Author / Cheng Shushu
Editor / Zhu Ting
Operations / Biscuits
1 hour, 39 minutes and 33 seconds, Luo Sanpao (played by Di Wei), who had already fallen to the ground, faced the big knife that Zhuo Yifei (played by Sammo Hung) was about to cut down, and the next second he kicked the big knife, turning defeat into victory?
It wasn't until more than 40 years later, watching the 4K restored version of "Plan A" on the big screen, that the audience saw Dewey's move to defeat Sammo Hung in the film that year. It turned out that Luo Sanpao here first used the first half of the oolong skein, landed on the ground with both hands, ready to stand upside down, and then exerted force at the waist, and used his feet to twist Zhuo Yifei's hand holding the knife. Zhuo Yifei lost his strength, and the big knife fell to the ground.
The 4K restoration of the early classic action comedy "Plan A" by Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and Sammo Hung comes from the China Film Archive, Douyin, and Volcano Engine, which jointly launched the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project". In the ongoing Beijing International Film Festival, "Project A" and another 4K restored version of the old Hong Kong film "Deed of Sale" were selected for the "Tribute to Restoration" section.
Limited by technology and blurry picture quality, many old movies carefully designed details failed to achieve a blow to the audience. Now, a group of film restorers and algorithm engineers are determined to work together to recover the glittering "details" from the aging film.
Restoring movies is also restoring precious memories scattered in time
When repairing this classic fight scene between Luo Sanpao and Zhuo Yifei, algorithm engineer Wang Jing pressed the pause button more than once.
Since he watched "Plan A" on a videotape for the first time in high school, a question has plagued him for more than ten years: in the face of Sammo Hung, who is holding a big knife and much more powerful than himself, how can Dewey, who has fallen to the ground, suddenly kick the knife away and turn defeat into victory in one second?
Wang Jing studied martial arts in middle school, and he dabbled in Chinese sanda and traditional Hong boxing. In his experience, Devie's move looks like an "oolong skein", but the "oolong skee" itself cannot take the opponent's knife. He wanted to solve the puzzle himself during this restoration.
Similar to Wang Jing's nostalgia for watching Hong Kong movies as a teenager, Hu Xiaobin, who works as a restoration at the China Film Archive, remembers the restoration of an old film in 2018. The moment he opened the film cassette, a pungent sour smell hit his face. When the film is unfolded, it is stiffened, wrinkled, and curled to fit in the scanner.
This is due to the fact that the previous film storage medium is mainly film, and the early film is mostly nitric acid film base, which is more flammable than paper, although after the sixties, it has basically been replaced by acetic acid film base and polyester film base, but no matter what kind of film base, it is difficult to maintain it for a long time at room temperature, and after a long time, the picture of the old movie will appear faded, distorted, acidified and so on. Damage such as mildew, as well as scratches, flickering, frame loss, and blurry images caused by repeated screenings.
Therefore, the traditional 4K restoration process of a movie is often divided into three steps: physical restoration, digital restoration, and artistic restoration.
Source: Film restoration steps on display at the China Film Archive
In the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project", the restoration team of the China Film Archive first physically restored the film itself, and then used a high-precision film scanner to convert the film into a 4K resolution data image file, and removed the traces left by time on the picture frame by frame to complete the digital restoration. Finally, the art restoration is carried out.
In order to ensure the "authenticity" of the film and follow the restoration principle of "repairing the old as the old and respecting the original", the Volcano Engine technical team visited the restoration laboratory of the China Film Archive many times and polished it with the restorers of each link. Both sides decided to play to their respective strengths.
For some repetitive dirty spots, the algorithm engineers of Volcano Engine will use AI identification technology to complete some repetitive de-duplication work on the screen. At the same time, with the help of the AIGC visual model, some problems in traditional restoration have also been solved. In addition, in order to improve the viewing experience, the engineers also designed the scheme, series model, through the combination of different schemes such as frame insertion, together with the restorers of the China Film Archive, to optimize the clarity, smoothness, color, remove flaws, and obtain a more realistic and clear high-quality version.
When fixing the martial arts footage of "Plan A", Volcano Engine used intelligent interpolation technology to improve the clarity and smoothness of the action. According to Wang Jing, this is similar to using AI to predict the middle value of a 90-degree head turning action, and inserting an illusory 45-degree angle picture to make the head turning action smoother and smoother.
