Making our own 35mm preservation--my crazy proposal — Page 25

Yes...try and salvage parts that were screwed up in the Special editions.  We don't need to capture the entire film.  Just the parts that we can only get in GOUT.

Like if the scene in the wampa cave where you see its shadow on the wall.  That part in adywans theatrical reconstruction was still GOUT.  See if you can salvage that split second shot.

Forgive if this seems mildly annoying and/or intrusive, but I'm a more visual person... are there any stills of this flaw someone would be willing to share? I'm afraid I don't think I understand the way Adywan has explained it to us...

I've seen warpage in 16mm and 8mm films that I've worked with. It's a pain in the neck without an easy solution.

First, shrinkage actually means shrinkage... meaning that simply pressing the film flat won't solve the problems of the sprocket holes no longer aligning with the sprockets.  This is fairly rare but I saw it once in an older Chinese film.

Second, warping causes the distance between the surface of the film and the camera to change as the film plays, meaning that it is difficult to keep it in focus.  This is more common.

If the shrinkage isn't too bad, someone could probably jerry-rig some glass plate method of keeping the film flat to counteract the warping.  But it would risk scratching the film in the process.  A normal gate tries to hold down the film at the edges... the tradeoff of a more closed in gate would be to crop more of the edges.  My workprinter has an enlarged gate which captures more of the frame but also makes it less successful with films with slight warpage.  Some of the home movies I've worked with have had this problem, and I've sometimes gotten around it by just trying various projectors until I found the one that was the best match for the filmstock.

Unless it's all a cover story, so they can continue making the preservation without anyone bothering them.

No, I kid.

Sort of.

^Another problem is that -1 has probably already paid for the process, and that's never cheap. A second pass isn't quite as easy as it might be for Puggo, who has the technology himself; I would imagine he went to a small business to get this done. It's not like they'll do a second pass for free.

Unless of course I'm mistaken and he has the equipment himself..

tom said:

How much heat is being absorbed from the light source used for image capture?

I don't know the answer in this 35mm case, but my 16mm workprinter uses a standard decorative lightbulb - significantly lower intensity than a projector bulb because it doesn't need to project the film, just light it up.  You can even leave the projector lit on a single frame without damage to the print. The more recent versions use LED bulbs that emit considerably less heat even than mine.

One common problem is due to very low humidity during the winter.  This can cause temporary 'buckling' of film due to moisture loss at the edges, giving the film a cupped look when laid flat.  If the print is stored at proper temperature and humidity it'll go away.

That is really useful information that I wasn't aware of and could be useful to me at some point.  Thanks for sharing that.  Although here in CA it is the winters that are humid, and the summers that are dry.

Jedi is not rare, nor is the LPP as rare as star wars or empire.

I think Derann had 2 releases on super8mm the first was very high quality but by the time they did the second release their negative was in rough shape.

There were more prints done for Jedi as it is the more popular film than star wars, derann got far less orders for that and is a rare title because it was only available for a limited time whereas Jedi was still available as a used print up until recently when they sold the last one.

The classic home cinema release was duped from a 35mm foreign release print, when it was imported they spliced on the english roll up and redubbed it into english from the laserdisc i believe.

So not a proper preserved print.  But people that owned it thought it was great.

The reason Jedi seems so hard to find is the demand.  Partially caused by the non existent release of a decent DVD release of the originals or a blu ray, but also because it is the more favorite of the three films.  Or the one people obligatory seem to buy to complete their set because they already own star wars and empire.

I personally think its because the first derann print is one of their finest releases they ever put out said to match the quality of the 35mm almost.  Obviously an exaggeration.  But the colors were very good and no fade.  The only negative was the audio was in MONO folded down from the stereo mix.

As for the 35mm prints any screenings would be problematic because of the pre LPP Eastman stock.  Star Wars and Empire being the biggest offenders.  But their are also badly faded copies of Jedi although the re-release was printed on LPP in 1985.

I cannot say for sure if their were new prints struck for the re-issues of star wars and empire.  But if they exist they are obviously very rare in LPP.

Never mind the 2 technicolor prints in existence that are the holy grail of star wars on film.

Oh, this is disappointing. But then, from what I've seen, the transfer had a much worse case of crushed blacks than even the 2004 transfer. I considered asking n-1 if I could use the lifting of the x-wing from the posted clip but in the end, I decided to use Ady's recreation of that shot with some of my own tweaks to it because of the crushed blacks. I would post some screenshots to show what I mean but I'm not sure if I'm allowed.

well, i should be getting both my prints back in a week or two.

(currently they're sitting in a vault)..

and then we'll REALLY know what we are up against.. sure

ESB was just a test.. but we'll find out if the real thing will

work out (or not)... here's hoping!

no, i didn't want to post this on april fools..

todays my birthday, so this is more like a gift when

it gets done!

later

-1

I know what you mean, the 35mm film print is just *beautiful*, there is no substitute for real film! :)

You know I've seen movies that were made on 16mm film AND are older than SW (chainsaw massacre for instance) that look better on DVD than the original Star Wars. Thoes film cells look amazing, it's good to know that at least SW is preserved in 35mm film at the moment! I just watched Terminator 1 the other day on an HD-LCD projector that was loaned to me at 480p (from the old double-sided DVD), and it looked, and sounded AWESOME; and that wasn't even an HD video which would have been better still! It may be crazy to invest in transfering your own print of SW, but I'm pretty sure my lucas is crazy boardering on insane for what he's done to his own movies! BTW u guys must worship SW or something?

Why? Is it they think they worship it more than u? ;-)

Hmm. I'm pretty shocked things got this far. Quite the shame about the quality of the prints :( but who knows? Maybe another one will crop up.