The 25th Anniversary restoration of "All Day and All Night" was a detailed and painstaking process that began in the Center for Southern Folklore's vault in downtown Memphis, just steps from Beale Street.
The remastering work was completed by Memphis native Chris McKinley in Los Angeles.
The goal was to achieve the highest picture & sound quality possible by using the original 16mm film and audio tapes. These reels had been in storage for 25 years.
Once the elements were catalogued, they took a flight from Memphis to a film lab in Burbank, CA.
A frame from the 1990 SD video transfer on the left and the new 2015 HD version on the right.
16mm of BB King & Rufus Thomas on Beale. Late 80's.
At the lab, the film was prepped for the high definition transfer.
Each reel was examined by hand to repair torn sprocket holes, and cleaned to reveal the clearest possible image.
Once cleaned and prepped, the 16mm reels & sound rolls were digitized to high-res HD files.
With extremely high quality files in hand, the digital portion of the restoration began.
Tiny dust particles and scratches were painted out frame-by-frame.
The film's color was balanced and enhanced.
All of the music performances were re-transferred from the original audio tapes.
Noise, tape hits, and imperfections in the soundtrack were repaired. Microphone feedback that was present in some of the original jam sessions was digitally removed. The above graph represents the sound for the entire film.
And finally, the remastered picture and sound were combined.
The result is a new High Definition version of the film, a 12 song companion soundtrack of live blues recorded during filming, and outtakes from the archives that are being released for the first time.
All of this new material is now sustainably archived at the Center for Southern Folklore and made available online to blues fans around the world.
Please explore this site for never-before-seen free content, and consider renting the film on-demand or owning the soundtrack. Your purchases will help support the Center and future restoration efforts.
