bbc studios and post production digital media services puts the jewel in the crown for itv studios global entertainment

Thirty years after it was first broadcast on British television, BBC Studios and Post Production’s award-winning Digital Media Services team has digitally restored and remastered over 30 hours of film to bring The Jewel in the Crown back to its former glory for ITV Studios Global Entertainment. Produced by Granada Television, and based on the Raj Quartet novels by Paul Scott, the stunning 13-part award-winning drama series stars Art Malik, Charles Dance and Peggy Ashcroft, and charts the final days of the British Raj in India during World War II.

With the original series shot on 16mm film, much of it on location in rural India, the challenging brief for the team was to seamlessly integrate the 1980s source footage with an extremely wide variety of variable quality archive and historical footage so that the 13 restored episodes had a consistent look and feel throughout.

To achieve the best possible results, the team worked from the original A/B roll negatives held in ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s archive. Their first task was to scan and conform all the source material to produce one complete timeline. After a visual check the team ran the negatives through an ultrasonic film cleaner before passing it through their SCANITY film scanner for output to 2K. Because of splice damage on the cut negatives, the team over-scanned the picture area so they could stabilise any jumps in the footage without picture loss.

Next they conformed and graded the 2K scans on Nucoda FilmMaster, before completing an automated dust pass to remove the worst dust, scratches, stains and chemical damage. To achieve a consistent look throughout, the team manually checked every frame of the 14 episodes and corrected any details that the automated process had either missed or over-fixed. A final grade in FilmMaster completed the restoration before output to HDSR masters for ITV Studios Global Entertainment.

For more information please visit www.bbcstudiosandpostproduction.com or contact: Louise Wells at Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, bbcstudiosandpostproduction@rlyl.com