poita said:
Yes, the cinema you saw it in, the light source of the projector, size of the screen, film stock, ambient lighting and even your seating position would mean that every one would have a different viewing experience. You would see different colour depending on the lamp colour temperature and film stock, you would see different colour intensity depending on the size of the screen and the number of foot lamberts output. I was the son of a projectionist and actually got to thread and screen Star Wars as a child, the handling of film is pretty rough, but it is usually lubricated and the threading etc. is just the leader tape which doesn't have any of the movie on it. Film is very hardy, you should see how it is treated by the film editors when cutting a film!
The IB print will be a pretty good indication of how the film was *meant* to look and would have looked at the first screenings in a small cinema with a great screen. It is as close to the original negative as we can get, but it won't necessarily be the way any given person saw it.
That is why I don't get too tied up about reproducing the *exact* experience, there is no such thing. Some cinema screens would have been so dark that the garbage mattes would be invisible, others so bright that they would have been clear and bright. Some projectors would have terrible weave, others pretty stable etc. etc.
However, the overall colour balance and tone would have been much the same, so the IB print allows us to know if the greys were actually a little green, if Uncle Owen's hair was nearly black or more browny-grey, if the monsters in the Cantina were dimly lit with dark shadows etc. etc.
While everyone's experience would be different, we can at last answer a lot of questions about how it looked in '77 if you happened to see it from a great print in a good cinema.
and I'll put money it didn't look much like the bluray release....
A great and informative write-up poita, thanks so much for this. A nice read!
I bet that was nearly a thrill of a lifetime, being able to actually thread in the movie Star Wars in 1977. I can only imagine that you were giddy with excitement!
A question to you though. Do you have any clue as to how many, of the movie houses/theaters showed the Technicolor print, versus the non Technicolor print? or what was the percentages made of the Technicolor print versus the non Technicolor print? I thought I read it was very small.
Also, a Technicolor print would look a lot different than a non Technicolor print, and thus would have a totally different color timing look, as noted in the pictures from Mike, posted above.