yotsuya

Well, if you listen to the interview, he was the one doing it and they set the setting at the beginning if the day and only changed things if the machine started to drift. That probably was between reels. From what he said, the machine was too strong and if you moved the film you risked breaking it. So I believe that his telecines on that machine had a uniform setting for every reel and they tried to stay consistent between reels. When you really think about it, there shouldn’t be any need to change the settings in the middle of a properly timed and processed itermediate.

Also, I just tried to match his transfer to the other transfers and after a few tweaks to adjust the contrast, levels, and saturation (reversing the settings that made it compatible with the old home video standards), it looks quite good for a pan and scan. And it looks so different from the 4k77 no-dnr release (which is pretty faithful to the Technicolor print). So my feeling that the color timing on the Technicolor prints is very screwed up is only reinforced.

For any home video release. They would telecine from 35mm intermediates (the interpositive or the internegative) to master tape. They would forward a copy to the director. So the 2006 DVD’s were made from one of the master tapes (either the one sent to Lucas or the one sent to make the LD masters). They spliced on the 1977 crawl, but otherwise it is the same as the Definitive Collection and Faces set, only it is noticably higher quality (well a higher generation anyway).

It is probably easier to edit the audio tracks. Especially at reel changes.

My point was is that for virtually every transfer they were using an intermediate print. Either an interpositive or an internegative. If using an internegative, as we previously discussed, it has the cue marks and everything else and once you reverse it it will look like a release print. So all the ones with a cue marks probably internegatives. but the 1982 transfer was specifically a release print in very bad shape. I had a very green color to it that they color corrected. And even so when you look at it the transfer looks very yellow. However, the opening titles were horizontally compressed so it has one of the highest quality transfers of that section which I found very valuable for one of my projects. The colors are horrible, but the details are great.

Also of note, in the interview Mr. Cook states that they didn’t constantly adust the transfer. So each scene is not individually color corrected. It is one setting for the entire film. So the scene by scene color, saturation, and contrast, at least of the transfers he did, are true to the original print.

I have found first hand info on what prints were used for the CBS/FOX telecines. 1982 transfer of Star Wars was a release print. The initial releases of TESB and ROTJ were interpositives as was the concurrent release of Star Wars. The 1985 release of the trilogy was also interpositives. Tapes were sent to Lucasfilm, but no one from Lucasfilm was present. And it seems that virtually all films telecined at the CBS/FOX facility were either interpositives or internegatives. One exception was a collection of Chaplin films.

Not a single special telecine print. Not a single 16mm print. And done on a Rank Cinetel 2.

The interview with Wayne Cook can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LagwssLxlk

“The transfer of already-completed features and film programs is always performed from prints or intermediate elements that were originally produced as a part of the print-finishing process.”

Facinating statement. So if they didn’t make a specific print that indicates they would use what they had on hand.

I find it interesting that most of this discussion comes across as the typical modern way is the only possible way it could be done. I know for a fact that for a great many movies the typical modern way is impossible, either due to what exists or the age of the film. TCM uses Technicolor prints for those old color movies.

Star Wars is not from a time when every movie came out on home video. I trust reports of what the sources for the Definitive Collection were over what some think how it must be because that has since become the norm. The real world is not that clean and tidy.

And while your detailed description of how Doctor Who was transferred to film is accurate for the situation in 1963-5, they adopted a higher quality standard where they didn’t drop any of the half frames and they retransferred all the older episodes, though not all the existing copies are the better transfer.

Now, when we talk about how the average TV station handled telecines (which I’m sure is a different standard from how a major network would operate or a home video arm of a major studio), I have no doubt that 16mm prints were very common. I know a lot more about how BBC properties were distributed and it was all 16mm film out to the station for transfer and broadcast. Anything important made at those stations would be transferred to film to be archived. Some countries were small enough they only had one BBC affiliate. Australia had several, plus their own censor board. Sometime in the mid 70’s BBC started shipping video tapes to some markets. I have no doubt that the smaller station only had equipment for 16mm so if they wanted to show a movie they needed a 16mm copy. But major networks and home video arms of studios wouldn’t need those. The video posted above is pre HD at the BBC and the machine demonstrated in the video can handle 16mm or 35mm, prints, negatives, or intermediates. So pretty much anything except 70mm.

