Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
i believe mastering a regular dvd costs 5,000 american dollars. mastering high def costs 40,000. per title
this is if you have the digital video masters all ready to go.
it does not take into account digital restoration, color correction, additional effects or fixes costs, as well as the elements being transfered from film. Supposedly fox put up the twenty plus million dollars to restore the special editions from scratch starting with the original negative, and of course most of that restoration was done by hand along with the re-comps of original opticals being done with modern computer technology as well as the final digital scanning.
YCM Labs did the restoration.
then it was further restored by Lowry in 0'4, take in the cost to also restored the sound elements and dialogue tracks the sky is the limit on how much they actually spent. If it is that expensive may be why he is reluctant to spend his own money on restoring the oot. On top of that the original negative was altered. that is the best source for a restoration, being a first generation or no generation copy of the film coming right from the camera. that is what they used to restore the bond films by lowry the o-neg. sure Lucas must still have the interpositives or selected takes of those scenes on film rolls but the quality is at least 1 to 2 generations older than the o-neg.
i believe mastering a regular dvd costs 5,000 american dollars. mastering high def costs 40,000. per title
this is if you have the digital video masters all ready to go.
it does not take into account digital restoration, color correction, additional effects or fixes costs, as well as the elements being transfered from film. Supposedly fox put up the twenty plus million dollars to restore the special editions from scratch starting with the original negative, and of course most of that restoration was done by hand along with the re-comps of original opticals being done with modern computer technology as well as the final digital scanning.
YCM Labs did the restoration.
then it was further restored by Lowry in 0'4, take in the cost to also restored the sound elements and dialogue tracks the sky is the limit on how much they actually spent. If it is that expensive may be why he is reluctant to spend his own money on restoring the oot. On top of that the original negative was altered. that is the best source for a restoration, being a first generation or no generation copy of the film coming right from the camera. that is what they used to restore the bond films by lowry the o-neg. sure Lucas must still have the interpositives or selected takes of those scenes on film rolls but the quality is at least 1 to 2 generations older than the o-neg.
The Special Edition cost 20 million--not the restoration. Creating a few minutes of totally new state-of-the-art CGI sequences and blending CGI into 20 year old footage costs a lot of money. The restoration was a complete overhaul of the film, re-comping all of the many optical effects, digitizing all of the blue-screen elements and plate shots, re-configuring the negative and repairing massively deteriorated footage.
What i am getting at is that it is not very expensive to just put a movie on dvd, nor is it much more expensive to do a less extreme restoration. What Lucasfilm did was more extensive than any other restoration in history because it wasn't just a restoration, it was re-building, re-making and enhancing the films almost from scratch.
The original negative can no longer be used simply to make a new OOT, so to make a copy from this would be problematic--but doable. Basically you could either break apart the SE-neg and put it back in its original OOT configuration, or you could scan the new SE-neg and then scan the missing OOT pieces and put them together in a new DI. This would require a bit of effort on LFL's part, probably running just over $100,000, pretty much a standard price for a DI. The other option would to just take a print--or better yet, a IN or IP--and just run a straight transfer, with the standard dirt/scratch/grain removal filters that come standard in telecine packages. This would not yield a perfectly clean version of the film, but it would be as sharp as any other classic film out there and would be imperfect but reasonably clean--and it would definitly blow everyone away with its resolution and clarity. The cost of doing this is practically peanuts, which is why worthless shit that only few people buy like Smokey and the Bandit 2 and Revenge of the Nerds 3 get the same treatment--way under $50, 000. Add authoring a master and creating a simple menu system and you are looking at a great looking version of Star Wars that would cost Lucasfilm just under $100, 000. So basically, if ever user in this forum bought a copy, Lucasfilm would already be making profit on the disk, and obviously this would sell a few million copies and not just a few hundred.