Tove Jystrup restores old films from Nordisk Films treasury. With her team of professionals Tove Jystrup scrutinizes each film frame by frame, restores damaged parts digitally and transfers them onto film, so that they once again are ready for the movie theatre’s dimmed lights.

 

While the film negative is being color graded, Tove takes the sound negative along to sound director Steen Rønne. He corrects the sound, for example reducing background noise and smoothing out the switch from clip to clip. The jointing of two clips on the old film creates a loud crackling noise in the soundtrack which Steen can reduce.

 

Tove Jystrup inspects the entire film for scratches, damage and signs of overrun. In the ”Smoke room” Tobias Bach Hansen, junior compositor, repairs any damage to the film. This can be a long-winded process, since he needs to correct each frame in the film, one at a time. A film contains 25 frames per second.

 

”The project that I am most proud of is the movie Qivitoq, which I have just finished restoring. Among other things I reconstructed the credits from bits and pieces I have tracked down,” says Tove Jystrup. Qivitoq is the Oscar-nominated drama about the manager of the trading station in Greenland and the young female teacher, whose love is put to the test by the harsh climate. Every week Nordisk Film gets enquiries from people who are interested in seeing the film still. This is a frame from the film before color grading.

 

And the same frame after color grading.

 

”The fantastic thing about film is that you can take a negative from the 1930’s, view it, and it is as good as new. So in the long term film lasts, and that’s what we don’t know about digital copies. They might only last 5 years, considering the speed of change nowadays,” Tove Jystrup believes.