Star Wars: The Trilogy **PROJECT STALLED DUE TO HARD DRIVE FAILURE** — Page 5

Lookin good ChainsawAsh,looking forward to seeing what you accomplish.

--edit--

Nevermind, I managed to find all the fonts after all.

I think the top one is Arial and the bottom one is Times New Roman. Can I have my name in the credits now?

No, because you were wrong about both of them.  Where the hell did you get Times New Roman?  None of those are serif fonts at all ...

For the record, these were the fonts:

Lucasfilm Ltd. Old Logo
- Zurich Black or Zurich Bold (not 100% sure which one yet)

A Long Time Ago ...
- Franklin Gothic Book

Crawl Text
- Franklin Gothic Demi Bold

End Credits
- Another Franklin Gothic variation (but I have all the variations now, so I'll figure it out)

--EDIT--

Quck update - I've taken the original 20th Century Fox logo from MASH (the movie, not the show) and used it to replace the awful-looking GOUT version.  I had to brighten it a bit since it was a bit muddy-looking, but I'm pleased with the result.

I've also recreated the original LUCASFILM LIMITED logo and the darker-blue "A Long Time Ago" text - here's what they look like now:

I'm currently exporting a 1500kbps h.264 file of what I have done so far - when it's done, I'll put it up on YouTube for you guys as a sneak peek.

I've just posted a new clip - it's the first 7 and a half minutes of the film as it exists now.

It's not done - there are sections where Ady's Revisited is missing frames or shots because of his re-edit of the Tantive battle.  For now, these have been replaced with GOUT video.  The audio is the 1977 mono mix.

There's also one shot that's been sped up just slightly - I mention this because I wanted to keep something Ady did to the shot, but there were a few frames missing at the end of the shot, and there's no way for me to rebuild the audio without jumping from the mono mix to Ady's mix very abruptly.  I think the speed-up is tasteful and not noticeable, but I want to know if any of you can spot it.  If anyone sees a shot they think is sped up in this clip, please tell me - you'll get a prize!

Oh, and the opening crawl is a GOUT placeholder - you can easily see where I switch from GOUT to Revisited just after the crawl.

--CLIP REMOVED - TO BE REPOSTED--

Crikey Avid!

That's one expensive piece of software. I'd have to sell all my platinum diamond tipped teeth to buy that baby.

I think your going to have to work from the AVCHD rather than the GOUT for those extra frames. The GOUT frames stick out too much. You could use the AVCHD for everything you want to put back that's in the SE but not Revisited and the GOUT for everything that's only in the OOT

The education version is $300, and I'm a student.  I took advantage of that as soon as I found out about it.

Only problem is, now 3.5 is out, and I'm stuck with 3.0 (actually 3.1.3 now, since they *do* still give you software updates) since you can't upgrade the education version no matter what.  The "real" version, you have to pay a couple hundred to upgrade, but at least you *can* upgrade it.

Anyway, I'm getting to work on the crawl now.  I figured out a way to do the opening logo that works much better than the one I was using before - here are the new ones:

There's just one problem.

As I'm sure many of you noticed, the edges of these logos are rounded.  It's subtle (much more subtle than using the contract selection tool, let me tell you), but it's there, and it shouldn't be.  Part of why I'm re-doing Star Wars' crawl is for consistency in this regard.

Now, it's possible to remove the rounded edges, but it would be so incredibly time consuming that I don't think it's worth it.  So I put it to everyone here - do you think the rounded edges are distracting, or am I making an unnecessarily big deal out of this?

Do you have a scene in particular you need to use?I could post a sample of it in VIDEO_TS form so you can see what you can do with it.

also the logo's look just fine.

Octorox said:

I think your going to have to work from the AVCHD rather than the GOUT for those extra frames. The GOUT frames stick out too much. You could use the AVCHD for everything you want to put back that's in the SE but not Revisited and the GOUT for everything that's only in the OOT

That's exactly what I was planning to do, but the problem is that I can't do anything with the AVCHD disc - it's sitting on my hard drive taking up space.  If you know of a way to convert it to a usable format on a Mac, please let me know!

