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The Phantom Menace on 35mm (* unfinished project *) — Page 2

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So not counting ZigZig, I have about $300 in pledges so far. See the OP for the running pledge total.

$2500 is about what I had in mind, and I’m sure that just includes the scanning and prep work, there is also the cost to rent and ship the print.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I’d be definitely interested in this, but I can’t afford any financial contributions until November unfortunately

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I hope we’ll achieve the needed amount to allow the scan to be made.
It seems that some people commit to donate something, but not immediately. What is the deadline ?

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If people commit, that is fine as long as I am fairly sure it is coming.
It is more about people genuinely wanting it, if someone chucks in say $5, or even two bucks, I can take that as genuine interest in preserving a film.
I figure if it isn’t worth $2 to someone, then they probably aren’t all that genuinely keen on seeing it preserved, and my time would be better expended on a title that has more people keen on having it preserved.
There are so many films out there that have no ‘original’ home release, so prioritising is important. I’ve found you can pick almost any title and people will be “yeah, It’s really important”, but there isn’t an easy way to tell if people are genuinely passionate about preserving a particular title, or if they just want to add almost anything to their collection.
A couple of dollars is a pretty low bar, but it is one way (imperfect as it is) of deciding if it really means something to people, or if it doesn’t really.

In this case, I don’t like the film all that much, but I know it is of historical importance and that it is important to others. It is hard for me to sink the time and money into a film I don’t have a passion for, but the opportunity came up, and if people are keen, I’m happy to go for it.

Hope that makes sense.

Obviously if it doesn’t go ahead, any donations will be returned.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Wait - you’re OK with 2 - 5 bucks? I thought you will want something like 100 from every person 😃 In that case I can donate as soon as I come home from work

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Honestly, ever dollar helps, and it doubles as an easy gauge as to whether people really want a project, or if they would just ‘like’ to see it.
That really goes for anyone’s projects, a buck or two or five is always appreciated, as much for the sentiment as for the offset of costs. A lot of people who work on these various projects put hundreds or even thousands of hours of their free time into making them happen, call in favours, take risks and spend more of their own money than is even vaguely sensible.
When you see people chip in anything to help, it really, well, helps. There have been many times sitting alone at 3am that you feel like giving up, looking at an A/B roll of frame #114003 for glitches you may have missed, or logging a missing frame, and then you get a ping with a message that someone in another timezone on the other side of the planet has donated five bucks, and an accompanying message that the movie held a special place in their life for their own special reasons, and you get a second wind - it keeps you going, and reminds you of your own passion for this stuff, and you keep plugging away it.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Poita, I think the donation thing is actually a very good way to tell who cares enough, but I also want to point out the other side of that. I actually want to donate to this, as I grew up watching the theatrical version on VHS, but I’m that outlier case that maybe can’t donate to something I really want to see happen. I’m a highschool senior currently without a job. I have no income and no money whatsoever. I donated ten bucks to the THX scan out of my Mom’s pocket, haha. I could do that for this as well, but that’s only going to happen if she’s feeling generous enough.

I just wanted to say that there is genuine interest even from those who don’t have the money to donate. I actually think this film is terrible, but I still enjoy watching the version that I grew up watching every single day on my CRT television, and having the complete widescreen theatrical cut from 35mm would probably be the most enjoyable way to rewatch it now. I also want to respect you and your time and money input, so of course there are more important films to get to, but I thought I should voice my interest in this. I’ll see what I can do about donating a bit.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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Dek Rollins said:

Poita, I think the donation thing is actually a very good way to tell who cares enough, but I also want to point out the other side of that. I actually want to donate to this, as I grew up watching the theatrical version on VHS, but I’m that outlier case that maybe can’t donate to something I really want to see happen. I’m a highschool senior currently without a job. I have no income and no money whatsoever. I donated ten bucks to the THX scan out of my Mom’s pocket, haha. I could do that for this as well, but that’s only going to happen if she’s feeling generous enough.

I just wanted to say that there is genuine interest even from those who don’t have the money to donate. I actually think this film is terrible, but I still enjoy watching the version that I grew up watching every single day on my CRT television, and having the complete widescreen theatrical cut from 35mm would probably be the most enjoyable way to rewatch it now. I also want to respect you and your time and money input, so of course there are more important films to get to, but I thought I should voice my interest in this. I’ll see what I can do about donating a bit.

