How Paramount Home Video gave The Godfather a restoration fans shouldn’t refuse
Archivists Andrea Kalas and James Mockoski talk about the enormous task of restoring the definitive mob movie’s luster
Film Features The Godfather
There isn’t a lot about Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather that hasn’t already been said, but Paramount Home Video’s new 4K edition of all three Godfather films indicates there’s still much more to see. Working from the original materials, the studio painstakingly scanned, repaired, and where necessary recreated the film’s original cut to create a vivid, lustrous new presentation.
Andrea Kalas, who works for Paramount, and James Mockoski, who works for Coppola’s production company Zoetrope, recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the enormous task of remastering and revitalizing this venerated classic for its 50th anniversary. In addition to discussing how technology has facilitated the process of rebuilding films for these releases, they talked about the line they navigate between an artist’s vision for their work and the viewers who may claim it as their own, and finally hinted at some of the titles that cinephiles may soon see debut in high definition on Blu-ray, and perhaps even in theaters.
The A.V. Club: Having done press about the James Bond restorations back in the mid-2000s, which explored the rebuilding of frames and a lot of those aspects, is it easier now to restore a film, or is it a more difficult process because there’s more material to go through, at least on something like The Godfather?
James Mockoski: Scanners are far better than they were 15, 20 years ago. It’s so superior. You get a rock solid, steady image. Software for digital restoration has come a long way in how they can handle dirt, scratches, and imperfections. So, yes, when you watch the disc and you compare the 2008 with the 2022 disc, and the difference in the level of cleaning, you’ll see, and that’s the software technology.
Andrea Kalas: It’s the ability to be subtle. I think the tools aren’t hammers anymore. They’re finally trained instruments. You can really fix a small thing without impacting something else. So that’s an amazing thing. But I think the other thing about this particular restoration is there’s a very analog aspect to that, which was we dove deep into thousands of boxes to find the best material that would give those digital tools their best shot in making it the most beautiful image. So this was a particularly interesting project from that perspective.
JM: I remember there was one example in ’08 that’s very subtle—no one picked it up—but the software was difficult to manage and it was hard to make fixes of frames. There’s one shot of a pigeon just appearing out of nowhere because they had to clone a section of the film. That’s an easier fix today. So as Andrea said, it’s a lighter touch. It’s being more subtle than a heavy hand at that time, and I hope that people appreciate that there are less of those fingerprints or artifacts.
AVC: Coppola and Gordon Willis presided over that 2008 restoration, and Coppola has certainly cultivated a reputation for going back to revisit his films. But how difficult is it to sort of navigate the thin line that must exist between potentially a filmmaker going, “This never quite looked the way that I wanted to, so I’d like to change or improve it,” and a certain point where a film sort of enters the cultural consciousness and is no longer necessarily just owned by that creator?
AK: I might talk about [The Godfather: Part III, a.k.a. Coda: The Death Of Michael Corleone] for a minute first, because that’s the one movie he did touch of this three. But the other two, he did sort of agree with your point that they’re not his anymore in a way, they’re the world’s. And III, I had the most amazing experience during the pandemic, which was when he finished the cut of III, [Coppola] showed it to the cast in the Paramount theater, mid-pandemic, when it was just like me and Pacino and Andy Garcia. It was an amazing day, and they came out of that screening so emotional. This franchise, obviously The Godfather meant so much to them. And obviously the criticism when III came out hit home very hard. And to see Coda the way it’s done now, it’s more understandable, it’s clearer, it’s better. And they were so emotionally moved by that, that I got that in a very interesting way, that it was like the burden of the other two was on that third. So I think it’s a very particular thing in this instance. But it’s not something that is cut and dried that you can say, “This is the policy, and it should always be this way.” I think that is the line that one always has to walk to make sure that you’re maintaining that thing that exists in the culture versus the idea of the creator having some intervention.
JM: I think always Francis is of the mind to have one foot in the past with the fan base that he knows that support this film over the last 50 years. But we also have to ride the fact that this is a 50-year-old film and library films [are] a very challenging thing to find new audiences. And Francis is very much aware of that. And that’s why he always likes to explore new technology and new ways to present his films. And this is a new presentation for him. He wanted to explore HDR. And we had success with Apocalypse Now and his other films in HDR, and a new audience expects a different look. So I think it’s still respectful to where we’ve come, but also we push it a little bit in a new direction hopefully can bridge the gap between young and old.
