PT Possible 35mm TPM scan

Hi, I hope it's okay to talk about this project here. I see that similar projects are discussed, and I'm always interested to engage on discussions surrounding film preservation.

We have an opportunity to scan a nice print of this movie. I give this project about a 50:50 chance of happening at the moment, we really need some more interest to make it happen so if you're interested speak up and chuck in a couple of bucks at least. A decision will be made whether to proceed on Friday. Anyway that's the end of the solicitation and you can head over to the thread on originaltrilogy.com if you're interested in helping, or showing interest in it. If we don't see more interest it probably won't happen.

I'd like to clear up a couple of misconceptions that I've noticed in some threads regarding scanning.

"Film has a resolution of 2.5k so 4k+ scanning is a waste of time."

Not true, many prints do have a resolution equivalent to 2K or even less, but others can have resolutions up to 4K and that's especially true for newer films that have a razor-sharp image made through reversal printing skipping generational loss. That said, we think that TPM came from a 2K digital intermediate printed onto negative to strike prints from, and that means it will have a maximum resolution of 2048x1556. Even that is 2x the resolution of Bluray, it's 2x the resolution that Revenge of the Sith was filmed in, and it's about 2.7x the resolution that Attack of the Clones was filmed in. So there's a lot more detail in this version of the film that has never been released.

Anyway, even though it will only have 2K detail, it is still necessary to scan at a higher rate to extract all the detail. What we want to do is triple-flash it with a 6K mono sensor (scan each colour separately) and save to 4K. We don't always have this opportunity, Titanic for example was scanned with a standard colour CMOS sensor with a native resolution of 4K, and in reality that's 2160 vertical lines of green pixels but only half that for red and blue (the bayer pattern). Most 4K bluray mastering is done this way, as you can scan like this in real time (some scanners can do up to 120fps), whereas a triple-flash takes 80hrs or so in the scanner (less than 2 frames per second). The Star Wars Trilogy blurays for example were made from a 2002 10-bit 1080p RGB telecine that Lucasfilm did in-house and sent to Lowy Digital to clean.

"It won't look good."

Well it will look better than the Laserdisc, the VHS, and the SDTV recordings that represent the only releases of the film in its theatrical version. But speaking in general how it will look will depend on how good the original film itself looks. If the film is good quality then a 4K scan of a print can look amazing. Yes the negative would be better, but prints deliver excellent quality as well. Anyway, people can decide for themselves which version they like best, it's not as if the bluray version is going to disappear or anything!

 

Damn right I'm interested. I'm sure you've encountered me on OT before.

 

No, I'm not interested in a version with (more) generation loss than the one currently available. As for preservation, Lucasfilm has the film preserved, as they should. I'll stick to what they have or decide to release as long as it's a transfer supervised by Lucas.

 

Well they might have it preserved (we don't know), but they've never released in in HD or 2K. They made a whole new version for the Bluray, which is fine but I'd like to see the original 1999 version preserved in the best quality available to us. It won't have much generation loss from the DI, and certainly less compared to a film that was struck from the interneg (how most blockbusters were struck).

As for the transfer, I'd have to look up what they did with the BD, but the Original Trilogy 2002 transfers they did are way below the quality that fans have already transferred, there's some 4K previews on YouTube if you're interested. They are at a quality from which you could author a DCP, the 2002 transfers were 1080p so aren't. And there was some discussion from those who saw the digital trilogy screenings last year that they had used a DCP mastered from the 1997 o-neg augmented with the 2004-2011 changes directly from the 1080p DVD/BD master resulting in a noticeable change in quality between certain scenes. The same thing sometimes happens on Blray, for example I have the Creepers Bluray and it looks like material unique to that cut of the film was scanned in much lower quality... quality I wouldn't be happy with to be honest if I was paying for the scan. That may have been because they couldn't move the negative or interpositive from its location to their scanner and had to use what was available at the film archive/storage facility. Or it may have been that they weren't allowed to re-scan it by the owners who gave them an old scan to use instead. Or perhaps they were planning to get a Kinetta in or something to re-scan it but missed the deadline. I don't mean to sound critical of the restorers, they still did a great job and I love the bluray. In the case of Creepers, an 80's film printed on LPP or high-speed stock, the print probably would look noticeably inferior to the negative, but the late 90's polyester film used for TPM will look much closer to the negative with a finer grain, more detail, and great dynamic range.

 

This is going ahead, so anyone interested please consider sending a donation, even as small as $2 it is appreciated to know there is interest, you can use poita's paypal.me link, or directly to his PP email described here. It's being done professionally and you can read the technical details here. The quality will be extremely close to what we would have gotten if we had the theatrical negative to scan.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but I am confused as to what source TPM copy you are scanning from. What copy of the film are you making the project based off?

 

From a 1999 print, but I was saying it will be close to the negative because the steps involved are DI (digital intermediate) > Negative > Print, whereas the traditional mastering process is o-neg > interpositive > internegative > print. They could even have printed the prints themselves digitally, but we don't think they would have done that... maybe for specific cinemas with huge screens and/or large format 70mm they may have printed digitally to prints. It will still be limited by their somewhat primitive by today's standards scan of the camera negatives, it won't look as detailed as the 2011 remaster of the film. But what we will ultimately end up with will be very close to the DI.

