Originally posted by: THX

Originally posted by: zombie84
If the case is that the original negative now has segments of it replaced with the CGI SE frames, what happened to the original pieces that these SE segments replaced? They would surely be stored somewhere, and it would be no trouble at all to simply scan these elements and digitally edit them into their proper original place on the new scan of the rest of the negative.

It's possible that the pieces were stored, but if the o-neg was in such bad shape that parts of the first-gen interpositive had to be used, they probably aren't the best source for restoration. Either way, it is not "no trouble at all" to de-SE the OT, even with all that might be at LFL's disposal. I see no reason to doubt LFL's claims on this issue, as reports contemporary to the making of the '97 SE support it (and make no mention of the restored OUT negative/print that we all wish existed). Now all this doesn't mean it's impossible to restore the OUT, but it does mean that it would be time-consuming and costly.

But why would this be difficult? I know that there were a few pieces of the original negative that, whether affected by the SE or not, had to be replaced with interpositive segments, but I'm not even talking about this. I'm talking about, for instance, the original dewback shot, or the original Greedo shot (pardon the irony) or the original space battle shots. If the original negative was altered with SE segments, then the originals segments which the SE segments replaced (i.e. the original dewback shot, the original shot of Ben's hovel, etc.) would have had to be removed and then stored somewhere. So maybe there is 200 feet of the original negative that is stored due to the fact that it was replaced with CGI-altered shots. Maybe there is another 1000 feet that has been stored due to the fact that it degraded to uselessness--I'm not even talking about that, nor do i care about the footage, as the interpositive material that replaced it is of better quality anyway.

But re-constructing the original negative would be fairly easy. Step 1: Scan the original negative, even though it has SE segments in it. Step 2: Retrieve the original non-SE segments from storage and scan them. Step 3: In the new DI, replace the SE footage with the original footage.

Very complicated, huh? They could even output the final product into a new 35mm print to give a new interpositive of this restored OOT.

This wouldn't be very expensive either. The stored OOT negative segments would be very easy to locate, and I'm pretty sure that ILM must have in-house film scanners, so really it costs nothing to scan the film itself. How many hours would it take to edit the material back in? Maybe an hour or two? So the whole act of completely restoring the OOT from the original negative is literally a day's work.