Regarding grain. It’s mostly a personal preference.
Some notes, you may have read in the FAQ:
- Harmys version, and Bluray are clearer - Yes
But they never appeared like that in the theater. Release prints were never one generation away from the Negative, so they would never appear that clear, even day one.
2 What if it was a Technicolor print
Then the colors would be closer, but then it still wouldn’t look as sharp. Technicolor prints were only shown in the UK mostly (there are some German, and other ones out there), and that was in 1978. They wear down like other prints when it comes to damage, and usage.
3 What about this LPP
This wasn’t show in a Spanish theater either, from what we gather. It might have been a copy made for a movie collector, or shown on Spanish Television.
4 Future projects and color sources
We do have an Eastman project forthcoming (Along with colors from Technicolor in the works)
Hinted at here: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/What-does-Lucasfilm-or-George-Lucas-really-have-as-Reference-Material/id/47412
Stay tuned for more.
===================================================================================================
So basically, the grain, is real grain from the print. You could run a clean up on it, but we wanted to preserve it to match what grain might have been if this print was projected.
So, the movie didn’t look like this in the theater, and due to its LPP nature, it is more Grainy than Eastman Kodak shots, which you can see the replacements are sharper for in certain scenes, like Han shoots first, and the Crawl.
By the way, we actually did have a Screening of this very print a few years ago, in a theater,
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Private-Screening-of-Star-Wars-1977-35mm-spanish-LPP-USA-oct-2012/id/14719
and we are planning future screenings of the digital versions.
We will post more details once they are finalized.
Team Negative1