 

Here's the trailer, and it gives an indication of how the film might look from a 35mm print:



Major thanks to Jetrell Fo for allowing me to share this.

 

Beautiful.

 

TPM aged so well compared to the latter two prequels , you can pause the trailer at any minute and you will not find any bad looking shot , the same would not apply to AotC and RotS unfortunately ..

Btw , do you think that one day Lucasfilm will eventually release a 4K-Master of the theatrical TPM version ?

 

but won't this cost an awful lot of money to do ?

and then Lucasfilm aren't gonna let you sell it , may even block it being shown ?

 

I usually am fine with the elements that is presented a film(the video you posted about 35mm) but this honestly looks worse than the later additions. I can appreciate it from a technical point of view but I prefer the look in the Blu Ray. Places like Naboo and Corusant look much better when cleaned up~

 

Well one thing to consider is that the 35mm trailer is just the trailer. We still have yet to see how the actual 35mm movie will look. And I'm wondering, will there need to be a color correction done or are the colors on the print representative of how it looked in 1999?

 

Yes, about $2500 in all. But we're getting it done professionally on equipment where the full commercial rate would be more like $15,000+. For more info see the OT thread. And obviously we can't sell it.

As far as I know the scan will come with a LUT from the lab for that, so no further colour correction should be necessary. The trailer was not CC that I know of so it may not look accurate.

 

Awesome! Looking forward to this. It will be my definitive Phantom Menace: HD, no DNR, shorter podrace, and untampered colors.

 

There were some photos of the film posted on the OT thread:









These aren't from the scan, the scan won't happen for about another month or two. The green lines/marks you see are damage to the film's base, from a platter most likely.

 

Well this trailer has barely any Jar Jar (I wonder why )

AOTC adopted digital too early, ROTS still looks good for the most part.

With that said, the trailer looks more Star Warsy than any of Disney's.

 

There were other films shot digitally and released theatrically in 2005, but they were typically lower budget movies that benefited from the cost savings on having to shoot on 35mm rather than CGI-heavy films like AOTC. It actually would have been better to shoot AOTC on 35mm, or at least to use a mixture of digital and 35mm filming.

 

I don't like the idea of making your own copy of the movie without consent of Lucasfilm but I will discuss which version I prefer.

I prefer the blu-ray version because it looks stunning and CGI Yoda is a huge improvement. I also like the added air taxi scene included in the dvd version and passed on to blu-ray. I like how they removed the human aides to Orn Free Taa and replaced them with Twi'leks too.

However, I prefer the theatrical edition's version of the pre podrace and the podrace. The introduction of some of the other aliens makes the film drag for me. The theatrical version flows into the race much more succinctly. It's cool world building and fun but not necessary.

I also don't like how in the blu-ray version, the "vote now" chant in the senate after Padme calls for a vote of no confidence in the chancellor is muted. What the heck was the reasoning behind that?? The various chorus of "vote now!" made it more dramatic. This just mystifies me.

 

Oh it's not my project, but this seems like a good opportunity to clear up a couple of things - 1. it's not illegal to scan a film print in the US, or in most places. 2. As per the forum rules, there is no discussion about a delivery of a full transfer to the masses, and I'm not sure if there are any plans to do so by anyone - I want to be able to use the scan for comparisons to older versions, something that falls well within fair use. And possibly unrelated, but point 3. Film Archives do the same thing all the time, they scan films they have but don't have rights to so they can preserve films before they're lost forever. There have been a few projects I've been made aware of where films were saved from the last known prints in existence, literally at the 11th hour before the celluloid fell apart due to the chemical degradation processes.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, I look forward to seeing what you think when you can see some actual scenes captured from the print!

 

"I sense a plot to illegally restore the films"

 

Well, someone has to start doing it. Lucas has always been known to drive technology forward, this wasn't any different. If he hadn't used AOTC to drive digital technology, following movies wouldn't have looked as good as they did, because then those movies would have been the first to try it.

 

It's didn't adopt. It was the defacto parent of digital in the movies. Technically speaking it was like this:

In May 2001 Once Upon a Time in Mexico became the first well known movie to be shot in 24 frame-per-second high-definition digital video, using a Sony HDW-F900 camera, following Robert Rodriguez's introduction to the camera at George Lucas's ranch whilst editing the sound for Spy Kids. In May 2002 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was released having also been shot using a Sony HDW-F900 camera.

No doubt there are other projects from a similar time but the point is that Lucas was the one pushing for it and of course no one else was doing it with the scale and scope of a Star Wars movie that was guaranteed to be seen around the world at that level.

Not merely good.

It's awesome looking because of all that was learned from AOTC.

 

He wasn't driving technology forward, he was investing in an alternate technology that ultimately was foolhardy of him. It made the green screen effects harder, not easier, and left less creative control over re-framing and balancing the dynamic range.

I don't agree that it helped digital movies - digital cameras were going to be ready for mainstream cinema by 2005 anyway, but the only ones using them in 2005 were low budget and independent films, every major Hollywood film made then was filmed on 35mm, no matter how much CGI was going to be packed into it.

 

Yes. Nobody making films of the nature of the Star Wars films around that time were thinking, "Wow. We better not miss the bus with this brand new but inferior picture quality movie making that George Lucas is using."