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Topic: Booking Original Star Wars Films?

Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 05-08-2015 06:51 AM

quote: Mike Heenan
I have an IB of Star Wars and was approached last year to lend my print for the LA screening but I could never make it work schedule wise. My print is missing reel 1 but complete otherwise in decent shape (was cleaned recently at a lab). I was told by the previous owner that the reel 1 he misplaced had an Agfa title scroll spliced in the print. Another collector friend in Chicago hosted a private screening of a supposedly mint IB print and that print had the original title scroll still intact. There can't be too many of those floating around.

According to George Lucas, they all went into the sun, together with the negatives... which somehow needed to be irreparably altered for the Special Editions...

For those not owning prints that should not exist, a bunch of devoted geeks actually created high quality (Full HD) digital restorations of all three movies, called the "Despecialized Editions". They come in .mkv format and diligently fix the damage being done after years of Lucasification. You can even chose between the original stereo mix and a 6-track mix pulled from one of the 70mm blowup releases. While it fixes all of Lucas alterations, it also fixes stuff that haunted pre-special edition releases for years, like visible matte lines and garbage mattes.

They are around there, somewhere. May the Force help you find them.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 05-08-2015 12:02 PM

Do you mean this version?

Actually, the Goldring G800 cartridge he plays the record with is one that is widely used by professional archivists for transferring some types of coarsegroove records, because it was designed to operate at a significantly higher tracking force than most moving magnet designs, and because they were made in large quantities (they were the stock OEM cartridge supplied with the GL75 and GL78 turntables), with the result that used ones can be picked up cheaply and in good condition. I use one with an 0.0025 elliptical stylus for most of my 78 transfers.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 05-09-2015 06:11 AM

If you want some more modern cartridge with high amount of tracking force, there are tons of options available, thanks to the whole dance and hip hop scene and their continuing interest in vinyl. [Wink]

But yeah, that transfer looks and sounds like the real thing. But thanks to this YouTube clip, I now know they actually made projector toys with some actual Star Wars Super8 footage inside. Awesome. [Smile]

But no, I'm referring to this version which was primarily sourced from the Blu-Ray releases, but used various sources to restore the original versions of those movies as close as possible. You could say that they probably put more collective efforts into this than Lucasfilm ever did.

P.S.: The "reconstructed 70mm sound track" sounds a lot better and way more dynamic than both the DVD and BluRay releases ever did.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 05-15-2015 01:37 PM

quote: Marcel Birgelen
If you want some more modern cartridge with high amount of tracking force, there are tons of options available, thanks to the whole dance and hip hop scene and their continuing interest in vinyl.

OK, but can you get elliptical styli between 0.0015 and 0.0070 inch radius styli for them (needed to play coarsegroove records)? I've yet to see a hip hop DJ playing Edison hill-and-dale records, or early HMV acoustics! That having been said, I know a DJ who plays 78s, but I suspect that if Jenny unleashed any hip-hop at the sort of gig she gets booked for, the result would be similar to a typical event which features hip hop: fatalities, only this time from age-related heart attacks rather than drugs and shooting!

Seriously, the G800 and a mono derivative of a mass-produced Shure cartridge (the M78) are very popular options for digitizing coarsegroove records, mainly because there are retired jewelers and engineers out there who make and sell the full range of styli for them. I'm guessing that only microgroove styli are made for the majority of cartridges used by today's DJs.

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Bill Brandenstein
Master Film Handler

Posts: 413
From: Santa Clarita, CA
Registered: Jul 2013

posted 05-15-2015 02:04 PM

I seriously need to come up with a good way to get some or my family's 78s transferred. Leo, when I get to a less busy time I might hit you up for advice. I work regularly with LPs, and if that's not nightmare enough, 78s have all those needle, EQ, and noise challenges.

Meanwhile, I'm curious if anyone here has run that gauntlet to get the downloads of the Harmy un-restoration. Specifically, I'm interested in the original 70mm print audio. I'm currently preparing a dual-system 5.1 show with the latest Blu-ray audio running to a friend's Derann Super 8mm print (talk about weird mix of old and new, and yes, it took a lot of editing to undo the dozens of altered shot lengths). So what I'd like to do is examine the original 70mm mix for surround use, dynamic range, and even revert to it in a few places where the Special Edition really kludged things.

But I don't want to get a virus from the underbelly of the Internet. So curious if anyone else here has already taken that risk.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 05-15-2015 08:15 PM

The needle, EQ and noise challenges are not that hard to solve or work around.

A 0.0025 stylus will play almost all shellac 78s without damaging them, though earlier acoustic ones (mid-1920s or earlier) will be noisier than if you went the geeky route and got yourself a selection. A microgroove stylus will damage coarsegroove discs, though.

EQ is a little bit more gnarly. Most phono preamps apply the RIAA curve, which was the standard for consumer LPs from the mid-50s. For 78s and very early vinyl you either want a different curve, or for acoustics, none at all (obviously). A "ghetto rigged" solution for capturing the audio from a turntable "flat" with no EQ is to connect the cartridge's output to the mic input of a decent PC audio card. Yeah, I know, unbalanced, etc. - but given what you're starting with, as long as you don't pick up a 60Hz hum, it should be fine for 78s. You can buy dedicated phono preamps that are flat (no RIAA), but most cost serious money.

Even freeware software such as Audacity will enable you to apply EQ curves once captured. For consumer 78s from most of the '30s and '40s, either the Blumlein or Westrex curve will basically do, but there are sites out there that will give you the details (to enter into a filter preset) for pretty much every label's curve.

