CHICAGO - If you were a young boy or girl growing up in the late '60s or early '70s, there's a good chance you spent your Sunday mornings watching a stop-motion series about a boy named Davey, his sister Sally and their talking dog Goliath. "Davey & Goliath" was an entertaining program that also taught children right from wrong, covering topics such as jealousy, selfishness, respect and love. The lessons from the show are as relevant today as they were back then and Chicago's Screen Time Images is helping to bring the series to a new generation by providing restoration services for its DVD release.
Screen Time was contracted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to restore all 65 15-minute episodes of the show, along with six 30-minute specials. According to studio owner Sean McKee, Screen Time was presented with 16mm film of the shows, which had been stored in the ELCA's climate-controlled archive. Still, at 40 years old, time has taken a toll.
McKee says the restoration process began with a film-to-tape color correction transfer by colorist Peter Pyskacek using a Cintel Mark III machine and a da Vinci color enhancement system. He estimates that each 15-minute episode spent an hour in color correction, and that the client budgeted approximately seven hours for the restoration of each episode.
After color correction, the Screen Time team would perform an automatic dirt removal process using a combination of Revival and its own proprietary tools. This would eliminate approximately 70 percent of the problems, says McKee. The remaining dirt and scratches were removed by hand in Revival.
Screen Time also restored the optical audio soundtracks for the show, removing clicks, crackle and hiss. Audio restoration and sweetening was performed using Cedar Audio hardware, Digidesign Pro Tools, and an AMS Neve Libra console.