As film restoration efforts continue to grow across Asia, a series of four Bruce Lee martial arts classics is among the latest projects to get the high-resolution 4K treatment. Udine Far East Film is proud to present the European premiere of the newly restored pictures: The Big Boss
(1971), Fist of Fury
(1972), The Way of the Dragon
(1972) and The Game of Death
(1978). We spoke with Davide Pozzi, the Director of Bologna-based film restoration lab L’Immagine Ritrovata
, about the project, and his lab’s work.
How did the Bruce Lee project come about?
My first meeting with [rights holder and client] Fortune Star was in 2013. I invited them to come to Italy to see our facilities and to see how we work, because, as I said to them, we are doing only one thing: film restoration. That’s our speciality. Usually a laboratory like ours does post-production, commercials and film restoration.
So I invited them to come, and the Fortune Star team came in October 2013 to visit our facilities.
At that time, of course, the Hong Kong facility was only an idea. Only later did it become a reality, in June 2015, when we officially opened L’Immagine Ritrovata Asia. In 2014, they gave us the first film to be restored at 4K, The Way of the Dragon. I think that was the perfect title for us, because the film was shot in Rome. Then later, in 2015, they confirmed the other three titles: The Game of Death, The Big Boss, and Fist of Fury.
We did the first part of the work in Hong Kong. We did the film repair, film wash, 4K wet-gate scanning, and optical soundtrack scanning there, then we sent the digital files to Italy to be restored.
This restoration project was done using the 4K process.
Can you explain the method?
Until the scan, the workflow is the same as usual: film repair and film washing. The true 4K work starts with a 4K resolution scan. For the Fortune Star titles, we made a wet-gate scan in order to avoid superficial scratches on the film. To get better image quality and stability, especially around the splices, we scanned at one-frame-per-second. After scanning, the film is digitised, and we start the digital restoration. That usually takes hundreds of hours. For the Bruce Lee titles, the average was 1,400 hours for this step alone.
After the digital restoration, we do the colour correction. The colour correction for the four Bruce Lee titles respected the original look of the films.
At the same time, we restore the picture and the sound. The work for the sound is almost the same as for the picture, because we have to repair the optical soundtrack, wash it, and digitise it.
Then we do the proper sound restoration.
At the very end, we match the restored picture with the restored sound and prepare all the deliverables. These are the 4K DCP [Digital Cinema Package] for theatrical release, HDCAM for broadcasting purposes, Mezzanine files for other purposes, and DPX file for digital backup.
What materials did you work with for this project?
Out of the four Bruce Lee titles, we were only able to work with the original camera negatives for two of them.
They were The Big Boss and Fist of Fury. Unfortunately, for The Way of the Dragon and The Game of Death, the original camera negative was not available. So we used interpositives, which are a second-generation element.
You said it took 1,400 hours to do the digital restoration.
What accounts for that length of time?
A film usually is around 150,000 frames, and you have to digitally restore every single frame. As you know, 4K is a very detailed resolution, and of course you have a lot of detail. But, on the other side, when you scan 4K, you have a lot of dust, and very small scratches start appearing.
That’s the reason we spend a lot of hours to get a good result. Just to give you an idea of the data size, every single digitalised frame is 52 megabytes. That means that a film of 150,000 frames corresponds to 7.8 terabytes. In order to carry out restoration work, we need a 1.2-gigabytes-per-second bandwidth to guarantee 24-frames-per-second play. Thanks to these numbers, you can see why a 4K restoration is technologically advanced, and needs a long time.
The dialogue with the client, in this case Fortune Star, is important, too. Restoration is always a dialogue between us and our clients. We sent Fortune Star a lot of files. They gave us detailed analysis, and were very good at quality control.
You said that you were respectful of the original look of the Bruce Lee films.
How did you confirm that?
We asked Fortune Star to provide us some with some references, and we received old videos already approved by Fortune Star. We also asked them to check if some vintage prints were available.
You prefer a respectful approach to restoration.
Can you explain what that means?
When you restore a film, you have to respect the film. We are not doing something new: we try to restore a film as it was. Why do I say “we try”? Because now it’s many years after the film was originally released, and technology has changed. For instance, the Bruce Lee films were released on 35mm; today we use digital cinema.
Our goal is to respect the spirit of the film. When we are talking, for instance, about colour correction, it would be very easy to do a very modern and even better colour correction. But the film was released in the 1970s, and we have to respect the original look of the film. Otherwise, we are doing something fake.
I think this is very important for our lab, for both the colour grading and for the sound restoration.
That’s the reason why we spent a lot of energy, and a lot of time, checking if there were some vintage prints available. You need to check all the elements available, because you have to know how the film was in terms of grading, in terms of sound, in terms of sync. Plus, you also have to know how it was edited.
For The Game of Death, we discovered that there were two versions: one international version (in English) and a shorter Cantonese and Mandarin version.
The most important thing is to learn from the clients what version they want to restore.
It was easy for The Game of Death because we restored both. It’s important for the fans, and as well for historians, to be able to compare both versions in order to understand why there was an international version as well as to a local one.
Was Fortune Star receptive to your preferred approach to restoration?
Yes. They accepted this approach without reservation. They really wanted to have excellent restorations. Sometimes, when only have to do an HD master for broadcast purposes, the client may ask us to be a little more modern with our colour correction. Of course, we follow the instructions.
But this case, it was full 4K restoration, and it was a true restoration.
You’ve been working on Hong Kong projects since 2008. How have you seen the market for restoration change in Hong Kong, and the region?
When we did our first Asia restoration in 2008, it was for Confucius [1940, for the Hong Kong Film Archive].
It was a real masterpiece, and was an analogue restoration. Analogue restoration means that we stayed on film, on 35mm. We received the original nitrate negative, and we created an interpositive, and then we printed a dupe negative and prints. This was typical analogue restoration.
Today, eight years later, 90 per cent, or even more, of our restoration is completely digital. It’s a big change.
In terms of numbers, or volume, today there is a global growing interest about film digitisation and film restoration. Now there’s a kind of market around 4K restorations because they can premiere at the very important film festivals, and they can be released on the new 4K television channels.
We can also provide a very new and good HD master for a Blu-ray release.