workprint

[wurk-print]

noun

Movies.

1. the first positive print of a film, assembled from the dailies: used in the editing process.

Word History and Origins

Origin of workprint¹

First recorded in 1935–40; work + print

Example Sentences

Of course, contentious director’s cuts are nothing new: consider the infamous Blade Runner: Director’s Cut, which was based on a workprint version of the movie but wasn’t actually produced directly by director Ridley Scott.

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As it turned out, Snyder did cut some sort of version of the film together before leaving the project, but it seems to have been more in the nature of a workprint than a director’s cut, with unfinished effects shots and unmixed audio.

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Even with the knowledge that the “Other Side of the Wind” completers drew from Welles’ notes and, as they mention in the opening crawl, “a workprint consisting of assemblies and a few edited scenes,” the final film remains merely an educated guess — other people’s interpretation of what Welles had intended.

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Nothing came easy—not even a dissolve or a fade-out, which had to be marked on a workprint and sent to a laboratory for realization.

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The last big example was 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine; in that case, a rough cut workprint of the film was leaked weeks before the finished version reached theaters.

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