Preservation of the Japanese Paper Films
Author:
Iaroslava Polusmak ’28Co-Authors:
Faculty Mentor(s):
Eric Faden, Film/Media studies, English DepartmentFunding Source:
PURAbstract
My summer research project had two parts. The first was a two-week trip to Japan, where we traveled Japan with the showcase of our project, scanned 50 paper films and made six new film discoveries.. We also visited cultural sites and met with many collectors and researchers who work with paper films. After returning to the USA, I worked on the preservation of the films we scanned, using DaVinci Resolve and Fusion, the video editing and visual effects softwares.
The preservation process has several steps:
1. I process each film through our project’s custom software. The code detects each frame by its perforations and frame lines, creating a pre-stabilized version.
2. I create a 6K timeline in the Color tab and make a highly saturated version of the film with bright pink perforations.
3. Using the tracking tool, I stabilize the film by detecting the black-pink-black pattern of the saturated perforations, stabilizing the film.
4. I divide the entire film into individual shots. In each shot, I find a stationary element and track the shot.
5. Finally, frame-by-frame stabilization. I use a reference frame to refine the image stabilization and align it with the frames before and after it.
Throughout my summer research project, I learned a lot about Japanese art and culture. I also found new ways to make the stabilization process faster. The biggest outcome of my project was the more than 20 films I finished that are now preserved in our new project database funded by Yanai initiative.