This paper describes the digital acquisition and restoration of a documentary in Super 8 of the origins of citizen\u2019s awareness on paper recycling in Brescia, a city of Lombardy, northern Italy.
This short movie has been shot in 1980 by ASM the public company which used to provide all the city supply (gas, water, electricity, district heating) and city transport. Now this film is part of the Fondazione ASM archive and its acquisition is part of a larger project of preservation of industrial memories in Italy.
Here we describe the tools used for the acquisition and the technical choices done, together with the restoration test made. As well, we discuss the problems that one must face in trying to preserve a visual document of this kind from the unavoidable damage of time

A. Ghiroldi

A. Plutino

A. Rizzi

M.P. Lanaro

R. Cammarata

AIR Universita degli studi di Milano

6th International Conference: YOCOCU, Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage 
Matera (Italy), May 22-26 2018 
WORK MEMORIES IN SUPER 8: THE DAWN OF PAPER RECYCLING 
IN BRESCIA 
A. Plutino1*, M.P. Lanaro1, A. Ghiroldi2, R. Cammarata2,3 and A. Rizzi1 
1MIPS Lab, Department of Computer Science, University of Milan, Milan, Italy 
2 ASM Foundation, Brescia, Italy 
3 Department of International, Legal, Historical and Political Studies, University of Milan, Italy 
*Corresponding author email: alice.plutino@unimi.it 
 
Abstract – This paper describes the digital 
acquisition and restoration of a documentary in 
Super 8 of the origins of citizen’s awareness on 
paper recycling in Brescia, a city of Lombardy, 
northern Italy. 
This short movie has been shot in 1980 by ASM the 
public company which used to provide all the city 
supply (gas, water, electricity, district heating) and 
city transport. Now this film is part of the 
Fondazione ASM archive and its acquisition is part 
of a larger project of preservation of industrial 
memories in Italy. 
Here we describe the tools used for the acquisition 
and the technical choices done, together with the 
restoration test made. As well, we discuss the 
problems that one must face in trying to preserve a 
visual document of this kind from the unavoidable 
damage of time. 
 
Key Words – Digital Movie Restoration, Digitization, 
Valorization 
 
I. INTRODUCTION 
 
The Super 8 film format was presented in 1965 by 
Eastman Kodak as an advance over the Regular 8 
mm home movie format. It was very popular for 
shoots in the private sectors and for filming home 
movies. Unfortunately, as all films, it also is subject 
to a fast decay and aging, especially when the 
conditions of conservation are not appropriate. The 
decay process is irreversible and the digitization is 
the usual way to preserve the content of the film and 
eventually restore it. 
Before digitizing the film, one wants to recover the 
history and check the authenticity of the film. When 
working on a Super 8 recording it is very rare to 
have authenticity problems, since making copies of 
super 8 films was quite rare. Nevertheless, each 
film must be considered as a unique historical 
record. For this reason, the historical research is 
important. There is the need to understand the 
nature of the video by answering to the questions 
“Who recorded it? What was the importance that 
the author gave to the film?”, and the nature of the 
materials with the questions “Where the film was 
stored? What is the conservation state?”. In this 
way, it is possible to make a preliminary study on 
the historical importance of the film and the 
conservation state of the employed materials. Then, 
the following phase is the digitization and in case 
of need, a digital restoration [1,2].  
In this work, we present the digitization and 
restoration of a 1980’s Super 8 film, proposing the 
use of an innovative software for the unsupervised 
automatic restoration of color and contrast.  
The innovative idea introduced by this software is 
the goal of restoring the appearance of colors rather 
than the original color information. [3,4] 
At first, we describe the instrument used, followed 
by a brief description and some historical 
information about the analysed film and an 
explanation of the employed algorithm for frame 
adjustment, with some examples.  
 
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS 
 
Reflecta Super8 Scanner 
For the digitization, we have used the Reflecta 
Super8 Scanner, introduced to the market in spring 
2014. This was one of the first equipment for 
private users with a very wide diffusion also in the 
semi-pro market. This handy instrument is suitable 
for positive Super 8 film in color or black and white.  
The system employs a LED light calibrated to 
obtain an ivory-ish color, like if the film was 
exposed to a halogen light (3200 K) but eliminating 
the problems of heating up the support.  
The time required for the digitization is 2.5 seconds 
per frame. In this case the film rate is 18 fps (frames 
per second) and the obtained resolution is 200 dpi.  
6th International Conference: YOCOCU, Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage 
Matera (Italy), May 22-26 2018 
The final movie is obtained through single JPEG 
images for each frame processed at the end of the 
digitization resulting in a MPEG (motion – JPEG 
codec) video contained in an AVI file. The movie 
is computed through the CyberView S8 software 
[5].  
The use of JPG format, a forced choice in the 
system, is a potential point of discussion, but for the 
actual dimensions of the film to scan, we have not 
experienced a very noticeable loss of quality. 
 
