I graduated from Biola University's film program in 1991, was married in 1992 and worked in Burbank as a production manager for a small animation studio called Stillwater Productions by 1995. My ambition in life was to direct feature films. But while working a full time job, I needed to find a way to get directing experience. So I took Dov Simen's 2-day film school class and learned how to make a no-budget feature. With the support and encouragement of my wife, in early 1995, together we wrote a script titled Split Second. The story has message about the meaning of life and the value of personal responsibility.

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PRE-PRODUCTION

 

We quickly jumped into pre-production. I used locations that were freely available to me. This included a radio station that had a visually stunning outside mural. I had friends who allowed me to film in their apartment and around a house. Even my boss from Stillwater Productions loaned me his 1940 Studebaker as a nice prop (even though the story takes place in 1995).

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PRODUCTION

 

We shot on 16mm film collected from “short ends”. This was left-over film stock from Hollywood productions. Studios usually would buy more than they need and sell off the rest at a reduced cost. Some just gave us their leftover stock because they knew we were making a no-budget feature. In all, the entire film production cost me about $5,000.

 

Cast and crew donated their time, in exchange I would give them a copy of the final film on VHS, credit in the film and meals. A big expense went into food. We made sure we fed our cast and crew well. And because I graduated from a film school, I was able to hire my friends to make a reliable crew. I also met an aspiring film producer at the time. When I told him about my film and I needed help producing, he gladly volunteered. He was a huge help and became a good friend.

 

We shot our 90-page script over 10 days during the week of Thanksgiving in 1995. Our shooting schedule was so tight we were filming 10 script pages (or more) a day. Normal productions would be lucky to film 1 or 2 pages a day over 2 to 3 months. I planned every shot to maximize our time. We were moving so fast we often could only afford one take. This was a huge risk because I couldn't afford “dailys”. Dailys were usually watched the day after you filmed to make sure there were no mistakes, like the camera being out of focus or anything that required you to re-shoot the scene. The camera team had to make sure they got it right the first time. Fortunately there weren't any major mistakes. The crew did an amazing job.

 

In the end we shot 9,678 feet of 16mm film. At 36 feet per minute, that was 269 minutes of footage. Since our film was about 90 minutes long, we had a final film shooting ratio of almost 3 to 1! Which was insanely low. Most low budget productions are at least 10 to 1.

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POST-PRODUCTION

 

With production completed, I now faced the daunting task to edit and finish the 16mm film. Since we had no money, my producer friend and I planned to edit the movie on video tape to show to distributors in hopes of securing the expensive finishing funds. My producer had some business connections with a few distributors and it looked like we were in good shape to make a deal - if they liked the film. Sadly my producer and I came into disagreement on some money that was spent while editing. Our disagreement became so sharp, he took me to small claims court. Fortunately I was able to settle with him, but it destroyed our relationship – along with all of the distributor contacts he had.

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DISTRIBUTION EFFORTS

 

I suddenly found myself alone and starting over to make a video edit of the film. Thanks to my professor friend at Biola University, he allowed me to use the school's editing studio over the summer of 1996. Split Second was finally edited to SVHS, from which I was able to make VHS copies to give to the cast and crew.

 

While I was successful in making a video edit of the film; I failed to finish the actual 16mm film and to find a distributor. Over the years I had received some difficult negative feedback on certain scenes in the film. Distributors didn't like the message in the film. Faith-based distributors didn't like the mild-swearing. Everywhere I went there was constant rejection. Nobody was interested in Split Second.

 

I tried film festivals. Few festivals took submissions on VHS. But I entered a few to see how it would fare. I was usually rejected yet one festival gave me an honorable mention. I did win an audience award in one festival. However in the end I found festivals expensive and time consuming to enter.

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FAILURE

 

The film went nowhere. Years later I re-evaluated the film to see if it could be re-edited to make it more appealing to distributors, but I determined the film was unfixable.