And yeah, I know the GOUT video stands out way too much - at the moment it's just a placeholder.  I'll most likely end up replacing the entire shot if a few frames are missing from Revisited, since even adding the individual frames back in will cause issues (I'm mainly thinking of the repainted Revisited lasers versus the non-repainted AVCHD ones).

I take it you didn't notice the sped-up shot?  Excellent ... *insert Mr. Burns hand gesture*

And DJ, I don't need any specific shots at the moment - honestly, I won't know what portions of your cleaned-up GOUT I'm going to need until I've finished the rough assembly.  At the moment, I think the main things I'll need are Mos Eisley, the establishing shot of Ben's hut, the establishing shot of Artoo in the valley (I may keep the Revisited version, though), the Alderaan explosion ...

If you want to just PM me your address, I'll send you the three dual-layer discs so you can send me the full versions of all three, since I really won't know what I'll need until I get to the point when I need it.

There are a few points of strangeness with the letter forms, the curve in the hook of the J in Jedi is the worst offender, some of the S's seem to have little slug tummies and the word "Back" seems to be rather crammed in there.

But the important question to ask is are you happy with them?

If the answer is yes leave them as they are, if the answer is no leave no pixel untwiddled.

Remember a dentine massacring dedication to detail isn't just for Christmas.

The "Jedi" logo was the only one that I created from scratch (using the Astro font, based on the logo on the SE poster).  Empire is an EPS file I downloaded a while ago that's 100% identical to the vintage poster (I perspective-corrected it and removed the "Star Wars" and surrounding circle-thing).  "Star Wars" is another EPS I downloaded, but haven't checked to see if there's anything specifically wrong with it.

What do you mean by "slug tummies" exactly?

The reason I'm asking is that I don't want someone to download this, watch the beginning, and then notice something wrong about the opening logo.  To me, something like that can ruin the viewing experience of any fanedit.  I don't want to have an "Eh, it's good enough" attitude for this project - I want it to be as perfect as I can make it.

If you (or anyone else) have any suggestions for how to improve the logos, please let me know!

Oh, and I did notice a problem with the first "S" in Star Wars that will be fixed.

ChainsawAsh said:

Octorox said:

I think your going to have to work from the AVCHD rather than the GOUT for those extra frames. The GOUT frames stick out too much. You could use the AVCHD for everything you want to put back that's in the SE but not Revisited and the GOUT for everything that's only in the OOT

That's exactly what I was planning to do, but the problem is that I can't do anything with the AVCHD disc - it's sitting on my hard drive taking up space.  If you know of a way to convert it to a usable format on a Mac, please let me know!

And yeah, I know the GOUT video stands out way too much - at the moment it's just a placeholder.  I'll most likely end up replacing the entire shot if a few frames are missing from Revisited, since even adding the individual frames back in will cause issues (I'm mainly thinking of the repainted Revisited lasers versus the non-repainted AVCHD ones).

I take it you didn't notice the sped-up shot?  Excellent ... *insert Mr. Burns hand gesture*

And DJ, I don't need any specific shots at the moment - honestly, I won't know what portions of your cleaned-up GOUT I'm going to need until I've finished the rough assembly.  At the moment, I think the main things I'll need are Mos Eisley, the establishing shot of Ben's hut, the establishing shot of Artoo in the valley (I may keep the Revisited version, though), the Alderaan explosion ...

If you want to just PM me your address, I'll send you the three dual-layer discs so you can send me the full versions of all three, since I really won't know what I'll need until I get to the point when I need it.

 Handbrake will do it, but only into an mkv or something and not losslessly. You might have to convert it again after that

No, when I try to open the ISO in Handbrake it says "No valid source found."  Do I need to go into the folders?  If so, what folders do I use?  I don't know BD file structure at all.

I'd remove the curved edges.