From a quality perspective, even an SD telecine should be done from the highest quality print available. Every generation adds more grain and degrades the colors. Reducing to 16mm adds even more grain,so unless you have to use that, you wouldn’t want to. If you have a special made high generation print, great. If you don’t, you wouldn’t deliberately have one made if the technical difficulties of using what you have weren’t insurmountable.

I still remember that very expensive VHS of Gone With The Wind that came out on the mid 80’s. I don’t remember how many generations down that was, but it was dark and awful. Then they did a restoration for the 50th in 89 that was outstanding from the original negatives to modern film. Then they finally did it right in full technicolor. So that telecine had to be from a print.

There is the norm and then there are all the exceptions. I have no doubt that Star Wars is full of exceptions. Return of the Jedi was the first one made in the home video era. I think rather than focusing on how some say it should have been done we look deeper and find out how it was really done.

I understand that cigarette burn IS industry slang. How long has it been since they were regularly used? They haven’t been used regularly in decades. Movies have been spliced together for showing for a long time.

For Star Wars there is a single negative. From that the many interpositives were made and the one or two color separations. From the interpositives the internegatives were made which is when the cigarette burns are added. I think that is also where subtitles are added. From the internegatives the regular prints are made. It is a well documented process. No where have I ever heard of special telecine prints. I have heard that telecines have been made from both release prints and interpositives.

Now, if you want to talk television,the easiest way to distribute is on film. The early years of Doctor Who have survived because they were transferred to film for international distribution. But we are talking a studio film, telecined by the studio for home video release. Why strike a new print when you have retired intermediates and prints on hand to use. That would be a lot of needless film transfers to do a telecine on a machine that can handle 35mm film of any type. And add to that the volume of transfers Fox was doing for home video. I can’t be specific with many of those telecines, but the 1985 US release was definitely done in house.

And we can go round and round about the quality of the prints, but if you like the look of the Tech prints, that’s fine. I don’t. I think they are flawed and not an accurate source for the original colors. I think we can get closer by tracking how each existing copy was made and correcting for the flaws.

RU.08 - perhaps you have missed the many articles on the conditon of the O-neg for Star Wars. It was used for the production of all the interpositives - there was no duplicate negative made. Lucas was lamenting that. They did an expensive 3 color separation master and no duplicate negative was ever struck from it. The o-neg shows considerable wear from the constant use of making the many interpositives and presentation prints needed over the years.

So when we see indications of changes to the film in different prints, it is the O-neg.

That all the telecines before the Definitive Collection have the reel change/cigarette burn (two terms for the same circular marks) and the fresh interpositive widely reported as the source for the Definitive Collection doesn’t just means that it really is a fresh print.

And the report that a separate print must be used for the telecine process just is not accurate. I found a description of one of the common high end telecine machines that can do 16 or 35 mm, prints, negatives, or intermediates (as in interpositives).

And TN1 released a raw scan of their SSE project. I have it. They had to splice in the opening sequence because the better print for reel 1 was not in English. There are some other slices as well, but largely the reels are uncorrected. Reel 5 is very dark (to dark to be of much use on this topic), but the scenes I question from the Technicolor Print are in reel 2 and that reel has a very consisted yellow tone and the contrast of the original image is quite easy to make out and it is quite different form the Technicolor prints. The Telecines all have similar contrast to those shots that match the raw scan for TN1’s SSE. So telling me that the final product was graded to the GOUT is irrelevant to what I am pointing out because I am going off of the uncorrected raw scan. And it would be interesting to ask the question if the SSE has scene by scene color correction or a more general color correction to each reel or spliced section. Having watched it several times I feel it is the later.

The assumption is being made that the Technicolor prints are the most accurate color for the 1977 release and what I am seeing is that those prints are heavily flawed in a number of ways. They have faded the least over the last 40 years, but they are not the best source of the 1977 theatrical optical print colors.

