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The GOUT crawl

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So I'm looking at the GOUT crawl for ANH - y'know, the one missing the whole "Episode IV/A New Hope" bit. I've got a vague memory of reading that the GOUT crawl is actually a modern recreation - the opening logo is a much straighter version than on the "later" crawl, and the lines of the crawl are split differently - because the rest of the GOUT is based on a laserdisc master that did have "A New Hope" on it.

Also, the GOUT crawl doesn't show the same "bend" at the bottom right that the special editions and later (and possibly earlier) do. Did they just do a poor job when they made the "Episode IV crawl" in 1980?

Can someone clue me in?

DE

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Darth Editous said:

So I'm looking at the GOUT crawl for ANH - y'know, the one missing the whole "Episode IV/A New Hope" bit. I've got a vague memory of reading that the GOUT crawl is actually a modern recreation - the opening logo is a much straighter version than on the "later" crawl, and the lines of the crawl are split differently - because the rest of the GOUT is based on a laserdisc master that did have "A New Hope" on it.

The opening crawl on the '06 Bonus disc is not a recreation, if they really went through such an unnecessary and tedious effort, I must say they did an extremely well done recreation because the opening is a completely perfect match down to every little small detail, the compositing of the crawl, starfield, planets, ships, lasers, impacts and mattelines are exact.

Darth Editous said:

Also, the GOUT crawl doesn't show the same "bend" at the bottom right that the special editions and later (and possibly earlier) do. Did they just do a poor job when they made the "Episode IV crawl" in 1980?

The specific angle of the original '77 crawl was what both Empire and Jedi emulated, when they did the revised ANH crawl the angle was for some reason different, ironically introducing a new inconsistency with the other crawls, which basically have become Lucas' staple over the years, as soon as he tries to fix something another thing gets broken. The revised crawl also came out a little bit skewed and have been so since '81. They did a nice job with the recomposited ships to get rid of the thick matteline around the Stardestroyer but the flaws already mentioned combined with different timing causing the music not match the visuals makes the whole thing poorly done. The '81 starfield was also taken from Empire, in '97 they went back to the original starfield and recomposited all the elements digitally.

EDIT: Sorry for my bullshit about the different angle, did take take a look at the '81 crawl and the angle isn't that much different from the sequels, ignore what I said. ;)

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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It's the original. Notice the lens distortion on the SW logo pullback, which makes the logo look slightly curved. (Mike Verta pointed this out in his recent image of the logo for his Legacy project.)

Also, there *is* a concave bend, just not as noticeable at first glance. Pause it right when the D in "DEATH STAR" is just about to be fully visible in frame, and look at how much more of the text in the center is still out of frame than on the edges. Also, I think the crawl is a little tilted to one side, too...

There is a color issue as well - the color of the logo/crawl tends more towards the green part of the spectrum on the right side of the frame (turn up the saturation and you'll see what I mean - when there's text in the bottom left section of the frame, it looks golden yellow, but it becomes more of a lemon-lime color further up and to the right). Someone in some older thread brought up how you can see a green tinge on the shadowed side of the Star Destroyer - I think this is part of the same color-shift issue. The fact that the GOUT transfer of the crawl/flyover has a kind of a green push doesn't help. (If you crank up the saturation on the Moth3r telecine, you can see the same "gradient" effect; since it doesn't have the same green push as the crawl/flyover segment of the GOUT, the crawl text looks golden yellow in most of the frame, while in the bottom left corner it comes out looking more red-orange.)

If it were a re-creation, these flaws wouldn't be there.

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An easy way to see the discoloration, a screencap of one of the white flashes with the saturation turned to the max.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Which then begs the question...where did this crawl come from? From a whole print or perhaps just a small reel of negative cut from the A/B roll in 81?

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Yeah what is that thing and why does it look sort of actually...good? If it was just clipped off a print in 1981 it should be beaten to hell. If it's negative it should also really be beat up, since 77-81 was, by far, the period when the movie was getting handled and tossed around the most. Which I would think applies to any other stage that it could be from. (pre-'81 being the period where all the elements were seeing the most action).

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Mavimao said:

Which then begs the question...where did this crawl come from? From a whole print or perhaps just a small reel of negative cut from the A/B roll in 81?

Maybe they once considered releasing a VHS or Laserdisc edition containing the original crawl (as a special feature, perhaps?) and conveniently had an old master sitting there.

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Could be. However, if you look at it, especially on an upconverted project, it looks really nice and film-like with fine grain. I don't think telecines back in the VHS/LD era could be so good. To my eyes, it looks like it was done earliest 2000.

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Well, since that conclusion beckons some speculation, it is possible that there is a perfectly-preserved print in the vaults of LucasFilm that we aren't meant to know about. We can see from the Blu-ray that they store a lot of prototype props that never made it into the films, so actually physically destroying what George apparently thinks is the workprint doesn't make much sense.

"Empire of Dreams" included the pre-ANH crawl in great quality as well. If we assume the GOUT-crawl was done around the same time, those two clips could be from the same "secret" source.

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The GOUT crawl has a different color balance than the EoD clip; the color on the EoD clip seems more "correct," but I'm assuming that the GOUT version was timed to match the 1993 transfer. Also, the GOUT seems to be sharper (the SW logo doesn't lose as much detail when it gets really small), and have more info on the edges (this was discussed way back in 2006 during the whole flap over the clip in the GOUT trailer, which turned out to be a digitally manipulated version of the crawl, where the SW logo was a lot closer when the text started scrolling up).

