Free "farewell" Screening of 1977 Star Wars collector's print (British I.B. Technicolor) — Page 3

The Star Destroyer shot looked really pink, but the rest of the film looked pretty much fine. I'll bet that was a 1981 splice to a 1977 original.

Also, you can see the odd spec of dirt really clearly--and by this means, you can tell how clean the film looks otherwise. None of that huge, coarse grain that the GOUT has for the first reel or two! Love that velvety Technicolor texture, you can see it on the video clip if you look closely.

Shame though, that the only way to watch prints of the film now is if you have a Technicolor print. I saw Jaws the other month, and the opening credits that were supposed to be black on white were blood-red on white. I thought it was an alternate title card because it was vividly red, and I thought maybe it was supposed to be the color of blood since it sort of worked in that way, but sadly the rest of the print, while not so red, was very, very pink, on the borderline of watchability.

zombie84 said:

but sadly the rest of the print, while not so red, was very, very pink, on the borderline of watchability.

Did you notice if it had the new sound mix?  Because there's some newer Jaws prints with the 2000 sound being shown here and there, and they look pretty great, (colorwise, no pink).

Do we have a rough guess at how many technicolor Star Wars prints were made? (For some reason I thought Lucas had the only one, made special.)

The Jaws print was a 1975 original to be sure. It looked and sounded very rough.

As to how many Technicolor prints...I'd say maybe a half dozen at the most. I.B. Technicolor didn't exist in the U.S. in 1977, but it still was being done in England. So, you probably had 2 Technicolor prints per major city in England, probably approaching a half dozen in total. That's a complete guess on my part, but it's what I would peg it at. Plus, one that Lucas had printed for himself. So it's pretty rare that one of them was privately purchased or stolen. It's clearly a collector, given how greatly the print has been cared for--hardly any dirt and scratching at all, and this must have been used in a regular theatrical run. I wonder if it was put through a formal cleaning process at some point.

Backlighting it is a bit tough because of the dye layers, but with modern scanning tools it can be done. Not ideal, but more than doable. Take a look at all the films that are Technicolor negatives--Wizard of Oz, for example. Looks pretty kick ass to me. The bigger issue is that the layers shrink at different rates, so you often have to seperate them and scan them individually, but for something 33 years old that's probably not an issue. The biggest issue is that the 100% fade-free claim is a bit misleading. It doesn't fade, but it never gets printed 100% faithful. You can see in the clip, there is a bit of a tint to it, although the white balance on the video camera is probably making it worse. The problem is that the color balance of the dyes is never 100% the same, so no two prints are exactly a like. If you want to use Technicolor for color reference, it's the best source possible but it will always be a tiny bit off if you want to start splitting hairs.

Ah, true about that.

Still, I doubt Technicolor prints would have any significant affects if LFL intended to transfer them to Blue Ray :p.

"Lucasfilm's henchmen might come..." I guess that's a big part of LFL's image now. It's funny that they have a whole PR machine constantly chugging away and yet they still can't erase that sentiment. I get that it's just about selling trinkets now, like some Tijuana gift shop, but I have to assume they could have sold even more without alienating anyone.

Welp, kinda wish I'd gone to this as I'm only an hour away in northern VA. Didn't read all the details until just now. I'd seen the thread title but I'm just so used to reading so much non-news in regards to the OOT that I thought this was no exception.

Obviously I was wrong.

Still, it warms my heart to hear people having such a good time in that youtube clip. Seeing camcorder footage of an actual 35mm print projected in a theater ..... it's unreal.

Ugh, kinda feel like Bart and Lisa after the nerds pulled the tv's power plug just as Scratchy was finally gonna get Itchy. An opportunity like this is probably never gonna come around again.

But with me it'd be like preaching to the choir. Just thinking of all those people watching the OO Star Wars in the highest quality possible gives me a slight boost of hope for our cause!

timdiggerm said:

4. The print is owned by a private collector in Britain. The Senator had been run by the same family for 71 years, so they had a lot of connections. Thus, when word got out that they were closing, friends talked to friends talked to friends and got them the print to use.

Someone get in contact with this private collector in Britain lol

R2 canyon scene:

http://petergaultney.smugmug.com/Movies/historic/Star-Wars-at-The-Senator/K7PG2338/948667790_SRJST-M.jpg

Looks pretty dark!