So I see no evidence that Star Wars/A New Hope ever had duplicate negatives or special telecine prints made. And the reason a lot of the prints have black cigarette burns is that they are typically applied to the internegative. Not a duplicate negative.

And your comment about the transfer for Song of the South was amusing. If you read the credits you will find the name Natalie Kalmus. You will also find, if you pick up a copy of Gone With the Wind (the last restoration was true to the original Technicolor timing), that the colors are similarly bright. That was a hallmark of all the early Technicolor movies. This is why we used technicolor to describe things that are brightly colored. Natalie Kalmus, wife of the inventor of the process, insisted that all movies made in Technicolor highlighted the process by using bright colors that were further brightened in the post production process. A selection of movies from DVD/Blu-ray, or from TCM that carry her name will show that the transfer for Song of the South is accurate to how she wanted the movie to look. That is why Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz had Ruby slippers instead of the original Silver. After her involvement ended, the Technicolor process was muted to more realistic colors and it was common to use a color negative and leave Technicolor to just the prints.

Star Wars was the last film to have technicolor prints. Anyone here worked at a production facility that was closing down? Shoddy work is typical of that environment. The green tint to the dark areas of Star Wars isn’t news and is a known flaw. Why there can’t be other flaws if there is already one known makes no sense. The general look of the Star Wars Technicolor prints points to someone not doing their best. And I’d rather believe they goofed up making the separations in the color timing than they screwed up the printing process. And that is what it looks like. The shots I question look like they were overexposed and washed out. The green shadows could be a timing issue as well.

Looking forward to seeing this.

And it really depends on which GOUT you are referring to. Typically it is the US GOUT. If you merge the two versions and use all the frames in both, there would be a different standard and these frames would be in there. All the frames missing from the US GOUT are in the UK GOUT.

OutboundFlight said:

Personally, I view Space Opera more as fantasy within space, but I suppose it is up to multiple interpretations. I’ll accept Wikipedia’s term.

So if Space Opera is indeed Science Fiction, why didn’t Lucas say so? Why did he say a sentence earlier that it was not Science Fiction. Perhaps Lucas (like me) misinterpreted Space Opera and meant to say fantasy (which is what he went on to explain later in the sentence).

Well, we know he was influenced by Dune, a space opera. And both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers would be considered space opera in modern genre classification. And I believe he was also influenced by Foundation (galactic empire, a corrupt emperor, and quite a few other things), probably the most significant space opera of the mid 20th century. So I think he knew what he was doing, but he also knew that when a lot of people think science fiction, they think 2001. He was being clear that his creation is more fanciful. More of a classic adventure that only lightly adheres to physics. And he drew from mythic source for his story concepts. He didn’t want movie goers to think boring science fiction. But to publish the story who did he go to? Del Rey, the biggest science fiction imprint in the industry. He wanted the wider audience, but he wanted the science fiction fans as well.

I consider Lucas using the word fantasy as accurate as I do his claim that Vader was always going to be Luke’s father and Luke and Leia were always brother and sister. We know he plays loose with the facts to suit his needs. I think he knew fully that he created an iconic science fiction franchise, but he didn’t want it confused with 2001, the last great science fiction movie that came out. He wanted it to appeal to a wider audience than a typical science fiction movie. Just look at the difference between Star Wars in 1977 and Star Trek The Motion Picture in 1979 in terms of budget an box office. Star Trek had a larger budget but took in a fraction of what Star Wars did.

I think Lucas lost momentum by waiting so long between trilogies. But to be honest, I think the only way any more movies were going to happen was if Lucas removed himself. I think if he would have tried to the the sequels that he would have ended up with the same problem as the prequels - no one wanted to direct them with him staring over their shoulder. I think we will find that the sequels are really his story with some changes to make them work better. There are hints at that already. They may have moved as far from George’s treatments as some of his films did from treatment to film.

I think they should make some movies, take a break, make some more, take a break. I don’t think they gave Solo enough time. They should have stuck with the Christmas releases.

Trilogies make nice longer stories in digestable installments. Lots of franchises use trilogies. But the one off stories are awesome as well.

“Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking.”