My approach is that it's far better to make a clean capture and then minimal digital post-processing, than to make a noisy capture and then have to do serious work digitally. If you don't want to spend crazy money on a high-end record cleaner such as a Loricraft, there are a range of $50-100 full immersion record cleaners that are very effective, given their price. My favorite is the Knosti Disco Antistat, but AFAIK there is no US importer - you'd have to import it direct from Germany. The US-made Spin Clean is pretty good, but IMHO not quite as good as the Knosti. One gotcha is that for shellac and and acetate 78s, clean them using distilled water only - in particular, alcohol (which most record cleaning solutions contain) will cause shellac to disintegrate.

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Bill Brandenstein
Master Film Handler

Posts: 413
From: Santa Clarita, CA
Registered: Jul 2013

posted 05-19-2015 06:07 PM

I like your style, Leo, appreciating the very encouraging technical details and your approach of best transfer is the cleanest one possible at the source.

Audition is my go-to-tool for day-to-day audio work and will work out some curves when the day comes. In the old Audition I used to have presets to remove or add RIAA curve that were deadly accurate!

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 06-29-2015 10:02 AM

Fair-use at least in the USA is as nebulous as Public Domain. Yes, in theory it allows use and does mention that means "excerpts" (but excepts are not well defined) and they need to be used in an educational setting, surrounded by discussion, lectures, etc., or in the print world, theses about the work. And even then, that caveat never stops the goliaths like The Rodent from using their bottomless legal resources to create cease-and-desist orders that almost always will scare the crap out of most any challenger, even if it is a big University with their own team of lawyers on retainer telling them they have a bulletproof case. No one wants to bit off that massive, costly chunk of legal cayenne pepper.

Thing is, usually these situations are such that the use of the copyrighted work in question is for intellectual, academic or in the case of say an art theatre, for a short, sometimes even a one-off engagement that is almost never done with large monetary gain (if any) in mind. Who is going to take on the legal battle to defend Fair Use or Public Domain status against the likes of Disney or Fox or Lucas when the battle almost always will cost an astronomical layout of monetary legal resources with no prospect of a return on the dollar? In these situations the challenger almost always backs down before the fight even starts, especially given the vague nature of the law in the first place and worse, the fact that over decades, the courts have ruled all over the map on such cases, even in the ones that seem cut and dry. That makes precedent really hard to read and so called "bullet-proof" legal status is almost never a guarantee. These battles are ones that most prudent legal teams will advise a challenger not to take.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 06-30-2015 02:08 AM

Public domain isn't really nebulous in terms of definition. It's just that the terms of when something enters the pubic domain constantly change, especially in the U.S., but the rest of the word usually follows... And the one you call "The Rodent" had it's fair share in it.

Once something is truly in the public domain, you don't need to account to anyone, you can just use it. It only becomes nebulous again, if some of the components in those public domain works are still being used by other parties that do have some kind of trade mark on them.

So, even if Steamboat Willie finally enters the public domain, not everybody can make Mickey Mouse cartoons as he/she pleases.
Fair use is an entirely different thing... you could fill 100-pages of discussions about it and not arrive at one clear answer. It's probably one of those things intentionally left vague.

quote:
OK, but can you get elliptical styli between 0.0015 and 0.0070 inch radius styli for them (needed to play coarsegroove records)? I've yet to see a hip hop DJ playing Edison hill-and-dale records, or early HMV acoustics! That having been said, I know a DJ who plays 78s, but I suspect that if Jenny unleashed any hip-hop at the sort of gig she gets booked for, the result would be similar to a typical event which features hip hop: fatalities, only this time from age-related heart attacks rather than drugs and shooting!

Sorry, I totally missed your answer on this one. [Wink]

I'm not sure if it really matters today if you're using elliptical v.s. spherical styli for those old records, since pickup technology has improved tremendously. True audio aficionados will probably go for the elliptical versions, whereas your local hip-hop DJ surely wants to go for a spherical one.

Ortofon still produces a range of mono styli for several types of old records, including those with a wider grove profile which work fine with recent turntables.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you get decent results with almost any old coarsegroove record and a modern Concorde pickup given the large amount of tracking force of those, but I guess you're potentially damaging the vinyl this way.

quote: Leo Enticknap
Seriously, the G800 and a mono derivative of a mass-produced Shure cartridge (the M78) are very popular options for digitizing coarsegroove records, mainly because there are retired jewelers and engineers out there who make and sell the full range of styli for them. I'm guessing that only microgroove styli are made for the majority of cartridges used by today's DJs.

As you can see, there are still cartridges being made for "specialty purposes", compatible with "current" technology. My best guess is that they will keep making them even after your local DJ ditched his last piece of vinyl. People still want to be able to play their old records and as long as there is a critical mass out there, there is still sufficient business in this considerable niche. Vinyl will probably outlast the audio casette, VHS and even CD as a somewhat "common" medium. [Wink]

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-01-2015 08:56 AM

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Ortofon still produces a range of mono styli for several types of old records, including those with a wider grove profile which work fine with recent turntables.

€719 for a moving coil cartridge to play 78s?! Sorry, but that's f***ing insane! More specifically, it's an absolutely classic example of audio woo. I've seen the systems used to capture 78s digitally for professional remastering and reissue (most recently, one of the systems used in The Vitaphone Project), which typically consist of a slightly modified Technics DJ turntable, a mid-range moving magnet cartridge and a set of styli covering around 0.015 to 0.040 (which between them will take care of everything from Berliners to final generation, 1950s 78s). The total cost of all the analog equipment uesd is around that of this single Ortofon cartridge. I haven't heard what this €719 moving coil can do, but feel safe in speculating that there is no significant signal information it can extract from a typical 78 that a complete system costing around the same money cannot.

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