Heya Dek,
No one is under any obligation to put anything towards any project, and there are certainly more important things out there to donate to. The THX donation is certainly appreciated by everyone working on it.
Please don’t feel under any obligation to donate to this project.
Generally though, I feel that if someone is passionate about a project getting done, nearly anyone could find $2 if they have the means to have internet access, a device to watch a digital file on, and time to hang out on forums etc.
I remember being 8 years old so and mowing nearly every lawn in our street, and washing neighbours cars to buy 8mm film stock to make short films on a wind up film camera (an old revere8) that I received from my Grandfather when he passed away.
I was really passionate about making films, and it was the only means I had to do so. I sold some of my action figures to other kids at school (not my Star Wars ones, I needed those for the films!) and once I scraped together the $30 or so required of 1979 money, I’d go buy my film, shoot the few minutes of it that you got for that money and would then post it off to Kodak and wait a few weeks for it to return to me in the post.
Once it came back, I’d breathlessly open the envelope, run inside and watch my (awful) creation, and then start finding ways to afford the next one.
One time the film came back blank, something went wrong with processing and I’d blown my dough, but another 3 months later I afforded another reel and made another short film.
However I would never have lifted a finger to get money to buy a chocolate bar, or somtehing like a radio control car, which my brother would have done nearly anyhting short of selling a kidney to get. (It took him six months to save up to get a Tamiya Hornet)
I thought RC cars were cool, but I never would have expended much energy, or sacrificed much to get one. I kinda wanted one, but I wasn’t passionate about it.

If one is passionate about something they really want, finding a dollar or two can usually be done, my 4 year old daughter gets a dollar a week pocket money if she cleans her room and makes her bed anbd waters the vege garden (her weekly chores) and she is currently saving up for a toy she wants really badly that costs $6. The 6 weeks feels interminably long to her, but she is now four weeks in and is excited that it is only 14 more sleeps.

That is kind of what I was waffling on about when I said it is an easy measure for me as to whether it is worth investing the large amounts of time into a project for me, if a solid amount of others are passionate about a film, willing to make a very small sacrifice for it to be preserved, then it feels worth it to me to go ahead with it.
If there aren’t a bunch of people passionate about the film, then it makes more sense to me to find one that people are really keen to have done.

I’ve been overwhelmed at times at the amount of work, sacrifice and support that strangers put into seeing films preserved both here and on other forums. Every one of you has my eternal respect and it warms my heart in these often selfish and divisive times to see people come together from all walks of life to share their love of film with each other. Amazing things have been achieved, if it wasn’t for everyone here, a laserdisc would still be the only way to watch the original Star Wars films for example.

Anyway, thanks again for the donation to THX, there will be news on that front soon 😃

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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I’m one of those who atm can only chip in a few bucks a month, but would genuinely love to see this project happen. I think I did well in my recent job interview so if tht works and money starts coming in, I can contribute more!😃

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Just chipped in $5. Call it a show of interest in your collective, upcoming projects 😃

she/her
mwah

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Thanks!

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Money is one thing that determines what projects go ahead and what ones don’t. As ZigZig has (I think) already send a hard drive specifically for this I can also just put in the $270 towards the costs instead of buying an 8tb, if need be. We only need 10 people to go in for an amount in that region and the whole scan will be funded - or we could get 7-8 people who can afford $200-300 and probably make up the rest through smaller donations. The small donations do add up quickly actually.

As for the film, it’s the first SW film I saw in the cinema. It may not be a great SW film, but hey it followed on from the relative silliness of Jedi, and at least it had a story to tell unlike the more recent Disney iterations. It’s also a glimpse into what might have been if Lucas hadn’t given up on directing to focus on merchandising.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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poita said:

Dek Rollins said:

Poita, I think the donation thing is actually a very good way to tell who cares enough, but I also want to point out the other side of that. I actually want to donate to this, as I grew up watching the theatrical version on VHS, but I’m that outlier case that maybe can’t donate to something I really want to see happen. I’m a highschool senior currently without a job. I have no income and no money whatsoever. I donated ten bucks to the THX scan out of my Mom’s pocket, haha. I could do that for this as well, but that’s only going to happen if she’s feeling generous enough.

I just wanted to say that there is genuine interest even from those who don’t have the money to donate. I actually think this film is terrible, but I still enjoy watching the version that I grew up watching every single day on my CRT television, and having the complete widescreen theatrical cut from 35mm would probably be the most enjoyable way to rewatch it now. I also want to respect you and your time and money input, so of course there are more important films to get to, but I thought I should voice my interest in this. I’ll see what I can do about donating a bit.

