American Cinematographer - July 2006 - 85

prime engagements. Through the years,
negative had suffered the usual
indignities that time, handling and print¬
ing can inflict; there were tape-repaired
tears, faded dupe sections for opticals
and to replace a damaged sequence,
and a bit of color fading and some dirt
that defied surface cleaning.
Directed by Robert Wise and
based on a 1962 novel by Richard

the

McKenna, The Sand Pebbles was

some¬

thing of a box-office disappointment
during its initial release, but has come to
be regarded as an enduring Hollywood
classic. The project provided Steve
McQueen with
U.S.

one

of his finest roles

Navy ship's engineer Jake Holman,

who, along with the other crewmembers
of the U.S.S. San Pablo, embarks upon a

"show-the-flag" mission in China in
1926. Holman's cynical outlook on life
begins to change when his ship is sent
on a

mission to

rescue some

American

missionaries. (A bastardization of San

Pablo, the "sand pebbles" of the title
refer to the

ship's crewmembers.)

The Sand Pebbles

was

danger of becoming a "lost film." In
addition to the original camera negative,
there were backup elements - an Eastmancolor interpositive and black-andwhite color separation masters had
been made in the 1960s

but

often the case, these elements did not
retain the full visual quality inherent in
the

FC2FMreao0ecmondxtuihfu.s.ry

Asocceunrfttesy
Phot s

original

camera negative.
Fox decided to give

contract with Ascent to

provide that

service.
Ascent scanned the

original
negative for The Sand Pebbles at 4K
(4096x3112 pixels per frame) using a
Northlight 1 pin-registered film scanner
to 10-bit Cineon files. The scanning
process takes about seven seconds per

resolution."

from the

After Bernstein's initial colorcorrection and

image-restoration steps,

the

digital files were sent to a contract
facility in India for dustbusting. This
process removed more than just

frame, and it took 20-30 hours to create

embedded dirt; the visible, thin-line

the 4K

digital files for each reel. The 13
reels of The Sand Pebbles required
close to 14 terabytes of disk storage

CinemaScope splice marks

space.

with Pablo, colorist David Bernstein

flat," says Bernstein. "Some of the stuff
coming out of the scanner looks fairly
normal in terms of color balance, [but

house. Much of it looks familiar

made a first pass for rough color correc¬
tion and restoration of the heavier

biased toward red

edit

bays, machine rooms, telecine and scan¬
ning facilities - but everything is on a
grand scale. The heart of the center is
Prod-Net, Ascent's proprietary digitalproduction network, which offers a fully
integrated, secure file-based workflow
through all phases of post, from image
capture to output in any video or film
format, from HD to DVD to digital inter¬
mediates. The facility also offers digitalcinema capabilities for clients who

were

also

removed.
"The

scans

come

"The iQ box is

shot-to-shot color variations. I did that

combination of every¬

thing Quantel has made over the last 30
years, so there's a bit of Harry, Henry

ner

The Sand
Pebbles

being

done at 4K
resolution at
Ascent Media's

Digital Media
Data Center in

Burbank,
California.

scan¬

might not have been calibrated for,
I added contrast and balanced the
the

could

people doing the dust cleanup
easily see the white specks,

Paintbox, Editbox and all that stuff,"

but this sort of broad color correction

Bernstein. "It's all resolution-inde¬
pendent, so I can bring any resolution

could also be
table at the

from standard definition to 4K into the

we'll set

says

restoration of

it's] very flat. Some of it is [also] heavily
or green, resulting

from different film stocks that the

(bottom) frames

out kind of

image damage, and removed the reel"change-over" cues that were phys¬
ically punched into the original negative.

end

(top)

and after

The Sand
Pebbles a digital facelift at Ascent
Media's new Digital Media Data Center
in Burbank. Designed by Kevin Sanders,
Ascent's chief technology officer, and
located on Hollywood Way, the facility is
a 100,000-square-foot "super" post

Using the Quantel iQ4 system

Before

system, mix and match any of those on
the timeline, and output them at any

applied using a lookup
cleanup workstation. I think
it up that way in the future.
American

Cinematographer 81

American Cinematographer - July 2006

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