The 16mm scan will be used to guide us with some of our color choices - it’s not a perfect reference by any means, but it’s bound to carry more weight than the bluray. It can also be used to repair missing or damaged frames.

While we would love to add Poita’s Empire scans to our mixing bowl, the logistics involved in copying TB of data is quite an imposition on his time and resources. It’s no exaggeration to say that it would require days of his time to restore the scans from LTO tape to hard drives (and at least three 8 TB Hard Drives would be needed for each scan), which would then have to be shipped to us. Even if we requested Prores versions, which could cut the file size down by about two thirds, it would tie up his computer for several days or even a week or two of encoding, a computer that then can’t be used for doing work on any of his own projects. The files are too big to download, and even if we tried it would still tie up his computer for weeks and weeks.

So, if you’re reading this Poita, and you can think of an easy way for us to access any of your Empire scans, by all means let us know, but in the meantime we certainly have enough to keep us busy. Indeed, it might be wiser to wait and see what we need - perhaps there will be a handful of shots that we just can’t fix, and then we can request just those shots from you - if that’s easier than just sending everything…