The Phantom Menace on 35mm (* unfinished project *) — Page 8

They didn’t produce the prints directly from digital files. The process was far too slow and far too costly back then to do a direct film-out for each print.
It opened in a shit-tonne of cinemas, it was a l-o-t of prints.

Yep they would have been contact prints made from the film-out negative.

I remember this opening and playing in virtually all the major screens of the major new Regal flagship theater where I saw so many great openings on their super huge main rear auditoriums. While I can’t remember very much technically since I was only 9 at the time I do remember camping out for tickets and finally managing to get seats for the second day of release and then being blown away by both the quality of the experience and by hearing my first dose of EX with the rear center sound information.
Sadly I saw TFA in that same hall that was turned into an RPX and it was literally as if the original presentation quality never existed.

In short I’m so looking forward to this as there is literally no decent home release (the LD has some definite issues) and the theatrical presentation was so stellar. Heck come to think of it even AOTC had a good presentation and it should have looked like complete garbage due to being such an early digital production. That may be why I saw it at least five times theatrically. Or because I was obsessed with the seismic charge sound effects…😉

It will be interesting to see if the movie really did look good on film, or if it was just all of our collective want and need for this film to look great.

I do remember the reveal of the underwater city looking absolutely beautiful, and the print being very clean when I say it at the cinema, but I don’t remember much else positively really, except that I very much liked the girl I went to see it with.

How many minutes into the film is that ‘Slave Scum’ scene?

poita said:

…except that I very much liked the girl I went to see it with.

I’m guessing you never saw her again. 😄

Turisu said:

poita said:

…except that I very much liked the girl I went to see it with.

I’m guessing you never saw her again. 😄

I love your post signature😂

Sadly we are going to have to find another print. The one I have has turned out to be toxic, and damn near killed me. We are yet to ascertain what the substance is on the print, but it is very bad news.

The print is also pretty bad shape.

Here is a sample.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/b389dfc6c7adc0434cc6e3ad640e857a20181009113440/6b9d705f4177f746d01dcb12ed5b9da120181009113440/7d61a8
I’m really sorry about this, I got completely screwed by the seller, I am on the lookout for a replacement.

Bummer! Hope all is well with you poita - have you experienced anything like that before?

It is quite likely a toxic mold that infected the print. It stunk like VS but it is a polyester print, so it is confusing, as they do not get VS.
Also, the print turned out to be in Russian.
Moral is, you should always wear a respirator when handling a print if it doesn’t smell right, I should not have assumed it was safe. Some molds are deadly and there is no ‘cure’, I was lucky in this case that it just made me very ill.

Let me know what you guys think of the scan, personally I wouldn’t want to continue with it even if it was safe, the print looks badly worn to me.