Originally posted by: THX
Not all technicolor prints are dye-transfer. IIRC, Lucas had his specially made. Haines makes no mention of dye-transfer. Do you have another source that suggests there were many?

The British Technicolor lab was still doing theatrical dye-transfer prints in the late 1970s. British audiences had the enviable opportunity to see dye-transfer prints of Star Wars up on the big screen. The reason that the print Mr. Haines mentioned was only faded at the beginning, was because there was a piece of Kodak stock spliced onto it (obviously, for use in a post-1977 theatrical revival). The rest of the print was not faded, therefore it was a dye-transfer print. If it was a Kodak print, the whole thing would have been faded. Mr. Haines is an expert on Technicolor, and has written a book about it. To him, the term "Technicolor" is synonymous with "dye-transfer".

"It was a British Technicolor copy (all US prints were on DeLuxe at the time and totally faded). The problem was that the opening title through the ships coming over head was replaced faded Eastmancolor. For re-issue Lucas had 'quick fade' Eastmancolor spliced in to put in "A New Hope" title. It continued through the first actual shot splice which was the ships coming over head which is my favorite shot in the movie. I couldn't watch it with that fade opening even though the rest looked great in Technicolor." (Richard W. Haines)

The Technicolor labs in the US had stopped doing dye-transfer prints in the early 1970s. That's why there are no American dye-transfer prints of Star Wars. It would have made no financial sense for the British lab to have only made 1 or 2 dye-transfer prints of Star Wars. It was an expensive process, and many prints would have had to have been made in order to recoup their expenses.

Today, "Technicolor" exists in name only. "Technicolor prints" ceased to exist after they stopped making dye-transfer prints. All they do now is process other company's prints (like- Kodak, Fuji, Agfa), just like any other lab.

Even if you were able to find (and afford) a dye-transfer print of Star Wars now, it still might have scratches, splicing, or other signs of wear from theatrical use.

Here's another bit of depressing info:

"The camera negative on Universal's 1960 Spartacus was totally faded, totally unusable. Nothing could be done to produce any printing material from that element. We worked from black-and-white separations and had to create the equipment to manufacture a 65mm preservation internegative on the film. We worked from the seps but those seps had been produced defectively. They had been vaulted 30 years before and never tested. I will not go into the problems that were encountered, but the lesson learned was simple and dramatic: black-and-white master separations, when produced, were routinely vaulted and forgotten, assuming they would yield beautiful results when needed. We now know that this simply is not accurate in all cases.

No one knows what materials can be produced from separation masters unless they have been printed, not selectively tested or reviewed on a Rank [film-to-tape transfer machine], but printed. This should be done before the negatives that they protect are no longer viable printing elements. If the protection is defective and the negatives have gone, nothing further can be done. Without doing so, we may have no protection for the last 40 years of color film history. Every film worth saving which has not been backed up should be looked into with immediacy." (Robert A. Harris, 1993)

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