A RESTORATION OF 'NOSFERATU' (1922)

Instructor: Mark Rance

Presented by: The Horse Hospital

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0	LONDON: The Horse Hospital
P	Thursday 19th April, 2018
N	7:00pm

Event information

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies - London

This show-and-tell lecture will illustrate many of the issues encountered and (with varying degrees of success) resolved in a digital restoration of Murnau’s NOSFERATU. We will begin with a description of the original production and the technology used to make the film. The film’s own troubled history complicated the film’s physical reconstruction, and that impacted the digital restoration. The reconstructed master print was made from many disparate elements, as a single negative was simply not available. We will examine many scenes and shots in a side-by-side comparison of the unrestored reconstructed print and the digitally restored version of the same material. As we do, this talk will investigate many of the problems faced by any restoration team when not all the original elements are available. We will examine the use of VFX tools, grain management, tinting processes and photo-chemical to digital translation issues when restoring motion pictures.

This talk will primarily explore the complex and subjective issues currently floating around in many analog-versus-digital discussions of film and how those opinions can influence the determination of what the restored version should look like if the goal is to replicate the original projected image at the time of first release. Can digital restorations generate valid preservation copies of photo-chemical materials? Let’s find out.