“These Bond films are 40 years old but they look like they were shot yesterday”
The Bond back catalogue is going Blu-ray, but looking so good doesn’t come easy. Clare Newsome investigates how 007’s past is brought into the present
One of the main differences between myself and male technology writers is that I’m not in love with the technology itself. Instead, I love what today’s technology enables me to do: get my music, movies and TV sounding and looking better than ever, aiding my escape into a world of wonder, beauty, fun, adventure, mystery, passion and tragedy. And escapist entertainment doesn’t get any better than Bond movies.
As anyone who’s been fortunate enough to enjoy
Casino Royale on Blu-ray Disc™ will know, it’s a jaw-dropping experience. Pin-sharp picture quality and explosive uncompressed audio draw you deeper into the story and have you whooping with glee as the set-piece action sequences charge by. No wonder it’s the world’s bestselling Blu-ray release.
Higher definition surpriseAnd the news keeps on getting better. Ahead of the cinema release of
Quantum of Solace in October, six of 007’s earlier jaunts will be hurtling onto High Definition disc with the style and power of a rocket-fuelled Aston Martin.
Dr. No,
From Russia With Love,
Thunderball,
Live and Let Die,
For Your Eyes Only and
Die Another Day have all been fully restored and remastered for the Blu-ray format.
When I overexcitedly babbled all this to a friend, they batted back a valid question: “But what’s the point of old films on Blu-ray? Surely they’ll look awful in high definition compared to modern movies?” But the answer is no – far from it. Good old 35mm movie film is actually higher-definition than digital HD formats, able to show more detail and with a wider dynamic range. How else would it still look good when projected to fill huge cinema screens?
Painstaking restorationFilm, however, is a fragile medium that can scratch, fade and even go mouldy. Even the Bond films – which have been carefully stored in the MGM archives – needed a freshen-up for their HD debut. At Lowry Digital, a team of technicians have spent the past two years painstakingly remastering and restoring the 20 pre-
Casino Royale Bonds, frame by frame.
“These Blu-rays will look better than you’ve ever seen Bond – even in the cinema,” claims Mike Inchalik, chief operating officer at Lowry Digital. “Because we’ve gone right back to the camera negatives and original prints. There’s colour and detail that no one’s seen since the day they were shot. Some of these films are 40 years old, but they look like they were shot yesterday.”
Starting from scratchThe movies had previously been remastered for DVD, but Blu-ray is such a big step up in terms of detail-visibility that the Lowry team had to start from scratch – literally.
“Blu-ray is a very discriminating format, so you have to make sure the films are up to it,” Inchalik says. “
Dr. No was a pretty low-budget movie, and it shows in places. There were lots of ‘gate-hairs’, scratches and problems with principal photography that we had to take out.”
Subsequent Bonds were bigger-budget but had different problems. “More money meant more effects and faster edits. Every time you cut into the film negative it can make the image look softer, or introduce noise.”
Spectacular resultsInchalik says that many frames of the films have been rebuilt to match the original image. So impressive are the results that Lowry now uses a sequence from
You Only Live Twice to showcase how spectacular remastered movies can look. Until Connery makes his appearance, the scene looks like a modern HD travelogue on Japan.
Sadly, Inchalik wouldn’t give me any preview copies of the new Blu-ray Bonds, so I’ll have to wait like everyone else. Meanwhile, maybe I’ll just watch Daniel Craig on the beach in Blu-ray a few more times – purely for technical reasons, you understand.
Clare Newsome is editor-in chief of What Hi-fi? Sound and Vision
Casino Royale
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