Il recupero del colore originale dei materiali d'archivio: la correzione digitale del colore dello storico discorso antisemita del Duce, nel 1938

The work in question is a digital colour correction experiment on a 35 mm film,
a documentary from the Archivio Storico Luce. This is the speech pronounced by
Benito Mussolini in Piazza dell’Unità, in Trieste, on September 18
th
, 1938. The film is
a positive duplicate made in nitrate of cellulose, scanned in full HD with resolution
1920 x 1080 at 25 fps. The interventions, with the help of the software PFClean,
were aimed to solve problems related to a strong flickering and a lack in distribution
of light and dark gradations, which led to a faded and low-contrast image. In order
to bring back to life the initial splendor, the digital intervention was performed using
both historical and technical information. Our first goal was to keep the colouring
and lighting of an outdoor shot, with a shot in full day that detects strong contrasts
of light. Further, we tried to recover part of the original colour with a colour correction
aimed to globally adjust the brightness and the gradation of black and white, while on
the more faded photograms a contrast mask was applied. The applied interventions
have allowed the documentary to return to the right gradation of light with qualitative
results that are comparable to the original image.