Interviewed J.W. Rinzler; asked him about real size of the LFL archive
- Thread starter Probe Droid
- Start date
Things like this you mean ?
Certainly during the production of SW there was not the same control as on future productions on materials staying within LF organisation. On Jedi for example still camera film was recorded on issue and handed back at the end of the day for development.There is a lot in private hands that will never see the light of day as well.
Probe Droid
Master Member
Rinzler
Bump for the update
Bump for the update
Darth Kahnt
Sr Member
What a great read. Thanks.
Woaaah, thanks for the headsup, I just ordered the book!
Thomas
Thomas
Probe Droid
Master Member
Rinzler
My thoughts exactly. One intern with a scanner could build a database of all those pix for very little money. Who wouldn't shell out $100 for a ten-disc set containing 5000 pix. Or make it a subscription-based online database and there'd be no production costs at all. LFL would make a fortune.
And as far as organizing the archive, hell they could get any number of volunteers that would do it just for the pleasure if being able to see it all.
My thoughts exactly. One intern with a scanner could build a database of all those pix for very little money. Who wouldn't shell out $100 for a ten-disc set containing 5000 pix. Or make it a subscription-based online database and there'd be no production costs at all. LFL would make a fortune.
And as far as organizing the archive, hell they could get any number of volunteers that would do it just for the pleasure if being able to see it all.
lonepigeon
Master Member
It'll never happen. All those photos are Lucasfilm's intellectual property. If they released them all to the general public in high res they would basically be handing people the tools to infringe on their copyright. OfficialPix is the photograph licensee that has already paid for the right to print LFL photos.
I know we see the pics as reference tools, but only a small group of fans see them that way. Most fans are probably happy with the Chronicles books or visual dictionaries.
We can really only hope for more books or magazine articles (or other products) to expose more pics. We can also hope that LFL releases more of this photographic information to licensees to make their products better. Both of these things are just starting to happen, but much of it still needs to be organized to do so.
Probe Droid
Master Member
Rinzler
I agree with you, but man it would be sweet.
I agree with you, but man it would be sweet.
Few things -
I believe the proto Darth costume was built by the ILM guys for the fun of it sometime in 1976. I don't believe it was ever shipped to England.
On STAR WARS, the guys at ILM did take a lot of photos with their personal cameras. They pooled most of the slides and most of them have wound their way over to the Lucasfilm archives. These slides formed the basis for the slideshows on the DVD in Lorne's book. (The photo of Grant with the blue striped X-wing surfaced recently and it's good to see that stuff getting out.)
Gene
I believe the proto Darth costume was built by the ILM guys for the fun of it sometime in 1976. I don't believe it was ever shipped to England.
On STAR WARS, the guys at ILM did take a lot of photos with their personal cameras. They pooled most of the slides and most of them have wound their way over to the Lucasfilm archives. These slides formed the basis for the slideshows on the DVD in Lorne's book. (The photo of Grant with the blue striped X-wing surfaced recently and it's good to see that stuff getting out.)
Gene
I think that polaroid shots were taken as well with those old instamatic cameras. I have about 20 of tiefighters,x-wings and the death star. Sadly they have not withstood the test of time. I'm sure these would have been used on set for pure convienience.
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I believe most of those official publicity shots were shot with a 4x5 camera. For marketing purposes, that is really the best way to go as the image is superior to regular 35mm. Also, you can do multiple exposures with a large format camera that would be difficult to do with a 35mm. This allows you to get all the lights and fiber optics on the same negative without having to go through optical.
Part of that process is to take a B&W Polaroid to check the lighting and exposure. So, those are essentially a B&W copy of the publicity still, yet still an original. (Kubrick used this method extensively on 2001 in order to get an idea of what a shot would look like on a piece of film.) Some Polaroid film is better than others. I've seen some stuff going way back that is every bit as crisp and clear as the day it was shot.
As for the personal photos, most of the guys shot short ends of the motion picture stock they were using to film the models. You try to avoid a roll out on a motion picture camera, so you stop filming and are generally left with small rolls of unexposed film. That film can be loaded into the small canisters and then shot with a regular 35mm camera. You can't get it processed at the local Fotomat (remember those?) since it used a different chemistry than the C-41 process stuff we civillians use (well, used). It had to be sent to a lab in Hollywood called RGB. They would develop the negative and return it with a set of slides that were mounted in the regular cardboard sleeves. When you got the negatives back, you could then send them out and have prints made. but most of the ILM guys seemed to go the slide route. The problem is that the slides were printed onto standard motion picture workprint stock and the stuff is not color stable. Over the years (and actually very quickly) the image begins to degrade. Mostly they wind up losing contrast and looking magenta (purple). Some of it can be color corrected, but the image quality still suffers. The good news is that the negatives are fine if stored properly. I've seen scans from original negatives from the "Galactica" days shot on the same stuff and it looks like it was shot with a nice digital camera just yesterday. The bad news is that all too often, the negatives got lost.
Like I said before, the guys shot a lot film on this show - most of which wound up in the archives. I got to use some of it for Lorne's booksigning here in LA and I noticed that some of the imagery they gave me has now wound up in that book. Also, the next issue of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Modeller (the British mag) will also be printing more of those rarely seen photos. That's cool as there is a ton of it that hasn't been seen in many years.
Gene
I just bought my book- can't wait to get it!
Brent M
Sr Member
I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but there is a great new website that just went online this week. It's called Star Wars Archives and it ties into the topic of this thread perfectly. The URL is:
http://www.starwarsarchives.com
It's still under construction, but there's a lot of cool stuff in the 1977, 1980 and 1983 sections. :cool
http://www.starwarsarchives.com
It's still under construction, but there's a lot of cool stuff in the 1977, 1980 and 1983 sections. :cool