 

For two decades the raw 16mm film elements hid in my home closet. Yet I would keep thinking “I need to do something with it. But what? Maybe I should at least try again to re-edit the film?”. But the thought of how much time and expense it would take – and where would all that effort lead? Only to be rejected again and again by distributors? It was a process I just couldn't commit to. So for 25 years the film sat in my closet. Yet I kept feeling an obligation to finish it.

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THE DESTRUCTION

 

In 2020, I eventually had to clean out that closet to make room for some other things. When I came to the box that contained my film, I felt it was time to make a final decision and stop thinking about it. My view of the film at the time was it was a failure and not any good. So I made the fateful decision – to throw everything out in the trash. All the 16mm film elements, all the original sound recordings – everything. I know it doesn't make sense, but I did keep the original 1996 SVHS master video edit. Throwing everything else away meant I was choosing to be content with the SVHS being the final version of the film. I watched the trash truck haul it away and was glad to finally have it all over. But I learned later - It wasn't over.

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REBIRTH part 1

 

About 6 months later I got a message from a guy I never met before, Nate who works at Biola University. He was reaching out to alumni to see if they had any old student projects. Nate was trying to archive different student films from a long time ago. He heard of Split Second and wanted to get a copy for his archive. So I went to find all my old student projects on video tape. There I also found the SVHS edited master of Split Second.

 

I started to digitize some of my old projects and put them on YouTube for Nate. When I got to Split Second, I decided watch the film and see if this is something I want to let Nate archive. I happened to have a working SVHS player and began to watch the movie. This was the first viewing I had of the film in a long time. But as I watched the movie, all of the negative emotions, negative memories and years of rejection began to melt away. By the end I realized -- Split Second is a good film. It was really well done, had a great message and left the viewer with a good feeling. All my previous judgments of the film had changed. I began to regret throwing away all the original film elements. But that was in the past. All I had now was this one SVHS copy of the film. What could I do with such a low resolution copy?

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REBIRTH part 2

 

So I decided to simply digitize the video tape and post it to YouTube for Nate at Biola. As I was doing this, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to contact Tim, the lead actor in Split Second. I thought he'd probably like to know about my plans to put it up on YouTube. But I was hesitant to talk to Tim again. I wasn't sure I'd be able to find him, and even if I did, I wasn't sure how receptive he'd be to me since I haven't spoken to him in decades and failed to do anything significant with the film.

 

But I searched Facebook and was surprised to find Tim so quickly. So I sent him a friend request. Then one evening on September 7, 2021, as I was about to fall asleep when I get this alert on Facebook Messenger. It was Tim! The following conversation would further change my whole perspective on the film and set me on a new mission...

 

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

 

Tim:

Hey Robert, how are you?

 

Robert:

Tim Starks!! Wonderful to hear from you again! How are you? I was going through some old videos and found Split Second. I’m going to try to clean it up as best as I can and probably put it up on YouTube. I wanted to touch base with you to let you know.

 

Tim:

Ok Cool. Have you thought about putting it on TUBI, PLUTO or even Netflix?

 

Robert:

It’s in rough shape. I doubt I can clean it up to where those media outlets would take it.

 

Tim:

Got ya! My Brother that passed away, always thought it should be a part of a school curriculum, especially for dropouts

 

Robert:

Oh wow! Sorry to hear that about your brother

 

Tim:

He was a dropout counselor and he would use the film for that

 

Robert:

Wow! He showed the film to help people?

 

Tim:

Yup!

 

Robert:

I’m stunned. That’s so awesome!

 

Tim:

He would ask me about the film at least once a year. He would say, so what are they gonna do with it? No joke lol

 

Robert:

Thanks so much for letting me know that

 

Tim:

Yes for sure. He would say “That's really good.”

 

Robert:

All these years I’ve struggled to do something with Split Second. I just always felt a failure with it because I couldn’t get it anywhere. But hearing that just blows my mind - that it was helpful in some way.

 

Tim:

Last thing I will say is this, he was very very well known in Tucson, and within the School System in Tucson. He was so well known they did 2 dedications for him on the floor of congress when he passed away. So, he ALWAYS believed in Split Second.

 

Robert:

Wow! Amazing!

