logo Sign In

Star Wars VistaVision “8-Perf X-Wing Wedges” Preservation (A WIP)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Star Wars VistaVision “8-Perf X-Wing Wedges” Preservation

movieola

“At ILM, its VistaVision Moviola, made from a cannibalized movement (interior mechanism) extracted from a Technirama VistaVision camera.” - The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler

As a huge fan of the movies of the original trilogy and a long time researcher of the miniatures built for them, I went out on a limb and purchased this roll of VistaVision film purporting to come from ILM-Van Nuys:

image 1

What interested me most about the roll of film in this auction what I could make out of a few of the light table scans in the auction web page:

image 2
image 3
image 4

From what I could make out, the roll contained a series of individual visual effects elements which would be composited together for some of the most iconic shots in the first film. So I eagerly bought the roll and contacted a friend in the film industry to see if we couldn’t figure out a way to have it cleaned, scanned and preserved.

Here’s the roll now in my shop, sitting amongst a very small portion of my collection of ILM-Van Nuys-sourced miniature ephemera:

image 5

It took some doing to find a lab that had the necessary equipment to mount, clean and scan what is by now a quite ancient film format. After being turned away three or four times, my friend in California found a place that was willing to do the job, and once they realized what we had, were even excited about an opportunity to assist with the preservation of something this rare.

We’re still processing the results of this scan, but here’s a preview of what we found on this small reel:

image 6

image 7

image 8

image 9

image 10

image 11

What we’re looking at here is the matte element for the following frame in the film:

image 12

image 13

And here is the X-Wing miniatures element for this frame in the film:

image 14

I’ve been enjoying color-correcting each frame:

image 15

And here are just a few of those:

image 16

image 17

More to come…

Author
Time

Oh my God, that is beautiful. There is so much detail in those elements. Can they be used for restoring some of the shots?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Wow, this is really a fantastic find! Can you give us some info about how it was scanned? What resolution, color depth, etc.?

Author
Time

For a first post on this forum, it is a masterpiece!

Author
Time

Holy carp! Nice find! I’m definitely paying attention to this thread!

A bit funny to call VistaVision an ‘old format’ when it’s just the 35mm still camera format.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

Author
Time

Mavimao said:

Holy carp! Nice find! I’m definitely paying attention to this thread!

A bit funny to call VistaVision an ‘old format’ when it’s just the 35mm still camera format.

Yeah you can just play this back with (or get it scanned on) regular 35mm film equipment - Sure the picture will be sideways, but rotating each frame 90 degrees digitally isn’t a lot of work. If you were trying to record as 8 perf vistavision, then you would need special equipment.

I guess Lucasfilm has digital backups of all this stuff if they’re letting it go on eBay? They went to a lot of trouble to track it all down when they restored the film in 1997. I can’t help wondering if they even know these are being sold…

Great find though and thanks for sharing.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

Author
Time

Great stuff.
We can also scan Vistavision as we have a special gate for it. Let me know if you are not happy with your existing scans and we can do it for you.

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

Author
Time

Welcome to the forums, beaz. And WOW!

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

Author
Time

Williarob said:

Mavimao said:

Holy carp! Nice find! I’m definitely paying attention to this thread!

A bit funny to call VistaVision an ‘old format’ when it’s just the 35mm still camera format.

Yeah you can just play this back with (or get it scanned on) regular 35mm film equipment - Sure the picture will be sideways, but rotating each frame 90 degrees digitally isn’t a lot of work. If you were trying to record as 8 perf vistavision, then you would need special equipment.

I guess Lucasfilm has digital backups of all this stuff if they’re letting it go on eBay? They went to a lot of trouble to track it all down when they restored the film in 1997. I can’t help wondering if they even know these are being sold…

Great find though and thanks for sharing.

Well, you’d need to rotate 90 degrees AND stitch two frames together in post if you were going to use a normal Academy aperture. VistaVision is 8perfs horizontal and Academy is 4 perfs vertical.

You could use a still frame negative scanner if you didn’t have the budget for a professional video scan.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

Author
Time

Mavimao said:

Williarob said:

Mavimao said:

Holy carp! Nice find! I’m definitely paying attention to this thread!

A bit funny to call VistaVision an ‘old format’ when it’s just the 35mm still camera format.

Yeah you can just play this back with (or get it scanned on) regular 35mm film equipment - Sure the picture will be sideways, but rotating each frame 90 degrees digitally isn’t a lot of work. If you were trying to record as 8 perf vistavision, then you would need special equipment.

I guess Lucasfilm has digital backups of all this stuff if they’re letting it go on eBay? They went to a lot of trouble to track it all down when they restored the film in 1997. I can’t help wondering if they even know these are being sold…

Great find though and thanks for sharing.

Well, you’d need to rotate 90 degrees AND stitch two frames together in post if you were going to use a normal Academy aperture. VistaVision is 8perfs horizontal and Academy is 4 perfs vertical.

You could use a still frame negative scanner if you didn’t have the budget for a professional video scan.

Oh yeah I didn’t think of that - capturing it with one of our “home made” scanners that uses a regular 35mm film projector would only capture 4 perfs at a time.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

Author
Time

beaz said:

Star Wars VistaVision “8-Perf X-Wing Wedges” Preservation

movieola

“At ILM, its VistaVision Moviola, made from a cannibalized movement (interior mechanism) extracted from a Technirama VistaVision camera.” - The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler

As a huge fan of the movies of the original trilogy and a long time researcher of the miniatures built for them, I went out on a limb and purchased this roll of VistaVision film purporting to come from ILM-Van Nuys:

image 1

What interested me most about the roll of film in this auction what I could make out of a few of the light table scans in the auction web page:

image 2
image 3
image 4

From what I could make out, the roll contained a series of individual visual effects elements which would be composited together for some of the most iconic shots in the first film. So I eagerly bought the roll and contacted a friend in the film industry to see if we couldn’t figure out a way to have it cleaned, scanned and preserved.

Here’s the roll now in my shop, sitting amongst a very small portion of my collection of ILM-Van Nuys-sourced miniature ephemera:

image 5

It took some doing to find a lab that had the necessary equipment to mount, clean and scan what is by now a quite ancient film format. After being turned away three or four times, my friend in California found a place that was willing to do the job, and once they realized what we had, were even excited about an opportunity to assist with the preservation of something this rare.

We’re still processing the results of this scan, but here’s a preview of what we found on this small reel:

image 6

image 7

image 8

image 9

image 10

image 11

What we’re looking at here is the matte element for the following frame in the film:

image 12

image 13

And here is the X-Wing miniatures element for this frame in the film:

image 14

I’ve been enjoying color-correcting each frame:

image 15

And here are just a few of those:

image 16

image 17

More to come…

the links don´t work…😦

Author
Time

you mean the images? they work for me, i can tell because you quoted 18 of them.

Author
Time

Yeah images don’t show up in the first post on mobile for me.

she/her
mwah

Author
Time

This is pretty cool! Maybe it can be used to re-composite various special effects digitally ALA the Special Editions for a new kind of Semi Specialized cut

Nobody sang The Bunny Song in years…

Author
Time

my, This something I never would have expected to see available to the public. It would at the very least make a neat bluray bonus feature.

Author
Time

For color correction, would it be possible to have a script generate a LUT using the 4k77 print as color reference for each shot?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

The turret and the x-wing cockpit are especially nice because the Horizon Line is in the middle of the frame correctly.

Where as in the film the horizon is either too low (Turret) or too High (x-wing) It would be good to re-frame those shots with a better Horizon line. Or more image either way.