MAKE A STAR WARS INTRO MOVIE
When the movie was re-released, the " A New Hope" subtitle was added, as was " Episode IV." The special 2004 DVD editions of the original trilogy also featured computer-generated versions of the crawls for restoration and enhancement purposes. That said, the prequel trilogy crawls were done in a much more timely fashion. Since the first Star Wars opening crawl debuted in 1977, multiple changes have been made. There was a difficulty, however, in matching the exact look of the original trilogy because the design team had to piece together the elements. To cater to viewers in other countries, the production team had to film multiple versions of the crawl that featured the text in different languages.īy the time Lucasfilm developed the prequel trilogy beginning with 1999's Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the crew was able to use computer-generated crawls. Various test runs had to be made before everything could be deemed perfect. Special effects advisor Dennis Muren has stated that the opening crawl process was very time-consuming because of focus problems and blemishes. Spanning two feet wide and six feet long, the models were laid out on the floor so that a low camera could longitudinally move along the text to create the crawling effect. To create the opening crawls throughout the original Star Wars trilogy, physical models had to be developed. Developing The Star Wars Opening Crawl Was A Difficult Process Next came the extremely lengthy process of filming the opening crawl, which actually required filming the text with a camera. When Lucas' original version was deemed too long, filmmaker Brian De Palma came to the movie's aid to revise the prologue. Once the font and logo were figured out for readability purposes, the text had to be written. DeMille 1939 film, Union Pacific, and how the crawl moved along a railroad track toward a vanishing point. More specifically, the production team took note of Cecil B.
MAKE A STAR WARS INTRO SERIES
Related: Star Wars: Why George Lucas Added Jabba the Hutt & Boba Fett Into A New HopeĪhead of Star Wars' debut, Lucas was inspired by opening crawls used in film series like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
Even though they returned for the prequel trilogy and the more recent sequel series, Rogue One or Solo: A Star Wars Story didn't have opening crawls. The tactic worked so well that it was brought back for the next two installments in the trilogy. Certain words in the crawl like "Death Star" and "Galactic Empire" were purposely capitalized to stress the importance.
The text provided a three-paragraph prologue while John Williams' "Main Theme Title" played.
Lucas and his team first created the famous opening crawl for 1977's Star Wars, the movie that launched the epic saga. Though the opening crawl has gone through some transformations since George Lucas first used it, the method remains synonymous with the film series. Serving as the opening sequence, the logo would then shrink while the crawl added context and backstory for the movie set to begin. Featured in all nine installments of the Skywalker saga, the "roll-up," or crawl, always began with the iconic line, " A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.," ahead of the official Star Wars logo, which led in the moving text.
The opening crawl is one of the signature aspects of the Star Wars franchise, but creating it was much more troublesome than most viewers thought.