AVC: Home video is becoming an increasingly sort of rarefied field for collection. Do any technological advancements that make it less expensive to do this process lead you toward either doing more, or is it offset by the fact that people are buying fewer Blu-rays and DVDs?
AK: I think we would’ve approached it exactly the same way, no matter how it was going to come out, whether it was going to be streaming only, theatrical only disc only, all of the above, some of the above. There is no reason to make that assumption when you’re starting a restoration. You have the ability to say, okay, let’s do it right from the beginning. Let’s scan everything that’s possible. Let’s do the full color correction. So that whatever way somebody—I sent James a funny picture of somebody watching it on their watch, and the joke was, “I’m watching the way Coppola intended”—and he was like, it actually doesn’t look that bad! But that’s the point. If you do it right, it doesn’t matter how you watch it eventually, because it’s going to be really good. So there’s no reason that “disc or not” moves that needle.
JM: I’d say that technology has become cheaper for us. We were able to start doing our own restoration. Francis is in a different position than Andrea or this studio. We own a collection of his films—not The Godfather, wish we could own it—but for him, having control over his films, he wants the best presentation. And it usually always starts when we do a restoration, it has to be theatrical-minded. We’re going to put it out in theaters. So for him there is a course of what he wants to do with his films, and always first number one is get it back into the cinemas and then do the best presentation on home video as possible.
AVC: There are a number of Paramount movies that I would love to see restored in this way, starting with The Conversation, but also the director’s cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Once Upon A Time In The West, and The Conformist. How much is Paramount as an act of preservation, much less of rereleasing these films, utilizing this process going forward?
AK: First of all, you’re not the first one, or the only one thinking about those specific titles. I won’t say any more than that, but you’re not alone. But the other thing is we’ve been incredibly fortunate at Paramount where we had the right people in the right corner offices supporting the idea of preservation and restoration. So we have, since I got here in 2009, restored over 1,500 films. And we are constantly ongoing to make sure that catalog is up to date and restored, and then how we release them out is a separate process altogether that we work on with our home media marketing people. But that is definitely something that Paramount has seen as an important part of their duty as a copyright holder is to make sure these things are preserved and restored. And I couldn’t be prouder of that.
AVC: I would love to see your version of The Conversation.
JM: The anniversary’s coming. So look out around then!
77 Comments
I am hoping that all the pictures referred to as “Before And After” are all incorrectly labeled and should actually say “After And Before.” Because everything on the left hand side looks cleaner, crisper, and more vivid than the images on the right, in my opinion.
I hope they’re after and before images or my eyes are screwed
Yeah… the one on the left looks like Blu-ray and the right looks like something around VHS.
The VHS never looked that bad.
An after-and-before image Are you this stupid on purpose?
Pretty deceptive frames, the 2008 “Coppola Restoration” did NOT give you milky grey frames with the brightness super boosted. Go back and look at the frame grabs in 2008 reviews, they sure as hell didn’t look like this. That shot of Brando in the study? Give me a break. Someone is purposely trying to make the transfer look as bad as possible there, that isn’t a commercial release.
Haha yeah, that would be unwatchable.
Yeah, these look like someone put them in Photoshop and deliberately boosted the shadows to the point of washout.
Actually, now that I think back to my film scannin’ days, what the “before” shot looks like is a super-blown oversampled DR scan, designed to extract maximum shadow detail…before being leveled and graded.
When exactly were these films ever available in nasty raw transfers without any kind of correction?
I’m not disagreeing with you on that; I’m saying that’s what they’re using for the afters-and-befores.
The first DVD release was pretty bad, IIRC. On VHS they were even worse, the scenes in the study were so damn dark you could barely see anything. the initial DVD release was definitely better and I think they did do some sort of remastering, which greatly improved the contrast and restored a lot of detail to the darker scenes. But that was definitely not a full restoration or anything like that.
I still remember watching Godfather 2 on VHS and wondering if Fredo actually got shot in the boat because it was just a dark mess
Yeah, those are definitely log color space raw frames, which is technically interesting if you’re a colorist, but not really revealing to the lay-fan.
LOG! That’s the term I was gropin’ for. Am a still photographer, that’s why.For those wondering, here’s a neat little video:Before and after of S-LOG RAW vs how they guy graded it.And yeah, it’s of no use in a comparison between two consumer releases of a film.
