logo Sign In

Original 1976 Star Wars Trailer Restored (Released)

Author
Date
Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

Hi everyone,

The YouTube channel I’m a part of just released a restored version of the first Star Wars trailer from 1976:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHk5kCIiGoM

We started off by replacing the scenes from the movie with scenes from Star Wars Despecialized, matching them frame-by-frame, in order to make them seem as original as possible. In some cases (like the lightsaber scene with Ben and Vader), an updated (colored-lightsaber) or alternate shot had to be used to keep the quality consistent with the rest of the footage. We cleaned the film dirt out of the starry background and the explosion, as well as stabilized the text crawl. In addition, we worked on the audio to make it clearer, as well as bring it to its original pitch, as referenced by other copies of the trailer we came across in our research. We concentrated on bringing the trailer to the highest possible quality while keeping as many original elements as possible.

Let us know what you think!

Enjoy! - The ReDiscovered Future

Author
Time
Post link

Thanks for the heads-up. That looks great! Now I must find the plain old trailer in it’s present neglected condition (the more scratches & fade, the better) for an A-B comparison.

On thing about the trailer itself, though. GL has always tried to inject his juvenile humor into his films. Problem is, R2-D2 falling over, hitting the ground, sounding like an empty garbage pail (what’s this foolery? Lost In Space? where’s Dr. “oh the pain” Smith?) surely lost many a viewer from even bothering with this bad/laughable thing called Star Wars.

Author
Time
Post link

Spaced Ranger said:

Thanks for the heads-up. That looks great! Now I must find the plain old trailer in it’s present neglected condition (the more scratches & fade, the better) for an A-B comparison.

On thing about the trailer itself, though. GL has always tried to inject his juvenile humor into his films. Problem is, R2-D2 falling over, hitting the ground, sounding like an empty garbage pail (what’s this foolery? Lost In Space? where’s Dr. “oh the pain” Smith?) surely lost many a viewer from even bothering with this bad/laughable thing called Star Wars.

In all fairness, that could have been a temp track. The movie wasn’t even finished when this trailer was made. You can hear on set audio when Vader tosses the rebel to the ground and Dave Prowse grunting.

And LIS was a pretty straight adventure show the first season. (I got the Blu Ray set for Christmas.) The relationship between Will Robinson and the robot clearly influenced Luke’s interactions with Artoo and Threepio.

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

Author
Time
Post link

this is great, do you plan on doing the other trailers?

“You can’t polish a turd. But you can shape it to look like candy.”

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link

The other trailers are definitely on our list, yes. We’d love to work on more Star Wars content - is there anything in particular you’d like to see done?

Author
Time
Post link

just the other trailers from Empire and Jedi. i may used them as extras for my edit dvds

“You can’t polish a turd. But you can shape it to look like candy.”

Author
Time
Post link

rediscoveredfuture said:

The other trailers are definitely on our list, yes. We’d love to work on more Star Wars content - is there anything in particular you’d like to see done?

restore the deleted scenes!

Author
Time
Post link

Spaced Ranger said:

Now I must find the plain old trailer in it’s present neglected condition (the more scratches & fade, the better) for an A-B comparison.

I realize I’m a little late with this response, and you’ve probably seen this by now, but for others (like myself) who are just reading this thread for the first time now…

I had a 16mm version of this trailer scanned a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0k_r5AXn3E

Same scan with a quick color correction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOs7rNtY1o&t=3s

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj