20 Years Later: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Still Touches Your Heart
By Bob Fisher

This article originally appeared in the ICG Magazine
in May 2002.

Steven Spielberg touched the hearts and warmed the souls of millions of movie fans with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. The story chronicles the adventures of a loveable alien being, who is stranded on Earth, where he is befriended and protected by a few children, including Gertie (Drew Barrymore) and Elliot (Henry Thomas). Twenty years later, it is still a tactile, magical experience.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is slated to play on some 2,000 screens around the world this spring, followed by a DVD rollout. The restoration and re-release of E.T. was a nostalgic journey for Allen Daviau, ASC, who photographed the original movie at the dawn of his own career. He earned the first of his five Oscar nominations for his efforts.

Daviau re-timed both the 2002 re-release and the DVD. He says that several new scenes culled from the original negative have been inserted into the re-release along with some new CG work by ILM. But don’t let that fool you. This is the same film audiences saw 20 years ago, including all of the nuances in lighting, colors and contrast that helped make E.T. an empathetic, flesh-and-blood character.

“During our first meeting more than 20 years ago, Steven told me he didn’t want the audience to see E.T. too clearly,” Daviau says. “During our earliest testing, we decided to use backlight and virtually no fill on E.T., and I also put a little sparkle in his eyes. You never see him in great detail, especially in the beginning. He was sketchily lit and I used heavy filtration—Harrison & Harrison Double Fogs on Panavision Ultraspeed lens.

“We shot into light sources to create lens flare, and used a lot of smoke in interiors and night exteriors (to diffuse light),” Daviau continues. “We filmed important scenes in a closet in Elliot’s bedroom. I suggested putting a window in the closet as a motivated source of light. It was (production designer) Jim Bissell’s idea to use stained glass with orange, yellow and white shapes. It was a perfect environment for setting the mood.”

The E.T. animatronic was operated by as many as 11 puppeteers with the arms controlled by a mime named Caprice Rothe. Daviau recalls a scene in Elliot’s room where E.T. is sitting around a table with a few of the kids. There is a bowl of fruit, and he’s eating watermelon. A little piece gets stuck on his lip. Rothe reached up and flicked it off. Daviau says that gesture is one of many subtleties that makes E.T. seem real.

He points out that one key to the successful restoration effort was the care that the original labs took in handling the negative and intermediate films. He says the unsung heroes include Michael Crane, the dailies supervisor at Deluxe, and Bob Raring, the feature film timer at Technicolor. Another key was the foresight of Universal Studios and Spielberg in properly archiving the negative and interpositive film in an environmentally controlled vault at the proper temperature and humidity.

“There was no noticeable color fading or other significant damage to the original film,” says Daviau. “It was in pristine condition. I also had the luxury of working on the re-release with Bob Raring, at Technicolor, the same timer I worked with on the original answer print.”

While it has gained status as a classic, Daviau reminds us that E.T. wasn’t a mega-budget film. He notes that original photography was completed in only 61 days with another two days of pick up shots.

DreamWorks postproduction VP Marty Cohen asked Daviau to help shepherd E.T. through both film restoration and conversion to digital HD format approximately one year ago. One of Daviau’s concerns was that E.T. was produced on Eastman 5247 film and timed for release on a print stock that is no longer available.

“The first test that we made on the current Kodak Vision print stock was awful,” he says candidly, “but then we did a follow-up test with the richer looking Vision Premier print film, and that got us back to the look we had in 1982.”

For the re-release, Spielberg culled old footage for two new scenes, including a sequence with E.T. in a bathtub and an extension of a Halloween night scenario.

“There are some wonderful new moments with a very young Drew Barrymore, and a couple of other surprises,” he says. “That’s why you need to preserve out-takes. Steven also had ILM do some CG work replacing some of the optical elements featuring the mechanical E.T.”

The original cut negative from the 1982 release was optically printed as an interpositive on color intermediate film. The only other elements were the two new scenes culled from the 1982 negative, which were copied onto C and D rolls that were optically printed in proper sequence on the new interpositive master. The same procedure was used to insert film output from the new CG shots from ILM.

While they were putting final touches on the look, Daviau and Raring confirmed each other’s memories of timing decisions made for scene-to-scene continuity in 1982.

“There is a language we developed 20 years ago, which came back to us while we were working on this project,” Daviau says. “We remembered deciding to make subtle changes in colors and looks during timing sessions.”

Technicolor used the interpositive to produce duplicate negatives with all corrections for colors and density. These were distributed to labs responsible for release printing in other countries. Daviau notes that as long as the different labs use the same printing lights and rely on the check prints provided as a visual reference, all of the release prints of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial should be indistinguishable. The cinematographer also orchestrated transferring the timed film to digital HD format at Post Logic, in Los Angeles, in conjunction with veteran colorist Lou Levinson, a frequent collaborator since 1982.

“The DVD carries both the 1982 and the 2002 versions of E.T., along with some remarkable behind the scenes 1981 documentary footage that was shot by John Toll (ASC)—believe it or not—in 35 mm format. There are some amazing insights, including Steven and John Williams working on the score with a Moviola next to a piano.

Daviau observes that while he was working with Levinson on the creation of the HD master, they saw details on the film that no one has previously seen on a TV screen.

“As telecine and video display technologies improve, you can see more and more of the amazing details and subtleties captured on the original negative,” he says. “Maybe in another five years, there will be a new generation of telecines and video or computer displays that will help us find looks that are even truer to the original film. That’s why it is so important to take care of the film and archive it properly.”

The other moral of this story is the importance of involving the original cinematographer in restoration projects. The reality is that they are the creators of the images and they know what emotional responses the visuals are supposed to evoke.

“We’re not only bringing our memories to projects like this,” Daviau concludes, “We are bringing our enthusiasm. There was a visual concept for every good movie I've worked on. It's our job to see that those intentions are honored during restoration.”