Also, take a look at places where two stroked edges almost meet, such as the "H" and "E" in the word "THE" for the RotJ and STR in "STRIKES." They look a bit awkward, I'd consider moving them apart just a bit so they don't look like they flow into eachother so much. This also goes for the "A" and the "C" in "BACK." 

Also take a look at the "E" in "THE" for ESB. I would remove the indentations for the "E" where the stroke tries to fill in the gaps in the letter.

ChainsawAsh said:

The "Jedi" logo was the only one that I created from scratch (using the Astro font, based on the logo on the SE poster).  Empire is an EPS file I downloaded a while ago that's 100% identical to the vintage poster (I perspective-corrected it and removed the "Star Wars" and surrounding circle-thing).  "Star Wars" is another EPS I downloaded, but haven't checked to see if there's anything specifically wrong with it.

What do you mean by "slug tummies" exactly?

The reason I'm asking is that I don't want someone to download this, watch the beginning, and then notice something wrong about the opening logo.  To me, something like that can ruin the viewing experience of any fanedit.  I don't want to have an "Eh, it's good enough" attitude for this project - I want it to be as perfect as I can make it.

If you (or anyone else) have any suggestions for how to improve the logos, please let me know!

Oh, and I did notice a problem with the first "S" in Star Wars that will be fixed.

By slug tummies I direct you compare the upper curve of the small Ss with the lower curve. The upper curves are perfectly rounded but the lower curves have more of a point to them (all be it smoothed but still more angular than rounded). The P in Empire has a very strange droop to the curve to (compare it to the R and you will see what I mean).

I haven't access to the typeset but if you have access to Fontlab, Fontographer or better still Fontforge (because it free) you can adjust these curves. Or if you have the designs as an EPS you could load it into Adobe Illustrator.

Kerning adjustments will help tweak the spacing between some of the letter forms too and help you avoid the crunching together thats very obvious in the ESB title it will also help prevent the clashing of close fitting uprights (like the vertical lines where the T in Strikes almost collide into the S and the R creating the illusion of a double width). Close crunching also makes a slightly off form look even more off.  Look at the curve of the C in Back, can you see how the diagonal of the A makes the already off curve seem to bend up?

Be warned it's really labour intensive work which is why some of the faults do (as you point out) turn up on official materials like posters because designers often can not arsed to do it right or don't think their audience will notice. Part of the problem is that the SE title designs were created to be seen with outlines filled in so the spaces between the letters were given more definition. Bear that in mind when you making outline only versions. In effect you are creating a totally new design because removing the coloured in sections you can no longer rely on them to iron out any clashes in the positoning of the letters.

Best of luck because this sort of work looks so easy until you actually try doing it and you have already done a much better job than many I've seen.

I have to say I really liked your previous Title logos, More than the current at least.

I like the new ones better.  They seem more 1977 than your first ones which looked more 1997.

Bingowings said:

By slug tummies I direct you compare the upper curve of the small Ss with the lower curve. The upper curves are perfectly rounded but the lower curves have more of a point to them (all be it smoothed but still more angular than rounded). The P in Empire has a very strange droop to the curve to (compare it to the R and you will see what I mean).

These will stay the same, as they are present in the original logo for The Empire Strikes Back from 1979/1980, which I'm trying to replicate exactly.  For the logo on the first page, I used the Astro font (Lucasfilm's official Star Wars font) and based the logo around the 1997 SE logo.  For this one, I used an EPS of the original '79/'80 logo, and I've compared the two extensively (even overlaid the EPS on top of the actual logo on the poster) and they're 100% identical.

Bingowings said:

Look at the curve of the C in Back, can you see how the diagonal of the A makes the already off curve seem to bend up?

Also present in the original logo and will not be changed.

Bingowings said:

Kerning adjustments will help tweak the spacing between some of the letter forms too and help you avoid the crunching together thats very obvious in the ESB title it will also help prevent the clashing of close fitting uprights (like the vertical lines where the T in Strikes almost collide into the S and the R creating the illusion of a double width)

This I can do - I'll do my best to tweak the kerning so there aren't any "double-width" lines without compromising the look of the original logo.