So yeah, space opera does mean science fiction. And while I won’t claim to know the story better than the author, I do know genres. That quote from Lucas really put all his references to fantasy in perspective. He is using that word to distinguish from 2001 type science fiction which is near future, real world, and possible (aka Hard Science Fiction sub genre). He is making it clear that his tale has no relationship to the real world. Well, all he needed was space opera, but that doesn’t work for the common person who has no idea what that is. However, for those of us familiar with all the genres and sub-genres of fiction, space opera automatically places it in a fantastical world where technology isn’t clearly defined and my not actually be possible even if they make it sound plausible. Hyperspace, while sounding logical and setup with some clearly defined rules, is about a real and scientifically possible as Yoda levitating an X-Wing. That is space opera (yes, even Yoda levitating an X-Wing). It is a direct successor to the old planetary romance sub-genre (like John Carter of Mars). It has been a staple of science fiction for over a century. So saying it isn’t science fiction is quite inaccurate. And that quote from Lucas shows he knew exactly what genre he was doing and he was doing a PR spin to make sure it was clear to the general public. Space Opera has never let accurate physics get in the way of a good story.

LordZerome1080 said:

yotsuya said:

From what I’ve seen, the prints for ROTJ have different color leanings. The one used for 4k83 evidently is NOT on lowfade stock. The release prints that are on lowfade stock (LPP) look more blue and the colors are similar to the more familiar home video. From the GOUT, which is also from a 2nd generation print (an interpositive struck in the mid 80’s), the blue tint of the lowfade prints is more accurate than this. This print might have better resolution, but might not be the best color source for the film. It is not what you would remember from the theater in 1983.

Where do things like the eralier restorations fit in? Stuff like Pugo (I haven’t yet tracked it down) or SSE

SSE 1.0 was color corrected to match the GOUT from what TN1 said. The later versions were corrected further. Puggo didn’t do much color correcting except to counter the fading. 4k77 no DNR is color timed to the Technicolor print. 4k77 appears to pull it closer the GOUT and other 35 mm prints.

RU.08 said:

deathstar1138 said:

yotsuya = ronster 2, still digging that hole, whether he understands it or not. even now.

I don’t think yotsuya is dumb or anything, just that they don’t at all understand the telecine process. There’s a good video on it here:

In the video you can see at the 13:30 mark that the operator describes grading as “an essential part of telecine work”. Anyone who thinks that telecine transfers have little to no grading done to them is mistaken - you can see the process in the above video, and the operator is able as you see to make scene-by-scene adjustments in the “rehearsal” and save them to memory before running the actual transfer.

Yes, I watched that video and found it interesting that he said they can do transfers from negatives and intermediates so they don’t have to use old faded, scratched prints. (around 0:53). That kind of makes my point that the Definitive Collection was done from a fresh interpositive just has been often reported.

And far from thinking that the telecines have not been touched and are a pure tranfer, my point was that certain aspects of the body of telecines are consistent indicating that is what the prints looked like. There are some odd differences between the different telecines, but for the most part they give us a consistent picture of what the prints should look like, capturing them between 1982 and 1993 so many times.

Plus TN1 shared a grindhouse version - uncorrected. This again matches to the Telecines, not to the Technicolor. Yes, there are differences in each different telecine, but as a body, along with the scans of the 35 mm and 16 mm optical prints, they show a consistency of what the film should look like that is at odds with the very exact scans of the technicolor prints that very faithfully show us what those prints look like.

This video was made in late 80’s/early 90’s, before HD came along, and it shows a Rank Cintel Mk III which can do either 35mm or 16mm film. From what I can find, machines of that caliber had always been able to do both 35mm and 16mm film, back into the 60’s.

My evidence is the large body of transfers being so consistent. No, I am not intimately familiar with the telecine process. Unless they had some guide they were distributing with the prints, it seem pretty impossible that 13 different telecines done all over the world would end up having the same shots that look different form the Technicolor prints. Add to that Puggo’s work and Team Negative One’s work. And that is just with the original movie. If you add in the SE, you have another set of transfers that are again different.

