1. People keep saying that Lucas had all of the film copies of the originals recalled and destroyed. Did Lucas himself ever say that or is it merely speculation that turned into rumor?
2. For the YCM restoration, existing positive elements had to be used to replace pieces of neg that had been severely damaged beyond any hope of restoration. Just where did those positive elements come from and what exact form were they in (35mm? 70mm? etc)? Also, what form is the original negative in?
3. If certain bits and pieces of what we're seeing in the 2004 dvd are from a positive and not the original negative, what hope does this give us for possibly seeing an OOT release that is mastered from a positive?
While I'm at it, I'm going to throw in a quote from Kevin Burns at one of the press junkets for the 2004 dvd. Burns was responsible for the "Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy" documentary. Anyway, here's the quote:
"just a brief mention at the end (of the documentary)...we certainly acknowledged the special editions and how George went back....you really see it was a series of compromises in making the first movie...things he saw in his head that he couldn't realize given the budget and limited amount of time....the special edition and the dvd comes closest because-again-the artist's work is never finished....as the technology runs apace, and GL has invented most of the technology that has been responsible for these SE's....the technology has come close to but still not matched his vision for what he wanted the planets and the spaceships and the battle scenes to look like...it was important for us to put audiences back in that theater seat in 1977....we did get papal dispensation to use footage from the pre-SE release...you see the opening title sequence as it looked in 1977....that was exciting for us because it does bring you back..."
and this is what I really wanted to highlight:
"I will say what was shocking-and this speaks to the whole issue of the restoration- those brief scenes that we used from the pre-SE, in our mind's eye they looked a lot better than they do when you go back and revisit them and you do see how the qualityof the print, the quality of the negative really doesn't hold up the way you think it might....so you kind of understand why things have been revised and digitally restored."
Has there been any speculation on where Burns was getting the footage from? Was it a print, a negative or something else entirely?
Since the doc itself is 16:9 enhanced, has anyone been able to figure out whether or not it's from the same master tapes used to make the GOUT?
Most importantly, do you think that when Burns says "quality" that he simply means the age of the special effects and not the actual quality of the print/negative itself? LFL's official statement was that they are in "bad condition." Is anyone willing to bet it's nothing that couldn't be restored with today's technology?