Prof. Walter Arrighetti Discusses Complex Film Restoration at Cinema Ritrovato Festival

Professor Walter Arrighetti will be giving a talk on June 26th at the Cinema Ritrovato international film festival in Bologna, Italy. An expert in cybersecurity and member of the Department of Mathematics, Natural and Applied Sciences, Prof. Arrighetti’s presentation is entitled “The Interoperable Master Format (IMF) and the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) frameworks in complex film-restoration projects.”

Complex film restoration projects involve a movie to be literally “resuscitated” from slices of 35mm films potentially coming at different times and ages, from multiple collections, and with manifold physical characteristics and technical formats (color or black/white; negative, intermediate or print stock; mute or sound; etc.). Preserving and future-proofing such footage in the digital realm may seem trivial, but poses new threats: technological obsolescence related to the file formats, and lack of reference to the original “color look” are just two examples. SMPTE Standards born for contemporary digitally-born blockbuster movies and film studios are still useful though. Prof. Arrighetti will explain two such standards – the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) and the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES)—used by companies like Netflix, Amazon, Technicolor, and Deluxe, pinpointing possible usage for film archival/restoration purposes.

Prof. Arrighetti currently works as digital transformation consultant for both for the Italian Government (AgID ― Agency for Digital Italy, and Ministry of the Interior), and for several Media & Entertainment companies. He specializes in Information Security (e.g. PKI-based electronic trust services), dematerialization/archival ICT technologies, and multimedia processing.

In Fall 2018, Prof. Arrighetti will be teaching BUS/CS 399 Special Topics in Business and Computer Science: Cybersecurity Management and Privacy.