Typophile - Star Wars flying text - word spacing problems - Comments

Hmm Maybe somebody will post

Eben Sorkin — Fri, 8 Jul 2005 00:31:52 -0700

Hmm Maybe somebody will post some stills when the DVD comes out...

To be fair, I think that the

dan_reynolds — Fri, 8 Jul 2005 00:04:29 -0700

To be fair, I think that the CIA-like glyphs are part of a bigger word. And I haven’t heard anyone else notic this. But I have seen the film four times, and I noticed it each time.
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Really? Well then I’ll

hrant — Thu, 7 Jul 2005 21:50:19 -0700

Really?
Well then I’ll have to go see the movie again won’t I! :-)

hhp

Did you notice that the big

dan_reynolds — Thu, 7 Jul 2005 21:41:43 -0700

Did you notice that the big shuttle ship that Obi Wan gets into on Coruscant, when he and Anakin part as friends, has “CIA” written on it?

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So I just finally caught

hrant — Thu, 7 Jul 2005 18:25:54 -0700

So I just finally caught Episode 3. Amazing movie, one of the best I’ve seen - much better than I expected. No stupid one-liners, very intense, both in emotion and action - reminds nicely of the original long, long ago, in a state of youth far, far away. I especially liked the little things, like catching a glimpse of the young Grand Moff Tarkin on the sidelines.

BTW, I did notice some type: on the computers on Musafar. It looked a little bit like those ancient Hebrew Dead Sea inscriptions. But yeah, otherwise type was absent. And the titles? I was too excited to check. I can hear Jabba scoffing: “He’s no type Jedi!”

hhp

If you have the chance, for

kris — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 14:53:19 -0700

If you have the chance, for the sake of comparison, play the
lego star wars game on ps2. The titles are hilariously bad,
they have split each episode into about 6 chapters. The best
bit: they are set in FF Sari!

Too too right.

Eben Sorkin — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 12:49:38 -0700

Too too right.

I just saw this online

dan_reynolds — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 12:33:19 -0700

I just saw this online today. If you thought that Episode III’s flying text was bad, the album cover is just…
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Knowing that Speilberg is

Norbert Florendo — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 08:35:11 -0700

Knowing that Speilberg is often faithful to his inspirational sources, I tried finding pics of Flying Crawl chapter titles seen in old Flash Gordon serials of 1936.

Of the few I found (very poor resolution) it is evident that the visual effect of words gliding off to the distance is best achieved with justified copy. That way both left and right margins clearly follow one-point perspective.

Oddly enough, the Flash Gordon title seemed fairly well spaced, but too small to see any detail.

I remember being slightly irked by the opening crawl in Star Wars Episode III, but really, I was too excited to care.

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Yes, I’m old, but I remember Yoda when he had hair!

I haven’t seen episode 3

hrant — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 07:53:58 -0700

I haven’t seen episode 3 yet (I know, I know) but maybe it’s a good thing it doesn’t have any text: the text in episode 2 (like outside the bar on Coruscant) was just horrid.

BTW, Tolkien was a linguist, that’s why!

hhp

I find I can’t stop

Eben Sorkin — Tue, 5 Jul 2005 00:11:04 -0700

I find I can’t stop noticing & thinking about text/fonts anymore, especially at films. Like Erik Spiekermann said : paraphrasing : Typophilia is a terrible disease.

Nick, text on de-texting! :-)

Actually it is relaxing for me to be without texts, for the reason above. Have been somewhere where there is lots of text which you can’t read? I find that also relaxing...

I guess I was thinking of the most recent star wars film as a kind of vision of the future like the film 2001 was meant to be* and the abscence of writting seemed to me somehow not like wimbeldon as you describe it, but as kind of purposely bland, almost neutered vision - because of the abscence of incidental text - as opposed to simply advertising.

*silly already i know. Really it’s just a marketing vehicle after all.

This is the opposite of The Lord of the Rings, where text is central. It’s on the ring. Or Blade Runner where incidental text is everywhere to create atmosphere.

I think what I am getting at is that there was a missed opportunity to make this Star Wars more compelling. But then with dialog like that - it is not too surprising...

The word spacing is pretty

kris — Mon, 4 Jul 2005 21:59:21 -0700

The word spacing is pretty terrible. But, oddly enough, I don’t actually care.
I like to go to the pictures to not think about what I think about most of the
time. I find it helpful and relaxing. The Star Wars logo is pretty terrible too,
but I still don’t care!

kris.

>The last star wars is

Nick Shinn — Mon, 4 Jul 2005 06:52:09 -0700

>The last star wars is textless

Yeah, all those advanced civilizations without street advertising.
De-texting must have caught on.

Maybe it’s like in The Diamond Age, where you get the ads beamed straight into your visual cortex. If you’re rich, you can see the world without them.

As a sports fan, I really enjoyed Wimbledon for the lack of commercial images on the playing surface and surrounds. Even the tennis players’ clothing is de-texted.

Sorry, wandering off topic again.

Oh well, thank you very

wesseltoft — Mon, 4 Jul 2005 05:12:42 -0700

Oh well, thank you very much, Dan for your hyperlink to me. I wonder of this referrer from typophile.com to my website, so that I visit this link. So now we meet us again. :)

Actually, the odd thing to

Eben Sorkin — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 11:46:52 -0700

Actually, the odd thing to me was the abscence of anybody reading anything ever. That was probably the result of a non-stop action, but I did like the original star wars for it’s 3d games (chess in 3d), combat computers and GUIs. The last star wars is textless - i think. Apart from the opening of course...

Star Wars flying text - word spacing problems

Eben Sorkin — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:04:45 -0700

Has anybody alreay discussed ( & condemned ) the word spacing on the flying text at the beginning of the most recent Star Wars films? It happens in part because the text is not allowed to be ragged right....

Probably all the others too - but this one was especially obvious to me.