Super 8 film 
The film that we have digitized is “Raccolta della 
carta nelle scuole” (“Paper collection at schools”), 
it is a Super 8mm and does not present a soundtrack. 
It is recorded on Kodak film and was shot around 
December 1980 by different citizens. The different 
films were acquired by ASM for a project of 
people’s awareness in environmental protection.  
The aim of this film was to provide documentary 
proof of an important moment of environmental 
education made in schools on the theme of paper 
recycling. In the video, it is possible to see the 
collaboration between schools, teachers and 
children with ASM to collect wasted paper for 
recycling. This awareness campaign worked on 
improving the civic consciousness of the citizens of 
Brescia on the theme of sustainability and separate 
waste collection, issues that are still very relevant 
also nowadays. 
The film is in pretty good condition. It was stored 
in the proper Super 8 film container, appropriately 
labeled. More specifically, the film did not present 
any serious damage on the surface and the only 
deterioration that occurred was due to the aging and 
to the presence of dust on the surface.  
 
Algorithms for restoration 
In this work, we follow the suggestion of E. 
Gombrich for the digital color restoration: “We are 
not asking them [Restoration experts] to restore the 
original dye color, but something much more subtle 
and delicate: preserve ratios” ([6] translated from 
Italian version). Following this goal, we have 
chosen a method based on the characteristics of the 
human vision, restoring each frame using an 
estimate of the scene color appearance, instead of 
the original colors [7]. The chosen algorithms 
simulate some of the mechanisms of the Human 
Visual System (HVS), with particular attention for 
lightness and color constancy. These algorithms are 
called Spatial Color Algorithms (SCAs) [8]. One of 
the useful characteristics of SCAs is their small set 
of parameters and the fact that they do not need any 
a-priori information on the image to filter. 
The concept-base of the SCAs is that the color 
sensation depends on the spatial arrangement of the 
stimuli in the scene [8]. Thus, the considered 
algorithms compute the final pixel value 
performing a spatial comparison among the pixels 
of the input image [9,10].  
 
ACE (Automatic Color Equalization) 
Among the possible SCAs, ACE algorithm has 
been used for this restoration project since it does 
not add noise to the frames, a characteristic that in 
case of Super 8 films is very important. It works by 
comparing every pixel pt in the image I to every 
other pixel independently in the RGB channels and 
summing all the difference to compute the final 
value:  
𝑝𝑛𝑒𝑤 = 
1
𝑘𝑡
∑ 𝑟 (𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗)𝑑(𝑡, 𝑗)
𝑝𝑗Є𝐼 ,𝑝𝑗≠𝑝𝑡
 
 
𝑘𝑡 = ∑ 𝑑(𝑡, 𝑗)
𝑝𝑗Є𝐼 ,𝑝𝑗≠𝑝𝑡
  
 
Before the sum, each difference is modified by a 
non-linear function r (·) and weighted by d (·), the 
inverse of the Euclidean distance among the pixels 
(𝑝𝑡  and 𝑝𝑗 ). The normalizing factor 𝑘𝑡  is used to 
make the weighting meaningful. The factor r (·) is 
the truncated gain function: 
𝑟(𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗)  
=  
{
 
 
 
 −1    𝑖𝑓  (𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗)  ≤  −𝑡ℎ𝑟
(𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗)
𝑡ℎ𝑟
  𝑖𝑓 − 𝑡ℎ𝑟 < (𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗) < 𝑡ℎ𝑟
1    𝑖𝑓   (𝑝𝑡 − 𝑝𝑗) ≥ 𝑡ℎ𝑟
  
 
This last function is a non-linear amplification of 
the normalized difference between pixel values, 
responsible of the final spatial rearrangements [3]. 
The filtering effect of ACE depends also on the 
slope value of r (·), in fact the growth of the slope 
is proportional with the increase of contrast. In this 
study, we selected a starting value for the contrast 
slope around 20. 
 