That’s what the Godfather looks like when it comes on TV on a Sunday afternoon while you’re doing the ironing and there’s bright sunlight shining through your window onto the screen.
Was thinking the same exact thing.
the 2008 “Coppola Restoration” did NOT give you milky grey frames with the brightness super boosted.
Forget that. I have the 2001 DVD release. They don’t look like that, either. I think what the image on the left represents is a raw scan, before any adjustments are made to the image. Even in the analog days, no film was ever released as just a straight negative to positive – there was always a high level of color correction.
I agree I just wacthed 1 and 2 over the last two nights and the quality is awesome and not 4k
I wonder if it looks that way on a 4K monitor with upscaling off and HDR on? Because yes, the 1080p Blu-Ray looks a lot better than the “before” on my UHD television, but that’s because it’s already correcting for a lower-resolution image.
After and before!
How do they get so degraded?
Don’t they keep a pristine version in a vault or something?
“Don’t they keep a pristine version in a vault or something?”They do now. We have to keep two things in mind. There was optical distortion or bits of dirt/dust that happened during exposure. There was also usually some damage that happened during the developing and editing process of any movie where minor mistakes made in the lab developing the film and damage caused by the handling of the negatives or the physical act of slicing the master print were just accepted as a reality of the industrial film process because it was the only option. Especially because it wasn’t a super expensive or hyped movie at the time, Paramount’s master print of The Godfather that was copied and distributed in 1972 likely had some visual aberrations that weren’t viewed as a barrier to the film being widely released. A lot of the dirt and aberrations that get talked about in discussions around these big 4K restorations are things that would either be blown out by proper projection, or wouldn’t be noticeable to an audience that were expected to see the movie a couple times at the very most. No one made and distributed the movie with the expectation that the audience might later be examining it at home.Related to that, the practical aspects of film preservation for still photography and motion picture photography end up being pretty different because of the scale and, outside of the Library of Congress and similar academic institutions, film preservation as a craft and science was not widely practiced until home video made it profitable.
Even assuming that a film was preserved as well as possible, and knowing that film as a physical medium does degrade somewhat over time like every other physical object, a lot of the perceived degradation has been caused by lackluster transfers to other mediums. That’s something that gets talked about in this interview and it’s worth repeating. Digital optical sensors have only practically caught up with the full potential resolution of 35mm film in the past 10-15 years. That’s ignoring the restrictions of presentation which have also only recently started get close to to matching the resolution of properly projected 35mm. Apart from economic considerations, imperfect scanning and presentation have the been the major restriction of home video presentation for the vast majority of the history of home video presentation.
Digital optical sensors have only practically caught up with the full potential resolution of 35mm film in the past 10-15 years. That’s ignoring the restrictions of presentation which have also only recently started get close to to matching the resolution of properly projected 35mm.
Prior to the pandemic there was a local revival house in my area that routinely showed black and white films. Digital projection technology has evolved leaps and bounds with regard to color films, but I still don’t think it’s quite there with black and white. It can look very good, but there’s just a richness of detail and “aliveness” seeing a good black and white 35mm print projected that digital still can’t quite match.
I wonder if it has to do with the fact that most b&w pictures were shot and edited to be projected from silver nitrate film. It was replaced in the ‘50’s once less insanely flammable stocks were developed. I’ve never seen a movie projected off of silver, but I know people who have, and they say it looks a lot brighter and deeper even than standard 35mm film.
I too have never seen a nitrate print. They were rare as hen’s teeth prior to the pandemic, I suspect showings now are virtually nonexistent. But yes, I have heard that they are particularly “luminous.” Keep in mind, nitrate and acetate are base materials. The actual image is coated onto them. It may simply be that light from the projector passes through nitrate more effectively.
There’s main reasons classic black and white film prints have that particular “snap” (besides the knowledge and skill of the cinematographers, lighting technicians, and other artists and craftspeople of the age) is probably because the image of full black and white prints is typically made up of the actual silver halide crystals or “grains.” Color prints, on the other hand, are made with a dye process. This is why color prints are prone to fade, while black and white ones do not (they are susceptible to other types of degradation, though).
I approve of your nerd level on this topic. Also, Chicago Transit Authority?
Hey thanks. I know just enough to seem nerdy as long as no actual film nerds are in the conversation.
Yep. I made this account in late 2020 before I was vaccinated and able to ride the L again.
