16mm French Star Wars and Empire

Thanks to Marvins, I will shortly be posting some samples from the 16mm version of Star Wars and Empire Strikes back.

The films were a bit splicy, dirty and beat-up in places, wetgate did remove some of the lighter scratches, but there is still plenty of restoration work there for whomever wants to tackle it.

Hopefully my internet will be connected this weekend and I will get some samples up. I'm watching both scans through tonight to make sure they are complete so I can *finally* return the films to Marvins before I go back in for surgery.

The sound I had to capture at 25fps, so it will need to be adjusted back to 24 to get the pitch down to the correct levels, I found it quite interesting listening to Vader en français, thanks again to Marvins for supplying the 16mm prints.

From what I've seen so far, the colours are pretty solid on SW and a bit faded on ESB.

Poita, thank you for scanning these. I'm really really interested in the original mono track on the SW print. I've never heard it in good quality. On every single video release, the stereo track is awful as well. Bad audio transfers unfortunately.

I'm not sure what the quality is like on the print to be honest, optical 16mm tracks can be awful, fingers crossed these will be better than what you currently have access to.

Really? I didn't know that. From the small samples I've heard in Marvins videos the audio was okay but we never know. The sound came directly from what seemed to be the built-in speaker of the projector so I can't really tell.

Are you saying that magnetic sound is usually better on 16mm prints? What is the main difference between a 35mm optical track and a 16mm one?

Mag sound is often considerably better than optical sound.

Mag 35 can be miles ahead of analogue optical 35mm.

However, it depends so much on the mastering process, the quality of the optical printer etc. etc.

Some interesting notes from a film maker here:

https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-1276641111/new-improved-16mm-sound

Some ugly, but informative reading is here:

http://www.sfu.ca/~gotfrit/ZAP_Sept.3_99/f/fsnd_lect_16mm_mix.html

Sound isn't my strong suit, so I could be way off, but I find 16mm tends to be missing most of the high end, and some of the low.

Thanks for the links and all the informations. Indeed it seems that 16mm optical tracks can be a bit destructive... Like you said, fingers crossed.

Also, why did you have to capture the audio at 25fps? 50/60Hz issues? It could make sense. I know for example that some 35mm projectors in Europe used to run at 25fps because of 50Hz.

It is just that I can lock the sound system to 25fps, if I run it at 24, the speed varies more, so I figured probably better to capture at a consistent speed, and adjust it after capture, rather than capture at a more variable speed.

Alright, that's interesting. I don't see the point of having a lock option with 25fps and not with 24. Doesn't make any sense to me since most of the films are meant to run at 24.

The reason is that I have access to a 25fps sync pulse signal, and not a 24fps one.

The reason that some systems have a 25fps lock is for transfer to PAL.

If people would prefer I can do an unlocked roughly 24fps sound capture, but it may be trickier to sync up.

Here is a sample of the audio at 25fps. I haven't had a chance to check it yet.

http://tinyurl.com/ANHREEL1

I don't know the history of French releases at all, but is the French crawl the original 77 crawl or the revised 81 crawl?

The crawl on ANH is in English on this print, on ESB it is in French.

Exacty, and it is the original '77 crawl.

poita said:

Here is a sample of the audio at 25fps. I haven't had a chance to check it yet.

http://tinyurl.com/ANHREEL1

 Wow it sounds pretty nice for a mono optical 16mm track!

I've tried to sync it with the GOUT and it's quite a pain in the ass to do, it seems to have a bunch of missing frames...

Yes, there are a lot of splices on the print unfortunately, so quite a few missing frames.

Reel 2 audio

http://tinyurl.com/ANHVREEL2

http://tinyurl.com/ANHREEL3

Thanks a lot for sharing these poita!

JEDIT: I just saw that you also shared reel 3 so thanks a lot again! I would like to thank you while using your real name but I'm not sure that you want everybody here to know it, so let's call you poita ;-)

Anyway, it's pretty strange because your link says "ANH" but the file is "ESB".

I'm feeling like tackling a little restoration myself...

Oops, I uploaded the Empire reel by mistake