Nicked from another forum.
Last year, I had the chance to work on the remastering of The Neverending Story. We did a completely new scan of the original negative film in 4K for a UHD-HDR remastering. It was a real pleasure to grade this beautiful 35mm film, shot by Jost Vacano.
One of the main challenges was to keep the original intention while transferring the film to the HDR colour space. I did a lot of testing with the material to find a way to keep the feeling of a 35mm film but at the same time pushing the film, so that it will work in HDR.
Another big challenge was the old VFX shots, because we only have dupes and not the original negative. The VFX shots in particular have to look very good to be able to immerse yourself in the world of Phantasia. To achieve this, many layers with keys, masks, tracking and effects were necessary, since the foreground and background sometimes behaved completely differently. The stacks were quite big in the timeline but it was not a problem to handle this in Baselight.
For this project it was not only about grading but also a lot of texture work. Therefore the Base Grade tool and the Texture Equaliser were really helpful. I worked in T-Log/E-Gamut and that was very helpful when creating the different deliveries.
Hopefully we see this great movie get a release next year.