Month: <span>March 2021</span>

Jammin’ the Blues is near-legendary piece of jazz art. Made in 1944, nominated for an Acadamy Award, and described by Turner Movie Classics as “one of the greatest of all jazz films” – it came into being when innovative photographer Gjon Mili, and Jazz producer Norman Granz joined forces to recreate on film a jam session of the type that was popular in the 30s and 40s. With a stellar cast of musicians and dancers, the result was a beautiful landmark in jazz movie-making, the like of which has never been done since.

Oh – and it’s only viewable on standard definition, in only passable quality. Which, of course, makes it a prime candidate for some upscaling work to try and bring out the real beauty of the film for everyone to enjoy.

General rambles Videos

Video upscaling software seems to be getting very popular these days – and I was blissfully unaware until the folks at Estiloswing blew everyone away with an incredible-looking upscaled version of the HD Hellzapoppin’ routine version which Atilio Menéndez found a while back. Of course… there was nothing for it but to revisit my retiming project, and see if I could use similar techniques to enhance it.

All I needed to do was find out what tools to use, run the original video through it, drop that into my existing project! Easy, yes?

Cue the deranged laughter. No. Nothing is ever that simple. Many hours later, many tens of hours of dedicated computer processing time, at least four start-from-scratch versions, over a dozen “I think I’ve finally finished” versions, the lucky unearthing of another HD copy of the full film, infinite patience on the part of my wonderful and long-suffering partner, a few more lost hair follicles….

And yes – I believe I do – finally – have something to show for it.

General rambles Video Edits