New BTTF "Save the Clock Tower" Flyer Project

I'm starting this thread so we can get the details perfected as much as possible on the flyer. I have posted my own version of the flyer in the BTTF thread that looks very close to screen accurate, however I have recently been shown that there are some issues with font/typeface differences and some of the text positioning.

It isn't anything major, or anything that anyone is really going to notice outside the RPF, but now that I have checked it out, I really want to get this thing 100% anyway.

So I will attempt to post the actual PDF of my flyer as it is.
Hopefully this can be used so we can work together and get this thing as perfect/screen accurate as possible. :thumbsup

I will get the PDF posted later. I still have a lot of catching up to do since I fixed my computer.

 

I just bought some pale blue paper today and was about to print your version of the flyer when you hit me with this!!! I almost wasted my ink!!!! :lol But seriously, awesome work so far - not that I can see anything wrong.

I do have one question though and I don't mean to knock your work, but is it too high quality?

The way I figure it, the ladies at the Preservation Society would have used a photocopier (built 1985 or earlier, so not a very good one) to photocopy a 30 year old newspaper onto the flyer.
I don't mean to sound like a smart-* but the way I always pictured it would be the newspaper part of the flyer to look photocopied.

What do you think? Or am I being too * fussy?

 

I've considered this same thing myself. I think the props were meant to be a little bit sharper/clearer than a real flyer would be, so it would look better on film.

I also considered all the points that Roland made in the Auction PDF thread, and realized that there was still a lot of work to be done. I think I have it a lot closer now. I corrected all the issues as well as I'm able to and I think it turned out pretty good.

I also changed the font for the article text. I found one that I think works better for the flyer
and looks more like something you would see in an old photocopy. I will post it in a few minutes.

 

Here it is, I even managed to correct the shape of those "C"s :lol

I used Roland's photo, which was already really nice.
I modified it slightly to look more like a photocopy of a newspaper photo would look.

I even used one of my original Earl Hays prop papers as reference to make sure all the text was justified perfectly.



I will post the PDF later today.

 

Yes, of course I'll help you. So let's compare your flyer with the originals! Following you can see:

- the flyer with bright blue background is a scan of an original flyer used in scenes with Eric Stoltz (with the inaccurate clock tower pic)

- the flyer with darker blue background is a scan of a copy of an original flyer screen used by Michael J. Fox. Actress Claudia Wells ("Jennifer Parker") use these flyer copies at her autograph sessions.

- the flyer with white background is yours.


If you compare your "CLOCK STOPPED AT 10:04" phrase with the originals, you can see your letters are too wide, particulary the letters "L", "S" and "T". And your number "0" is too thin. The edge on top left of the number "1" is vertical on the original, yours is transverse. The horizontal line of the number "4" is too low on your flyer.




The letter "C" of the large title letters: The beginning and the end of the letter is transverse.




The first three page numbers of the left columns are cropped at their right sides on the original flyer. It seems the designer of the original flyer commited a blunder. And the page number in the fourth line, right column, is a "7", not a "11". I think your mistake was to use for comparing the newspapers made in 1989 (second movie). But they are slightly different from the newspapers made in 1985 (first movie).




As you can see, the spaces between the letters on your flyer have always the same width: zero. To justify your text, you stretched only the spaces between the words. But as you can see on the original flyers, sometimes the spaces between the letters are stretched too.

I don't know, what a font you used, but the most accurate font for this text I found, is "Stratford Medium".




Comparing your phrase "Plans To Launch Tests of New Toll System Here" your letters seem to be too large (the drawing of the letters, not the font size). Look e. g. the letter "o" in the word "To", then you can see it.




Your Cent character is centered, but should be on the bottom. The slash in this character is larger and has a more acute angle on the original flyer.




Let's compare the words below the clock tower pic. Please note: The following comparing is just my own opinion. Maybe I'm mistaken.

First column: If I look on Claudia Wells' flyer copy, I recognize "murder" instead of "warded" on your flyer. The first letter of the word "renewals" is lower-case. The word "to" seems to have a dash at the end ("to-") and the last word could be an "if" or "of", not an "as".

Second column: Perfect!

Third column: Your Chairman "Pollak" looks more like a "Poliak" in originals. And the social organization seems to be "new".





And here is a resized (shrinked) pic of my selfmade clock tower pic. The blue background is just to show the lookout when it's printed out on a blue paper. My original has a white background. I've been trying to get a more copy-like lookout. If you compare with screen used flyers: The pic on the flyers looks more like a copy of a newspaper photo. It's not very accurate, if it looks exactly perfect like a newspaper photo.



I hope my annotations were helpful and you understood everything.

 

Yep, I think I got it all! :lol
But I can see that photobucket is resizing my images again. :confused
I will fix that and post a larger one shortly.

 

Okay, I copied my annotations into here and deleted it in the other thread.

 

As I can see, the only differences are the vertical spaces between the different parts of the flyers, the order of the paragraphs in the main text, the letter spaces in "CLOCK STOPPED AT 10:04" and of course the wrong clock tower pic and the text below. In any other cases you can use this flyer version to look for details.

 

I think these are still being resized.

 

Thanks. I wasn't sure on the other details.
How does it look so far?

