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For many people, using artificial intelligence in any form is like breaking one of the seven deadly sins. That group might not be happy when they learn that director David Fincher used AI to work on the 4K restoration of his classic “Se7en.”
In an interview with EW, Fincher ahead of the film‘s 30th anniversary spoke at length about using AI to help with the restoration process, and why any discussion about generative artificial intelligence shouldn’t be so black and white as just being for it or against it.
Fincher noted that he’s done a digital version of “Se7en” twice before, once for the film’s DVD after its initial release in 1995, and again to bring it into high definition. But he said he underestimated just how much work went into again bringing it up to quality for a 4K version and that his team didn’t realize “exactly what we were getting into.”
“I know that there are a lot of people who tend to bag on digital, but if you could see a 30-year-old negative and what it looks like even when immaculately stored — it was an enormous amount of fixing, just digs and scratches and cinch,” Fincher told EW. “So a good couple of months were just devoted to bringing the thing back to what I would consider to be a negative, and then we could begin.”
Enter AI. Fincher says the AI tool (he didn’t specify which) was used to sharpen the image in order to “reestablish what was intended to be looked at,” a process that took over a year.
“We were really trying to get back to that first CCE check print that we saw 30 years ago when we were like, ‘Okay, that’s the movie. That’s the contrast of it. That’s the density of it. Those are the colors. This is where they’re muted, and here’s where they’re vibrant,'” he said. “And really just try to remember what — technologically and artistically — that first print effect was. And I think we did it.”
Fincher said he believes strongly that a film should be beholden to the tech constraints they were made under, but they were able to do color matchings and other minor effects that couldn’t be done before. Specifically, AI helped bring into focus one scene in which Kevin Spacey’s character is seen in the backseat of a police car, separated by a grate.
“We were able to use AI and make mattes and extract the performance that was in the backseat and render it. It’s still soft, but it’s not as egregious as it was,” Fincher said. “But yeah, my real attitude is I don’t want to change it. I want to make it opening night, 1995, but the pristine version of that.”
He gave another example of a scene that the camera operator missed, resulting in some data that was “irretrievable.”
“Now, on either side of it, we had the fullness of the character’s shoulder, and we were able to kind of recreate using AI — recreate that shoulder and the kind of ripples or motions of the light on the surface of the leather. And we were able to sort of composite that so that we didn’t have what I considered to be distracting and unnecessary movement,” Fincher explained of “a lot of little stuff” that gave him a few extra looks.
But Fincher added that it’s too open-ended to ask, “Are you for it or against it,” because many of the generative AI tools are still adept at doing the little stuff.
“I mean, look, you give me a tool, a powerful tool to do X, Y, and Z, I may not be interested in Y and Z, but if I can use it for the sake of X — all tools, if they do what they say they’re going to do, are good tools,” he said. “And it’s usually the tools that overpromise and underdeliver that I take more umbrage with than, ‘Oh, here’s this wildly powerful new toolset; use it to make something ugly.'”
Audiences are sensitive about any whiff of AI being used in restoration. Just ask the fans of a recent “I Love Lucy” Blu-ray, which IndieWire reported did not use AI. Even Fincher has been skeptical of some of AI’s other uses, as he previously said that some of his friends’ attempts at AI cinematography have looked like a “low-rent Roger Deakins.” But the tech has already come a long way since then.
The “Se7en” restoration arrives in IMAX theaters beginning today, January 3, almost a year after the restoration was first debuted. The 4K Blu-ray hits shelves on Jan. 7.
English (US) ·