Audiences familiar with old movies should be familiar with Xie Jin's "Women's Basketball No. 5". Released in 1958, this film is not only Xie Jin's first self-written and directed work, but also the first sports-themed color feature film shot in New China. In addition to The heroine Lin Jie, played by Qin Yi, this film is also Xiang Mei's film debut.
On June 16, after Migu cooperated with the China Film Archive to restore it, the 4K restored version of "Women's Basketball No. 5" premiered during the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival.
New China's first sports-themed color feature film
"Women's Basketball No. 5" tells the different encounters of basketball player Tian Zhenhua (Liu Qiong) in the new and old society, as well as the twists and turns of his love story with Lin Jie (Qin Yi), revealing the different fates of sports athletes before and after the founding of New China.
Not long ago, the 84-year-old Xiang Mei mentioned in an interview with reporters that she starred in "Women's Basketball No. 5". It was 1957, and Xiang Mei was 20 years old, concentrating on drawing designs in the Architecture Department of Tianjin University. Director Ding of a Shanghai Film Studio suddenly visited and said that director Xie Jin intended to let her play the role of "Wang Aizhu" in "Women's Basketball No. 5".
In the film, Wang Aizhu is No. 9, and has clashed with Lin Xiaojie, the No. 5 of the women's basketball team, resulting in Xiaojie being punished for delaying the game. Afterwards, she admitted her mistake to Xiao Jie, and the two reconciled. Lin Xiaojie is lin jie's daughter. 18 years ago, Lin Jie and Tian Zhenhua were separated due to a misunderstanding, until Tian Zhenhua became the instructor of Lin Xiaojie's basketball team after being demobilized, and the two were reunited.
"I was supposed to be an architect, but a chance in early 1957 changed the course of my life." Xiang Mei summed up her screen debut in this way, "I am a premature baby, very weak, because of the athletes in "Women's Basketball No. 5", everyone has misunderstood. ”
"Director Xie Jin liked to play football when he was young, broke his leg during a sport, and when he was recuperating at home, he thought of creating such a sports-themed film." Ishikawa, vice chairman of the Shanghai Filmmakers Association and professor at the Shanghai Theater Academy, introduced that the director buried a lot of stems in "Women's Basketball No. 5", such as Tian Zhenhua's clothes printed with the words "Southwest Military Region" on his clothes. Ishikawa said that these four words hide a message, "During the War of Resistance Against Japan, He Long personally formed the Southwest Military Region Combat Basketball Team, which was the highest level and most famous basketball team at that time." Tian Zhenhua's identity shows that he has enough level to coach women's basketball players. "As the first color sports film in New China, this film has a higher budget than the same period of film." Audiences can also see on the screen the daily life of Shanghai citizens in the 1950s. ”
Liu Guangjie, the recording engineer of the original "Women's Basketball No. 5", also came to the scene. "Chinese sound films were born in 1931, the same age as me." He also remembers that the recording equipment at that time was rudimentary, backward, and even dragged the back legs of film creation, "the predecessors tried their best to pursue sound and picture synchronization, which was a great difficulty at that time." Seeing the restored version of "Women's Basketball No. 5", he felt very valuable, "Film preservation is not easy, with the current technology to save the film, I am very grateful." ”
Make digital films with a "film flavor"
The reporter learned that just like the protection of old buildings, the principle of 4K restoration of old movies is also "repairing the old as old". The 4K repair of "Women's Basketball No. 5" can be roughly divided into three stages. "Physical restoration, digital restoration, artistic restoration." Wang Zheng, senior engineer of the production department of the China Film Archive, introduced.
The restoration material used the original negatives that had been preserved for many years in the Xi'an Film Database. Physical restoration refers to the identification, repair, washing and other processes to complete the repair of the film itself. In the second stage of digital restoration, it refers to the transformation of film into digital format for sound and picture restoration. The 85-minute "Women's Basketball No. 5" has 122,400 frames, and the restorer performs manual operations such as denoising, scratching, shaking, and flickering of each frame according to a unified standard; and emphasizes the audio to convert mono to 5.1 surround sound.
"Art restoration has been doing in recent years, originally this concept was called 'color grading', but art restoration is mainly to respect the original, we will invite the former creator, director, photography, or read the materials of the year to complete this together." Wang Zheng said. In the artistic restoration stage of "Women's Basketball No. 5", the restoration team consulted a large number of archival materials such as director's elaboration and photographic exposition of "Women's Basketball No. 5" to achieve artistic restoration of the film.
Ishikawa said that in the process of 4K restoration of old films, one of the most worthy of consideration is how to maintain the texture and graininess of the film, and even its sense of age and history. "I've seen over-noise reduction, to make '50s movies look like they're watching HD ball games now, and that doesn't seem acceptable." He believes that the restoration of old films from today's position requires an understanding of the cultural context of the time. "Xie Jin filmed "Women's Basketball No. 5" in order to show the contrast between the new and old society. Therefore, in the use of color, he will shoot more cold tones before the founding of New China, and after 1949, he will have more warm tones. Therefore, the artists, photographers, and technical aspects of printing and color grading at that time had to be handled around the director's intentions. Pay attention to this when repairing. ”
"The first principle of film restoration is to maintain the grainy feeling of film and make a digital film with a 'film flavor'." Wang Zheng revealed that the restoration team is currently working on a new project, that is, to establish a speech library to restore the "sound" in the old movie through speech synthesis technology. "Similar to the navigation of the map software, such as the voice of Zhou Xuan in the 1930s, the film clip is missing, and we restore it by establishing a voice library of the same era." He said that now the project is only 50% successful, "out of a very standard sound, the next step hopes to follow the feeling of the script, come out when happy, angry when the voice, step by step restoration." ”
Source: Author: Zhang Yi