On April 18, the 14th Beijing International Film Festival opened. The new 4k versions of "a plan " and " sell oneself to " had their world premiere in the "Tribute·Restoration" section. The 4K version shown this time is supported by the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" jointly launched by the China Film Archive, Douyin, and Volcano Engine.
4k version of "Plan A" and "Pact of Promise" movie posters
"Plan A" and "Pact of Promise" were released in 1983 and 1978 respectively, more than 40 years ago. After the original filming negatives of the two films were scanned in 4k specifications in Hong Kong, they underwent digital restoration by the China Film Archive, AIGC visual large-scale technical restoration by the Volcano Engine, and artistic restoration by both parties, and finally achieved clarity and smoothness. Achieve 4K effects in terms of brightness, color, etc., bringing a different visual experience to movie fans.
Old movies "renovated in 4k", you can clearly see the martial arts action from more than 40 years ago
In early April this year, Jackie Chan just celebrated his 70th birthday. "Plan A" is directed by Jackie Chan. It is Jackie Chan's first work to be nominated for the Golden Statue and Golden Horse Best Actor, and it is also his important masterpiece.
During the pre-screening event of "Plan A", senior film producer Sun Rong, who once served as Jackie Chan's vice president of China, shared with fans on the spot that Jackie Chan's "famous scene of jumping from the bell tower" in "Plan A" was filmed for seven days, with a total of 15 Jump off the bell tower twice. The action scenes of this film combine elements of authenticity, acrobatics, and danger, establishing Jackie Chan's classic style of comedy action films in the future.
Dinosaur Pictures founder, former Vice President of Jackie Chan China and Vice President of Sparkle Roll Films, Sun Rong shared before the screening that
’s carefully designed martial arts movements are smoother and smoother with the support of intelligent frame insertion technology. There was a fight scene in "Plan A". Dewey, who had fallen to the ground, faced Sammo Hung who was holding a big sword high, and kicked the knife away to turn the defeat into victory. This is actually not common sense. How did Dewey stand up and kick the big knife away in an instant? ? The Volcano Engine uses intelligent frame insertion technology to insert the middle value of the AI-predicted action between two martial arts actions, and this solves the mystery. Dewey put his hands on the ground and prepared to stand upside down. Then he exerted force on his waist and used his feet to twist Sammo Hung's hand. Sammo Hung lost his strength and the sword fell.
There are more details of scenes and props that the audience did not notice when they were children, but they can finally be seen clearly on the big screen 40 years later. The lifebuoy in the home of Jackie Chan's character "Ma Rulong" has the words "Hong Kong Marine Police" on it. Some of the street scenes in the film were shot in Macau. After the
movie, a female audience member who was born in 1982 said that the first time she watched this movie about her age was when she watched a video tape rented by her father after school. The quality of the copied picture in her memory was not clear. There was a 4K version screened at the Beijing Film Festival, and she was the first to grab a ticket: "I am familiar with the plot and lines, but the 4K restoration has more visual impact. It reminds me of watching Hong Kong at home with my parents when I was a child. "The movie makes my heart very warm."
Film scholar, senior film producer, and screenwriter of " Ruan Lingyu " believes that the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" preserves these precious images, which is a meaningful work for cultural heritage. "Perhaps after watching it again, you may wonder why you were so stupid when you were a child, why you liked such clips, or why you didn't see it back then, and this movie was so awesome." Watching an old movie is like connecting with your own childhood and past. , today’s conversation, she said that she would welcome any repairs.
The main creator walked into the restoration laboratory, "secondary creation" also has artistic value
"The Pledge of Allegiance" is another masterpiece of the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" that premiered at the Beijing Film Festival. The film was the box-office champion of Hong Kong movies in 1978. Its director, Xu Guanwen, was the undisputed "King of Comedy" in the Hong Kong film industry before the rise of Stephen Chow.
"Xu Guanwen is good at understanding social psychology. He uses the form of comedy to criticize society and reflect on human nature, giving Hong Kong comedies a new look." According to Su Tao, associate professor of the School of Liberal Arts at Renmin University of China, who was the pre-screening guest, Xu Guanwen and Bruce Lee They are also called the two superstars of the Hong Kong film industry in the 1970s. Their respective creations influenced the appearance of Hong Kong films in the following decades.
The digitization and restoration of the film "The Pledge of Allegiance" will be completed in 2024. The original filming negatives were scanned in 4k format in Hong Kong using an arriscan scanner, and the sound restoration was derived from the preserved 35mm mixed sound of the film.
The traditional 4k restoration process of a movie is generally divided into three steps: physical restoration, digital restoration and artistic restoration. The restoration team of the China Film Archive first physically repaired the film itself, then used a high-precision film scanner to convert the film into a 4k resolution data image file, and removed the traces of time on the screen frame by frame. , complete digital restoration. Finally, perform artistic restoration.
In order to ensure the "authenticity" of the film, the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" project team follows the restoration principle of "repairing the old as before and respecting the original". The Volcano Engine technical team had repeated discussions with the film archive's restorers. During the digital restoration process, engineers used AI marking technology to reduce the restorers' repetitive work, optimize the clarity, smoothness, and color of the film, and remove defects.
art restoration process, in order to "reproduce" the aesthetic style of Hong Kong films. The China Film Archive invited directors such as Chen Jiashang, Guan Jinpeng and Gao Zhisen to enter the restoration laboratory, and under the guidance of the main creators of the year, they completed the restoration of films such as "Martial Arts Champion Su Qier", " Underground Love", " Rich and Powerful " Art Restoration.
Director Chen Jiashang (second from right) guided the restoration at the China Film Archive.
Sun Rong mentioned that Jackie Chan believed that the light in the tunnel in " Flying Eagle Project" was not bright enough. The "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" team adjusted based on their opinions and made up for it. Jackie Chan’s regrets about his creation back then. Therefore, the "renovated" 4k version not only has the value of technical retention, but also has the artistic value of "secondary creation".
Engineers collaborated with movie fans to explore restoration image quality evaluation standards
In addition to the restoration opinions of the film's creators, the subjective feelings of modern viewers are also an important part of the restoration plan. The director of "The Greatest Hero", Chen Jiashang, once said that he hopes to use the "Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project" to make the film more modern and more accessible to young people.
In January this year, the Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory screened and recruited more than 50 professional movie fans, inviting them to conduct online evaluations of the 4k restored version of " Happy Ghost " with different technical solutions, and explore more acceptable restored image quality based on fan feedback. standard.
As the repair work progresses, the actual repair problems that arise also contribute to the academic research of the Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory.
In the top computer vision conference cvpr 2024, the Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory team won the championship in the ntire (new trends in image restoration and enhancement) track. The main problem that this winning plan solves is how to repair the low-quality pictures commonly found in old films and other materials.
In addition, the Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory has further optimized the large visual model by introducing adaptive feature weighting modules, a combination of unsupervised learning and supervised learning, text semantic priors and other training methods to achieve extremely low-quality portrait reconstruction, Good results have been achieved in several aspects such as color adjustment of faded film and generation of missing strokes in text. At the same time, in order to maintain the texture of the film, an adaptive texture enhancement scheme was specially developed to add grain that simulates film noise.
In the past, the film restoration process was complicated and trivial. It would take an experienced restorer one month 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.
As AIGC visual large model technology is widely used 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. “Not only are the audio and video in old movies out of sync, Problems such as this will be solved more effectively through aigc, and in the future it is even expected that AI will learn to automatically judge the repair effect. "
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