Gillean

Excellent! I’ve also long pondered a Machete Order fanedit inspired by Topher Grace’s cut and came to a similar conclusion: use just the Darth Maul fight, ending with Obi-Wan’s promise, as a cold open in between A Long Time Ago and the Main Title.

I love your voiceover intro; very smoothly sets up the shift in time period without resorting to an out-of-place ’35 Years Earlier’ subtitle, wasting words in the opening crawl or even spoiling the surprise cold open.

As I’ve never tried editing this, I don’t know if the Darth Maul fight's energy could be sustained without cutting to the space and Gungan battles. Your flashbacks sidestep this issue nicely.

I’m glad you're putting it into action – ideas are worthless without execution!

I do have one suggestion. The cut after A Long Time Ago needs to be as explosive a start as the usual Main Title and possibly Duel of the Fates can’t pull it off by itself. It may work better to cut straight to the flash of a lightsaber strike – possibly from the flurry of blows just before where you started the scene – and amplify that striking noise.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Your example isn't showing, but I'm guessing you mean the current Lucasfilm Ltd logo. The most accurate way to make your own logo resemble theirs is to manually create one in a vector art application like Adobe Illustrator. If you simply want to automated solution that is 'good enough' then I recommend Star Wars Title Sequence Generator, an app that creates custom 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm Ltd logos, Star Wars logos and opening crawls. Here's an example of its output. If you don't have access to a Mac then unfortunately that wont help you.

This topic needs moving to the Requests and How-tos forum.

I was actually considering posting a tutorial exactly on this topic earlier this week, so apparently there is interest. I'll have to think more about it.

Asteroid-Man said:

I don't remember. It's from another DVD. I use the same bar code for all my covers. Besides, it's just a bar code, doesn't matter what it's from.

The barcode is from Batman Begins.

Considering any old mobile phone or computer with a webcam can scan barcodes these days and many people now catalogue their DVD collections via barcode scanning in various media library apps (Delicious Library being a common example, and the various copycat apps for Windows), it is probably worthwhile using correct barcodes on future custom designs if they are primarily for public consumption.

That said, what would be the appropriate barcode for the fanedit? The various Star Wars videos would make some sense (as once scanned only a few text fields would need to be changed in the library apps to correct the title and producers), though if you're going for complete realism then really no barcode would be the only option.

[It should be noted: I don't personally care - my fanedit library will be purely digital soon and I only print out custom DVD art for my own projects anyway -  so don't make any changes to YOUR OWN work purely for me. Oh, and I do love the designs! :) ]

Janskeet said:

Ripplin said:

You should read the novelizations sometime. They explain a lot of stuff the movies didn't. Extra scenes, too, like Vader and the Emperor talking about Yoda in ROTJ.

Which books do you suggest I read? I'm not into the EU or the prequels, strictly OOT. I've tried to indulge in Star Wars books a few times, but never got anywhere with them.

A 'novelization' is a movie's story adapted into the form of a novel. So Ripplin isn't referring to any EU novels, just the books 'Star Wars', 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi'.

Here's probably the cheapest way to buy them (new) - http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Trilogy-George-Lucas/dp/0345384385/ref=ed_oe_p

RoccondilRinon said:

I have the latest version of QuickTime. It works fine. Must be something else.

Might be a codec issue then; are you using the regular XviD codec? I'm using the bundled Perian version, so that may explain the difference in file reading.

RoccondilRinon said:

Works fine in VLC and QuickTime. Probably an mplayer problem.

Actually, the latest version of Quicktime also respects the file's Video Properties Header so also displays the trailer in 16:9 ratio, giving a squished image. Easy to fix if you have the Pro version of Quicktime (just change the video track's Visual Settings and save the file), if not then just use another player.

Not sure why VLC ignores the instruction, bug maybe, or just a missing feature.

bkev said:

One question - since there's shots from ROTJ on the site, does that mean that the whole trilogy has been at least captured?

Nope, a section of ROTJ is still missing.