 
6th International Conference: YOCOCU, Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage 
Matera (Italy), May 22-26 2018 
 
 
 
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 
 
The video “La raccolta della carta nelle scuole” is a 
piece of the history of the city of Brescia, linked 
with the Azienda dei Servizi Municipalizzati , born 
in 1908, and today part of the ASM foundation that 
involves also part of the area of Bergamo. The ASM 
foundation supports cultural events and works, and 
is also involved in different project for citizen’s 
growth and awareness with a particular attention for 
social issues, promotion of artistic expressions and 
support on education and environmental protection.  
This Super 8 movie documents the origin of the 
ecological attitude of the city in the 80’s, through 
the activity of paper recycling. The Azienda dei 
Servizi Municipalizzati of Brescia was responsible 
of the urban waste collection since the 1968, and in 
1974 the separate waste collection was activated, 
starting from the paper. The appeal and projects 
involving local schools fostered the growth of 
citizen awareness on themes of sustainability and 
recycling. The film is an important visual document 
of this sensibilization project. Its digitization and 
restoration is an opportunity to make this document 
available for the community and is part of a larger 
project of preservation of the industrial memory in 
Italy.  
After the digital acquisition, the movie has been 
subdivided into shots, then we extracted the 
relevant frames that summarize the content of each 
shot. These frames are used to set the ACE 
parameters. After this step, the SCA filtering is 
performed on the whole shot sequence and then 
rejoined in the same editing sequence.  
In Figure 1 it is possible to see a couple of frame 
restoration examples. The side by side comparison 
of the frames shows the dynamic restoration and the 
adjustment of contrast obtained by the ACE 
filtering. The resulting frames appear clearer, with 
Figure 1 Restoration example of two frames of "Raccolta della carta nelle scuole". On the first column, an original 
frame (left) and on the second column the same frame restored using ACE (right). 
Original Frames Adjusted Frames 
6th International Conference: YOCOCU, Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage 
Matera (Italy), May 22-26 2018 
more details, and with a strong reduction of the 
color fading caused by the aging.  
Usually, for a big amount of dye fading the 
restoration process is complex and requires 
specialized techniques [11]. In this case, ACE 
filtering achieve an acceptable result without need 
of dye fading models and in case of very degraded 
images can be a practical kick-off technique, able 
to shorten the restoration effort needed. 
In conclusion, thanks to this innovative approach 
based on the application of the ACE filtering on the 
Brescia’s ASM film it was possible to quickly 
restore an important record of the Italian industrial 
memory at a very low cost.  
  
IV. CONCLUSION 
 
The digital restoration of a film is, in many cases, a 
long and expensive process. In fact, many software 
require high competence and a constant supervision 
by qualified personnel. With this work, we 
demonstrate the possibility of a quasi-automatic 
and almost unsupervised method for film 
restoration. Thanks to this approach we obtained an 
acceptable frame adjustment in a fast way.  
This process has been tested on a Super 8 film, part 
of the industrial memory of the 80’s that documents 
a significant step in the process of public awareness 
on the theme of paper recycling and sustainability 
starting from children and schools.  
 
 
REFERENCES 
 
Paper: 
1. Enciclopedia Treccani, G.L. Farinelli and D. Pozzi. 
URL: www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/il-restauro-
cinematografico_%28XXI-Secolo%29/ 
2. Rizzi, A., Gatti, L., Kránicz, B. & Berolo, A. (2008). 
A Mixed Perceptual and Physical-chemical 
Approach for the Restoration of Faded Positive 
Films. In 4th European IS&T Conference on Color 
in Graphics, Imaging and Vision, CGIV2008, 9-13 
june 2008, Terrassa (Barcelona, Spain) 
3. Rizzi, A., Berolo, A. J., Bonanomi, C., & Gadia, D. 
(2016). Unsupervised digital movie restoration with 
spatial models of color. Multimedia Tools and 
Applications, 75(7), 3747-3765. 
4. Rizzi, A., & Chambah, M. (2010). Perceptual color 
film restoration. SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, 
119(8), 33-41.  
5. ScanDig, filmscanner-Shop URL: 
www.scandig.com/index.html 
6. Gombrich, E. H. (1977). Art and illusion: A study in 
the psychology of pictorial representation (Vol. 5). 
London: Phaidon.  
7. Rizzi, A. (2006). Digital Colour Film Restoration 
between Physics and Appearence. Digital Futures 
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symposium, 31 October 2006, London, England. 
8. A. Rizzi, J.J. McCann, “On the behavior of spatial 
models of color”, IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging 
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9. Berolo, A., Bonanomi, C., Gadia, D., & Rizzi, A. 
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10. Zuffi, S., Cereda, R., & Rizzi, A. (2007). 
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Work memories in super 8: the dawn of paper recycling in Brescia

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Work memories in super 8: the dawn of paper recycling in Brescia

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