Mulan (1998) - 35 mm opportunity (WIP)

timemeddler said:

available only to donors, how is this different than selling copies than?

Let’s see, that question is easy:
The donors are needed to obtain and scan the thing at all, so that not only one person, but a group of persons can share the price.
So every just pays a bit of the price to preserve the print.
While selling copies is intended to make more money, than just the essential needed amount.

Warstorck said:

So if someone wants a copy once it’s already scanned you won’t give it to them? Or will you charge them for a copy?

“avaible only to donors”

I assume he will broadcast it worldwide…

…seriously… What’s so hard to understand in those 4 simple words?

Warstorck said:

So if someone wants a copy once it’s already scanned you won’t give it to them? Or will you charge them for a copy?

The short answer is no, he wouldn’t be “charging people for a copy”. Dr. Cooper is a good friend of mine, sometimes projects can’t be distributed even when we would like to, and there are different reasons why this can be the case. I don’t want to go into specifics because sometimes the reasons are quite complicated, but other times they’re not. Managing people’s expectations can also be tricky, we even get interesting requests from people from time to time as well.

This will be a great job, the Blu is terrible as it can be and the HDTV-version is as good as it can be. A 35mm-Scan is the absolute reassurance of getting it right, since we do not really trust Disney in faithfully transfers without enhancing the f**k out of the films.

(And the thing with donations: without donations, there will be no scans anyway, and without having this done in an exclusive way (kick-starters work in the same way), nobody wants to donate anything, this sad but true. Anyway: The scans usually appears on myspleen or on Blutopia at a later time, I see no problem in it.)

Setzer said:

Let’s assume a single person donated all the money that was needed.
Tough luck for anyone else wanting to contribute, and see the print?

If that would happen, lucky for everyone! My assumptions: it’s not just one movie we want to have, right? If anyone contribute to a next project, they’ll get access to the old ones as well.

In your unrealistic scenario all the other donators would need to give just a smaller amount of money to get realized an access to a film. And projects in this forum get a wider release anyway sooner or later, it might happen that in this case, open access would be possible earlier than usually.

In a realistic scenario it looks like this: it is a long run to get the money together, even if there are generous donators, not only the buying of a print, scanning costs and cargo, initiators needs to have lots of terabyte of stationery storage, a high-end computer and screens to manage all the work, and do need time.

All in all, donations always helps, even small amounts. If anybody has another realistic and sustainable way of realizing to scan films, please let me now;)

I’m more curious what the point is than the sketchy payment plan.

Mulan was created on a digital system and digital releases are directly transferred from that. A transfer from film adds more copying steps between the source and the final release.
This is a case where film prints would have the WRONG color if it differs from the existing home releases and quality can only be worse.

Not to say that it’s not beyond Disney to have messed with the colors after the fact, but you could still color correct because there are enough existing sources to match it to.

Doctor M said:

I’m more curious what the point is than the sketchy payment plan.

Mulan was created on a digital system and digital releases are directly transferred from that. A transfer from film adds more copying steps between the source and the final release.

Simple. To preserve how it looks on film.

TLMerman said:

You are right but, maybe they (we) want to watch the film the way it was projected in theaters when it premiered, that was a 35mm print from the digital CAPS source.

Prints are not made from the CAPS source. There is a digital film-out to negative, and prints are struck either from that negative or from a duplicate.

I’ll echo this statement.

GZK8000 said:

Not sure if it helps, but I was one of the donors for The Little Mermaid and in a PM I was explained why that one is also limited to donors. All I can say is that the reasons sounds legit to me.

hairy_hen said:

Also, it is likely that the colors and contrast were rendered knowing that the process of putting it on film (the intended viewing format) would change them in a certain way. It is often the case that going back to the earliest generation source causes post-production decisions that were made later in the chain to be lost. So viewing the film version tends to gets you the closest to what it was really supposed to look like.

Maybe to some degree, but there is a big difference between 1930s, 40s, etc. Technicolor film stock that is chemically color timed and 1998 digitally color timed Technicolor. Any difference between the digital source and film prints would more likely be unintended by the animators.