Spencer Kelly visits the Warner Bros archive in Los Angeles to meet the people painstakingly restoring old films using the latest technology.
 How the West Was Won featured many stars, including John Wayne |
All film deteriorates, end of the story. The 1962 epic How the West Was Won is a case in point.
The last 46 years have not been kind to the reels of film making up the multi-Oscar winning epic - the colour has faded, the landscape is marred by dirt and scratches, and there are strange vertical lines in every shot.
Ned Price is part of Warner Bros technical operations team and he said he is usually dealing with films which are turning to "powder".
"I'm dealing with film which is dehydrated, shrunken and buckled," he said. "As that happens the film shrinks and warps at an inconsistent rate.
"We're now working on digital techniques to actually record it as it moves and morphs and then digitally, after the fact, sort of stabilise the image itself."
BY-BBC NEWS
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