TServo2049

adywan said:

The UK got the 70mm version without the extra shots of the rebel fleet

Interesting. I wonder what 70mm prints (if any) were made of the revised version, and where they were seen.

I did not see any film cells of the Rebel Fleet shots, but I did see cells of the close-up of Luke hanging upside down in the Wampa’s lair, the bacta tank wide shot, and Luke falling off the weather vane with the Falcon dish in frame. I thought that on the 70mm, at least some Wampa/bacta shots were missing, and the weathervane shot didn’t have the Falcon dish composited in. That means the film cells came from a 70mm element of the later version, no?

I’m just curious why they would have had a 70mm intermediate of the later version, printed onto film stock manufactured by Kodak in 1979, meaning it was printed probably within the first year of release - abs notable actually made any new release prints.

CatBus said:

Sa da tay!

^ Pootie Tang reference wins the thread.

And there may have even been a second run of 70mm prints with the revised standard cut. The collectible film cells that were sold in the mid-90s include frames of shots that were supposedly not in the 70mm version. I’ve combed over a ton of the cells on eBay and found that the Eastman film stock edge codes printed in from the 65mm internegative (blue on black) have two circles, meaning the film stock that the previous generation was printed onto was manufactured in 1979. (The cells themselves were newly made, the actual positive print stock has 1995 edge codes.)

Maybe other countries got the revised version on 70mm, since it was released overseas later…

ElectricTriangle said:

I think the first DVD of Toy Story is also transferred from film. I remember the special features from “A Bug’s Life” making a big deal that the DVD is the first to be directly transferred from the digital files. I think it’s the 2nd DVD that’s a purely digital render.

Nope. The first Toy Story DVD was digital, too. For those who don’t remember, it was actually released on DVD AFTER A Bug’s Life - TS1 and TS2 were released together in 2000, as a 2-pack and in the 3-disc Ultimate Toy Box. (There’s even an intro skit for the Toy Box extras where Lasseter calls back to the “Super Genius Edition” running joke from the Bug’s Life Collector’s Edition DVD set.)

They were both direct from digital, and this was mentioned in the marketing. I definitely remember it looking totally clean and digital. I still have the Ultimate Toy Box set, so I could check it.

There is green shift on the 70mm film cells that were sold around in the mid-90s, but I have a theory that they might have made a new 70mm blowup off of an IB print (perhaps George’s print?) just to produce the cells. (Remember, this was right around the time they were going into the vaults and finding that the negatives for the first movie were in dire condition.)

The ESB cells have printed-in negative black edges (in the inner half of the area between the sprocket holes and the edge, which would be the edge of a 65mm negative) with blue Eastman codes for 1979. but brown positive edge codes of about 1995 for the actual print stock, on the outside of the edge (in the extra 2.5mm on each side of 70mm compared to 65mm), seeming to indicate the cells were newly printed off of original 65mm internegatives.

Meanwhile, the ROTJ cells seem to come from two original prints - most of the cells come from a faded original print (with brown 1982 edge code for the print itself), while cells from the last reel or two aren’t faded and come from an original LPP (also 1982 stock edge code, but actually says “EASTMAN LPP” - I found one frame that shows that portion of the edge code).

On the other hand, ANH only has the 1995 LPP edge code of the actual 70mm positive stock itself, nothing looks to be printed in from a previous large-format generation. Since these weren’t intended to be projected, they might have been able to cheat by duping from an IB print, and that would explain the green shift.

We will all miss you. I hope the best for you and your family.

I am not saying this just for a cheap Star Wars reference, but…

May the Force be with you.

Aren’t HBO Signature and HBO Zone SD-only? I haven’t had HBO for years, did they ever introduce an HD feed for anything other than the main HBO channel?

I also wanna help in any way I can.

No wonder I felt a twinge of familiarity when I saw the EE BD transfer at the 10th anniversary theatrical event. I’ve always wondered if it was closer, especially when I went back to those bootleg DVD screens where Rivendell didn’t look like the official DVDs - did you look at the link I posted earlier?