 

Tim:

So you surely have something there. After all these years.

 

Robert

I’m speechless. Thanks so much for letting me know.

 

 

This conversation gave me a whole new perspective on the film. My film wasn't a failure. It had done something significant! Sure it wasn't released with distributors. But here, a person I never met, had used a VHS copy of the film for some good in the world. This was beyond my expectations. It was then I decided to renew my commitment to the film by performing a full restoration of the film - as best as I could given what I had to work with.

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RESTORATION EFFORTS

 

With all the original negatives gone, there was no way I could do a full restoration. If I had the negatives, they could be scanned in at 4k resolution. But that would have cost around $10K to scan everything properly. My video tape only has a resolution of 720 pixels by 480 pixels which would have been a far cry from modern 4k of 3840 x 2160.

 

But the resolution of 720x480 was the only amount of data I had to work with. And there were a lot of problems with that data. The image data was from analogue tape that degrades over time and is prone to color bleeding and high-contrast ghosting. Plus video plays at 60 interlaced fields per second. I shot the film in 24 progressive frames per second. When the film was transferred to video, interlacing artifacts greatly degraded the image. When I had the film transferred to video 25 years ago, it was done as a “quick pass” meaning the film had a lot of dust and scratches that got transferred into the video. And it had various tape glitches, static and poor color correction. The film would need a lot of work. But it was not impossible.

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DIGITIZATION

 

My first step was to get the SVHS tape professionally digitized. I found a place in Hollywood that still had the old machines and got it transferred to a digital file format called ProRes422HQ. I now had my film digitized in a resolution of only 720 x 480 at 60 interlaced fields per second. Very low quality, but it was something to start with. From there I used my editing program and divided each shot in the film into its own individual file. Every time I had a cut or dissolve, I turned it into a new file. I had to take apart the entire film to correct it shot by shot. In all there were about 500 different shots in the film.

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TELECINE

 

From there I took each shot and performed a reverse telecine. 25 years ago, when the film was transferred to videotape, it went through a telecine process where some frames are turned into interlaced fields to evenly convert 24 frames per second of film to 60 for video. Fortunately this process can be reversed. But I wasn't sure how well it would turn out. I didn't want to fake the 24 frame rate (which would be easy to do) and introduce new problems. I needed the film to be restored to the original frame rate it was shot on. And after quite a bit of work, I was able to restore the film back to its pure 24 progressive frames per second of each shot! And the frame rate looks very clean. I'm very happy and proud of how this turned out. This was my first critical step.

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CLEANING

 

I now needed to clean the film up. There was dust, scratches, video glitches all throughout the film. So I used Adobe After Effects to paint out by hand, frame-by-frame all of the garbage. All 129,600 frames! This took about 9 months to do with several passes. It was very tedious and time consuming, but the end result is amazing. It's not perfect as it is about 99% cleaner. But after working on it for so long, I had to move on.

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AI TO THE RESCUE

 

The film was clean but still had other issues. First it was in a low resolution of 720x480. And there's a sharpening halo around areas of high contrast and color bleeding inherent in the SVHS tape format. On top of all this is a lot of constant video noise. Not the crisp high definition image people are so used to watching. This is when I discovered a new software program that used Artificial Intelligence.

 

Video Enhance AI by Topaz Labs had been out for a while. I had seen ads for the software in my social media feeds. So I decided to give it a chance. To my surprise, it did improve the image quite a bit. It wasn't perfect, but it was about half-way there to high definition. It eliminated all the sharpening halo and video noise. In fact it looked so clean, I had to add in film grain to make it look more real. The color bleeding was not fixed unfortunately. And it still had a softness to it. Normally you would add a sharpening filter to an image, but here sharpening made the image look worse. The AI sometimes added artifacts and detail to places that shouldn't have detail. Sharpening made the image too distracting in my opinion. But over all, the software did an amazing job to bring it up to “almost” high definition quality. But it wasn't quite there yet.