The fundamental truth of geekdom is that there’s always a bigger fish and after a certain point you probably don’t want to be that fish. Ride on. #addisonstop
You know what? THIS kind of wholesome, interesting, slightly geeky conversation is why I used to (and still do) come to the AVClub. I’m glad it’s still around, corporate fuckery and rampant trolls notwithstanding.
The problem was the negative endured a lot of wear and tear, not only because of what nostalgic4thecta describes, but also because the Godfather was edited in a rather new method for the time that allowed for a more straightforward printing of dissolves, of which the Godfather has a LOT. But this method also meant the negative had to go through more machine passes during the print process, which led to more wear and tear and damage.
There was another article about this (was it here? or nytimes?) but also that the movie ended up being more popular than they expected and they made many extra prints directly from the original master instead of duplicates intended for that purpose.
I would be skeptical that they would use the actual camera negative for visual process shots. I would think they would create a duplicate or intermediate.
The problem was the film was edited to take advantage of a process called auto-select, that was an “automated” means of creating dissolves and transitions from the negative when making master positives, printing matrices, etc. It was easier in that it meant you didn’t have to cut A-B negatives, but a single strand, and you could ensure consistent dissolves without having to resort to splicing in dupe opticals. It was also useful for when you had to, say, censor a scene for a foreign release. You could simply tell the auto-select which shot to omit when printing.The problem was the auto-select method itself created further wear and tear on the negative, because it would run it back and forth while printing the dissolves. For example, say you want shot A to dissolve into shot B. Via auto-select, you’d simply hard splice the two shots in a single strand, and then designate the auto-select to do, say, a five second dissolve from one to the other. What it will then do as it is printing a positive is fade is run one shot with a fade in exposure, and then run the other, and there is a back and forth going on which incurs wear. And because the film had a lot of versions like the TV cut, and censorship for different markets, there was a lot of this kind of thing going on.
Was the original really that washed out ?? Either way, great thing to do for a masterpiece of filmmaking.
So, the right side, the ‘after’ look horribe.. That can’t be correct??
Looks like shit.
Where are those screenshots from?Here are some similar ones from the 2010 Blur-Ray:
The “new” images look like a 10th iteration of a screenshot of a screenshot.
Man, that first sentence in the article is a mess.
I’m kind of wondering if the reference to a “finally trained instrument” was the person being interviewed or if it’s an error on the AV Club’s part. I read it as finely trained at first, which seemed odd to read in place of finely tuned but a fully understandable thing for someone to say.
Welcome to the AV club, where they strike to be able to work from home with more pay but not for a competent editor.
Nothing will ever beat the originals.
If the “after” truly is on the right, I’ll pass. Looks awful.
Does anyone believe the “before” shots are accurate representations? lol…
Needs more vaseline,
They’re finally trained instruments.Surely he said “finely”.
Next week, some random user does an AI-enhanced 4k version that looks better…or has Sylvester Stallone as Sonny.
I saw this restored version in a theater a few weeks ago and it was glorious. You could see the pores on Brando’s face. It was beautiful, can’t wait for Godfather 2.
Good news, Todd, the 2001 director’s cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is currently being rebuilt in 4K, and will be released some time this year. And it’s going to be a whopper. Not only is the 2001 DE team remastering the added VFX shots, they’re also doing a few things they had slated but couldn’t be accomplished with their technology and budget 20 years ago, and they’re digitally recompositing at least some of the original 1979 VFX shots. They’ve even found some elements that were shot for the movie but didn’t make it in. There are a couple work-in-progress screencaps out already, and it’s amazing to see the classic model work without a bunch of matte lines and dust and scratches.
Was excited to hear that until I read this:
Not only is the 2001 DE team remastering the added VFX shots, they’re also doing a few things they had slated but couldn’t be accomplished with their technology and budget 20 years ago, and they’re digitally recompositing at least some of the original 1979 VFX shots. No, no, no NO!!! I have that 2001 version, and the “updated” effects add nothing. Arguably, they detract. In the original version, we never really see what all of V’ger looks like. That’s quite effective: The thing’s so massive, you can’t even take the whole thing in with your eyes. Then, in the “improved” version you did see it, and the result is like, “so that’s what this was all about?”It’s the same basic lesson Val Lewton learned with Cat People, and Steven Spielberg learned with Jaws: sometimes, it’s what’s off screen that’s scariest.