And except for the English language 16 mm print that Puggo used and the Moth3r bootleg, all the versions (35 mm, Technicolor, pan and scan, and widescreen) have the identical end credits. However, the 3 FX shots (the Falcon being shot at by the Star Destroyer while leaving Tatooine, the composite arrival outside the Rebel Base, and the Rebel fighters streaking across the sky) are not found in any non-English print. The only explanation for what prints they are in is that the earlier version of the shots (in each case the flaw it pretty clear) were from the May 1977 release and the opening and closing credits were changed out to do the home video version. That means this cannot be a print struck from the negative for a telecine. If they need a different print to do the Telecine then it would have to have been struck from the interprositve used in May 1977. These older telecines also have ciggarette burns at the reel changes. By the time the telecines were needed, the negative had been long changed. The first official telecine was in 1982. The negative had to have been changed before the end of 1977 for the international version and probably the wider release later in the summer. So the 3 FX shots archive just when the prints were taken from the O-neg. As you say, it is easy to change the credits.

And all the information about the Definitive Collection LD has indicated the source was a fresh set of interpositive prints. From what I’ve seen of the color of both that version and scans made by this community, the colors are off in a way that is consistent with the orange tint found on an interpositive.

I am not saying that the telecines are identical in all respects, but they follow so close in some ways that differ from the Technicolor prints that I can only conclude the technicolor prints are flawed. If the prints used for telecines are lower contrast than the release prints, then they would have even less color in those Tatooine scenes that look so washed out and it would be even more impossible to pull so much contrast and color out of what we see in the Technicolor prints. No one at Technicolor in 1977 could imagine we would be sitting here analyzing their prints 40 years later. They did one final movie and the prints have known flaws that because of the nature of the prints come down to us now just as they did them. And it isn’t like we don’t have access to the raw scans of other prints to compare to. I have compared all the versions I have and only the Technicolor have those odd washed out Tatooine scenes and the green shadows. It seems like the color timing used to make the master wasn’t quite correct. And I realize that nearly every version I have access to has been tweaked and color corrected to look better, but the sheer volume of transfers and the consistency of what looks different from the Technicolor prints can only point to the Technicolor prints being flawed during the creation process.

hairy_hen said:

Yes, the 4K83 print was faded to a dull red. The colors weren’t gone for good, they were able to be brought back without too much trouble, but it’s hard to say exactly what they looked like when it was new. The best way to get Jedi’s colors would probably be to take an unfaded LPP version, somewhat reduce the excessive blue the LPP’s all seem to have, and then make the 4K83 print look like that.

Regardless, the 4K83 colors do look nice the way they are, and I suspect that my suggested method would probably yield a similar result, minus any remaining issues caused by fading. Jedi seems to have been a rather blue film overall; probably not as much as the exaggerated LPP’s, but still blue nonetheless. Some people have complained about the leaves on Endor not being green enough and things like that, but honestly I think that’s just how it was. It just takes a little getting used to. Even with a blue tint, it’s still not monochromatically dull the way the 2004/2011 version tends to be in many scenes, and it is entirely lacking that version’s overly pumped up reds.

A very enlightening post. Thanks.

From what I’ve seen, the prints for ROTJ have different color leanings. The one used for 4k83 evidently is NOT on lowfade stock. The release prints that are on lowfade stock (LPP) look more blue and the colors are similar to the more familiar home video. From the GOUT, which is also from a 2nd generation print (an interpositive struck in the mid 80’s), the blue tint of the lowfade prints is more accurate than this. This print might have better resolution, but might not be the best color source for the film. It is not what you would remember from the theater in 1983.

screams in the void said:

“I knew at the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted.”
-George Lucas from Star Wars the annotated screenplays by Laurent Bouzereau

Yes, there is the answer in the first line - “A Space Opera”. That has been my point from the beginning. Lucas, like so many, has this false image that science fiction has to be real. Yet he correctly labels Star Wars as a space opera - one of the subgenre’s of science fiction where everything he wanted to do was normal. And he only seems to use the word fantasy in terms of things aren’t based on solid science rather than the Tolkienesque type of fantasy. Making up worlds is the first step to creating any space opera universe.

