Johnboy3434 said:
ChainsawAsh said:
I understand your argument, but as a preservationist, I can't accept it - that's like saying that old effects should be updated to meet current technological standards because it's ugly in comparison to what we see now. While there are those who would argue for that, the concept horrifies me.

I don't see that as the same argument at all. Old effects, ugly or not, were deliberately added. The directors didn't have a choice of whether the grain was there or not. If grain were deliberately added by the filmmakers, then I would be against removing it, because its presence was a conscious choice. However, with natural grain, there was no choice. Yes, they could choose between different film stocks for variations in the grain level, but they didn't have the opportunity to buy No Grain Film Stock (C).

Your argument is flawed because you assume that cinematographers would always chose the film stock which would show the least grain and that their ideal is to have none, but often a film stock is chosen specifically because it shows more grain. So film grain may not have been deliberately added but a deliberate artistic choice has been made not to minimize it.

Your argument is little different to saying that all Black and white film should be colorized because filmmakers didn't have the choice to use colour film, but that would be making the assumption that colour is better and if that is true why do people still use black and white film?

The truth is when films are made the prople making them have a very good idea how they will look when they are finished and by removing the grain your are changing the final result, the intended result, and that's just wrong. By all means clean a classic painting remove every bit of dirt but don't remove the brushstrokes, they are meant to be there they are part of the artists intention.