I know, but they said the o-negative has faded because it some of the film stock was notorious for quick fading, and some of it was unusable.
Film that couldn’t be scanned in the 90’s because it was too far faded can be scanned today.
Other sections of the negative were destroyed when they cleaned it.
No doubt, but there is as I said plenty of other material.
In 1997, they said they restored the negative by making duplications of sections from internegatives, interpositives, and the separation masters. So it seems to me that around 1997, what Lucasfilm is calling the “restored negative” (now conformed to the 97 SE), it would have to partially (or mostly) consist of new pieces of film printed in the 90s. All cgi shots were printed onto film, all digital composites were printed onto film, and the restored sections were new film created from IN, IP, or SM sources.
Right, but just because they printed those sections onto film doesn’t mean the interpos, dupe-neg, and separation film is gone.
If there were any sections of the restored negative that were actually from the original negative, it seems like they would have faded even worse by 2013 when they did the 4K scan.
Of course, but the scanning technology is much, much, much more advanced now. In the 90’s no one was scanning for digital 2K. They were doing it for TV, DVD, or digital effects on film.
Unless they were able to avoid additional fading through better storage methods. I suppose worst case scenario, if the sections of the negative that were printed prior to the 90s were unusable , they could have been scanned from the separation masters, since those don’t fade. I’ve heard even the IPs and INs had fading.
Separation masters are black-and-white film, so obviously can’t fade. That said, any dupe-neg would do fine to do a restoration from if the o-neg and the interpos are unavailable, and there would have been several dupe-negs.