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Post #1253689

Author
RU.08
Parent topic
Info: Star Wars - What is wrong and what is right... Goodbye Magenta
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1253689/action/topic#1253689
Date created
2-Nov-2018, 3:34 AM

yotsuya said:

For Star Wars there is a single negative. From that the many interpositives were made and the one or two color separations. From the interpositives the internegatives were made which is when the cigarette burns are added. I think that is also where subtitles are added. From the internegatives the regular prints are made. It is a well documented process. No where have I ever heard of special telecine prints. I have heard that telecines have been made from both release prints and interpositives.

Well I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of telecine prints if you keep insisting on calling changeover cues “cigarette burns”. Foreign language subtitles for subtitling the films are etched in directly to the prints, however the subtitles you probably mean are the Greedo Subtitles and they are an optical composite - so from a master positive I would say and inserted into the negatives used to strike prints.

Now, if you want to talk television,the easiest way to distribute is on film. The early years of Doctor Who have survived because they were transferred to film for international distribution.

That’s a bit more of a complicated process because they filmed the 50i picture on a broadcast monitor at 25fps (dropping every 2nd field) onto 16mm in a process they called “Telerecording”. Then that film would be stored and used to strike prints for telecine and distributed (and yes they are all low contrast prints before you ask that wouldn’t look very good projected). The telecine prints could be transferred in PAL countries back to 50i (although it has lost half the original resolution) or in NTSC countries to 60i using 2:3 pulldown played back at 24fps (or 23.976fps for colour television). Also, the ease of this process for PAL material I suspect is why more US television shows were originally shot on film compared to UK shows. Telerecording wasn’t really suitible to transfer NTSC videotape to film.

But we are talking a studio film, telecined by the studio for home video release. Why strike a new print when you have retired intermediates and prints on hand to use. That would be a lot of needless film transfers to do a telecine on a machine that can handle 35mm film of any type. And add to that the volume of transfers Fox was doing for home video. I can’t be specific with many of those telecines, but the 1985 US release was definitely done in house.

Because it’s a lot easier to transfer low contrast film - even today any modern film scanner - the Lasergraphics Scanstation for example - works much better with negatives or inter-positives, or other lower contrast lab films than it does with release prints that have a much higher density and are more difficult to transfer without introducing excessive scanner noise. That’s not to say you can’t get good results from theatrical prints - you can I know as I’ve had several scanned - but you need to work with a scanner who understands the issues that they present and is able to accommodate them, otherwise what you end up with is a noisy mess.

To put it simply - all lab film other than release prints is low contrast. You only use theatrical prints for telecine if it’s the last resort - even if you didn’t have any telecine prints you’d use the internegative or the interpositive or the o-neg or the master positive or whatever lab film you have available with a timed soundtrack before you would even consider using a theatrical print. Telecine machines were not designed to transfer projection prints, and they didn’t do a very good job with them - end of story.

And we can go round and round about the quality of the prints, but if you like the look of the Tech prints, that’s fine. I don’t. I think they are flawed and not an accurate source for the original colors. I think we can get closer by tracking how each existing copy was made and correcting for the flaws.

And I think you need a better source for your evidence than telecine transfers as they use different prints.