Heya Dek,
No one is under any obligation to put anything towards any project, and there are certainly more important things out there to donate to. The THX donation is certainly appreciated by everyone working on it.
Please don’t feel under any obligation to donate to this project.
Generally though, I feel that if someone is passionate about a project getting done, nearly anyone could find $2 if they have the means to have internet access, a device to watch a digital file on, and time to hang out on forums etc.
I remember being 8 years old so and mowing nearly every lawn in our street, and washing neighbours cars to buy 8mm film stock to make short films on a wind up film camera (an old revere8) that I received from my Grandfather when he passed away.
I was really passionate about making films, and it was the only means I had to do so. I sold some of my action figures to other kids at school (not my Star Wars ones, I needed those for the films!) and once I scraped together the $30 or so required of 1979 money, I’d go buy my film, shoot the few minutes of it that you got for that money and would then post it off to Kodak and wait a few weeks for it to return to me in the post.
Once it came back, I’d breathlessly open the envelope, run inside and watch my (awful) creation, and then start finding ways to afford the next one.
One time the film came back blank, something went wrong with processing and I’d blown my dough, but another 3 months later I afforded another reel and made another short film.
However I would never have lifted a finger to get money to buy a chocolate bar, or somtehing like a radio control car, which my brother would have done nearly anyhting short of selling a kidney to get. (It took him six months to save up to get a Tamiya Hornet)
I thought RC cars were cool, but I never would have expended much energy, or sacrificed much to get one. I kinda wanted one, but I wasn’t passionate about it.

If one is passionate about something they really want, finding a dollar or two can usually be done, my 4 year old daughter gets a dollar a week pocket money if she cleans her room and makes her bed anbd waters the vege garden (her weekly chores) and she is currently saving up for a toy she wants really badly that costs $6. The 6 weeks feels interminably long to her, but she is now four weeks in and is excited that it is only 14 more sleeps.

That’s actually some great talk about passion. I’m also passionate about film, but I grew up kind of the opposite of you in that I’ve never been the kind of person who easily expresses my passion with action. I’ve always had the pessimistic mindset that I’ll never be able to afford the means of following my dreams of filmmaking. It was always a matter of “I’ll be a big director… when I’m an adult with money and experience.” But there was a change last year’s Autumn when I watched the Evil Dead films and read about Sam Raimi’s filmmaking origins, from Super8 to professional features. I was greatly inspired and finally shot a shortfilm. I kind of wish I had the kind of passion you described growing up, but maybe that just has to do with the different environments created by different time-periods.

That is kind of what I was waffling on about when I said it is an easy measure for me as to whether it is worth investing the large amounts of time into a project for me, if a solid amount of others are passionate about a film, willing to make a very small sacrifice for it to be preserved, then it feels worth it to me to go ahead with it.
If there aren’t a bunch of people passionate about the film, then it makes more sense to me to find one that people are really keen to have done.

I completely understand that. Considering the film we’re talking about, I’m surprised there’s as much interest as there seems to be, and I’m glad it’s there. There’s a thread on here where some members are getting a Jurassic Park III print scanned, and I wouldn’t spend a dime to care about preserving any of the JP sequels, and this is coming from someone who saw JP3 first. I can imagine that’s how you sometimes feel with a project like this. You don’t care much, but someone out there does, so it just might be worth it for them.

I’ve been overwhelmed at times at the amount of work, sacrifice and support that strangers put into seeing films preserved both here and on other forums. Every one of you has my eternal respect and it warms my heart in these often selfish and divisive times to see people come together from all walks of life to share their love of film with each other. Amazing things have been achieved, if it wasn’t for everyone here, a laserdisc would still be the only way to watch the original Star Wars films for example.

Anyway, thanks again for the donation to THX, there will be news on that front soon 😃

I think you deserve the eternal respect of everyone on this forum. You seem to sacrifice so much just to see the films we love preserved. I give my utmost thanks to you for your contributions to this community and to the history of film.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

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 (Edited)

poita said:

If there is another forum where there might be more TPM fans, let me know, if people really want this film preserved, then I am all for it.

I’m pretty sure some people from https://forum.fanres.com/ will be interested too!
spOrv, what do you think?

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I need to make a decision on this by the end of the week.
So if anyone is interested and still on the fence, by all means speak up/donate so I can work out if I can go ahead with it or not.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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My pledge still stands. Assuming you decide to go forward with the scan, you’ll have it on Friday.