Well, if you want the theatrical cut in 4K, you can buy that today, and if you want an remastered version of the director’s edition, that’s what the “director’s edition” is, so…?Also, I disagree vehimently about the updated effects. For instance, the moment where the Enterprise is about to be shot down, but the energy blast dissipates at the last second after they manage to respond to the alien’s hail. In the DE, there’s a very clear shot of the ship about to be struck, and the bolt fading away before impact. In the older versions, the energy bolt just flickers off the viewscreen and the sound effect keeps going for another five seconds, making it very unclear what’s going on.I could go on like this; the slug of the floor mural at Starfleet Command to cover for a missing VFX shot. Spock lifting his hand to get the sun out of his eyes in a scene we just saw was at night (and the moonless planet Vulcan having two giant-ass moons, to boot).
Do we even risk uttering Lucas’ name here? Co-sign on not making any content edits, just cleaning up the image.
Word.
We can agree to disagree here, because you make a valid point about what’s off screen being scarier. but personally, I loved the new effects. There’s a tricky line between cleaning up crappy effects that were limited by the technology of the time and making entirely new effects / editorial changes. In my opinion they rode that line pretty well. It’s possible they went to far in some spots and I didn’t catch it because I was never a big fan of the theatrical “motionless picture” cut. But to me, the directors cut is by far my preferred version of the movie and I can’t wait to see the HD version.
I thought those extra scenes really highlighted Stephen Collins’ great acting
I saw something on another site earlier today that said it’s coming out on April 5th!edit: I saw this in the google feed on my phone but the link goes to a dead page on blog.trekcore.com so it looks like the post was taken down.
A pox on whoever decided to put the after on the left, and the before on the right.
They had ONE job.
As others have noted below, those publicity shots are awful. Firstly, because most people assume what you’re showing is before/after, not after/before. But secondly, because I have watched the Godfather on a few mediums – VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu Ray – and have never seen it presented the way it is shown in those “before” shots.My guess is they’re attempting to dramatize the difference between this and earlier versions by presenting raw scans of the negative before any color grading or other corrections are made to them. I suspect that if you compared frames of this restoration side-by-side with earlier ones, you’d see some marginal (but not super dramatic) improvement.Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for film restoration and preservation. I just think we’re getting a lot of marketing hype with those screen grabs.
“Firstly, because most people assume what you’re showing is before/after, not after/before.”
Including the person who originally wrote the cutlines and had them labelled as “before/after” when this article went live last night.
I’m genuinely impressed someone fixed the image captions. I’m not used to G/O articles getting fixed.
I had to triple check that it was fixed because it’s such a rare occurrence.
It’s almost as if they want you to buy the same movies a second, third, fourth or fifth time.
I just think we’re getting a lot of marketing hype the A.V. Club
The first time I saw the original it was on broadcast TV on a weekend afternoon 20+ years ago, and what I mostly remember was how dark the image was, making it very difficult to make out some of the interior scenes. The restoration made things much more intelligible, but I sure don’t remember seeing a version so totally washed out as what’s represented here.
There’s a funny story about how when Paramount executives saw early rushes of the film, they complained that the film was too dark to show in drive-ins. Clearly, they didn’t get the thematic significance, i.e., that the Corleones inhabit a “shadowy” world, that the tentacles of their criminal empire reach into many parts of “legitimate” society, yet they avoid scrutiny by staying out of the limelight.On the other hand, Gordon Willis did admit that by the time of Part II, they may have gone overboard with the low-key lighting in a few places.
The idea of seeing The Godfather at a drive-in is surreal.
The “before” screen caps look like the old VHS / broadcast TV versions with the brightness turned all the way up to compensate for how dark some of the scenes are. I’m not saying that’s what they are, that’s just an analogy for how damn bad they look in my opinion. I know the Blu-rays I own currently look a hell of a lot better.
If the restored version has Greedo shooting first, I’ll be pissed.
I would’ve given you two stars if you had said “Guido”.
I can’t remember the last time I played a physical disc, and I don’t see that changing.
Too bad they can’t fix Sonny’s phantom punch.
Can’t wait for this release!The Conversation release ‘sclusie?
I think I’ll wait another 12 years for the next restoration that will put all other restorations to shame.
Umm… was the “before” a VHS rental copy from the 80’s or something?? Tell me they didn’t put out such an ugly transfer at any point and charged money for it.
“They’re finally trained instruments”Finely, not finally.