Star Wars : 'Tantive's Orange Items' Thread & other unintended objects — Page 3

Leonardo wrote: how's this?

This helps.  Didn't see it the first pass but there seems to be one vertically thru the middle of R2.

Created some guides which identify/name the orange items in the Tantive sequence.  (was confused what bkev was referring to, maybe with guides and names it might clear things up)  Will add the new one mentioned above, eventually.

Also updated the first post to bring up msycamore's point of there being more instances of the orange.

msycamore wrote: I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, similar damage appear elsewhere in the film but not as fatal as those in the corridor, here's a few of them as they're seen on the SWE LD (Technidisc)

Those in the Twin Suns sequence are quite random.  Some rain down, others almost horizontal, some seem to have directional smearing others more rip like.  Need to run this by a forum of old film projectionist folks, they would recognize this phenomenon.

Those shots are beautiful

The orange marks in the binary sunset scene on the Technidisc don't show up on any other version, including the various 35mm and 16mm telecines and preservations. They seem to be unique to that print.

The Tantive shake is so grainy because it was an optical effect. Various frames were optically smeared and repositioned to make it look like the camera was shaking more than it was in the production footage. (I have a theory that the less severe shake we see in the SE is the original on-set shake effect - they had to go back to the production footage, likely not because of any burn marks, but rather because the optically-enhanced version was either too grainy, or had CRI fading problems like some of the other opticals.)

I don't think the orange marks were burned in during the optical process, because the 80s video releases don't have them. Either these marks were not on the scene in the original negative, or if they were, then Lucas/ILM/whoever must have gone back and found the original master footage of the shake optical and cut that in to replace the "burned" dupe version.

The interpositive used for the 80s video transfers is really a mystery to me - it doesn't have the '77 color timing, so it could must come from the O-neg or some element earlier than the timed answer print, yet it has its own weird damage (like the strange blobs when Luke turns on his saber after putting on the helmet). If that damage was actually on the original negative by '82, then it's no wonder that they had to go back and recomposite these scenes in '97...

Now, I just have to wait for Russ Dawson to confirm whether or not the burn marks are on the 80s ITV broadcast. That version is interesting in its own right - it has the mono mix, it has the '77 flyover (but apparently the crawl itself is the EpIV version), and it may have been transferred to video using film chain rather than telecine. A Christmas 1984 ITV promo shows the same Tantive chase shot -1 posted, and it has a similar bluish tone to the first capture of his 35mm print. The other clips in the promo don't - though the color balance reminds me more of the Moth3r and Catnap telecines than any official video release. There's also a brief clip from a 1987 airing elsewhere on YouTube; it has a blue-greenish tint and no panning-and-scanning (i.e., the cropping seems to sit right in the center - perhaps ITV used a widescreen print, and the cropping was done by the film chain operator). I'm almost wondering if it was sourced from a print similar to -1's.

Isn't the original negative A/B roll? If I had to guess, the '82 IP was probably printed as A/B roll and given a quick-and-dirty glue job. Since it was intended for pan-and-scan video, and the edges of the frame would fall outside of the "safe area" of most early-80s TVs, it must not have been judged to be that big of an issue...

As I said before, that source is an enigma.

- It looks low-contrast; aren't IPs low-contrast? I will note that the home video transfers have low contrast, but the version seen on ITV has higher contrast; I have a theory that ITV got an actual *print* and transferred it themselves, as it has the blue-green cast and blown-out highlights I associate with film chain;

- It comes from a source that lacks the burn marks and the Greedo subtitles (meaning either that these weren't on the O-neg, or that earlier-generation sources were cut in);

- There's those weird blobs that msycamore seems to say are on much of reel 3. I find it hard to believe that those were on the actual negative - perhaps there was a lab mishap during duping and they let it slide because it was only intended for the relatively small and mid-size TVs of the era?

Oh, and by the way, danny_boy said his screenshot was from the "PAL UK 1982 VHS premiere broadcast (mono optical audio track)". The screenshot looks very similar to the ITV broadcast screenshot from Russ - might it just be another ITV recording? He did say "premiere broadcast" and "mono optical audio track", and he put it side-by-side with the PAL rental VHS, which has a pinkish tone similar to the U.S. VHS/Beta transfer.

Regarding early TV broadcasts, I suspect live telecine or film chain would have been the norm back then for such showings until high-resolution, relatively cheap cassette formats like Betacam SP became available in the late '80s and '90s. It's not something they would be broadcasting too regularly (maybe once every year or two?) so they probably deemed transfering to tape unecessary.

