RU.08,
What Mr. Cook said was that they would find the best settings for a film and then hope they didn’t stray while they monitored the transfer to check. The machine was a best to change the settings on (an hour and a half at the start of the day) and between the two comments and many others in the 90 minute interview I understand that they did not tweak the scenes but rather looked for the best settings for the entire film (not sure if he meant for each reel or for the entire film).
That’s not what he said. He said they had to calibrate the machine every morning, and that they had to fine-tune the settings for every film they transferred because they were all different. Nothing about that suggests a transfer as straight-forward as you’re imagining.
He never mentions using a special telecine film. He never talks about 16mm. He talks about interpostives and internegatives which are the two intermediate steps in chemical processing from o-neg to release print. Both are lower contrast than the release prints.
When he talked about using an interneg he said “the interneg is actually another film stock …” I’m not sure exactly what he meant, but when he talked about the film being too fragile to fast-forward on the Rank II it was in the context of using internegs.
And according to the man at BBC interviewed about the next generation machine (Mr. Cook was using a Rank Cinetel 2 and the man at the BBC circa 1990 was using Rank Cinetel 3), it could do release prints, negatives, and intermediates. I conformed that with an independent source. So it can do anything on 35mm or 16mm from the o-neg to a release print. Please refer to all his comments about the 1982 telecine that happened right before he joined the team and refer to the images of the LD archive of that telecine that I have included. It is a fine transfer that really contradicts what you are trying to say. Per Mr. Cook’s interview, it was a release print that was turning green and they had to restore the color rather than just do a straight transfer. From how it turned out, they didn’t do a bad job and the dark areas contain far more detail than the Technicolor prints.
We’ve been over this already. If release prints worked so well why were they using dupe-negs and interpositives?
Just because it can do something doesn’t mean it does it well or that it is designed for it. Blackmagic claim their $30K BMD 4K scanner is designed to transfer prints - but it’s a complete lie. I can show you samples I have from positive prints transferred on it - they come out noisy as fuck. Anyone in the business could tell you the same thing - you would not use that scanner to transfer theatrical prints, and there may be other types of film it struggles with as well. Now does that mean that everyone does the right thing? Of course not - I have no doubt that some small companies have installed these and are using them to transfer prints - but as Ian Malcolm would say “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.
And you are incorrect about prints not having crushed blacks. Please refer to the Technicolor scans. Either Mike Verta’s samples, DrDre’s scan, or the full film release as 4k77. It is full of shots where the dark areas are just a blob of darkness where all the telecines show an abundance of detail. We know that at least one telecine was from a release print (1982), at least two were from interpositives, and some from internegatives (interpositives would not have the reel change cues and internegatives would). Not one of them is from a special telecine transfer (not surprising since none of these are TV station telecines which is where you might find a special 16mm telecine print).
As I said, prints don’t hold as much detail in the dark areas, not even IB prints. It’s not because the blacks were “crushed” (the black point being set lower than shadow detail).
Your theory of the nature of the source of the telecines is not born out by the abilities of the machines used, the interviews with two different telecine operators, or the accounts of the sources of other telecines which agree with what Mr. Cook has said. I think the evidence presented makes it very clear how Fox did telecines and that it was from a release print or intermediate (the O-neg was too precious most of the time except when no other prints were available such as the Chaplin films). That matches what I have always heard and observed from watching movies on various movie channels from across the years. A great many telecines are made from theatrical prints, especially for older technicolor films where a full restoration would have to be done to realign the 3 strip Technicolor negatives - pretty cost prohibitive for a telecine for TV viewing. We could continue to discuss this, but I think the horse is dead and the evidence I have posted is pretty clear cut. Fox never used a special print for the Star Wars telecines. It was always a print on hand. Even the print used for the Definitive Collection was not one done specifically for that and was a standard interpositive.
We’ve been over this, I already said that negatives and inter-positives and other lab film would transfer just as well as a telecine print, but be on much more fragile film. I’m not sure what you think this proves… you only have the accounts of one distributor, and they were not using release prints as matter of course. Lab film is not referred to as “prints”, so the film they used for the DC was an interpositive film not a print.
Your continued comments about a low contrast print match the nature of interpostives and internegatives so I don’t know why you keep insisting that it had to be a special print when the evidence says otherwise.
What I said was that theatrical prints transfer poorly, and are more difficult for the telecine operator. As for what the telecine machines were designed to handle, you just have to listen to what Mr Cook said - the machine would tear apart lab film if used to fast-forward and stop. This is undoubtedly because when the Mk II was designed (in 1964) it was designed for TV broadcast not for home video. They didn’t imagine having to routinely work with lab film.
For a huge film archive like Fox, Paramount, MGM/Republic, WB, and Universal each have, having to make a special print for each telecine would become costly. Why do that when you can just buy a machine that can do anything. The Rank Cinetel was just that - a machine that use any source material.
Striking a low-contrast 16mm print for telecine would be a lot cheaper than having to replace a worn out 35mm interpositive. As I’ve already been over this, just because you can transfer theatrical prints on a telecine doesn’t mean they are easy to work with and produce nice results. They don’t. I’m sure the distribution company was not asking the film studios to send them theatrical prints, that would be almost last on their list of preferred film to work with.