“Lucy, you’ve received some ‘splainin to do.”
It’s exhausting to overlook, however sadly, somebody did. Late final month, a pair of screenshots of a lately launched Blu-ray field set of the whole “I Love Lucy” collection went viral due to what regarded like a horrifying case of remastering gone flawed. It appeared that when upscaling the unique present’s picture high quality to HD, the method inadvertently created an eye-popping second through which background characters’ faces immediately turned bizarrely enhanced.
It’s a brief second on a multi-year restoration mission that in any other case seems pristine, however the photographs stand out nonetheless and had folks on Reddit and different boards crying foul.
The pictures present a girl seen within the background simply over Ricky Ricardo’s shoulder who now seems decidedly extra masculine, with bulging, useless eyes, and a toothy smile floating over a necklace. A person to the left of the body seems oddly misplaced too, with a scarily clean face and grin leaping out from what was meant to be an onlooker initially seen out of focus. The unique filmmaking selection right here was for them to be out of focus.
The second will not be lengthy, however when seen in movement in context of the scene — which seems within the first episode of the 1957 “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” titled “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana” — it instantly distracts from Desi Arnaz within the foreground.
It’s not some viral gag both. An organization supply at Paramount advised IndieWire that throughout the restoration and remastering means of this specific episode from earlier this 12 months, a couple of faces within the background had been “unintentionally over-enhanced” in a scene. The supply says the background of the scene is being corrected and an up to date model of the scene will probably be accessible quickly on Blu-Ray.
It’s a disgrace that’s the second that stood out, as a result of a minimum of one evaluation argued the brand new field set regarded distinctive. The gathering, which was remastered and restored over a interval of 4 years by Paramount and different third events, is a 1080p remaster of the ’50s TV traditional and was designed to look as Desilu supposed again within the day, because the collection was shot on movie.
Although the present was initially shot on 35mm, the restoration course of on the entire mixed a few of the unique 35mm negatives, 16mm movie reels that had been despatched to community workplaces, and even some more moderen video tape, which accounts for why it was essential to each restore the unique footage and upscale the image high quality. The corporate supply says as many as 4 minutes of fabric had been lacking from some episodes, with different reels requiring restoration of warped, soiled, or scratched frames to get all the things wanting constant. It’s a shock contemplating how well-known the present has remained within the a long time since its launch.
It additionally required a treasure hunt of types to search out the lacking materials and piece it collectively. Whereas the primary two seasons of “I Love Lucy” had been restored beforehand, subsequent seasons, together with the 13 “Comedy Hour” specials that ended its run, had been all newly restored and remastered for this 32-disc field set launched on November 5. You’ll be able to see a side-by-side of the earlier than and after in a single scene from the “Comedy Hour” above.
However many on-line have speculated that the upscaling course of was carried out with synthetic intelligence with a purpose to save on prices (“Gee, why is it that all the things that’s fantastic prices cash,” as Ethel as soon as mentioned). The Paramount rep denies this was the case. Generative AI tends to have hassle with depth of discipline and can try and progressively sharpen blurry photographs in an effort to carry them into focus, so you possibly can think about why folks would bounce to the conclusion.
However on this occasion, the corporate supply defined that generative AI was not utilized, and the restoration and remastering course of simply “enhances” what was already there within the episode.
We hope that ‘splains it.