hairy_hen said:

True, they're probably not what the actual movies looked like, but they still have a 'natural' sort of look that my eyes find pleasing, far removed from the harsh manipulation of the destroyed SE images. And since that is what final movies ultimately originated from, there's a certain authenticity involved.

How exactly does analogue colour timing on film prints work, anyway? I don't know much about that sort of thing.

I assume you mean film colour timing? I don't think film would be considered analogue, because it's not electronic. But the way film colour timing works as far as I understand it is when the film is printed there are coloured lights (three I believe--RGB) that shine on it to control contrast, brightness and colour. So, you decide on the printer light settings for each shot, and as the shot comes up the intensity and mixture of the lights change according to the result you want. There is also a "one light" method, where if you can't afford or don't have time to do a shot-by-shot correction you just choose one printer light setting for the whole film; I think this is usually done to control contrast and brightness, rather than colour. So anyway, you run your negative assembly through the printer, and as it's going through the lights that expose it on to the new copy affect how it looks. You then get a new print with all the colour correction--it usually takes multiple tries to determine the precise settings because you can't see the result until it is printed. When a print is approved, this is called the answer print. The negative is then run again using the same settings from the answer print, and this makes the interpositive, which is used as the master for making theatrical prints.

csd79: Those examples are terrific! They have a very natural quality to them. Would make a good example for fan preservations to follow. The only problem is the same one that keeps coming up again: in terms of representing the "look" of the film, they lack that bright saturation.