Therefore, he must find and restore what happened in this second between Dewey and Sammo Hung.
After getting the picture of the completion of the traditional restoration, Wang Jing found that Di Wei did not directly kick the knife. With this clip, I asked several friends in the martial arts circle who are good at acting, and finally understood the mystery: this is not a complete oolong skein, but the first half of the oolong skein, plus a disarming kick to surrender the knife.
The interpolation repair was completed, and Wang Jing finally solved the mystery in one second. He knew that it would be difficult for the audience to notice the details of this moment, but it was inevitable that some teenager, like himself more than a decade ago, would get the answer from the restored 4K movie.
On April 18th, on the day of the premiere of the 4K restored version of "Plan A" at the Beijing Film Festival, a female audience member said at the end of the show that the first time she watched this movie of about the same age as herself was watching a videotape rented by her father after school, and the quality of the ripped pictures in her memory was not clear. "I'm familiar with the plot and lines, and it's more visually striking after the 4K restoration. ”
There are also more viewers who discovered scenes and prop details that they didn't notice in their childhood, such as the words "Hong Kong Marine Police" on the lifebuoy at the home of Jackie Chan playing "Ma Rulong", and some street scenes were filmed in Macau.
"It reminds me of when I was a child, watching Hong Kong movies at home with my parents, and my heart was very warm. The female audience member said.
Restored old films, hiding the answers to the large models of the volcano engine
4K restoration of old film films, and the preservation of the painstaking works of the older generation of filmmakers in digital form, to a certain extent, is also competing with time.
Hu Xiaobin remembers that the first film restored in the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" was "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier". The film was shot in the 90s of the last century, and the film was relatively well preserved, so the physical restoration was relatively simple, only washing with an ultrasonic film cleaner to remove floating dust and mildew.
However, for those mold spots that have been immersed in the film film film layer, they cannot be cleaned off by physical repair, and after being converted to digital format, the green mold spots crawl on the frame by frame. And the direction of the veins is different, so it can only be done manually.
In the artistic restoration of this film, Li Tao, director of the production department of the China Film Archive, proposed that the classic works of martial arts film masters such as Hu Jinquan and Zhang Che should be used as a reference to analyze the color aesthetics of Hong Kong films. In order to be more rigorous, the restorers also invited director Chen Jia to check the scene.
Sun Fan, a restorer at the China Film Archive, was deeply impressed by Chen Jia's expression when he watched the film. Due to the limited conditions of the film era, the director put a lot of effort into the early set, costumes, and shooting, and Chen Jiashang loved and cherished every shot very much.
It is precisely because of the limitations of film that Chen Jiashang has always had a regret, ""Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qi'er" was filmed very quickly, and the shooting and post-production were super rough for the Chinese New Year. He has always felt that there is too much red in the movie, especially the red in the ending scene, which is very eye-catching and looks very earthy. But at that time, there was basically no room for adjustment after printing, and the time was urgent, so he could only deliver in a hurry.
Chen Jiashang told Sun Fan that he hoped to "press the red color of the second half" when repairing. After seeing the finished film, he felt satisfied, and even more felt that it was not easy, "The film has changed from such a broken situation to the current version." ”
Wang Jing and his colleagues at Volcano Engine will also participate in art restoration, using AI to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
In "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier", Su Can played by Stephen Chow and Rushuang played by Zhang Min only looked at each other for a second, and Su Can claimed that he was in love with Rushuang and wanted to enter Beijing for Rushuang to take the top prize. This second supports Su Can's motivation in the whole movie, which is very important.
In order to make this eye look at each other, hook Su Can and the audience's heart, Wang Jing and his team colleagues finally separated the portrait part of Zhang Min from the background environment and used two different sets of solutions to enhance the portrait while retaining the details of the environment. He also cooperated with the AIGC visual model to split the original algorithm inference steps into hundreds of steps, and naturally restored the texture details of the picture by using enhanced data scale, model parameters and computing power. After trying and comparing various schemes, the engineers of Volcano Engine discussed and determined the final visual effect.
Pictured: The restorer and director are working on the artistic restoration of "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier".
With the deepening of the restoration work, the Volcano Engine has carried out a series of optimizations for the visual model: through the introduction of adaptive feature weighting module, the combination of unsupervised learning and supervised learning, text semantic prior and other training methods, the visual model has been further optimized, and good results have been achieved in several aspects such as extremely low image quality portrait reconstruction, color adjustment of faded film and generation of missing text strokes.
