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Picture perfectArmed with a computer and a lot of patience, a Monash University academic is bringing some of Australia’s earliest films back from the brink of obscurity, discovers DEREK BROWN Arguably the world’s first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang has endured almost a century of use, abuse and neglect. Originally shot around Melbourne in 1906, the film has suffered severe damage over the years, which has obliterated details from some scenes and made entire sections impossible to view. Dr David Suter (below) from Monash’s Department of Electronic and Computer Science Engineering has been working on restoring digitised copies of films from Australia’s early years of cinema for more than five years.
According to Dr Suter, it is common for old films to be fragile and marked with imperfections, known in the business as ‘artifacts’. "All changes to the film from the original are classed as artifacts. Scratches, dust, water marks, fungal growth, lifting of the emulsion, distortion of frames, intensity flicker and frame flicker – all are the result of damage and make it harder to watch," he says. Dr Suter removes some artifacts from the damaged films by running the digitised copy through a computer process or algorithm that checks the film for anomalies. "One of the algorithms we use takes a patch from a single film frame and looks two frames before and two frames after to try and find the same piece of the image. In essence, though this is a simplification, if it can’t find the same patch two frames back or two frames forward, the patch is likely to be an artifact and it will be removed," he says. "It takes a lot of manual intervention to perfect the restoration, but eventually I hope we can take an old film, put it through the digitiser and then run the digitised version through these algorithms without a human in the loop." Although using algorithms in restoration is prohibitively expensive for widespread use, Dr Suter says the cost is small compared to manual methods of film restoration. "To restore a film manually, they use a lot of different techniques, from chemical baths and washes to all sorts of optical and physical techniques, where damaged sections are masked out and replaced," he says. "This process is expensive, time-consuming and a bit dangerous because you have to work with the original print to make a copy. Every time you make a copy of the film, you risk further degradation and damage. "Once you’ve made one copy, you can make any number of additional copies digitally without making a disturbance on the original and without any further loss of detail." Dr Suter, his former PhD students and paid research associates are one of only a handful of academic groups around the world working on such methods of film restoration. The international reputation of his work has helped attract funding from the Australian Research Council to sponsor a visit from French academic Dr Samia Boukir. Dr Boukir, from La Rochelle University in France, is at Monash this year working with algorithms to restore modern and historic films – including French films. Some of the films she is looking at include the 1897 film Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins - Artillerie de Montagne: Chargement de Mulets, created by the Lumiere brothers, La Belle et la Bête, filmed in 1946, and some more modern television movies. According to Dr Boukir, some recent films may also require restoration. "Most people are aware that older films may be damaged and need repair, but you can find artifacts in recent films as well. Even during the development of modern films, accidents can damage or scratch the original," she says. Dr Suter hopes his efforts of film restoration and encoding will eventually improve the viewing pleasure of historical footage for a wide audience. "Viewers will have a more pleasant experience due to the work we are pioneering," he says. ACTION: For more information on Dr Suter's research and to download examples of his work, visit http://batman.eng.monash.edu.au/suter_research/suter_research.html |
Using a computer and a series of mathematical equations, he has been
trying to improve the appearance of historical film sequences donated by
the National Film and Sound Archive, including The Story of the Kelly
Gang and footage of the Gallipoli landing during World War I.