I hate to argue with you, Poita, but I don’t think the colors in Star Wars/A New Hope are as bad as you think. I think what you are referring to are the Technicolor prints which I have seen are quite messed up. But with the process winding down and Star Wars being the last film with commercial Technicolor prints, it isn’t a surprise that they screwed up the colors. And I don’t think you are correct about the telecines. While it is true that a telecine operator can tweak things on the fly, the overall consistency between the various transfers indicates that is not what we are seeing. Team Negative 1 and Puggo have both transferred multiple 35 mm and 16 mm prints to arrive at the Silver Screen and Puggo Grand presentations. And starting with the Moth3r bootleg transfer (apparently done from a release print not an interpositive) and going through the old pan & scan releases and the widescreen releases (multiple in each country and in at least 6 countries and from old and new interpositive prints), all the transfers show are marked similarity and a stark difference from the Technicolor prints. That many different telecine operator cannot all have done exactly the same corrections on the fly. That color timing has to be from the prints themselves. That the 35 mm and 16 mm scans agree with that says to me that the Technicolor color timing is very screwed up. The sources appear to vary between original May 1977 prints (Puggo Grand US, Moth3r, and the early US/UK telecines), later 1977 prints (all the non Technicolor 35 mm prints and early foreign telecines), and the fresh interpostives done in the mid to late 80’s. But the results are all pretty close. That body of fairly consistent color timing in all those transfers vs. what we see in the Technicolor scans to me indicates that the Technicolor prints, while low fade and high resolution, are not representative of the color timing of the optically generated prints. The scene I have taken note of is where Ben and Luke are talking in the canyon. It is so washed out in the technicolor scans while it is so vibrant in every other scan and telecine.
I have spoken to Mark Wileage who did the colour for the SE, and I have an almost unfaded Kodak print here, it isn’t very different at all to the Tech IB other than the slight green in the IB being absent.
A telecine master was created twice that I know of (and would have been done more times I’m sure), but nearly every home release comes from one of those two masters. I can assure you the LD and VHS masters were corrected on the fly, as there was no other option at the time. However the source film was already colour timed, and was done so quite differently to the release prints.
Every home release afterwards would have been influenced by those before it. If you are a colourist, you can see the decisions that were made to make it suitable for home release, which is a totally different animal to the theatrical release, and always is. The colour was boosted for telecine in a lot of shots, which was also typical of home releases of the era.
That is, the telecine operators worked hard to remove the inconsistencies that are present on the release prints, and they did a pretty good job of it. The colour grade on the original prints is much more all over the place.
I don’t see a lot of similarity though between home releases, quite the opposite there are a lot of inconsistencies when you look at the original media (rather than at captures where the person capturing has already messed with the colour, either on purpose, or the equipment used).
What is fairly consistent is the exposure, and it is, as I would expect, much more ‘balanced’ than the home releases, with less overexposure/blowouts, which again is typical of a video release.
I’m not sure anyone weighing in on the debate has watched the film projected multiple times, it looks nothing like the scans from Mike for instance, and I have watched that actual print. Scans look nothing like the projected print, until you go through and grade them to match. The Kodak print, and the re-release print (for the double bill to get people up to speed for Jedi) look the same as the Tech print, just a little warmer.
The scans are a poor reference in that regard, watching the projection is really the only way to see how the film looked. The grain is also a completely different look scanned vs projected.
It isn’t surprising that the original grade wasn’t great, or that it was changed, maybe even improved in some ways, for the home releases.
From a preservation point of view, we try to get to the look of the projected print. From a view ability standpoint, I would expect any home release, and even fan release to grade to their own preference to make the film more consistent and more watchable on televisions, that are totally different to a projected image.