According to Ned Price, vice president of mastering for Warner Bros. Technical Operations, the restoration was made by converting the best available prints to video using an 8K Northlight scanner made by FilmLight. The 8K resolution—roughly 8,000 pixels across by 4,000 pixels down—translates to about 32 megapixels, far more than needed for Blu-ray’s maximum resolution of a little more than 2 MP. Warner used what it calls its Ultra-Resolution process, scanning the red, green, and blue elements of the film separately rather than together. All processing and restoration was performed at 4K resolution; the image was then downconverted to 1,920 x 1,080 pixels for the Blu-ray version.
“We can’t even see the 8K version right now,” Price added. “There are no [commercially available] displays that can show it.”
All of the key filmmakers who worked on The Wizard of Oz have passed away, so no one was available to provide guidance as to how the movie is supposed to look. With this movie, such questions are not simple. The movie’s then state-of-the-art special effects required that many scenes incorporate “all these layers of fake things,” as Price put it, referring to the movie's complex sets, background paintings, and optical effects. He also noted that the movie was shot on 8 ASA film, which means the production required an extraordinary amount of stage lighting.
Fortunately, Price and his crew were able to locate an answer print—a film print that was sent out for approval by the director. “It’s unusual to have an answer print for a film this old,” Price said. “It was at the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] but was misidentified.”
Viewed on one of Warner Bros.’ Panasonic professional plasma displays, the clips we saw looked richly saturated and extremely detailed, if grainy overall and even a tad flickery in spots. I noticed that individual grains of sand were visible in the Wicked Witch of the West’s hourglass, and that I could see slight blemishes on Judy Garland’s face that had gotten past the makeup artists.
The grainy look is intended, Price said: “On the last DVD [in 2005], we processed it to reduce the grain, then increased the sharpness to compensate. But you can’t get away with that on Blu-ray. On this one, we didn’t touch the grain. With films of this age, the grain is what carries the information.”
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Warner, cuando quiere, sabe hacer las cosas bien. Ardo en deseo de poder disfrutarlas todas.
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