Bingowings said:

Be warned it's really labour intensive work which is why some of the faults do (as you point out) turn up on official materials like posters because designers often can not arsed to do it right or don't think their audience will notice. Part of the problem is that the SE title designs were created to be seen with outlines filled in so the spaces between the letters were given more definition. Bear that in mind when you making outline only versions. In effect you are creating a totally new design because removing the coloured in sections you can no longer rely on them to iron out any clashes in the positoning of the letters.

Oh, I've discovered how labor intensive it can be.  It's not fun stuff.

However, while some of these peculiarities in the ESB logo that you've pointed out may be due to laziness on the part of the original designer, they've been that way since 1979 and (to me, anyway) are as much a part of the "look" of the logo as anything else.  "Fixing" the strange slope on the "P" in "Empire" and the weird "C" in "Back" would be just as bad, to me, as disconnecting the "ST" and "RS" in the Star Wars logo.

And the only one that's based on an SE design is Jedi, and I think that one turned out fairly successfully - one change I did make was to extend it vertically so the distance between the top and bottom of the logo (not counting the bottom of the "J") is the same as that of the SW and ESB logos.  There is something funky about the bottom of the "J," but I've got a very long time to work out the kinks in that one.

Bingowings said:

Best of luck because this sort of work looks so easy until you actually try doing it and you have already done a much better job than many I've seen.

Thank you, that means a lot coming from someone who very clearly knows quite a bit about this stuff!  I think these new ones are a huge improvement over the ones I did back in February.

Sumguy21 said:

I'd remove the curved edges.

Also, take a look at places where two stroked edges almost meet, such as the "H" and "E" in the word "THE" for the RotJ and STR in "STRIKES." They look a bit awkward, I'd consider moving them apart just a bit so they don't look like they flow into eachother so much. This also goes for the "A" and the "C" in "BACK." 

Also take a look at the "E" in "THE" for ESB. I would remove the indentations for the "E" where the stroke tries to fill in the gaps in the letter.

The curved edges will be removed - I decided that last night after attempting (unsuccessfully) to animate the opening crawl for Star Wars and was quite unhappy with the way the rounded edges looked.

As I said above, I'll be working on the kerning to get rid of the "double" lines where letters are too close together.

Now as for the "E" in the ESB logo ... I can try making the "forks" of the E a little thinner so the outlines don't touch, but I'm not making any promises with that one.  I'll see what I can do.  I'm hoping it doesn't result in the need to make the "THE" (and thus the top bar of the "E" in Empire) bigger, but I'll see if I can improve it.

Now, one last thing - how's the yellow color on the logos?  While animating the crawl (attempting to, anyway), I noticed that my yellow was a lot more yellow than the GOUT's logo (which is actually kind of greenish-yellow).  And then I noticed while editing later that Adywan's ANH:R crawl was a lot less yellow than the GOUT's crawl - his was a bit more orange.

So any opinions on the color of the crawl/logo?  (I'm still toying with the idea of blue for ESB and red for ROTJ, but as I'm working on SW for the moment I'm just asking about the yellow/orange style)

Oh, and a quick update, I'm now about 14 minutes into the film.  So far I've had to speed up 4 Revisited shots by a few frames to match the GOUT - the first can be seen in the 7.5-minute WIP clip on YouTube, it's where Ady removed the jump cut when the door Threepio and Artoo walk through explodes (six frames missing due to jump cut removal), the second and third were the first two wipes in the movie (around ten frames or so missing from each during the wipes - not sure if this is a Revisited thing or an SE thing), and the third was a shot of Threepio in the desert that was missing one frame.  None of these are noticeable - the audio sync of the mono mix during the jump-cut-door-explosion fix is a little off, but no one's said anything about it in regards to the YouTube video, so unless there are major objections to this method, I'll probably be keeping these sped-up shots.

