Synopsis:

See what could have been the first major HFR feature film, decades before The Hobbit trilogy and Avatar 2! This project takes the first-person scenes from the 1983 sci-fi film Brainstorm and uses neural AI imaging to interpolate them up to 60 frames per second in order to present, most approximately, the film as originally intended by director & legendary VFX artist Douglas Trumbull. Additional remastering such as color corrections, technical fixes and enhanced visuals have also been added to improve the experience for modern viewers.

Intentions:

In the late 70s, VFX artist Douglas Trumbull, famous for his groundbreaking special effects on films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, was researching ways on how to increase the visual impact and fidelity of movies. What he found was that increasing the size of the film and raising the film's frame rate also greatly increased its emotional impact. So he invented the film process known as Showscan, which is 70mm film recorded & projected at 60 frames per second, and it was essentially the forerunner to what's now called High Frame Rate (HFR) cinema. This led to what would eventually become 1983's Brainstorm, a sci-fi film directed by Trumbull about scientists that invent a device called The Hat that can record & replay experiences from one mind to another which stared Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher and Cliff Robertson, and it basically predicted Virtual Reality before the word or concept became commonplace. Trumbull wanted the film to be a vehicle for Showscan by having the VR scenes shot in Showscan and the regular scenes shot in regular 35mm 24fps, however the studio found that this would be far too expensive and cumbersome to achieve at the time, so instead a compromise was reached where the VR scenes were shot in 70mm and stereo sound but at 24fps, while the other scenes were filmed in 35mm, mono sound and a smaller aspect ratio to give the scenes a noticeable difference. But what more people are likely to know about is that actress Natalie Wood mysteriously died in a drowning incident during a break in filming, and this nearly caused the filmed to be canned. But Trumbull fought tooth and nail to get the film finished, and since Wood had already completed most of her major scenes it was certainly possible to do so, and eventually the film was finished and premiered in September of 1983. Sadly the resulting film ended up failing at the box office and got mixed reviews from critics, and Doug Trumbull was so distraught from the experience that he never wanted to direct a film again, and wouldn't fully return to filmmaking until decades later. I'm personally a rather big fan of this film, and find it to be a pretty fascinating high-concept 80s sci-fi film that's unfairly overlooked and was certainly ahead of its time. But looking at its history, I've also wondered, "What could it have looked like if it was shot in Showscan to begin with?" So with this fan edit, I'm using today's technology to interpolate all the VR shots up to 60fps in order to present the film as it was originally envisioned by the director.

Change List:

