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The 1977 Crawl.

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I'm going to stick my neck out here. I've just studied the crawl VERY closely. I will now reveal this:

1. I looked at the Revenge of the Sith Crawl first. As expected, the star-field does not move.
2. Then I studied the 1977 crawl. The star-field is moving - this is the first indication that it is the "real thing". If they used the same process for recreating the crawl as the prequels then the star-field should not move at all (they just take 1 frame, and put the star-field over it, they don't composite it over a movie of the opening crawl).
3. Comparing the quality to that of ESB, it has clearly been mastered after 1993.

OK, now I remember when I suggested that the 2004 crawls were recreated - and I didn't say that they were beyond doubt, but I thought they were - and people said "no, Boris, they're the originals"... so let's compare, if we shall, to the ANH crawl... the crawl is exceptionally stable, and the stars don't move. This would suggest they recomposed a digitally-stabilized crawl onto a stationary star-field.

Maybe it's just me, but the 77 crawl doesn't resemble either the generated ROTS crawl - or the digitally stabilized ANH one.

So, let's have a look at the EOD... the text does move more then on the "GOUT" disc... however the stars seem to move less.

It's my opinion that this crawl has been somewhat stabilized. It does not appear to be a recreation, and the 77 crawl does subtly "wobble" on the "GOUT" disc ever so slightly about once every 2-4 seconds.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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I can't believe we're even going into the crawl in this much detail - no wonder us fans have a reputation as being a little - well - 'special' - hahaha! Not taking the P here, but just suddenly hit me the level of detail we go into over these releases is perhaps a tad over the top? Even if this crawl is digitally generated at some point, does it really matter in the scheme of things? It looked fine to me and this on a projected screen...
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Good work, Boris.

Would this then indicate that they basically went and re-scanned the original crawl? Why wouldn't they just use the EOD scan? Makes one wonder what else they have in that Ranch, just waiting to be used for another release...

Also, based on the caps I've seen, it looks like the opening stardestroyer fly-by is pretty much the exact same shot taken from the 2004 SE. The detail, colour and image characteristics match perfectly. I am guessing that this is because the starfield on the 1993 LD fly-by is the re-created one and thus would not match the original crawl, so they just spliced the original crawl to the 2004 fly-by, which would also match in quality and image characteristics, perhaps downgrading their quality so as not to completely stand out (they certainly look better than any other shot on the disk from what I've seen, and are free of the ugly grain that this release is notorious for--the look of the Tattooine moon for me is a dead give away).
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After having watched the crawl on the OUT yesterday, I was very convinced it was the original crawl.

Differences between it and the EOD crawl can be explained by what I said in another thread: the EOD documentary makers did their own transfers of original film elements, independent even from what Lowry was doing at the same time for the 2004 discs. There's no guarantee Lucasfilm used the EOD transfers, or even had access to them. It's very likely they took the original elements themselves and used them to do the original crawl (hence the "digging into the archives" statement on the press releases). So in the end they look a little different from the EOD crawl.

--SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

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Of course the EOD makers did their own transfers but those transfers still are done on behalf of LFL, and belong to LFL. I mean they were allowed full access to the original negatives, thats not exactly a priviledge thats easily given. All the material they scanned was likely done in house by LFL archive technitions. I had also heard that LFL had transfered all of the original negatives to the computer in 1997, but i'm not sure if this is true.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
Good work, Boris.

Would this then indicate that they basically went and re-scanned the original crawl? Why wouldn't they just use the EOD scan? Makes one wonder what else they have in that Ranch, just waiting to be used for another release... The EOD actually starts from the Lucasfilm Ltd logo, and it's actually clear this moves around much more then it does on the GOUT as well. This indicates the transfer they used for EOD moved around more... so maybe they didn't even digitally stabilize it. The main difference between the two is that the GOUT one is higher quality then the EOD. I'd suggest they just did a quick transfer for use with EOD... and then for this release, they went and did a more careful transfer.

