Faculty of Communication & Design

A 40-year-old movie was brought back to present-day quality after Taylor Whitney and Susan Patrick teamed up to restore the short home video. Taylor graduated from Ryerson in 2006 with a Master of Arts in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. Since graduating, she has established her own photo and film restoration business Preserving the Past based in both Rochester, NY and Los Angeles, CA.

Susan is currently a special collections librarian at Ryerson University. As a student in Montreal back In 1967, she gathered a group of friends and family members to create The Adventures of The Girls from Ditty, a 26-minute film about a group of young female detectives fighting the forces of evil. The movie was shot on Super 8 film.

After finding the film in a box in her basement almost 40 years later, Susan contacted Taylor about working together on the restoration project. The film was degrading and showing signs of “vinegar syndrome,” where acetic acid leaches out in the plastic film base. Luckily, the film was transferable and the two worked together using both traditional and digital film preservation methods to restore the home movie.

The film was transferred onto a Betacam SP tape at Film Technology Co. in Hollywood. They used a Digital Video Noise Reduction (DVNR) to minimize dust and scratches; DaVinci Renaissance for colour correction; and Final Cut Pro to edit and digitally repair scenes and soundtracks. 

Nine months later, the project was complete and screened for the first time
in Toronto on April 2007 for a 40^th Anniversary Gala Premiere - serving as a reunion for many of the cast members.

“Everybody should have an obligation to preserve the past,” said Taylor. “Instead of opening boxes of old photos, people are going to open closets of hard drives.”

Taylor and Susan are currently working on a sequel called The Return of the Girls from Ditty.