 

The most important part of the film are the actor's faces. And I felt the detail in the faces was still soft. Then Topaz Labs came out with Gigapixel AI. (And no, this is not a commercial for Topaz Labs – these were just the tools I used.) This was software designed for still images only and not video. But Gigapixel has this new feature called AI face restoration. After experimenting with it for a while, I determined Gigapixel could restore detail in my actor's faces. Unfortunately this was a bigger process that I anticipated.

 

To use Gigapixel properly I had to convert each individual frame into its own image file. Then I would batch render each image file into Gigapixel to process the faces. The results? It did an amazing job, there was a noticeable improvement. But it was a nightmare to turn all 129,600 frames into individual files and back to video. This took a huge amount of hard drive space and time. But it was worth it.

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FLICKER FIXER

 

Unfortunately I had a new problem. Gigapixel introduced a subtle but annoying flicker to the video. This is because Gigapixel was not designed to be used with video, only stills. I thought I had to live with this flicker. But after months of research, I finally found a video plugin for my editing software. Not only did it fix the issue introduced from the Gigapixel process, it also fixed other subtle color shifting issues from the original VHS tape transfer. The Image quality was now about as good as it was going to get.

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CLEANING AUDIO

 

Cleaning up the audio was another journey. I was never satisfied with my efforts here. So I decided to turn to internet forums for advice. I found an individual who was willing to clean up all the hiss and noise for a reasonable fee. After some going back and forth with notes and various attempts, I was able to get a much cleaner audio track of the film. I was very glad for his help as he did a much better job than myself.

 

The audio on the SVHS tape was mono and I really had no way to get true stereo. I experimented with different techniques to fake the stereo image. But in the end I found it too distracting and decided to keep the entire soundtrack all in mono. Had I kept all the original sound elements, like the dialogue tracks and original score, I could have made a nice stereo (or even a surround sound) mix of the film. One interesting technique I attempted was to use a service that can “unmix” audio. Meaning it could (for an expensive fee) separate all the dialogue, music and sound effects into separate audio files. From that I could have created a better stereo sound space. But in the end I decided against this path simply because I found the service to be way too expensive.

 

One big unexpected improvement for the audio came from a new service called “Enhance Speech” by Adobe. They used AI to take bad dialogue and process it to rich sounding, studio quality audio. I used this throughout the film and the dialogue now has a much better “presence” than the original SVHS analog tape. In fact if sounds like as if I had the original audio master digitized.

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RE-EDITING THE FILM

 

However the biggest improvement, by far, was all my efforts to re-edit the film. To my surprise, I was finally able to surgically remove those unfixable jokes and scenes that troubled the original edit. Modern editing and compositing software allowed me to do things that were impossible years ago. Most notable was one particular shot I was finally able to finish after 25 years. Before it was confusing, now the scene gives a nice emotional moment.

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NEW TITLE

 

The last improvement to the film was the title. I found there are hundreds of films called “Split Second”. I wanted my film to stand out from the rest. I searched for a new title but I kept coming back to “Split Second”. So I decided to make only a slight change to the title. The film is now called “One Split Second”.

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CONCLUSION

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Overall the film is in the best shape it has ever been in. While it is not perfect it is just shy (in my opinion) of being in true high definition. When compared to the original SVHS tape, there is a massive difference. A difference I am very proud of.

 

So that is the summary (if you can call 7 pages a summary) of the journey my film and I went through for almost 30 years. I will always look back at that day when I threw out the film with great sadness and regret. Ironically, there was much good that came from it.

 

At the beginning of the new 2023 version of One Split Second. I have a graphic card that summarizes the journey this film has been through. In it I say “the film was accidentally destroyed”. While the “accident” was not technically true – it was intellectually true. I had an accident in judgment. I allowed 25 years of negativity and rejection to cloud my perception of the “good” that was in my film. Before I threw away Split Second, I had already thrown it away in my mind. This “wrong judgment” was the accident that killed my film. But now I have a new perspective, love and admiration for One Split Second. In the past, I allowed other people's voices to define my world. An accident I have deeply learned from, which is the best way to deal with our mistakes.

 

-Robert Bontrager, Nov 18, 2023