-All 70mm first-person footage has been upconverted to 60fps to match the original intended Showscan presentation, mostly using the Flowframes interpolation program, and occasionally using a few other programs and methods (Slowmovideo, TVP-App) on some shots where Flowframes fell short. -Color corrections and additional remastering have been applied throughout the film to improve its visual quality, as well as fixes to technical issues and some enhanced visual effects. -The static in the opening credits has been enhanced to look better in 60fps with more visible motion. All static "warp" shots have been enhanced for 60fps as well. -Added a new visual distortion effect to the first shot of the lab. Based on evidence from unused footage from the films trailer, the dialog in the shot and its composition, and info from an 80s VFX magazine, there was supposed to be a distortion effect added to this shot initially, but it was discarded after the director found it unsatisfactory. I thought I'd reintroduce an effect to the shot using a "radial slitscan" effect in After Effects, plus an additional sound effect was added in the middle to help signify a change during the effect. -The shot of "the grid" being viewed by Gordy while he moves his head away from the device has been improved so there's some matching lens distortion on the grid during movement, since it instead looked like a flat image was just pasted on. -Edited out a crew member who was visible in the lower-left corner of the frame at the beginning of the shot where Gordy enters the animal testing lab. -Blew out the brightness & color on the shot where Michael is experiencing the point of view from the test monkey Lina. This seems to be a very overwhelming experience for Michael and/or Lina, and I felt that adding this effect would better match the intent of the shot as well as the loud distorted audio. -Extended the "twittering" sound of the Hat tape at the shot where Alex lets go of the playing lever at the end of him playing the demo tape, as it comes in too late. -Added a subtle glint effect to the bright lights in the shot of the nightclub at the end of the investor demo tape to make it look a little more groovy. :) -A slight reverb effect was added to the ambience of the establishing shot in the large rec center room to better reflect the environment. -Adjustments have been made to most of the film's forced matte shots to better blend in with the live-action footage. -One of the lines spoken from Karen during the recorded memory of her & Michaels' argument ("You're so selfish, your ignorant!") seems to be taken from a lower quality on-set recording with audible camera noise in the background. Presumably, Natalie Wood died before she could do ADR for this line and they had to make do with what they had. I cleaned up the audio of it so that the camera noise is less noticeable and the dialogue sounds a bit clearer. -The missiles fired during Gordy's second flight sim have been improved/redone so they look better & more solid after the 60fps conversion. -Edited out what looked like a boom mic in the top of the frame for the shot of the wedding bouquet toss. -Added some lens distortion during the shot of Lillian dying during Michael's first playback of her tape. Thought this would make it look more dramatic & impactful. -Lens correction/distortion was also added to the next shot of Lillian/Michael floating above her body to keep continuity with the previous effect, give it more impact as well, and also to hide the camera shadow that was visible in the upper-right corner of the frame during the beginning of the shot. -I added a transitional "dimensional warp" effect to all the cuts where the camera enters/exits a memory bubble, using a lens distortion like in previous effects. This may not have been conceived at the time, but I think this makes the bubble sequences more snazzy and modern-looking, and it was done in a way to match the soundtrack & sound effects. -The color grade for the memory bubble shots have been adjusted so they all have an ethereal light-blue glow, which was predominant but not consistent. -Cropped out a crew member who again appears in the lower-left corner during the surprise birthday party shot. -In one of the shots of Alex on the balcony, a pane of glass was reflecting the camera & crew, so I isolated & darkened it to make this less noticeable. -One shot, where Michael lets the robotic arm drop a can of Coke into his hand, is actually missing a frame in the current master of this film, which was just replaced with a slightly earlier one. I was able to generate a replacement frame with the Flowframes program so that the motion stays smooth in this shot, and I even sought out an older DVD copy of the film to borrow a small element, the Coke can, from the original frame which existed in an older master, and pasted it in the new frame. -Fixed some brightness flickering that occurs during the shots of Chris finding and playing the psychotic episode tape. -Added additional screen flashing to the shot of the screaming man and the shots of Chris experiencing the psychotic episode tape. I believe that the flicker would have been more intense like this if it had originally been done in 60fps and I wanted to reflect that here. -Slightly trimmed one of Michael's close-ups during Chris' psychotic tape to fix some lip flap. -Cropped out a crew member who was fully visible on the left edge of the frame during the last shot of Lillian and Alex talking on the balcony. -Fixed some stars that disappeared on the last few frames of the first shot of Michael/Lillian traveling to the distant galaxy. -Fixed some bright lights that suddenly appear/disappear during parts of the "Soulgate" sequence that Michael experiences toward the end of the film. -Adjusted the brightness of the bright light on the second shot of "Heaven's gate" so it looks brighter and less dull in contrast to the other shots. -Tweaked the colors of the bright light in the third & last heaven's gate shot so it better matches the color from the previous ones. -The stars are now more visible in the night sky in the film's last shots. (To better complement Michael's line, "Look at the stars") -Edited out a crew member's head that briefly appeared in the lower-left corner of the shot where Karen looks up at the stars. -Adjustments made to the final memory bubble and credits to look less washed out. -Other small miscellaneous edits made to the video/audio to add more polish.

Additional Notes:

This is something that's been gestating for over a decade, but it really started coming together a couple years ago when I came across this donationware app called Flowframes, which lets you use AI imaging frameworks to interpolate videos to higher frame rates with very realistic results. That was when I decided a quality edit could be made and I'm finally ready to share my results. Personally I believe the 60fps conversion to the VR shots creates a manifest difference in the visual language of these scenes and the scenes around them, and to be honest it's unlike anything I've personally seen in a feature film before. It's a unique experience you have to see for yourselves. I'm aware that directors like Peter Jackson, James Cameron, and Ang Lee have been experimenting with HFR film in recent years, and some of their HFR film work has admittedly had a mixed response thus far, but I believe this fan edit might be a better demonstration for HFR in feature films than what's come before, and should also show how much of a genius Douglas Trumbull really was. Although this project started with the goal of mainly making a 60fps conversion and touching up the video where needed, I eventually realized that the latest official master for this film is quite dated and shoddy. So I decided to remaster much of the video and audio so the quality is more up to snuff, and I also improved some of the visual effects to enhance the presentation for more modern eyes. Details on these changes are listed in the Changes tab. I hope you'll enjoy all the work I've done.

Other Sources:

The 2012 Blu-ray release was my primary source, but I also used a 1998 DVD release to grab an element from a missing frame.

Special Thanks:

This fanedit is humbly dedicated to DOUGLAS H. TRUMBULL (1942-2022) Thank you for your ingenuity, perseverance and visions Beyond The Infinite. Thanks to Wraith & ArtisDead for supporting my edit and approving it. Thank you nmkd/N00mkrad for making the Flowframes program, without which this fanedit wouldn't have been possible. And thanks again to Mr. Trumbull, who actually first gave approval to an early concept of my edit years ago. Wish you were still around so you could see this finished version. For my late sister, Tiffiny.