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what's the original format of star wars trilogy? 35mm or 70mm?

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hi from italy

What's the original format of star wars trilogy? 35mm or 70mm?

R2-LEO

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It was 35mm. Then, for certain theaters they blew it up to 70.

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I believe that for live action shots 35mm was mostly used and for shots that involved special effects with optical compositing they used 70mm to reduce grain that would show through from generational loss.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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Shot on 35mm for Scope ratio. Visual effects done on VistaVision.

Final release prints in both 35mm and blown up to 70mm.

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The VistaVision cameas used by ILM used 35mm, but ran it sideways so that on frame was exposed over what would normally be 2. In effect it gives the resolution of 70mm without having to use the more expensive 70mm film stock. Everything was then composited onto 35mm film to create the master negative.

Very few movies have been shot on 70mm film. But distributing on 70mm eliminated the increased grain that distributing on 35mm creates.

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70mm isn't actually a format that is shot on. Large-format films are shot on 65mm, which are then released in 70mm. I'm not sure why the difference, I assume it has to do with the optical strip for release prints.

Anyway, everything you see in Star Wars was filmed in 35mm, and the master negative is 35mm. When it was first released it was shown in 35mm but 70mm blow-ups came out at the same time (as was common back then...similar to Imax releases of 35mm films now).

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 (Edited)

^^ I LOVE that site- that's where I send anybody who has questions about Technicolor.

I thought some of the fx shots were shot in a 70mm format on VistaVision cameras, which is why they looked so good compared to other sci-fi/fantasy films of the era?

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Didn't Lucas film Captain EO on 70mm? I seem to remember it was done for precisely the reason you list - better quality effects.

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A bit of an old thread – but does anyone on here know the actual “resolution” of the 70mm print? Like if you COULD compare it to a digital res like 4k or 8k, what would it be?

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Pryze said:

A bit of an old thread – but does anyone on here know the actual “resolution” of the 70mm print? Like if you COULD compare it to a digital res like 4k or 8k, what would it be?

This is actually something I’ve always wondered myself.

It’s probably around 4k worth of perceivable detail, although I’m not sure exactly at what point in the photochemical chain the OT films were blown up to 70 from 35.

There was actually a study done years ago where it was estimated a 35mm release print was only projecting about 875 lines worth of detail onto the screen at the absolute most.

70mm is a perf taller than 35 and roughly twice as wide, but that still only gets you between 2k and 3k worth of information up there on screen.

There’s way more detail to be gleaned from the camera negative itself, but seeing a Star Wars movie in 70mm back in the day was getting you as close as possible to what the 35mm cameras captured.