I would be careful about the Two Towers teaser as a reference though, that was attached to prints of FOTR in spring 2002, 8-9 months before theatrical release. So the grading might have not been absolutely finalized yet. I do agree with you that the home transfers may be wrong, let me dig up the Asian bootleg screenshots of TTT that were also an Internet meme in the early 00s, they were also presumably from a screener or something prior to the official DVDs.

Actually, it is more complex than that (sometimes). An original U.S. theatrical print of Rambo: First Blood Part II or Angel Heart wouldn’t have that Carolco logo, it would actually have the old TriStar Pictures logo - and I believe that’s what appears on the modern home releases, too.

To get that Carolco logo in higher quality, someone would have to find some European print. (And I don’t even know which countries would have had it at the beginning, and not replaced with the logo for that country’s distributor.)

Interesting topic, though. Most complete film prints I’ve seen of movies (at various theatrical revival screenings) keep the original logos. When the studios made new prints to rent out for screenings, they generally didn’t go to the trouble of replacing logos. If they didn’t make the print from an element which already had the logo replaced (I’ve seen a print of Caddyshack with the later Orion logo, just like the later video releases), they just left it. (Actual re-releases are a different story.)

Timing changes were not uncommon on video, even before teal-orange. Phantom Menace looked much better in theaters than the pinkish purplish low-contrast mess we got on EVERY home release. And The Matrix, Spider-Man, The Dark Knight, they all looked different on video.

I do think Jackson and Lesnie (or someone) tinkered with the color for the pre-BD masters, even if just to make it read better on TV sets. They definitely had to for the EE DVD, because they had to put in the deleted footage that likely didn’t get to the grading stage in the theatrical release.

And that bootleg may be an interpositive transfer rather than a print, it does still look like it was lightened or brightened to read better on video? Regardless, it’s not how my EE looks.

I wish someone could track down that bootleg, or a screener, or something.

I concur though, how does the Council look in this project?

Engrish = broken English. Remember the Episode III “Backstroke of the West” bootleg?

In the case of FOTR, instead of it being a translation to Chinese and back to English, the Asian bootleggers tried to transcribe the English dialogue as they heard it, and failed miserably. There are bootlegs for the other two as well (TTT’s bootleg is even more notorious.)

Here are screenshots from the bootleg DVD I was referring to, these have been circulating as an Internet meme for almost 14 years. I found an old site on Wayback Machine that has all the images. I have no idea who still has an actual copy. But look at the color of the Council scenes, don’t they have less of a tint than the official DVDs?

https://web.archive.org/web/20070106214116/http://users3.ev1.net/~eekfrenzy/captionspage/badfotrcouncil.html

I don’t have an answer to your question, but I do wonder if the warm filter over the Council may not have been in the theatrical prints. I remember seeing screenshots of the bootleg DVD with the Engrish subtitles and it didn’t have as much of a tint as the official DVDs. (I think it probably came from a screener?)

If this is the print I saw at the Cinematheque Halloween 2010 screening, it’s grainy and beat up six ways to shit (AFAIK, it’s an original 70mm from '84), it has a sizable amount of splices (and some of them aren’t just a couple frames, 5-10 seconds are missing, particularly at some of the reel changes), but on the positive, the sound is great and since it’s LPP, the color is completely intact.

I don’t know the whole story. Maybe it was nitrate decomposition - I don’t believe the master audio reels were magnetic, I thought they were optical. I just know they were on film (tape didn’t exist yet).

The nitrate destruction thing is also something I can’t find the info on, the description of what happened (by David Gerstein) may have been on a message board or blog which is no longer around.

Also, it could have even been before Eisner came in, in the Ron Miller era or something. And some of it could have been due to decomposition, not just bean-counting. (One animator/historian saw some Disney-held nitrate prints of old B&W Mickeys in 1969, and I think he said they were starting to decompose even then?)

