Are all old "optical printed" movies second generation masters?

[yoda313]

I was wondering. The old movies like Star Wars that used optical printing to merge images together by reshooting them - are those 2nd generation copies? I don't mean the principal photography with the actors but the action scenes that were done with blue screen matte paintings and stuff.

Does that mean no matter how much digital manipulation goes on that they will always be working with second generation masters?

I know thats the best technology of the time period but how much does that effect the reprocessing years later?

[guns1inger]

For some scenes it makes little or no differnece, as they can be replaced completely by digital work. Start Wars is a good example of this, where some of the dogfights have none of the original footage in them.

As for the rest - if the original bluescreen elements exist, then the scenes can be digitally reconstructed by scanning these elements and building from there. In these cases, the bulk of the work is still based on the first generation masters.

How much of a difference does all this make - watch the original release of the THX'd Star Wars films, where they managed to clean up some of the optical issues present in the first film - especially transparency issues from the optical printing process - with the digitally enchanced or replaced versions in the later re-issues of the film. The THX cleanup reduced the problems, and went some way to balancing the inherent contrast issues in optical printing. The digital version removes all of these issues completely.

This is dependent, of course, on a number of factors, including

a) availablilty of original effects elements
b) condition of these elements
c) the amount of time and money a studio is willing to spend doing the restoration work

It is interesting to note however, that two of the greatest restorations I have ever seen are Lawrence of Arabia - The Director's Cut, and Rear Window. Both of these were done chemically by hand, not digitally.

[yoda313]

@ guns1inger

Yeah I had forgotten that the studios would most likely still have the masters of the blue screen stuff. That way they could remerge them directly digitally.

Yes the thx release in the 90's was a great excellent print for Star Wars. The dvds are out and out amazing. The restoration of movies is pretty interesting.

[guns1inger]

What I like about the THX versions is that they are simply a cleanup of the original theatrical releases. No additions, no changes.

Unfortunately, few directors wield as much autonomy as Lucus, so for many films, these elements don't exist, or the studios wont spend the millions needed to do this type of restoration work. Even just a THX cleanup costs hundreds of thousands to have done. And while the work is worth it from a vusiual perspective, it might not be cost effective in many cases.

[edDV]

And hats off to Kodak and others (VistaVision process/ILM) for the original optical effects sequences that may have been a half dozen or more generations down. All of the tradeoffs were well understood at the time. The original release didn't look bad in tha theater.

http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1997/star.wars.anniversary/lucas/index.html