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Vernon  

Vernon man remastering old film to preserve history

Vernonite has rare machine

Ben Low-On

Vernon’s Francois Arsenault is one of just two people able to convert film footage into ultra HD.

Arsenault uses a 4K scanner to help bring footage to ultra HD – one of two people in the province and one of eight across Canada that can do so.

“If we don't preserve and restore them, they're going to be forgotten,” said Arsenault about the importance of these restorations. “We'll have lost that link with the past.”

His film collection fills three rooms in his house, and Arsenault thinks it will take five or six years to convert all the footage.

“I will put it through the scanner, and then we will capture the footage. I'll do all the adjustments that have to be done on the machine and then I'll transfer it over to the edit suite. Once it's in the edit suite, it will be cleaned up, making it look a little bit better,” said Arsenault about the process of developing the film.

One reason why developing film is not as popular is due to the availability of certain parts and how expensive it can become.

“That’s unless you buy a 30, 40, or 50 year old machine. Bulbs for them are extremely expensive, hard to find and have a very short lifespan. For a lot of folks today, it's beyond them,” said Arsenault.

Remastering the footage and his years as a cameraman has turned Arsenault into an “accidental historian.”

“It's just a passion for me, history is something I just truly enjoy. Television is not as exciting as history.”

Arsenault has videos of remastered footage coming out on his YouTube channel once a week.



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