New Line Cinema
David Fincher recently restored his iconic 1995 neo-noir thriller “Se7en” to full 8K resolution ahead of the 4K premiere on IMAX at the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles this past Friday and a 4K UHD disc release which at the time of writing is still listed for May 3rd this year on Amazon.com – though has been delayed to 2025 according to other outlets.
To make the restoration possible, he and his frequent post-production collaborator Peter Mavromates reunited to scan the original camera negative in 8K and then remastered it at that level.
Color corrections, retouches, and VFX were also rendered in 8K, but then were downsampled to 4K because there is currently no distribution chain for 8K.
Speaking with Indiewire, about the intent of the restoration, Fincher says the aim of the work was to retain the original 1995 intent and style of each scene – even if he sees scenes he would do differently now such as close-ups framed far too tightly he says.
Yet there were also some tiny errors that simply don’t work in the 4K HDR age that had to be fixed. Fincher says:
“It is what it is, warts and all. And some of it is spectacular and some of it is stuff that I would change or fix today, but I didn’t want to mess with that.
There’s a lot of imperfections, there’s a lot of things that you just don’t see on film. When people say they love the look of film, what they’re talking about is chaos, entropy, and softness. Now, of course, we live in an HDR world where you get those kinds of very deep, rich, velvety blacks for free.
And we had to negotiate that fine line between what to fix or not. So we attempted to go back in and fix to make it match. And kind of repaint stuff and just take out water spots and little edge flashes. And some of it is impossible to get it to match, certainly by today’s standards.”
Every tweak is judiciously applied—unfinished matte paintings of cityscapes in office or apartment windows, for example, don’t hold up, so they went back in to “kiss in some of the city… [it’s] subtle, but there’s now detail there,” says Mavromates.
One of the biggest changes is on Gwyneth Paltrow’s face during her diner scene with Morgan Freeman. In 4K, some flyaway hair “cuts right through Gwyneth’s eye” says Fincher who says on film and even Blu-ray it’s not really noticeable, but it’s apparent and distracting in 4K so they removed it.
The result was a large job and in explaining that job, he also confirms he’s currently at work on similar high quality restoration of his 2002 thriller “Panic Room”:
“I didn’t realize it [‘Se7en’ restoration] would take as long as it did, at least six months dealing with files and making notes, and maybe the last nine months to a year putting some of it on the back burner while we finished ‘The Killer’ and did initial work on ‘Panic Room,’ which is what we’re working on now.”
“Panic Room” was announced for 4K UHD years ago but seemed to be one of those titles, like James Cameron’s “The Abyss” until its 4K UHD release the other month, that was never on Blu-ray and would never see the light of day beyond its old DVD issue.
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