Weekly Reel, May 26
News, WarnerMedia-Discovery Merger, Producers Union, Cinemas Opening, and Film Restoration.
In the always fun world of giant media mergers, WarnerMedia and Discovery are merging as a spin-off company from parental overlord AT&T, which wants to focus solely on its 5G telecommunications rollout. This merger pairs HBO Max with Discovery +, placing HBO content next to TLC “content” and gives WarnerMedia more non-fiction listings and a larger Indo-European reach. Just like with Disney’s 2019 purchase of 21st Century Fox, WarnerMedia/Discovery are aiming to compete with the tech giants, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon, as a giant legacy media company using their new direct-to-consumer streaming apps. This is the recent trend because the legacy media companies simply can’t compete both against each other as well as the larger tech companies. For perspective: AT&T bought Time Warner in 2018 for $85 billion, Disney bought Fox in 2019 for $71 billion, Comcast bought Sky in 2018 for $39 billion, and CBS bought Viacom in 2019 for $12 billion. Also in talks is the purchase of MGM by Amazon for $9 billion. But what’s different with the WarnerMedia/Discovery merger is that it will actually be a merger in which the two companies will break off from the vertical integration model under AT&T and focus on media/entertainment because AT&T can’t put more of their time/money in anything other than their telecommunications venture (so then why buy Time Warner and three years later abandonen it?). But what isn’t different is the testosterone-fueled, capitalist-crazed, ego-centered, big-wallet posturing (compensating?) of media executives that personify the William Goldman truism of Hollywood suits: “nobody knows anything.”
A group of film producers are trying to unionize as the Producers Union in an attempt to receive basic job benefits, securities, health coverage, etc. Although they are mostly part of the Producers Guild of America (PGA), it’s important to understand that the PGA is a trade organization, which operates less for the workers/members without the legal ability to bargain for them, and more as a cell within the larger film industry structure. Therefore it fails to cover the most basic human necessities of its members (for example, only three of 474 surveyed producers were covered under the film industry healthcare plan). And since the Producers Union is just beginning, it’s able to set standards for diversity/inclusion and lower entry thresholds for younger producers, both of which have been problems for many (all?) of the entrenched Hollywood institutions.
And lastly, much of the cinema-world is beginning to open again as vaccines are rolling out and incidence levels are going down, which will culminate in a summer of theater-going that all of you reading right now should take advantage of, even if it’s just big-loud schlock!
Article: Film Restoration Today, The Elusive Perfect Viewing Experience by Robert Drucker
Film restoration has become much easier in the last few years through the use of modern film scanners, massive hard drives, and various platforms/media in which to exhibit the restored products. And while it seems pointless restoring old, usually black and white films from directors barely known outside film study programs, it can have a profitable outcome. Criterion in particular takes advantage by restoring original (and sometimes recently discovered) film negatives using top-tier film technicians, packaging their product with extra film-fluff (commentary tracks, filmmaker/actor interviews, original artwork, etc.), and sold to their hungry and loyal followers for $30-40 MSRP.
Beyond just film nerds buying the latest restorations, film restoration has an important purpose and process that makes it “equal part art as it is science,” as Robert Drucker explains. Film restoration is essential in preserving a physical medium that deteriorates over time, therefore a quality of scientific expertise is needed for the process like with archaeology and other artifacts of cultural heritage. The difficulty with preserving a film is doing so without altering the image/sound in such a way that’s too different than originally intended, which can happen with a simple color grade for instance. So then how exactly is that tricky process accomplished? Or to put it differently, what is the point of film restoration?
When restoring a film, experts such as James White and Robert A Harris agree: the goal is to create a finished product that resembles the original theatrical experience as much as possible. Today, film restorations frequently produce results that live up to this standard. The technological advances in film restoration as well as high-end home video products have brought high-quality, 4k picture quality to a wider audience than ever before. Restorations can be appreciated and enjoyed not just in theaters in major cities, but home video and streaming services.
And so with the advent of theatrical home entertainment and decline in cinema-going, film restoration allows the film enthusiast to be able to enjoy an experience as close as possible to, say, watching Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali at a theater in the mid-1950s. And it should be noted that this is much different than forgoing a contemporary theatrical release to opt for its home entertainment release 3-18 months later on a streaming app. To dive a little further into the technical details, Drucker explains:
Ideally, digital restorations will be sourced from the original camera negative, the film element which will have the greatest possible amount of detail. This is far different than the sources used to create television broadcasts, VHS copies, or early DVDs.
Therefore:
There would have been no reason to utilize the OCN because consumer products like televisions wouldn’t have had the ability to broadcast the level of detail present. The negative is incredibly valuable from both an artistic and intellectual property perspective, and studios and libraries that hold copies of film negatives have an incentive to ensure they are touched as rarely as possible.
So because of the advancement in consumer products, the films restored and released today will look much closer to its original versus the previous TV, VHS, and DVD releases, which will more and more over time have their own imprecise look that marks the era in which it’s from. Drucker continues:
Once the film is scanned, there is a significant amount of precision that today’s tools afford those that perform restorations. They allow for missing frames to be recreated by adjacent frames in the elements. They also allow for precise color timing that can not only vary from shot to shot, but be remarkably consistent from shot to shot, often correcting for issues that may not have been controllable in analog workflows. Not only can dirt and scratches can be erased instantaneously, but parts of the image in each frame which were removed can be highlighted, allowing the restorer to ensure they are only erasing dirt and scratches, and not grain or parts of the original photography. With the negatives being accessed and films restored to the glory only seen in original release prints, living filmmakers and members of the original production staff are then brought in whenever possible to sign off on the work and ensure it is “director approved.”
But this director-authorial ideal doesn’t always work perfectly. George Lucas famously made many changes to the Star Wars films over time, often re-releasing one or both of the trilogies every few years to a world filled with SW fans (with disposable income) after testifying to Congress in 1988 that “people who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.” By this logic then another one of these “barbarians” is his buddy Steven Spielberg for digitally replacing the guns as walkie-talkies in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
But as Drucker maintains, film restoration is both art and science, which makes it inherently unstable over time. So then where do we go from here? What is the future of film preservation beyond just selling the latest discovery as a Criterion Blu-ray? In some ways it will become something of an archaeological practice: digging for original film negatives and restoring/preserving. The Library of Congress estimated that 75% of American silent films are lost forever; I wonder which of these films will become cinema’s lost Ark of the Covenant.