The $325 has been raised, the 16mm print has been scanned, and is ready for use as a color reference and for repairing/replacing damaged frames. The Fuji print has also been scanned, so now it is just a matter of time, rather than money - unless somebody has 6 figures they can throw our way, so that we can quit our day jobs and work on this full time.
Cleanup is very time consuming, as this real time video demonstrates:
https://vimeo.com/338040925/ca9015d4f8
In 13 minutes, about 30 frames (or just over 1 second of film) is cleaned. The frame is advanced, forward and back repeatedly, because it’s very difficult to see which white specks are dust and which are stars without checking to see which ones persist across multiple frames and which are only there for a single frame.
It’s quite boring to watch and it’s quite boring to do, but it’s also why there are so few updates about the project. This opening crawl sequence is 2000 frames and will likely take at least two weeks to clean. We all have full time jobs and family responsibilities, so an hour or two per day is the most we can usually devote to projects like this one. Two films in, this is all routine to TN1 at this point, so unless a new technique or new software is being tried, or something weird and unusual is spotted in the footage, time isn’t usually wasted creating videos or posts to update people about what’s happening. If this post takes 5 minutes to compose, that’s 10-15 frames that didn’t get cleaned.
Progress is slow, painfully slow, but it is happening. Every day more frames are being cleaned, color corrected, stabilized, deflickered, and repaired or replaced. (Though not necessarily in that order!)
Different reels are being worked on simultaneously by different people around the world, which makes tracking progress difficult. But don’t worry, when we have some news, we’ll let you know.
Thank you to everyone who has donated, and to those who are still willing to donate. At this point, if you’d like to make a donation to help projects like this one, I would recommend you donate to one of Poita’s projects - last I heard he needed the money for Hard Drives, without which work cannot continue, so donating to him will actually help get some of his projects get off the ground, e.g.:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Original-Trilogy-restored-from-35mm-prints/id/49756
paypal.me/poit
Though of course donations to us are also always welcome 😃 We always need more software, Hard Drives, and other computer hardware.