[Frameworks] De-dusting scanned film footage

[David Tetzlaff]

> A circle matte no larger than the size of the dust particle was made, then a piece of the frame just before or after the dust spot--in its exact position--was captured then laid over the offending piece of dust. That's it! Worked like a charm. Perhaps David T can weigh in on his method?

That's what I did. 4 pt. garbage matte with a lot of feather on the edges. Copy and paste the filter from one shot to another and then move the corner points to cover the dust spot in question, which was faster than starting from scratch on each dust spot. Usually one frame off from the dust spot would provide a fill, but sometimes I had to go two frames. I also moved the fill frame around to find a good match. I'm sure there are more sophisticated ways to do this, but this was something I could figure out and execute using the basic capabilities of FCP 7. It was very time-consuming and boring. It's hard to find the exact frames of the dust spots because things look different in the still frames than they do in motion. Sometimes a spot that's really obvious is motion is hard to see in the still frame. This is exacerbated if there's any pull-down or speed changes.

I did the work for Crooked Beauty because Ken's a friend and I thought enough of the film that I wanted to see it look as good as possible. Even though Ken paid me something for my time, it's nothing I'd want to do on a regular basis, 'professionally.' 

But, in the end I think it was worth it aesthetically. Crooked Beauty has that Super-8 look, but it's incredibly clean. I showed it to some S8 enthusiasts at UFVA a couple years ago and they were pretty much gob-smacked at the quality of the image. They'd never seen anything that free of dust marks. But, of course, it all depends on what aesthetic suits the purpose and vision of the individual film. For some projects, the dust that remains on a typical S8 to HD transfer may well suit the concept that led to the choice of S8 in the first place.