I can't compare the flyover, because in EoD they just used the 2004 version and painted over (most of) the desaturated/white lasers. So we get the Star Destroyer shooting thin green lines instead of thin white lines. No idea why they didn't use the original version...

Not sure if it's the same source as EoD but a different transfer. If the source of the GOUT crawl were properly transferred and mastered, it would probably look a lot better than it does now.

The EoD, the GOUT crawl, and the (non-SE) images in Rinzler's book seem to point to the existence of a high-quality source, possibly a separate one from George's personal Technicolor print. Of course, as long as Lucas and co. refuse to rationally and honestly discuss anything relating to the original versions, we can only guess...

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TServo2049 said:

I can't compare the flyover, because in EoD they just used the 2004 version and painted over (most of) the desaturated/white lasers. So we get the Star Destroyer shooting thin green lines instead of thin white lines. No idea why they didn't use the original version...

 

The documentary used footage from the '97 SE telecine on that flyover that's why the colors on the lasers etc, are fine.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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msycamore said:

The documentary used footage from the '97 SE telecine on that flyover that's why the colors on the lasers etc, are fine.

I stand corrected. Just didn't remember the Star Destroyer lasers being that thin in the '97 SE...

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Here's the original ESB 21 in. x 29 ½ in. Kodalith, for reference.

 

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For what it's worth, I had information from a friend at ILM prior to the GOUT release that the original title and crawl were, indeed, recreated for the 2006 release, albeit carefully and conscientiously. 

 

I hadn't given it much thought until recently, when I noticed an extreme amount of jitter in the title card, which I have from two absolutely confirm-able 1977 sources, which are identical to each other.  What's odd is that the GOUT title card element is much straighter and smoother in its motion.  Stabilizing my 1977 elements doesn't yield the GOUT result; they have internally different characteristics.  If I didn't know better, I'd say either 1) GOUT was indeed a recreation or 2) There was a second, more stable version of the title card created after the initial release in 1977, but before the 1981 re-release and re-do, which GOUT is based upon.

 

You can view the differences for yourself in the Legacy forum, but there is more to the story here, for sure...

 

_Mike

View the Restoration and join the discussion at StarWarsLegacy.com!

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While I've never analysed the crawl in detail myself, there were many theories posted on the forum in 2006:

1. The crawl is completely new and CG (the text looks stable when compared to the starfield).

2. The crawl is original but has a fake gate-weave added (maybe to match the rest of the movie, which is from from the laserdisc master).

3. It's the real deal.

The situated is confused because, as TServo mentioned above, the GOUT trailer was shown to have a fake crawl.

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Wait, the GOUT crawl may be recreated? My comparisons! I need to add originals to the originals!

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Has anyone ever done a detailed comparison between the Empire of Dreams crawl and the GOUT?

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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mverta said:

For what it's worth, I had information from a friend at ILM prior to the GOUT release that the original title and crawl were, indeed, recreated for the 2006 release, albeit carefully and conscientiously. 

That sounds just pointless enough to be true.

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mverta said:

For what it's worth, I had information from a friend at ILM prior to the GOUT release that the original title and crawl were, indeed, recreated for the 2006 release, albeit carefully and conscientiously.  

That re-creation is probably what we all saw in the web-trailer for that release.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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mverta said:

For what it's worth, I had information from a friend at ILM prior to the GOUT release that the original title and crawl were, indeed, recreated for the 2006 release, albeit carefully and conscientiously. 

 

I hadn't given it much thought until recently, when I noticed an extreme amount of jitter in the title card, which I have from two absolutely confirm-able 1977 sources, which are identical to each other.  What's odd is that the GOUT title card element is much straighter and smoother in its motion.  Stabilizing my 1977 elements doesn't yield the GOUT result; they have internally different characteristics.  If I didn't know better, I'd say either 1) GOUT was indeed a recreation or 2) There was a second, more stable version of the title card created after the initial release in 1977, but before the 1981 re-release and re-do, which GOUT is based upon.

 

You can view the differences for yourself in the Legacy forum, but there is more to the story here, for sure...

 

_Mike

 

I looked at your GOUT comparison and the Legacy title card element seems to drift quite noticeably more to the left than the GOUT and it seems kinda silly to mess up a simple thing like that if it was 'carefully' recreated in 2006. 

Also I compared the GOUT crawl with a sample from a Spanish SW 35mm print, it's only a one frame comparison but more or less from the same position where your clip ends, and it is a very close match, the Spanish title card element might be slightly slightly more to the left but not at all as much as the Legacy source and I think well within normal geometric distortions in the transfers/prints.

So my money is on the GOUT being the real deal and the Legacy crawl  "simply" is from another source.

 

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here's various samples from different

parts of the crawl from our print:

-----------------

 

the whole sequence is about 1300 frames...
if you need more specific ones for comparison,
post a specific part..
later
-1

 

[no GOUT in CED?-> GOUT CED]

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Nice. I've matched them with GOUT frames (as best as I could do anyway)...

 

Later...

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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mindofone said:

Here's the original ESB 21 in. x 29 ½ in. Kodalith, for reference.

 

here's our version of it:

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later

-1

 

 

[no GOUT in CED?-> GOUT CED]