Also, and this is hard to spot, on all the CG crawls the text goes over the stars. On all the three (four) "original" crawls the stars are visible through the text. This is also evident on the OUT disc. This is a dead-giveaway that it was composted optically rather then digitally... so it's just plain crazy to think they CG'd the crawl and then optically composted it onto a shaking star background. Also, the stars are far brighter then they are on any of the three prequel crawls.
Originally posted by: zombie84
Also, based on the caps I've seen, it looks like the opening stardestroyer fly-by is pretty much the exact same shot taken from the 2004 SE. The detail, colour and image characteristics match perfectly. I am guessing that this is because the starfield on the 1993 LD fly-by is the re-created one and thus would not match the original crawl, so they just spliced the original crawl to the 2004 fly-by, which would also match in quality and image characteristics, perhaps downgrading their quality so as not to completely stand out (they certainly look better than any other shot on the disk from what I've seen, and are free of the ugly grain that this release is notorious for--the look of the Tattooine moon for me is a dead give away).
No it's not. It's got the grain, it's got the matte-line (which you can see on the Tattooine moon) and it's not got the SE lens-flare... here's the same frame from both versions, so you can see what I mean:

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/4403/swotsf5.jpg

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8119/swsezz1.jpgOriginally posted by: zombie84
I had also heard that LFL had transfered all of the original negatives to the computer in 1997, but i'm not sure if this is true.
Yes that's true, however the master reels were permanently altered with the special edition parts first.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Also before I forget, I just wanted to say I think it's wonderful they released this with the 1977 crawl, and without a "selectable" 1981 ANH crawl. I know it sounds crazy, since some people wanted a selectable crawl - however the way I see it is that the 1981 crawl was the first of MANY changes made to the Star Wars Trilogy. And to have it released faithfully is simply fantastic.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Hmmm, if only they'd stayed audioistically faithful to the original as well, I could have enjoyed myself past the first 45 minutes. Oh, well ... 45 minutes of nostaglia ain't bad. But I am in the 80's as soon as they hit the Alderaan asteriod debris field. Le sigh.





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I was pretty sure the crawl (scroll) in the beginning was redone as well and not from the LD. Only because from other boots I have which are LD rips, the entire text body from left to right is a little thinner. On the Star Wars OUT DVD you can tell when the first line appears from the bottom of the frame you can't see the 'I' in 'It' because the start of the text line goes outside the TV safe zone. But from other boots I have, for example TR47/Cowclops V2, the text (It) starts exactly where the TV safe area starts.

Also I think the angle of perspective is a little different. I set up two DVD players and paused a frame in the exact same place, and switched back and fourth from the inputs, and the text body is definetley wider and I'm pretty sure a different angle of persepctive. Maybe the LD used in tr47/cowclops version is just like that, but the new OUT looks an awful lot like the PT crawls.

Plus, I really feel LF pulled some kind of Garret Gilchrist classic edition edit, where they mixed altered SE or 04 DVD material with older LD material. Places where you might not notice. I mean it doesn't look as good (or as fake) as the new 04 stuff but it seems to 'new' perfect example when Luke meets Ben for the first time or when R2 is in 'the land of the jawas'. The color and clarity is very high. More like the 04 DVD than the LD. Unless they cleaned them up.
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Different text width and angle from ESB & ROTJ may be signs of authenticity, rather than recreation. Remember the ANH crawl was re-shot when the ESB one was done, which is why those two match. The pre-ANH crawl was always a little different stylistically from the "Episode" ones. Not saying it's 100% authentic (it does look overly stable), just sayin'...

As for the hybrid idea - I don't think so. The whole point of this release was not to put time & money into it. The overall saturation is boosted a little (nowhere near SE cartoon levels, though).
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I have found another indication that it is the origal crawl!

Start the film and pause it on the first frame where the STAR WARS logo appears. Now advance 11 frames. You see fixed dirt on the lens between the lower connection line of the "S" and the "T"!

Now someone has to check on the EOD 1977 crawl if these dirt pieces appear in the same spot.

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Originally posted by: boris
Also, and this is hard to spot, on all the CG crawls the text goes over the stars. On all the three (four) "original" crawls the stars are visible through the text. This is also evident on the OUT disc. This is a dead-giveaway that it was composted optically rather then digitally... so it's just plain crazy to think they CG'd the crawl and then optically composted it onto a shaking star background. Also, the stars are far brighter then they are on any of the three prequel crawls. And here's an animation to show what I mean, already posted in another thread I chose a "dark star" (as I like to call it) because it's dead-easy to see at real-time and at the original resolution. I haven't resized the frame so the picture will look slightly stretched.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/4631/crawl2fc3.gif

Originally posted by: Vigo
I have found another indication that it is the origal crawl!

Start the film and pause it on the first frame where the STAR WARS logo appears. Now advance 11 frames. You see fixed dirt on the lens between the lower connection line of the "S" and the "T"!
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3947/swlogo1tu2.jpg
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/7465/swlogo2vf6.jpg

It doesn't appear to be dirt... and it's in more then one frame, as seen above.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!