This is a bootleg "restoration" of James Benning's Ten Skies (2004). It was made using a composite of several low quality sources scavenged from p2p networks and streamings sites like Youtube and DailyMotion.

After assembling the best possible cut from these low quality sources, a variety of image manipulation and post-processing techniques were used, including warping, masking, and timestretching. Although some AI upscaling was used in certain places (skies #1, #3, #7, and #9), judicious frame-by-frame retouching was done in photoshop to ensure ghosting and other AI artifacts were minimally invasive. Additionally the resolution was capped at 1920p × 1440p (as opposed to 4k) to minimize the amount of visual data invented by the AI in the places it was used, providing an image that is as close as feasibly possible to Benning's original 16mm film.

Color correction was applied to fix disparities between different sources, and a final grade and layer of artificial grain was added to further lessen the visibility of certain artifacts. Finally, the audio track has been remastered to lessen the pervasive analog hum that exists on the known digital copies of the film, and bring out the subtleties in the soundtrack.

Due to the low fidelity of the source material, creative liberty had to be taken when color correcting and grading the film, as well as minor cropping to fix areas of the film that suffer from large amounts of drift in the copies that are available online.

The resulting product is closer to a simulacrum of an HD restoration of Ten Skies. The intent is to create an imperfect alternative to the highly compressed, low resolution versions of the film that are currently floating around the internet.

We hold out hope that a true HD Remaster made from high resolution scans of a master print or negatives will be made available in coming years.

—GM