DukeAlaric

Vader21 said:

Darth Lucas said:

Vader21 said:

How is it possible to have a technicolor print if the film was not shot on 3 strip technicolor…??

It can still be printed on 3 strip technicolor even if it wasn’t shot that way. Same as how you can have a 35mm film printed onto 70mm stock.

JEDIT: Or at least it could if Technicolor was still doing these kinds of prints, but Star Wars was actually the last movie they used this process for before shutting down their labs.

Oh ok got you cheers for the info bud… do you know why there would have been a need to create a 3 strip technicolor print since the film was already shot on the newer 35mm single strip colour film…???

I actually do, because I know who owned one and where it is.

When Star Wars was opening in the UK, they realized how popular it was in America, so they wanted extra prints at the last minute, and no one had capacity… except Technicolor. Although they were a lot more expensive, they wanted to get more copies in circulation so they bit the bullet and got like 12 or 13 copies made.

And (especially at the time) just because the single strip film was newer at the time, it wasn’t better- it was subject to fade and had a higher level of grain than Technicolor. Because it’s an optical print, you can go from whatever image/film you have to whatever stock you print with, it’s not a big deal. The cost of it is very high, and like the other reply said, it was the last film they did (they also did a few prints of Jaws a couple of years beforehand…) because they just couldn’t compete, even though their product was infinitely better.

The North Carolina School of the Arts Film Archive has a technicolor print of Star Wars, part of Ray Regis’ collection (https://greensboro.com/a-reel-jewel-school-of-the-arts-archive-is-one-of-the-best/article_1a78fe79-c018-59aa-8010-e4d941974d6d.html), and I am pretty sure parts of it has been scanned for various restoration projects. I watched it 4 or 5 times while I was there, and it was pristine and just a joy to see because it looked pretty much exactly the way it had when I saw it originally in 1977. When I first saw the print in 1994, it was incredible. Then when the re-release came out a few years later and we went to see that in the theater, we were amazed at how much better the Technicolor print looked then the new THX versions or whatever they had just put out were.

When Star Wars was released in the UK, they realized they needed some extra prints because of the popularity of the film, and since everyone else was busy, they had Technicolor make strike like 12 or 13 prints. Although no one really shot on Technicolor anymore, they still used the same process to create their prints. Somehow Ray got ahold of one, and I know for years fought with Lucas over it. He also had Technicolor prints of Jaws and a few other movies.