Here is the thing, when I look at the timeline of how the movie was released and the telltale signs that the process left that were archived in the home media releases, I can’t reconcile that with what is being said.
There were 5 edits to the movie between the 16 mm US release (the main source for Puggo Grand) and Moth3r bootleg and the fresh print used for the Definitive Edition/Faces/2006 GOUT. The obvious one is the opening credits. But 3 FX shots were also changed as were the end credits. Now, I’ll ignore the changed opening sequence because we all know when and why it was changed. So far, all the 35 mm prints that this community has found and used, be they optical transfers or Technicolor prints, are have the other 4 changes. The key to understanding when those 4 changes were made lies in the release sequence after the initial release (which was 35 and 70 mm with only the Dolby encoded stereo track and the 70 mm 6 track). Both Puggo Grand and Moth3r have a stereo mixdown mono track instead of the real mono track created later in the year. By the time they made the international release, they had the mono track done and the edits had been made. Not one international version has been found without the 4 changes. However, all the US/UK (as in English) home video releases between the Moth3r bootleg and the Definitive Edition are missing the 3 FX changes.
Also, being an avid movie fan, I have encountred troubled telecines in the past. The transfer for one of Hao Miyazaki’s films carried a bad orangy tint. They quickly did a corrected version and blamed it on the source being an interpostive print that wasn’t fully corrected. The information I’ve found on the Definitive Edition LD release indices it was done from a new interpositive print. The color is off on the DE/Faces/GOUT US/UK version in a manner that is consistent with an interpositive print (slightly orange and low contrast).
And back to those earlier US/UK and Japanese releases that have the original version of those 3 FX shots, by the time the home video was being made, the negative had already been changed so these cannot have been done from a print just for Telecine as any new print from the negative would match the international releases (and also the later 35 mm prints and the print the DE was made from as well as the SE which still has two of those scenes). From my understanding, an interpositive matches the parameters described and doesn’t have to be struck separately. Also, being a lover of old movies, all of the old Technicolor movies that saw relseases on home video (tape, LD, and DVD) were telecined from release prints, so telecine operators are obviously familiar with using many types of sources and can work with what they are given.
Which brings me back to some of the scenes from the technicolor prints that bother me. Particularly that scene where Ben and Luke are talking in the canyon. There is little color to recover in that scene and yet so many of the transfers show a nicely blue sky behind Ben. That scene and those like it (which seem to be mostly on Tatooine) are timed very differently between the Technicolor version and all the other versions. To me that indicates that when they created the 3 color master that starts the Technicolor process, they did not get the timing settings right. And they didn’t get it right in an oddly consistent way. Plus there is the green tint that we already know about. If they screwed up the timing in one place, maybe they did on the whole thing. That is why I say careless. Once the master is made, it is hard to screw up the rest of the process unless you fail to get the dyes the correct colors. But as a result of what I have seen from Mike Verta’s samples, DrDre’s samples, the 4k77 no-DNR version (which sticks to the Techncolor asthetic), and the samples of raw scans of both 4k77 and SSE, I don’t trust the colors on the Technicolor prints. And I bet if you could project one side by side with an optical print you would see the same odd timing. I don’t see how a telecine operator could pull that much color if it wasn’t already there. And it wouldn’t be just one. By my count, ANH has had more than 13 separate telecines from around the world. The scene of Ben and Luke and the canyon looks nothing like the Technicolor in any of them. That is way too many different telecine operators making the exact same (and nearly impossible) correction.
I will admit that the telecines are not identical. Some are more yellow, some more blue, some a bit orange. The JSC has a very orange Threepio on the opening sequence in a bluish corridor. I wasn’t arguing that. I was saying that what they point to for the colors are remarkably similar and that level of similarity over that many different copies from that number of different prints (there are details that indicate the THX foreign language transfers were new prints so that leads to at least 10 separate prints) points to very little tweaking during the telecine process.
And I am aware that the projection process changes things. If your goal is to relive how the movie was projected when you watch it on your TV, then correcting to the projected version makes sense. But that involves tweaking for blub color and a lot of variables that lead to different interpretations. My experience with photos (scanning from negatives, from prints, reprinting negatives, color correcting, repairing, etc) over the last 25 years says that the oddities I’m seeing in the Technicolor scans are not just because the other versions have been corrected or that there is some oddity in the scan that doesn’t show up when projected. I have enough experience to know that isn’t how it works, not to mention a lot of examples from the work done by our members. It is a flaw in the Technicolor print. It is washed out, low contrast, and the color seen in other transfers cannot be recovered from what is in the Technicolor print. Unless you experienced a Technicolor print back in the 70’s, that isn’t how you saw Star Wars. And the whole point of Technicolor prints was that you didn’t need special equipment. Ideally, after the era of Natalie Kalmus, a movie should look the same whether it is a Technicolor print or optical print. But if you have the last movie to get Technicolor prints and someone didn’t do things right, then you can end up with a superior process producing inferior prints. I think that is the case. Everything I’ve found points to that.