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Film cells from a Technicolor print on ebay

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It is a shame that one of these rare prints has been hacked up:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-2-x-35mm-Film-Cells-Vintage-Star-Wars-1977-Rebel-Briefing-room-/121534059491

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-2-x-35mm-Film-Cells-Vintage-Star-Wars-1977-Han-Luke-Stormtrooper-/121534396423

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-2-x-35mm-Film-Cells-Vintage-Star-Wars-1977-Han-Luke-Stormtrooper-/121534397133

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-2-x-35mm-Film-Cells-Vintage-Star-Wars-1977-Throne-Room-Finale-/121534398071

This one has Luke's blue saber while  he is training on the falcon:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-2-x-35mm-Film-Cells-Vintage-Star-Wars-1977-Luke-Skywalker-Jedi-training-/121534422329

there are plenty more!

I saw Star Wars in 1977. Many, many, many times. For 3 years it was just Star Wars...period. I saw it in good theaters, cheap theaters and drive-ins with those clunky metal speakers you hang on your window. The screen and sound quality never subtracted from the excitement. I can watch the original cut right now, over 30 years later, on some beat up VHS tape and enjoy it. It's the story that makes this movie. Nothing? else.

kurtb8474 1 week ago

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=SkAZxd-5Hp8


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Godawful. There seem to be a great number of film prints that have been hacked up on ebay.co.uk simply for this purpose including many Bond films. That shot with the blue saber in training is very striking.

VADER!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOCHA LATTE? -Palpy on a very bad day.
“George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”-Harrison Ford
YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader

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The color is really great in all of them. Here's a dumb question, are these technically stolen property? The prints aren't supposed to be in private hands, let alone chopped up and sold. Weird. 

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Yeah, one reason to buy films reels, even if you have no immediate use for them, is the save them from "cutters".

But yeah, projection prints technically belong to the studios, who loan them out to theatres and expect to get them back.  Private ownership is not really kosher, but it's saved the studios' bacon quite a number of times, as the private collectors often take better care of "their" property than the studios do (e.g. when the studio has effectively destroyed its copies, and then wants to make a home video transfer).  Star Wars is just another case-in-point.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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What i'm finding pretty remarkable is just how close my colour grading of the Star Wars Semi-Specialised Edition V2.2 has ended up looking to that rebel briefing room frame and the other frames, especially fleshtones that are pretty much spot on, considering I didn't even have access to a technicolor print.

All those frames have a bit of green fade though so that has to be taken into account, my regrade doesn't have that. Star Wars certainly is a beautiful looking film with the right colours. Lets all hope that Disney/Lucasfilm come out with the goods colourwise for the 4k release of the Star Wars OT and especially with all the film grain and detail intact, these films certainly deserve it.

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captainsolo said:

That shot with the blue saber in training is very striking.

That shot certainly seems to suggest that the lightsabers are meant to be pretty punchy colourwise. It's one of the things thats made me rethink the saturation of all the lightsabers in my Star Wars Semi-Specialised Edition V2.2 release.

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What a senseless shame.

I remember that movie!

It would be great to be able to see it again.

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Are we sure this is Technicolor? I looked at photos of the other photos and they have Eastman written on them. They could be a reprint from the 80s. 

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Poita might be able to tell what they really are. I think he's on a long vacation at the moment.

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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At first I though they were just poor scans, but now that I look at them again, that's a much better explanation for how they look.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I can't figure out if the OP is excited and if that's the appropriate response.

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I can't figure out if the OP is excited and if that's the appropriate response.

JEDIT: I can't tell if my phone sucks, the forum software sucks, or both.

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Did Technicolor manufacture their own film stock for dye-transfer (IB) printing? I'm looking it up, I can't find any info.

Also, the Eastman edge code info is in white on a gray strip, leading me to believe it's not actually on the print stock itself, but printed in from an earlier negative generation. After all, even IB Technicolor prints were made from Eastman negative. (The square indicates that the film stock comes from 1977 - but if I'm correct and it comes from the negative and not the print itself, who knows when this print came from?)

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Yeah the big to-do is always about Technicolor the lab/process. It's too bad none were done for EMPIRE/JEDI. In a perfect world, they'd do a special limited run and make a few like they did for APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX.

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Actually, that's a separate print chopped up by the same cutter. Notice that your image has a Dolby Digital track between the sprocket holes, and the other ones don't.

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Well, the bidding ended. Did anyone here end up getting them? Or would that only encourage this kind of terrible behavior?

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Damn, looking through his completed listings, its amazing how much people are willing to pay for just 10 frames from that technicolor print, as much as 25 pounds in some cases...

Anybody have any idea how much a complete technicolor print of Star Wars could sell for?

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There were I think only 50, and from what I understand only a single-digit number of them still exist today. Not sure how few, I think at least three different complete copies are confirmed to have survived? (And Lucasfilm may have one too - the official story is that George Lucas' personal print was an IB and was used as a color reference for the SE, but Mike Verta once told a different story that LFL actually had to *borrow* one of the privately-held IB prints.)

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Approximately US$5000-$15000 for a print depending on condition.

From what we've enquired. We know about 5, maybe a few more.

Team Negative1

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I doubt this eBay guy had a full print and just decided to start chopping it up. Surely he knew how much the whole thing would go for.