CT Original 1976 Star Wars Trailer Restored

Hi everyone,
The YouTube channel I’m a part of just released a restored version of the first Star Wars trailer from 1976:

We started off by replacing the scenes from the movie with scenes from Star Wars Despecialized, matching them frame-by-frame, in order to make them seem as original as possible. In some cases (like the lightsaber scene with Ben and Vader), an updated (colored-lightsaber) or alternate shot had to be used to keep the quality consistent with the rest of the footage. We cleaned the film dirt out of the starry background and the explosion, as well as stabilized the text crawl. In addition, we worked on the audio to make it clearer, as well as bring it to its original pitch, as referenced by other copies of the trailer we came across in our research. We concentrated on bringing the trailer to the highest possible quality while keeping as many original elements as possible.

Let us know what you think! Enjoy!
- The ReDiscovered Future

 

Super clean and sharp! Looks fantastic!

 

Great work, kudos!

I really love that trailer but each time I watch it I can't help but to ask: When was the official Star Wars logo and font style created?

 

Evolution of the SW logo: http://www.visualnews.com/2013/08/16/the-storied-evolution-of-the-star-wars-logo/

 

It makes me think now someone needs to do a fan edit of Star Wars with alternative, sci fi music as George Lucas originally wanted it to.

 

Beautifully done.

 

We're very glad everyone's as enthusiastic about our remaster as we are! Our channel focuses on rescuing media from old formats, restoring it, and sharing it with a new generation of viewers. We plan to release more Star Wars content in the future. Does anyone have any old media from a galaxy far, far away they'd like to see cleaned up?

 

Fantastic. Looks great. One other thing it highlights is how much teaser trailers have changed over the years.

 

Looks fab. There's something funny about how Wuher sounds when he's ducking for cover.

 

Ugh, movie trailers back then were SO much cooler than today

Granted, all I know of them is what I have seen on Youtube or in older movies' special features, but now it's all the same crap

LOOK, BRIEF SHOTS OF EXPLOSIONS. INSERT BIG BOOM NOISES WHERE THERE ARE NONE. USE MUSIC NOT EVEN IN THE MOVIE THAT SOUNDS DRAMATIC

Lame. Yet in old trailers like those, it generates excitement, intrigue, and most importantly, it pulls you in, makes you want to see it

Or perhaps I'm just being hipster and long for an era of which I was not part

 

Seagoat

Or perhaps you are just tiring for seeing the same type of modern trailer over and over again so that the old Star Wars Trailer looks unorthodox and fresh.

And IIRC, it used a theme from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

 

I remember hearing Mark Hamil saying Fox initially didn't know how to market the film. They didn't know to portray it as down and gritty action film or a tongue-in-cheek comedy.

 

I'm not quite sure, but I believe the music is the start of Winter, just slowed down and pitch-shifted.

 

I still wonder how different Star Wars is without John Williams score?

 

This may be stretching it a bit, but this should give you an idea of how important John Williams's score is for Star Wars:

 

John Williams music sort of gives SW that sense of hope for the viewer, whereas the non-John Williams trailer gives the sense of a much darker/sinister tale.

 

Our channel is going to try to upload a new Star Wars video every two weeks on Monday from now on.
Here's this past Monday's video: an advertisement for the classic trilogy on videocassette, sourced from a 1986 VHS copy of Return of the Jedi.


Enjoy!

 

I actually remember renting ROTJ on VHS when it came out around March 1986. I didn't buy movies then as I was in 7th grade and didn't have the money, so I would wait for them on cable on tape them on my VCR.