Disney has been hard at work on a restoration of 1950’s Cinderella. Starting on Aug. 25, you’ll be able to watch a 4K version on the streaming service.
The film really needs no introduction, but for those who aren’t aware, here’s a short summary. The movie centers around Cinderella. She’s a poor girl who’s forced to work by her wicked family. Eventually, she encounters her fairy godmother. The fairy godmother sends Cinderella to a ball, where she and a prince fall in love.
The origin of the story is ancient, and it’s gone through a number of iterations since then. The most commonly known version of the tale outside of the Disney movie was in Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé. It was also included in a collection of Grimm’s Brothers fairytales back in 1812. At this point in time, for most people, Disney’s interpretation of the tale is perhaps the definitive version.
Kevin Schaeffer, the head of restoration at Disney, shared his thoughts on the project.
“Working with our restoration team along with internal technical experts, outside vendors (like Mike Underwood at Picture Shop Hollywood) and advisors from Walt Disney Animation Studios, we were able to make this 1950 classic look and sound better than ever. We began the process by pulling the original nitrate negative from the Library of Congress, and scanning the successive exposure color records in 4K.
We then did a cleaning pass to remove dirt and as many artifacts as possible. The current available restoration tools allowed us to produce a sharper and higher quality image than previous efforts. To make sure we didn’t lose any of the detail or artistic choices of the filmmakers, we turned to Disney Animation legends and authorities, including Michael Giaimo and Eric Goldberg.”