ChainsawAsh said:

deathstar1138 said:

yotsuya = ronster part 2, never give up dude. maybe someone will listen.

Nah, yotsuya actually grasps the core concepts at play, whether you agree with his conclusions or not.

I do try. I just feel that there is a bit too much faith placed in the Technicolor prints. I find those colors to be less than pleasing and not consistent with TESB and ROTJ sources ,the 35 mm optical print scans, the telecines, or any references.

Here is the thing, when I look at the timeline of how the movie was released and the telltale signs that the process left that were archived in the home media releases, I can’t reconcile that with what is being said.

There were 5 edits to the movie between the 16 mm US release (the main source for Puggo Grand) and Moth3r bootleg and the fresh print used for the Definitive Edition/Faces/2006 GOUT. The obvious one is the opening credits. But 3 FX shots were also changed as were the end credits. Now, I’ll ignore the changed opening sequence because we all know when and why it was changed. So far, all the 35 mm prints that this community has found and used, be they optical transfers or Technicolor prints, are have the other 4 changes. The key to understanding when those 4 changes were made lies in the release sequence after the initial release (which was 35 and 70 mm with only the Dolby encoded stereo track and the 70 mm 6 track). Both Puggo Grand and Moth3r have a stereo mixdown mono track instead of the real mono track created later in the year. By the time they made the international release, they had the mono track done and the edits had been made. Not one international version has been found without the 4 changes. However, all the US/UK (as in English) home video releases between the Moth3r bootleg and the Definitive Edition are missing the 3 FX changes.

Also, being an avid movie fan, I have encountred troubled telecines in the past. The transfer for one of Hao Miyazaki’s films carried a bad orangy tint. They quickly did a corrected version and blamed it on the source being an interpostive print that wasn’t fully corrected. The information I’ve found on the Definitive Edition LD release indices it was done from a new interpositive print. The color is off on the DE/Faces/GOUT US/UK version in a manner that is consistent with an interpositive print (slightly orange and low contrast).

And back to those earlier US/UK and Japanese releases that have the original version of those 3 FX shots, by the time the home video was being made, the negative had already been changed so these cannot have been done from a print just for Telecine as any new print from the negative would match the international releases (and also the later 35 mm prints and the print the DE was made from as well as the SE which still has two of those scenes). From my understanding, an interpositive matches the parameters described and doesn’t have to be struck separately. Also, being a lover of old movies, all of the old Technicolor movies that saw relseases on home video (tape, LD, and DVD) were telecined from release prints, so telecine operators are obviously familiar with using many types of sources and can work with what they are given.

Which brings me back to some of the scenes from the technicolor prints that bother me. Particularly that scene where Ben and Luke are talking in the canyon. There is little color to recover in that scene and yet so many of the transfers show a nicely blue sky behind Ben. That scene and those like it (which seem to be mostly on Tatooine) are timed very differently between the Technicolor version and all the other versions. To me that indicates that when they created the 3 color master that starts the Technicolor process, they did not get the timing settings right. And they didn’t get it right in an oddly consistent way. Plus there is the green tint that we already know about. If they screwed up the timing in one place, maybe they did on the whole thing. That is why I say careless. Once the master is made, it is hard to screw up the rest of the process unless you fail to get the dyes the correct colors. But as a result of what I have seen from Mike Verta’s samples, DrDre’s samples, the 4k77 no-DNR version (which sticks to the Techncolor asthetic), and the samples of raw scans of both 4k77 and SSE, I don’t trust the colors on the Technicolor prints. And I bet if you could project one side by side with an optical print you would see the same odd timing. I don’t see how a telecine operator could pull that much color if it wasn’t already there. And it wouldn’t be just one. By my count, ANH has had more than 13 separate telecines from around the world. The scene of Ben and Luke and the canyon looks nothing like the Technicolor in any of them. That is way too many different telecine operators making the exact same (and nearly impossible) correction.