So it's possible every early broadcast of the film would be somewhat different, and they could have just been given typical theatre-grade 35mm prints from the distributors for each showing. But I'm just guessing here :)

On my unsuccessful searching of more information about this I did come across something possibly useful - what cue marks (the dots before the end of a reel) are on these older releases, if any? Black cue marks would have been made on a negative, and white ones on a positive.

I don't know what US stuff was like but cue marks were often present on UK TV broadcasts of films and home video releases well into the '90s. With a lot of UK video releases you'd even get the BBFC certificate at the start just like you'd see on cinema reels (and it looks like it's part of the film, not digitally generated or anything), so it's likely they used locally-sourced prints as opposed to anything else.

U.S. TV airings of the films were always on tape, either from the time-compressed laserdisc/CED transfer (HBO) or the VHS/Beta transfer (CBS), both of which were originally released in 1982. I am assuming that ON TV's one-time airing in September '82 came from one of these.

The ITV broadcast, however, does seem to be from film chain. It has that blown-out, yellow-greenish look I associate with old film-chain broadcasts of movies. I don't know if it was run live, or if it was output to tape by hooking up a VTR to the film chain. Since this version was still running on ITV in 1987, I'm guessing that eventually it was backed up on tape. And unless every broadcast was at the same time across the entire network, each region would have to either have their own print or their own tape copy; my theory is that one print was sent to ITV, then backed up to tape.

In general, for widescreen films, stations weren't given widescreen prints to crop themselves. They were given flat Academy-ratio prints, derived from a cropped internegative made with an optical printer. This same technique was used to make prints for airlines. Cropped flat prints of at least the first SW have turned up on eBay in the past.

As seen in old videos and TV broadcasts, the Greedo scene was reformatted for 4:3, with new subtitles added optically (not on video). Even though different transfers had different cropping choices, if you compare the Greedo scene, the cropping is identical in every version, because they were all sourced from the same cropped and re-subtitled element.

ITV either received a completely cropped flat print, or a widescreen print with the cropped Greedo footage spliced in. I'm leaning more toward the former, but I don't think there's any way to know for sure.

ZilogJones wrote: On my unsuccessful searching of more information about this I did come across something possibly useful - what cue marks (the dots before the end of a reel) are on these older releases, if any? Black cue marks would have been made on a negative, and white ones on a positive.

Here are pics of known SW film cue marks:

http://fd.noneinc.com/Reel_Changes/Reel_Changes.html

negative1 wrote:

Thanks for these.  Have been wanting to ask for awhile, but felt a like a nudge, so held off until an opportunity arose.  They look great and fill out the chart where past preservations lacked.  The one above is a little mystery.  The next shot is Luke leaving Dagobah, which is not that bright a shot to make this unnoticeable.  but maybe it is.  Would think this could possible be the first of the transition, any chance they accidentally got mislabeled?  Does the shape continue into the leader?

msycamore wrote: what's odd about them is that they along with other dirt spots, tell us that these frames were reused a couple of frames later in the sequence but in opposite order

A second case of RTRR.  (Raging Tusken Raider Reversal)

Thanks for these, interesting seeing them at this scale. At this res maybe able to determine something.  Why is the outer ring so yellow?

Something odd, on the far right, why does the horizon line jump for the last 5 or so vertical lines?

Your 4 pics and Mallwalker's frame counting lead me to want to redo the Reel/Cue page.  Got to this point of the new format:

http://fd.noneinc.com/cue/cue.html

But then realized, why not just have the full video, as the audio change over is part of the experience, so currently re-evaluating.  But comments welcomed.

msycamore said:

I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, similar damage appear elsewhere in the film but not as fatal as those in the corridor, here's a few of them as they're seen on the SWE LD (Technidisc):

It might be coincidence, but the damage on this shot corresponds with a warble in the soundtrack in either the 85 LD or the 93 THX LD. Maybe both, I don't remember. Although the sound source for a transfer is usually not the print the picture is captured from, so who knows.

I believe this shot is near a reel change, too, so end-of- or beginning-of-reel damage could account for the sound and picture glitches on this occasion.

(...so the Tantive shot WAS an optical! Glad to know I wasn't misremembering. ;) )

msycamore said:

Just so people get what damage me and TServo were talking about:

 

Looks to me like splicing glue.