I’m not sure if there’s any interest in this, but I’ve already started playing around with the idea, so I figured I’d go ahead and post it here and see where it goes. I’m not very good with video or audio editing, so I figured this is probably one of the few ways I could actually contribute to any sort of semi-restoration. That, and I’ve recently become fascinated with fonts. Not sure why.
I started this after looking at a lot of the comparison screenshots between the user created content here. I noticed (and was very impressed by) Harmy’s DeEd, where he managed to recreate the scrolling text. It looked incredible. But I noticed that through all of these restorations, the “A long time ago” intro text (and Lucasfilm Limited text) almost always remained untouched.
So I began playing around with the idea, and then I saw Harmy’s preview for his upcoming DEED v2. He used a film reference, and I’d never seen such a clear presentation of it. All of these years, I’ve been used to seeing the soft font with a soft blue glow… but after seeing this restoration, now I realize that it wasn’t a glow at all! It was a bleeding/compression/scaling issue. The font had become distorted.
If you overlay them in a photo program and hide/show the layers (the gif below is the best I could do here), it’s very easy to see that not only has the text become blurry and dull, but the actual layout of the text has become distorted. It looks bubbled, pushed out… almost like a fish-eye lens.
Thanks to doubleofive for the comparison references for the pic above and below! Each frame of the gif below is delayed 10 seconds. In order: dark_jedi’s GOUT, Harmy’s DEED, Harmy’s DEED v2, Recreation, Special Edition.
From what I’ve read, and I’m sure many here know more about this than I do, the font used in Star Wars wasn’t digitized until after the movies were released. And even when it was digitized, it doesn’t look like it was digitized very accurately. You can see the digitized font in the Special Edition (and newer editions) above - it’s very different.
So I thought, why not try to re-create it accurately? I mean, it is the first thing you see in the movie.
Not only would it provide for a cleaner look, but it would cancel out any noise artifacting, and help with stabilization. It will also scale better.
That way, it can be scaled up (or down) to whatever size without any loss in quality. A soft glow will look like a soft glow instead of a hazy blur. A solid border will look solid. For fan edits, it would be much easier to alter/manipulate, and create effects with, change the colors of, etc.
I haven’t looked into how complicated this would be, but I guess this could eventually turn into a source to create a font, which could then be used for the alien subtitles and maybe an end credit restoration.
I guess uses of this are pretty basic and limited. But does anyone think that this is something worth bothering with? I haven’t followed everything as closely as I would’ve liked to, so as far as I know someone else may have already done something like this. Please let me know if so. And if not, and if this seems like something that might be useful, any comments/critiques/criticisms would be great. Also, any other reference material would be a huge help! Thanks!