Alien resurrected: thanks to digital editing techniques, a classic film is reborn.(Digital Video)

Director Ridley Scott's 1978 breakthrough film Alien reinvented the science fiction/horror genre by establishing new standards in special effects, art direction, and set design. Yet, the key to Alien's success was not what people saw, but rather what they didn't see on the screen. Tension builds throughout the movie as the audience catches only a fleeting glimpse of the monster, and reaches a crescendo near the end in a "coming out" scene that is still talked about today.

More than two decades later, what could be seen in this blockbuster sci-fi thriller was cause for concern at 20th Century Fox, as scratches, dirt, chemical stains, and other ruinous effects of time have marred nearly every frame of this classic film. A fairly common occurrence, these age spots nevertheless were problematic for the studio, which was planning a 25th anniversary Alien release in select theaters across the US, beginning last month. To reverse the signs of wear and tear, Modern VideoFilm (Glendale, CA) used state-of-the-art editing and color-correction technology to digitally restore the movie to its original condition--and then some, by creating a number of new visual effects, revising scenes, and even adding never-before-seen segments from the director's archives.

"What we're doing, in the pure sense of the word, is a digital intermediate, but the interesting twist is that it's also a digital restoration intermediate process," says Mark Smirnoff, executive vice president of studio services at Modern VideoFilm.

A fairly new process, the digital intermediate has evolved over the past year and a half and is accomplishing what used to be done photochemically in postproduction: editing, visual effects, color grading, and riming to complete a film, or give it a signature look. Now, however, it is done digitally with software and computer workstations.

The process, in short, requires a person to scan the material that was just filmed, producing an interpositive, so all the information resides on a server in very high resolution. As a result, the original film negative is no longer used, helping to keep it in optimal condition. Completing this task electronically not only prevents wear on the original negative, but it also provides editors with a larger collection of tools--and subsequently, more creative options--from which to choose. When the process is complete, the digital files are recorded back out to film, the most widely used theater medium.

In most instances, this novel digital intermediate process is used for new rifles, though Modern VideoFilm applied this technique to the quarter-century-old Alien, and achieved impressive results.

An Alien Process