“It has come to our attention that some of the recent screen shots posted by Team Negative1 are from a scan of a print that has been obtained by unethical means without the owner’s knowledge or consent.”
Thanks to another former member of Team Negative One I have been able to examine the original emails, including those from “person #2”, and they prove beyond any doubt that Mike Verta did NOT pay for the Technicolor scan we received (though he did pay another scan which we don’t have). They also prove that we were given permission to use the scan in anyway we saw fit by the person who actually did pay for it. Now I’m not going to paste the content here because I believe that the one thing both Mike and -1 would actually agree on is that these kind collectors who very generously agreed to share their priceless prints with us, are not to blame for any of this and certainly don’t deserve to be identified in any way or dragged into this any further than they already have.
In fact -1 told me repeatedly to leave things alone, he’d rather take all the blame than have it shifted to them, so please, let’s leave them out of this. I’m only bringing this up now because yesterday Jetrell Fo made a valiant defense of the Team (in the 35mm thread) but in doing so focused attention on the collectors, which is actually worse than leaving us with all the blame.
But, the fact is, I don’t think anyone should be blamed for what, in the end, can only be put down to a lack of communication between all the parties involved.
Secondly, I don’t think it is fair to label -1 as wanting to be “the guy who wanted to save Star Wars” or seeking “fame”. First of all, all the interviews are by a “Mr. Black” - not even “-1” and all this trouble with the Team Account was BECAUSE OF HIS WISH TO BE ANONYMOUS! It’s pretty hard to seek fame and anonymity at the same time! The only reason we agreed to any interviews at all was to make sure the details were reported as accurately as possible, if they were to be reported at all. Nobody wanted the media circus that followed. And I don’t see anybody accusing Harmy of wanting to be the guy who saved Star Wars or seeking Fame and fortune based on his projects and he’s been in the spot light a lot longer than we have.
Thirdly, in spite of the knowledge that we had done no wrong we still agreed to shut down the project “for the greater good”.
So, regardless of whether or not you “like” -1 or Team Negative One (Frink), knowing all this, is it fair to continue this thread any further? Or should there in fact be a public apology for what in the end turned out to be false, untrue, incorrect and unfounded allegations of misconduct that were just thrown out there along with an immediate ban which prevented the accused of uttering even a single word in his own defense?
Do you still think the print was obtained unethically? The fact that Mike didn’t give his consent is irrelevant - he neither paid for the scan, nor owned the print. Consider this, the owner of the scan, that is the person who actually paid a huge amount of money to have it scanned, took the time to copy 21 TB of data onto 7 3TB hard drives, boxed them all up and mailed them to the team so they could use them. It’s hard to picture that happening without his knowledge or consent.
I rest my case.