Originally posted by: generalfrevious
mielr, you said that film deteriorates after a few years- what then is the worst case scenario for the OOT?

Who knows- that's the problem. I am by no means an expert on this subject, but I know that the Eastman/Kodak film used in the 1970s was unusually unstable, and started to fade within 5 years (the piece of film in my signature is a good example- it's a frame from a 70mm release print of Star Wars from '77).

There was one particular stock that was used on Star Wars and other films from that era called "CRI" (color-reversal internegative) stock that was particularly notorious for fading. It was a stock that became a "negative" when exposed to the original camera negative, instead of becoming a positive (hence the "color reversal"), so that release prints could be made directly from it, instead of an additional positive/negative step. This saved a generation in the duplication process, so that the resulting release prints would be one step closer to the camera negatives, and would thus be clearer and less grainy, but- it turned out that the CRI stock faded very quickly. The color-fading problem was discovered in the late 1970s, and Kodak was forced to improve their film stock after 1983 to prevent the problem from happening in the future. Film-makers, upon discovering the problems with the fading film, made back-up copies of their movies on better film stock. George Lucas did the same, I would imagine, but how good the copies are or what condition they're in is the question. When they went to make the SEs, I understand that a lot of the film elements they were going to use were in bad shape, so they had to go back to the original camera negatives (or so we were told) which evidently faded at a slower rate. But, who knows what state the original camera negatives are in now that they've apparently been cannibalized for the SEs, so what remains of the OOT and what kind of shape any remaining prints, or negative dupes is a mystery.

Logically, I would think it would have made sense for them to have restored/preserved ALL of the available footage, before they went ahead and did the SEs, because I'm sure they weren't sure at that early stage what shots were staying in, which were going out, and which old shots would still remain in the film but with a bit of CGI added, etc. (also remember- in the '97 SEs they used that alternate take of Han in the cantina saying "I'll bet you have", and the previously-unreleased Luke/Biggs scene) So- I think probably all of the OOT footage exists- somewhere- even if it's chopped up and/or on a computer hard-drive. But, like everyone else, I'm just guessing.

On a side note - George Lucas (among many other directors) stores his film in a vault in an underground salt mine. The storage conditions are supposed to be ideal (temperature/humidity-wise) and are safe from earthquakes, etc.