The highlights of China's first black-and-white-to-color 4K restored version of "The Eternal Electric Wave" made a stunning appearance at the opening ceremony of the 11th Beijing International Film Festival, which shocked the old artists and audiences present.
On October 6, the full version of the film will land in theaters nationwide, and the hero "Li Xia", played by the late famous film performance artist Mr. Sun Daolin, will appear clearly on the big screen for the first time in a color image, and fans will once again hear the classic line: "Comrades, farewell, I miss you!" ”
As China's first feature film restored by black-and-white to color 4K technology, "The Eternal Radio Wave" was jointly completed by the CCTV Central Video 5G New Media Platform and the China Film Archive, the original film of the film was released in 1958, produced by the Chinese People's Liberation Army Bayi Film Studio, directed by Wang Ping, starring Sun Daolin and Yuan Xia, the film is based on the deeds of martyr Li Bai, telling the story of LI Xia, a member of the Communist Party of China, lurking in the enemy-occupied areas and dedicating his life to the revolutionary cause.
Mr. Sun Daolin, who played Li Xia at the time, was 37 years old, and when his color lens appeared at the opening ceremony of the 11th Beijing Film Festival, Tian Hua and other old artists burst into tears and excitedly said that they "missed their comrades-in-arms" all the time.
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Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive, said in an interview that the biggest driving force for the restoration of "The Eternal Electric Wave" comes from the audience's demand for the "red classic", "Previously, the China Film Archive was commissioned by CCTV to use 4K + AI coloring restoration technology to complete the 4K repair and coloring of the whole song fragment of the "Shangganling" movie theme song "My Motherland", and a large number of viewers left a message below asking for the 'full film color repair' of these red classics, so we have the confidence to do this." ”
Sun Xianghui revealed that the "Eternal Electric Wave" is the restorers use 7 months to color 165,000 frames of images, using traditional restoration techniques and artificial intelligence coloring technology combined, first to complete physical repair, and then 4K scanning, with 4K digital restoration technology to remove the residual damage on the film, and then use artificial intelligence coloring technology to convert black and white images into color images. Because of the age, every step is very difficult, because there are dust, dirt, mildew, fading, image shaking, scratches, flickering, noise, discoloration, blur and other problems on the film film, so it is necessary to use digital film repair and processing technology to process it, so as to obtain higher image quality.
Interestingly, although the AI artificial intelligence black-and-white to color technology independently developed by the China Film Archive can improve the coloring efficiency, it is also "careless" and requires a lot of learning and training, Wang Zheng, a film restorer at the China Film Archive, said that in the process of coloring, because ai technology has to pass tens of millions of pictures, and then one by one to identify, and finally it is colored in a weighted way, so when the restorer finishes the AI coloring, it is often found that the volunteer army's clothing has a serious color aberration." The result calculated with AI is blue, but the real color should be yellow-green. In order to refine this matter, we rented some costumes of the volunteer army from the prop group, and then made a lot of data for it, and then trained the technology of AI. In addition, AI is not good at repairing moving camera screens, which require manual modification by the repair team frame by frame, and it takes a day to complete the screen in seconds.
In order to truly conform to history, restorers cannot rely on "guessing" to determine what kind of hue black will be after it becomes colored, so they need to collect massive information, conduct historical "examination" of details, and accurately restore the sense of age more than 60 years ago.
For example, in order to give the lipstick of the female characters in the film a "color number", the team had to study in detail the difference in the brightness of reds such as light red, vermilion, crimson red, bean paste red, rose red and other reds in the black and white picture, according to the personality and identity of the characters.
Lan Fen, the heroine of the film, when she newly joined the underground revolutionary work, her face was bright, and in the later stage, after Li Xia was arrested, her life was much more difficult, and the color of lipstick became very light at this time.
Other female characters should also distinguish the characteristics of export red and makeup according to the faces of the characters in the black and white version. The women's qipao also combines craftsmanship and materials in the film, and restores the three-dimensional sense, gloss and texture during restoration, reproducing the modern fashion of old Shanghai.
Coloring itself is an artistic creation, but it must conform to the basic tone of the original material, in order to verify the cover color of the male protagonist Li Xia's wire-bound book "Dream of the Red Chamber" used to transmit information, the team specially invited experts from the Dream of the Red Chamber, and then according to the yellow cheongsam worn by the heroine when holding the props, it was finally determined that the cover should be the "Dream of the Red Chamber" with the blue cover of the lead printed version at that time.
In order to restore the color of a vase in the film, it was necessary to call the Peace Hotel in Shanghai, and it was finally determined that it should be blue and white porcelain.
In the film, the neckline of Li Xia's military uniform was removed, but the mark will still exist, so when coloring, the restorer also has to have a golden eye to restore such details.
When the picture quality is improved, the sound aspect should also be upgraded, matching the picture, the restoration version uses sound to supplement the picture for secondary creation, recreate the auditory system, and use 5.1 surround sound to let the audience "sound immersive".
Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive, said that the restored version of "The Eternal Wave" may use two versions when it is screened in the theaters of the National Art Film Screening Alliance, "We will make it into a black-and-white restoration version and a color restoration version, hoping to keep the first version in its original state, only 4K black and white restoration, which is in line with the nostalgia of some senior film fans for black and white films; at the same time, we will turn it into the current color restoration in order for more audiences to go to the theater to relive these classics. The only theaters in the country are the color version of "The Radio Wave That Never Goes Away". ”
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Xiao Yang
Editor/Ying Qiao