I will admit that the telecines are not identical. Some are more yellow, some more blue, some a bit orange. The JSC has a very orange Threepio on the opening sequence in a bluish corridor. I wasn’t arguing that. I was saying that what they point to for the colors are remarkably similar and that level of similarity over that many different copies from that number of different prints (there are details that indicate the THX foreign language transfers were new prints so that leads to at least 10 separate prints) points to very little tweaking during the telecine process.

And I am aware that the projection process changes things. If your goal is to relive how the movie was projected when you watch it on your TV, then correcting to the projected version makes sense. But that involves tweaking for blub color and a lot of variables that lead to different interpretations. My experience with photos (scanning from negatives, from prints, reprinting negatives, color correcting, repairing, etc) over the last 25 years says that the oddities I’m seeing in the Technicolor scans are not just because the other versions have been corrected or that there is some oddity in the scan that doesn’t show up when projected. I have enough experience to know that isn’t how it works, not to mention a lot of examples from the work done by our members. It is a flaw in the Technicolor print. It is washed out, low contrast, and the color seen in other transfers cannot be recovered from what is in the Technicolor print. Unless you experienced a Technicolor print back in the 70’s, that isn’t how you saw Star Wars. And the whole point of Technicolor prints was that you didn’t need special equipment. Ideally, after the era of Natalie Kalmus, a movie should look the same whether it is a Technicolor print or optical print. But if you have the last movie to get Technicolor prints and someone didn’t do things right, then you can end up with a superior process producing inferior prints. I think that is the case. Everything I’ve found points to that.

OutboundFlight said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

But we’re assuming that he still hands over his control of Lucasfilm to Kathleen Kennedy.

I don’t think that would ever happen. Lucas sold Lucasfilm for the money. I think he’d hold onto his creation as a long as possible, unless Kennedy hands him a couple billion dollars.

But for the sake of the argument we will say she gets it and receives George’s blessing. I think she would more or less follow George’s wishes until his death. It’d a lot harder to blame a large corporation like Disney, but very easy to pick on one person. People do it with Kennedy already, but in this timeline she truly would be responsible for everything that happens.

A couple years after George’s death, she might announce a sequel trilogy but I don’t think she’d use his scripts. While we don’t know much about them, that everyone who read them didn’t use anything just proves to me their poor quality. So she’d hire new directors. A certain Star Trek director would’ve loved to make a star wars film would happily sign off even if at a slightly lower salary than one with Disney. And… not much would change. Although the sequels would probably be three years apart without an spinoffs.

You aren’t quite correct. Abrams did use a lot of what Lucas intended. Lucas had a young woman find Luke on an isolated planet where the Jedi were formed. Abrams pushed some of the story back to VIII due to his feeling that Luke took over VII from the moment he appeared in the script. I bet there is a lot more that they used that we don’t know about. They’ve referred to Lucas’s story treatments as where they started but they developed it further. So his ideas form the basis of what they did even if they basically abandoned his treatment.

I have issues with the color, but overall it is a fantastic preservation. Definitely an issue with the whites being too bright and overall a lack of color saturation. And some of the colors are really off. Isn’t Oola supposed to be green?

I hate to argue with you, Poita, but I don’t think the colors in Star Wars/A New Hope are as bad as you think. I think what you are referring to are the Technicolor prints which I have seen are quite messed up. But with the process winding down and Star Wars being the last film with commercial Technicolor prints, it isn’t a surprise that they screwed up the colors. And I don’t think you are correct about the telecines. While it is true that a telecine operator can tweak things on the fly, the overall consistency between the various transfers indicates that is not what we are seeing. Team Negative 1 and Puggo have both transferred multiple 35 mm and 16 mm prints to arrive at the Silver Screen and Puggo Grand presentations. And starting with the Moth3r bootleg transfer (apparently done from a release print not an interpositive) and going through the old pan & scan releases and the widescreen releases (multiple in each country and in at least 6 countries and from old and new interpositive prints), all the transfers show are marked similarity and a stark difference from the Technicolor prints. That many different telecine operator cannot all have done exactly the same corrections on the fly. That color timing has to be from the prints themselves. That the 35 mm and 16 mm scans agree with that says to me that the Technicolor color timing is very screwed up. The sources appear to vary between original May 1977 prints (Puggo Grand US, Moth3r, and the early US/UK telecines), later 1977 prints (all the non Technicolor 35 mm prints and early foreign telecines), and the fresh interpostives done in the mid to late 80’s. But the results are all pretty close. That body of fairly consistent color timing in all those transfers vs. what we see in the Technicolor scans to me indicates that the Technicolor prints, while low fade and high resolution, are not representative of the color timing of the optically generated prints. The scene I have taken note of is where Ben and Luke are talking in the canyon. It is so washed out in the technicolor scans while it is so vibrant in every other scan and telecine.