And I've also decided that I'm replacing Ady's new canyon establishing shot with the SE version, as the only reason to keep the Revisited version would be for continuity with Episode II, which is completely useless with these edits as the prequels don't exist for their purposes.

Now I *really* need to find a way to rip the AVCHD SE on a Mac.  Handbrake doesn't work.  Anyone else got a suggestion?  Please?

The whole film is basically one file on the AVCHD.

It shouldn't be too hard to find (just keep browsing to the biggest folder until you find a ts or m2ts file)

Just copy that file to your harddrive and the "ripping" is done :-)

Well, now I feel like an idiot.  I did exactly what you suggested, and I'm now converting (via HandBrake) the AVCHD to a 10GB (at 11,424 kbps bitrate, no audio) h.264 mp4 file, size 720x480 with no cropping - I figure that's probably the best way to get it to the resolution I need without losing any quality (since HandBrake can't output lossless), though I may lose *some* quality simply due to the downconversion to SD.  At any rate, I'll see how it looks when it gets done encoding.  I have to go to work in a half hour (3-hour shift ... I'd better make damn good tips for such a short time on the clock), and it says it'll take about 3 hours, so I should know by the time I get back from work.

--edit--

Damn, first I get sent home from work an hour early, then I get home and HandBrake says it's got another hour and 35 minutes to go.  Lame.

Alright, I've hit a bit of a roadblock.

The scene with the stormtroopers and dewbacks searching the desert ... well ... I hate it.  I've always hated the added SE shots of the scene, so I'm trying to cut them out.  I don't mind the added dewback in the shot that was always there since 1977, but I hate the two new shots.

The problem is, the shot that's been there since 1977 is shortened a lot in the SE.  So I'm stuck with either using at least one of the new SE shots, or (gasp!) switching to GOUT video for that shot.  And as many here know, that shot is one of the worst on the GOUT (four-eyed stormptrooper, anyone?) ... so I really don't want to do that.

If anyone has any suggestions regarding this shot, that would be great :-)

ChainsawAsh said:

Alright, I've hit a bit of a roadblock.

The scene with the stormtroopers and dewbacks searching the desert ... well ... I hate it.  I've always hated the added SE shots of the scene, so I'm trying to cut them out.  I don't mind the added dewback in the shot that was always there since 1977, but I hate the two new shots.

The problem is, the shot that's been there since 1977 is shortened a lot in the SE.  So I'm stuck with either using at least one of the new SE shots, or (gasp!) switching to GOUT video for that shot.  And as many here know, that shot is one of the worst on the GOUT (four-eyed stormptrooper, anyone?) ... so I really don't want to do that.

If anyone has any suggestions regarding this shot, that would be great :-)

Maybe you could use the gout, color match it to the AVCHD shot or Revisited whatever you are using, Then have the R/AVCHD shot blend into the Gout shot when the gout is the only source available for the frames.

Make that single shot into a clip in a timeline (I don't know how to use the software you are using, so sorry if this isn't possible) from both sources and line them up on the timeline so that the end matches. Use the GOUT just for the beginning of the shot where that's all there is and then have it slowly blend into the higher quality shot. If done well it would be better than just using the GOUT and the increase in quality would be slow so it wouldn't be so jarring.

I just typed a huge update post, then somehow managed to, while typing, select it all and delete it, then continue typing to prevent the possibility of undoing my mistake.  Fuck me.  I'm not retyping that tonight, it's 1:10 AM here, I'll post an update tomorrow.

Possessed, that's a good idea - I'll try it out in After Effects and see what results I can come up with.

Short version of the really long and detailed update is I'm now almost an hour into the film, with a few shots throughout that hour that aren't done yet (I need DJ's GOUT before I can do those).  I'll post a YouTube clip of the Mos Eisley sequence so you guys can see how I've cut the SE/Revisited footage to match the original cut/mono mix - I'm pretty excited and happy about how it turned out.