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I’ve updated the OP, we’re currently up to about $950 in pldges. I won’t put the list here publicly because some people like to remain anonymous, but it’s a very promising start.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Great stuff.
As mentioned, I’m trying to gauge interest, so anyone interested in seeing this happen, please throw in one or two dollars or something.
If another 20 people made even tiny donations, it would help it feel like there is an audience out there for this.
I, and others will be throwing hundreds of hours at this just for the scanning and transferring, backing up etc. even without any restoration, so it is good to feel like the work is being done because people want to see it.

To go through the process, first the reels are loaded onto a set of rewinds and inspected by hand to look for any splices, broken perforations, or any damage that might cause a problem in the scanner, and then any damage carefully repaired.

Each reel then has leader attached, and is taken to a clean room for ultrasonic cleaning. The technician will load the film into the cleaner, and again supervise the film as it moves slowly through the cleaning bath, buffers and is dried out the other side.
It is transferred onto cores, and then each one is loaded into the scanner one at a time. The hard drive array is initialised, and the reel and job numbers, timecode start points etc. are keyed into the control panel.
The film is then tensioned, the stock analysed and the density set.
The film is then focused and a test scan done.
Any last minute adjustments are done, then each frame is exposed 10 times onto the CCD. 3 passes each of Red, Green and Blue, to ensure that the full latitude is captured (at 16bits per pixel), and the tenth pass is infrared to capture any dust, hair or scratches so that they can be more easily repaired digitally.

Each frame is around 120MB, there are about 172,000 frames, and each are exposed 10 times, and after each is written to the disc, the next frame advances. At each scene change, the film stops momentarily, focus is re-done as on older prints the film tends do drift a bit from the focal plane, and the process continues until the reel is done, it is then rewound back onto its core, and packed away, and the next one loaded.

Each reel takes around 10-14 hours to scan, depending if there are any issues, and a two hour feature has around 6 or 7 reels.

Then the files have to be backed up, they are 20-23TB in size, so this takes many, many hours even with fast drives, and then transferred to HDDs to send out to be worked on.

Cleaning, scanning and transferring the files is over 100 hours of work on its own, on equipment that comes in just under eight hundred thousand US dollars.
This is why commercial scanning is so expensive, typically a commercial scan at this quality will run between $15-25K.

We are so lucky that scanning prints at truly archival quality has come along and that we are able to get this kind of thing done. With some films fading, they would be lost forever if we didn’t take on these projects ourselves.

Anyway, that is a bit of an insight into the process, in case anyone is interested in what goes into it, and why I like to be fairly choosy about which films get archived, we have limited resources, both in time and money and need to try and allocate it to the ones that are most meaningful/important to the community.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Come on folks! Even a buck will help! Do it for Ric!

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Where were you in '77?

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Does anyone know did the entire film go through a digital intermediate? Because if so it would have be done at 2K (2048x1556 if it was done anamorphically). For any effect shot the resolution will not be higher than that, and it’s possible they rendered some of them at lower resolutions if they were particularly complicated CGI scenes (the entire Toy Story film was rendered at 1536x922 for example).

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I think I can fine the answer in my files (I keep all technical articles about TPM), but not before tonight in Europe.

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The shoot was only 65 days, and then nearly two years of post production.
With that level of work, I would say most if not all of it went through a DI.

I see what you are getting at, however, we still need to scan at at least 4K as we aren’t just transferring a digital file directly from their servers, we are scanning a print.

If through some miracle the ‘2K grid’ that the print ‘originally’ was created from happened to perfectly line up with every CCD pixel on our scanner, well, umm… you see what I mean.
If we scanned at 2K we would end up reducing the resolution of the print to way below 2K as the ‘pixels’ as laid out on the film could not possibly line up perfectly with the pixels on our scanner CCD.

If that seems confusing, I’ll draw up a graphic to show what I mean.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Yeah I know we need to scan higher than 2K, just letting people know what we have. We’re not going to get 4K detail out of the print. Would they have produced prints straight from the digital files, or do they output a negative digitally to strike prints from?

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Of memory, all scenes of TPM were analogically filmed with Arriflex lenses except for one scene shooted directly in HDCAM.

90% of the film was processed digitally, which leaves still 10% of “natural” scenes, but the entire film was processed through a Digital Intermediate at 2K (but Poita’s remark is quite relevant).
Eventually, there were 2 final masters : one Kodak 35mm and one TI at 1280x1024.

The first LD/DVD/HDTV master was made from InterPositive ; the last BR master was made with a new scan directly from the 35mm master, fully scene by scene color-regraded.

On the other hand, AOTC and ROTS were digitally filmed with Sony cams at 2K.

I’ll try to find the exact information tonight.