You keep straying off topic. The topic I keep addressing is to calibrate your monitor.

You have erroneously claimed that YCbCr is better, but that is just a different way of representing RGB color (allowing higher compression of the color and lower compression of the luma to give the illusion of a higher resolution image. It has nothing to do with the colors. That would be the bit encoding. In order to truly change the color space you have to switch from an RBG encoding to a CYM/CYMB encoding.

And HDR has nothing to do with color and everything to do with blacks and whites. With a backlit screen it is all about getting the black as dark as possible. OLED takes advantage of having 3 lights per pixel to achieve true black (as in no light at all for that pixel). The whites are just how bright the light can be. Again a feature of the display, not the source.

So the things you are citing as important are not really important at all. Not to a discussion about color correcting the original source material.

But let’s get back to what is wrong with the GOUT.

These are the stages of what film goes through for duplication. The exception is presentation prints which are generated directly from the negative, as are the dailies.

What you see on the interpositive is a general orange color. The image is lighter as well. Traces of this can be seen in the older home video of the OT. Things tend to be a touch orange and the contrast isn’t as high as it should be. This makes grays a touch red and skin tones a bit redder and blacks more gray. As you can see, this orange tint is reversed for the internegative and then canceled out on the final prints. For whatever reason, interpositives have often been used for telecines and a lot of telecines have this combination of orange and gray. In many shots in the OT, all teleciens look about the same. In others, they can be very different.

So to correct the GOUT to compensate for this trace of orange and gray, you really need a sample of what it should look like. Enter the Technicolor prints. Mike Verta was nice enough to post a sample of his scan. From that and the known green issues, I created a correction. Doing the same thing from frames of a different Technicolor print he acquired, DrDre did a correction. Technicolor is a CYM printing technique that doesn’t fade easily. Many old color movies exist for home viewing because a Techncolor print is available. There really is no other way to accurately find the original colors for A New Hope. By the time of the SE in 1997, the negative had faded badly and inconsistently and they used Lucas’s own Technicolor print to restore the colors for the SE. You have said you like the colors of the SE Telecine. That is all well and good, but those aren’t very reliable colors.

So either you rely on the Technicolor samples, or you do some research and see if you can find references that will help. I did both. I have read the research on the correct blue for R2. I have seen the parts with my own eyes to confirm it (the original units were more purple). I have studied flesh tones. I have extensive experience mixing paints for art and the correct way to make skin tones involves yellow and red to get the right peachy orange color. I have watched movies by the actors made at different times by different studios. There is a nice array of natural skin tones. Some are paler and pinker. Some are darker and tanner. Some are redder. Some places add to the red tone (our blood is red after all and the only way our skin is naturally not at least somewhat pinkish is if we are sick. Jaundice makes us yellow. What I see in your corrections (and in my early attempts) are people who should go see a doctor immediately for jaundice. One thing I did (and keep doing) is to compare my skin tone to others. Just in our office meetings I am presented with a nice variety of skin tones. When I keep those images in mind as I color correct, I have to keep the yellow to a minimum. Too much and the image is ruined and the people look sick. Too little and they all look sunburnt. And I found that Owen should look a bit singed in all his shots. Most of the humans on Tatooine should look like they’ve been in the sun. The people should be decidedly redder than the rocks (they didn’t film any of Tatooine at Red Rocks in Colorado after all) and the rocks should be a nice tan color.

And what I’ve found in all that research has led to my color correction and my near agreement with DrDre. I think he takes a bit too much red out of some shots. You take way too much red out and the DVD/HD/BR left too much yellow out.