And I have no idea of anything Fantasound-related was tossed at the time. All I know is that B&W Mickey Mouse short titles had to be recreated for laserdisc in the 90s because the original title elements couldn’t be located in the Disney vaults, yet at least one of the cartoons turned up with original titles in the early years of the Disney Channel, suggesting they had access to elements in 1983 that were missing a decade later.

(Steve Hoffman’s separate claim that they disposed of original IB Tech backup positives going all the way up to 1974, which would have included stuff on SAFETY, is more troubling.)

Jedi has one advantage over the other two: Because the entire run was on LPP (from what I know), EVERY extant 35mm print has intact color. (Some of them look too blue, but that was how they came out of the lab in 1983, it wasn’t due to fading over the years.)

Agreed, if you put colorful cartoon animals and “Disney” on the front you are signaling that it’s safe for the kids of 2016, and risk the same “won’t someone please think of the children” outcry Disney fears if they release it themselves.

At the same time, Criterion has been suggested for years (and Anchor Bay, when that deal was still in effect) and they still haven’t budged.

I don’t believe any 1940 Fantasound prints exist. The Fantasound mix was supposedly already deteriorating even in the 50s, which is why they backed it up by running it from the studio to RCA over a direct phone line.

Disney has certainly never been able to locate any original Fantasound elements. They replaced Deems Taylor’s voice because they only had usable picture elements for the roadshow scenes, not sound. (This leads me to assume the Fantasound source used in the phone transfer was the general-release edit?)

And I’ve heard stories from two knowledgeable sources that most/all of Disney’s backup positive elements were junked - during the early years of the Eisner regime? - either out of nitrate storage concerns, or a belief that they were redundant and useless because all the negatives existed. I am not sure if any Fantasound copies of Fantasia were trashed, or if they were all already gone.

Is the EditDroid version 60i? Or is it deinterlaced?

I like to be able to watch stuff taped in interlaced NTSC at its actual frame rate or upscaled to 60p, rather than cut down to 30p, so I’m just curious.

From what I understand, there were only three theaters with THX certification during Jedi’s original release, one in Los Angeles and two in Dallas. All three showed Jedi in 70mm.

The “premiere” location could only refer to Avco Center in Westwood, Los Angeles. That was the only THX location in L.A., but there was no official “premiere” for the movie IIRC.

I can’t determine for sure, but I think there weren’t any more THX certifications until 1984, when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom released with the Broadway trailer. So “Wings” may well have only ever been seen at those three “test” locations.

Wazzles said:

Asaki said:

team_negative1 said:

And then the SE, and the Prequels.

You forgot about The Fanfic Awakens!

That would be a pain to get their hands on considering there’s like 2 prints in existence.

There actually is at least one 70mm IMAX print, it’s playing at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. I saw it, it was a trip. But we’ll never get it.

(Are there any 35mm prints in release, or only 70mm IMAX ones?)

Actually, he doesn’t like TESB either. He calls it “the soap opera” (those were his exact words - he referred to Empire and Jedi as “the soap opera and The Muppet Show”)

Towne nails it - he is a fan of Star Wars, the singular film that came out in 1977.

I still think we’d benefit from a transfer of the Fuji print.

No. The Ultimate Toy Box was also direct from computer files; I remember that it was definitely publicized at the time that it was straight from the files, while previous video releases had been from film.

AFAIK, A Bug’s Life was the first Pixar transfer to come straight from the animation files and bypass film (I also remember that publicity). So the highest-quality film-transferred version of Toy Story would be the laserdisc.

If you look at that comparison video, find a scene where the camera is static and focus on some stationary object in the background. I detect just a bit of wobble in the LD. So yes, 100% sure it’s film. That doesn’t mean that’s how it looked in theaters, video transfers always come from low-contrast elements, but still.

I know someone posted the Coca-Cola stuff on YouTube once (from a B&W 16mm print), but it’s not there anymore.