Before vs after repair
Contrast before and after fading film color adjustment
Solving various practical problems in the restoration of old films also provides value for the academic research of the Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory. At CVPR 2024, the Volcano Engine Multimedia Lab and the University of Science and Technology of China won the NTIRE (New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement) track in one fell swoop Learning), the main problem solved is to repair the unpredictable complex damage (unknown complex degradation) that exists in large numbers similar to old films.
Wang Yue, Director of Video Cloud Technology Architecture of Volcano Engine, said: "On the one hand, the large model has strong generation capabilities, and with the help of the generation ability of the Stable Diffusion large model, the repair effect is better than the previous algorithm, and the picture details are more natural; ”
In the past, the film restoration process was complicated and tedious, and it took 1 month for an experienced restorer to complete the restoration of a film. In recent years, the rapid development of AI technologies such as deep learning has greatly improved the quality and efficiency of old film restoration.
With the wide application of AIGC visual large-scale model technology in more film and television scenes, Ma Kede, assistant professor of the Department of Computer Science at City University of Hong Kong, believes that this technology trend may become the mainstream of 4K film restoration in the future. ”
In the pre-screening activities of "Plan A", Sun Rong, a veteran filmmaker who was the vice president of Jackie Chan China, shared with fans that Jackie Chan previously thought that the light in the tunnel in "Flying Eagle Project" was not bright enough, and the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" team adjusted according to the opinions to make up for his regrets in the creation of the year.
Sun Rong, founder of Dinosaur Pictures, former vice president of Jackie Chan China and vice president of Sparkle Roll Film and Television, shared before the screening
Time is undefeated by the beauty of art
Screenwriter Zhang Xiaobei said: "Cinema is originally an art that tries to fight against time and defeat oblivion. ”
Nowadays, many films have digital materials, but their film reels are still carefully preserved in the China Film Archive. Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive, explained the reason, "The emergence of digital cinema has only been about 40 years, and film has been preserved for hundreds of years...... Although some films have been restored, we will still preserve their films as if they were cultural relics, because we are not sure whether there will be technological innovation and change in a few years. Sun Xianghui looks forward to the future, under the new technology, the restorers will be able to restore better versions, "so that more precious images can get out of the 'iron box' and into the audience." ”
During the restoration process, Wang Jing, who was born in 96, watched the Hong Kong film he loved several times. When he first watched Stephen Chow's movie, he was only seven or eight years old. His parents knew that he liked to watch movies, so they bought DVDs, and he once had a full set of genuine CDs of Stephen Chow's movies.
When he was a freshman in high school, Wang Jing once watched "Jiupin Sesame Official", "Domestic Lingling Paint" and "Plan A" all night. The next day, he shared in the literary club that Hong Kong films are like a kind of adult Grimm's fairy tales, but one is to wrap reality with childish stories, and the other is to wrap the heaviness of tragedy with nonsensical and even hysterical comedy. And whether it is a Hong Kong film or a fairy tale, "Every age group will have different ideas when you watch it." ”
Sun Fan especially likes the clothes of women in old movies, "very beautiful, very fashionable", she thinks, it is a kind of upward spiritual atmosphere, "The movies of an era are also recording the real life of that era." Even though the restoration had to be seen many times, she would also enjoy those scenes over and over again.
Restorers often pour emotion into an old film when they complete it. They expect the film to be recognized, appreciated, understood, and shine on the screen, but they are also worried that their abilities are limited and their works will be criticized.
Last year, on the day the 4K restored version of "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qier" was screened at the China Film Archive, Sun Fan did not enter the theater. She is afraid that when she watches the movies she has restored, she will see unfinished regrets and problems. In her eyes, there is always room for the end result to be better.
That night, Sun Fan sat outside the entrance of the theater and listened to the dialogue of the movie. It wasn't until the last line fell that she stood up. It's her work routine, and every movie she restores by hand, she accompanies them to release in this way, making sure that nothing unexpected happens.
Jiao Xiongping, the screenwriter of "Ruan Lingyu", was deeply touched by the restoration of this old Hong Kong film. She feels that rewatching old movies is a dialogue with her childhood and the past. Only when you know where you come from will you know where you will go in the future.
Note: Wang Jing is a pseudonym, source: Weibo, Douban, invaded and deleted.