Stjärnornas Krig - Swedish 16mm print (Released)

It’s time to start a thread on the Swedish subtitled 16mm print “preservation” effort that is nearing completion.  I put “preservation” in quotes, because I am admittedly not putting as much effort into this as I did the Puggo Grande.

The source is a 16mm print of “Star Wars” with Swedish subtitles and mono mix. It was provided by Jaxxon, the same source as the better 16mm print used for the PG.  The sound is the same as used for the PG. The color on the print is much more red, and it has proven difficult to effectively remove very much of the red without losing detail in many of the scenes, so even though I have removed quite a bit of red, the final product will still be quite pink. I was not willing to go through scene-by-scene with different color corrections… there are other, more interesting SW projects I am eager to get started on.

Interestingly, this print seems to be just as cropped as the PG, except on the top instead of on the bottom!

More details will follow, as well as a few screen shots. But for now, an important detail needs to be decided… what to call this thing??  I hesitate to put the name “Puggo” in the title, because I am not really putting my best effort into it.  It is unabashedly “for completists only”.  So, any ideas? The Swedish subtitle for “Star Wars” is “Sjarnornas Krig”, and the Swedish word for “pug” is “mops”.  But I’m not sure any of that makes for catchy material.

STATUS REPORT:

• Finished Workprinter scan of all three reels.
  I wasn't as meticulous as I was for the PG, so a few scenes are a bit washed out... particularly on the Tantive IV and on Tatooine.
• Finished red reduction of all three reels.
  I only did a mild level of reduction. Some scenes would have benefitted from more, but then I would have had to do separate reductions scene-by-scene. That was more work than I was willing to do.
• Synched sound on reel 1.
  This print was the source of the sound for the PG, but since the Workprinter doesn't grab sound, synching still has to be done by hand.
• Resized reel 1 and applied curved letterbox.
  The slightly curved mask used to letterbox the PG was reused.
• Encoded reel1 sound (ac3) and video (mpv).

I'll start on reel 2 tomorrow.  Still need to collect a few screen shots and make a webpage for them on my puggo site.

Keep all expectations in check... this will certainly be worse than the PG. Noticeable drop in quality due to red shift and sloppy exposure settings. The subtitles are annoying if you don't know Swedish.  Most people will probably only want it for the mystery extra!

The correct Swedish title of the film is, "Stjärnornas Krig". I'm really interested to see this, mainly because of the subs, as it'll be interesting for me to see how the original translation differ to the modern Swedish translation.

Thank you for doing this.

Interesting observation...

On the PG "making of" extra, I noted that the 2nd reel on the PG had a different countdown leader than the 1st and 3rd reels.  I thought that this, plus reel 2 being a little more red, was evidence that the 2nd reel came from a different print.  Although I also noted that it had been cropped identically.

Well, lo and behold, this Swedish set of prints has the same discrepancy in countdown leaders, and again the 2nd reel has a different countdown than reels 1 and 3.  In fact, the countdowns correspond identically in both sets.

So now I am beginning to wonder if it is customary, for some reason, for 16mm sets of prints to have a different countdown for reel 2 as they have for reels 1 and 3 ??

msycamore said:

The correct Swedish title of the film is, "Stjärnornas Krig". I'm really interested to see this, mainly because of the subs, as it'll be interesting for me to see how the original translation fare to the modern.

Thanks, I couldn't figure out how to generate the ä.

Indeed, I think the most interesting thing likely to come of this will be in the translations of the subtitles back to English by people like yourself, after it's done.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Thanks, I couldn't figure out how to generate the ä.

Ah, okay. Didn't think about that, I'm so used to have that letter on my keyboard. ;)

Finished resizing and letterboxing reels 2 and 3.

Experimenting with very light sharpening. Will A/B over the weekend.

Would like to add that synching the sound is complicated by the different frame rates.  I have to do a temporary pulldown, then synch, then go back to the original unpulled video and encode with pulldown flag. The issue here, is that ALL video edits must be complete before synching the sound... you can't include any video edits during sound synch because you don't actually encode the video file used for sound synch.

Will start sound synching reel 2 over the weekend too.

Personally I highly doubt the swedish translation will be any different from any other subtitled language. For sure I will not result in hilariousness like "Backstroke of the West".

But tell you what Puggo...You are welcome to send me a PM if you need a native Swede to look at it ;)

Any additional film sources are always useful. Thanks for doing this Puggo.

FWIW, I have found that importing clips into photoshop and correcting them their is the most powerful method for getting rid of the red in faded prints. I've been amazed at what I have been able to recover using all the tools available there. But it is a lot of work, and hard on your CPU.

Had to redo reel 1, because I discovered that in several places the subtitles stepped over the frame boundary.  So there are now some lengthy segments where the top of the frame appears along the bottom, in order to see the entire subtitles.  Like I said, for completists only.

Your countdowns for reels 1/3 vs 2 match the ones for Ep.IV.

Redid the framing and color balance of reel1, and re-encoded.

Finished sound sync of reel2.

Redid the framing and color balance of reel2, it's rendering now.

Still need to post some screen caps (haven't had a chance, but will hopefully this coming week).

Finished reel2.

Reel3 is rendering, will work on reel3 sound sync tonight.

Great to hear this is moving along smoothly, looking forward to some screen-caps of the subs. Keep up the good work.

Reel 3 finished.

Starting to work on the "bonus feature".

The "bonus feature" has been captured, sound and video.  I'll sync the sound with the video later today.

At this point, I'm thinking I'll either call the disc "Sjarnornas Krig", or I'll call it the "Puggo Swedish Edition".  Any preferences one way or the other?

I vote for Puggo's Swedish Edition.

People will know what to expect with that title.

Oops, you're right.  I thought the "t" was missing in the initial subtitle, but I just checked again and the "t" was there.

Great find with the Swedish poster!  You wouldn't happen to have that in hi-res would you?  I could use it for the menu.