Idea: Prints - Has anyone tried getting prints of the films for preservations?

zombie84 said:

There were a couple people here who had prints and tried to do something with them, but they are long gone as far as I know. I would suggest trying some 35mm collecting forums, and also not advertising that you will be transferring them to video. Any print you will get your hands on will be extremely rough though, so make no illusions about what you are up against. It will take a long time to clean it, unless you have access to proprietary software and hardware like Lowry. If the print is good, be prepared to spend four figures on it also. This sort of thing is probably the "greyest" area of home video collecting, as it is clearly illegal, so I'm not even sure how open you want to be about posting it on this forum.

If you have professional frame-by-frame scanners, or even a regular pro telecine, that will get HD results, you might want to consider a 16mm print. There are a few low-fade LPP prints from the 1980s out there that, when cleaned up, would get you better-than-DVD level of detail in an HD scan. More importantly though, it's much cheaper and easier to find (eBay), and slightly less "illegal" because 16mm isn't seen as a real piracy threat.

There were low fade prints struck on 16mm in the 1990's.  Two such prints one of empire and the other jedi were sold on the 8mm forum.  Empire was bought by someone on these boards.

I did not have the funds or i would have purchased Jedi.  Both were not dupes, both struck from an original source negative. Probably the very same prints made in the 1990's for fan conventions and official printed by Lucasfilm before the special edition. These were supposed to have been destroyed but somehow made their way into collectors hands.

The reduction 16mm print that was recently up on ebay of jedi is clearly a dupe made from a faded 35mm release print and probably a bootleg if not a foreign made print, or military purposes print.

The super8mm one was officially licensed by Derann, and it on no fade LPP mylar stock.  It was released on magnetic mono.  Some collectors rerecorded the print into stereo but that ruins the collectibility of the print because for preservation purposes it would only be good for the video since they erased the theatrical audio in replaced it with the laserdisc audio.

Also these prints with magnetic and not optical audio are problematic to ship because placing them near any magnets will wipe the recorded audio.

hey guys,

yeah, it's been what? another year?

(of silence) i know...

well, the 2- 35 mm prints of star wars i have are

still waiting patiently for someone to do a HD

transfer of them...

don't get me wrong, i've tried through several

different people, and looking on my own... but

for some reason the negotiations always seem

to break down in the end....

scanning them manually obviously is not the way

to go due to too many problems.. i have worked

out a deal to at least preserve the prints properly

so they wont deteriorate any further than they

already have (and the same with the Empire

Strikes Back print)....

it looks like 1) the prints of course are too fragile

to ever be project again 2) they can only be scanned

once or twice before they are really unuseable..

so we're going to have to be extra careful with them..

on the other, due to economies of scale, time, and pricing,

it will probably be better to try for a 2k-4k preservation

and do it right......

again, no timeline or timeframe right now..

wheels are turning though..

later

-1

notadroid said:

Has anyone tried getting prints of the films?

For 16mm/8mm, see the links in my .sig, and related threads in the preservation section.

For 35mm/70mm, that's complicated.

notadroid said:

Has anyone tried getting prints of the films?

please check your pm.

thanks

later

-1

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Good luck finding someone to transfer those prints, Negative 1. You're gonna need it. ;-) Anyway, I'm sure a solution will eventually present itself, and when it does, it will be a day long remembered. I also agree. It is better to do it right than fast. Wait for a 4K or 2K scan instead of getting a quick and dirty SD scan or 1080p scan.

 thanks,

well, the only thing to do is to keep looking (as i've been trying),

and hopefully one day things will work out.. however, it's hard

to keep something limited to just a few people, with the great

amount of interest in it... also, realistically, finding people who

could do this properly, and handle all the logistics of working

with the data and restoring the film, is also a major factor.

money might be an issue, but its never gotten far enough

for it to come up yet.. and that's something that i would

rather shield people from, since it creates more problems..

later

-1