From CNet News:
How’s this for pressure? In the care of Daphne Dentz and her colleagues was a masterpiece of American filmmaking: The Godfather.
A year ago, Dentz was sitting in an editing bay with other members of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI). Also in the room was none other than the movie’s director, Francis Ford Coppola. He was there to observe as they set about digitally restoring his 35-year-old classic.
On a bank of computer monitors, The Godfather’s opening scene began to play; the melancholy trumpet; the now famous line: “I believe in America…,” and slowly forming out of the blackness is the face of a man seeking vengeance.
Stop everything. Coppola, a famous perfectionist, told the technicians: “I want his head to look like it’s floating in purgatory.”
An instruction like that from Coppola might have intimidated Dentz, MPI’s vice president of digital services, if she didn’t know MPI had the tools to give him what he wanted. Six years ago, Warner Bros. developed digital technologies designed to make copies of damaged or decaying film negatives and return the movies to their original viewing quality.