 

Looks much better now! Congratulations!

There are two other inaccurate details I detected:

The two dashes in the weather forecast are too short. They look more like hyphens in your flyer, but have to be en or em dashes. The dot after page number "C3" is just in the 1989 made newspapers. In the newspapers made in 1985 there is no dot, but the line ends with a slightly space.




The same thing with the seperated word "conference": there is no hyphen, but space instead of it.

 

Just another thing:

The clock tower pic ends on the same line like the word "shed". The text below has to be displaced more downward.

 

Sorry, I meant the phrase "CLOCK TOWER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING"! :confused

 

Here is my large version of the clock tower image. Don't look too close on it! It looks terrible. :lol But as I said: Printed on paper in original size, it's looking good.

 

I've got everything updated now except the photo. Should have it all done in 15 minutes. :thumbsup

 

Me again! :lol

You forgot to modify the letter spaces in the word "seem" (in the paragraphs beginning with "An immediate investigation"). As I can see, this was the last one that is justified with letter spacing. All other words in the main text is justified with word spacing.

 

It's looking almost perfect now and if there are more inaccurate details in it, I think the most people won't notice it.

Of course I will continue making my own flyer, because there is much work behind it up to now.

 

Hi Daniel, lookin great as usual,only thing is, is now i will need some more updated flyers from you:lol

 

Thanks for all your help! It looks a lot better now!

 

Cool watch you are wearing!

 

Those same Casio CA53s are still being made, 25 years later. Most people don't even realize they are the same watch that was used in BTTF.

 

I was watching this thread late last night - it was 1am Australia time.
Good to see it's worked out nicely (and that it didn't come to blows between you and Roland :lol)

* it Daniel, now I'm wanting one of those Casio's. Quick search of the 'Bay and they're only about $20

 

Now, to harass young couples in the park...

 

But first you have to dress up like an old lady. :lol

 

Save the Clock Tower DB537 RPF
Here is the PDF of the flyer. I found a really good photo of an original flyer, so I was able to make even more corrections and I think it's about as good as it is going to get without a scan of an original to work with. :cool

These photos are the ones I used for reference to make the changes:

 

I already have the second photo (of the flyer in the display case) on my harddisc. Parts of the clock tower photo on this flyer I used for my selfmade photo.

Your first picture is a smaller version of Claudia Wells' flyer copies.

 

I've just seen, you draw and vectorized the letters "Hill Valley Telegraph" yourself. Why didn't you use the original font?

 

I reused the same newspaper file I made to have the newspapers printed.
Printers normally prefer all text to be converted to outlines just in case they do not have all the same fonts available, and the printing company I used also requested it.

 

But the same font is available! It's called "Engravers Old English MT". Look here:

Engravers Old English MT - Glyphs « MyFonts

That's the font they used for the newspapers made in 1985. In the second movie there is another font.

 

I typed the text using the Engravers Old English font and converted it into vector outlines in Adobe Illustrator. The file I used to make my flyer was originally created as a template to have replica newspapers printed.

Not only does it make it a lot easier to adjust and align individual characters this way, but the printing company I used also requested vectorized text if possible for the best print quality. :cool

 

Really? It looks more like a pixel graphic, which was converted to a vector graphic. It seems this Illustrator doesn't work very accurate. Compare it: in the image on the left is your letter and on the right the letter from my (still unfinished) flyer. I used CorelDraw. Do you see the difference?

 

I don't know why it's showing up like that for you. :confused

This is what that same "a" looks like as screen captured from my PDF:



There are no pixel graphics or anything like that.

I converted all the "HILL VALLEY TELEGRAPH" text into outlines and simplified the paths slightly in Illustrator so it would look like something that was actually made with a 1950s typesetting machine and not a computer in 2011.

I wanted to be sure to add some minor imperfections to the individual letters so it wouldn't look "too perfect" compared to the originals. I was trying to match the look of the Earl Hays prop newspapers.

I have a few different papers they made from about the same time period, and from what I've seen, their "Old English" is never perfectly sharp and crisp in appearance, at least not at this kind of magnification.

 

Okay, I've just opened your flyer with my Adobe Reader and the "a" there looks like on your screen shot. The wrong rendering you can see on my screen shot came from my standard PDF reader: Foxit Reader. There your letters look like a combination of lines with no curves. Hmmmm, very strange!

Your idea to let it look more like a mechanical typesetting is good. I just found irritating the angular curves.

 

Well, here is my version of the flyer. In the next few days I will post it as PDF in different paper sizes and background colors (blank and blue backgrounds).

I'm still working on the flyer's back side (Jennifer's phone number). The single PDF will contain both, front and back side.

 

Very nice work. :thumbsup

 

Firstly, let me congradulate the fantasic work done on this, and kudos for sharing.
But (and please take this in the spirit it is meant) with all this attention to detail, it has also made clear that the text to the right of the picture repeats itself. Indeed, it does not seem to have anything to do with the clock stopping at all !
I know it was put in as a filler, but anyone know the original text?

 

This IS a filler, yes, but it's the original text in the screen used flyer, too. You can find these same text blocks in all of the original newspapers made for the BTTF movies (except for the 2015-newspapers).

 

Ah, I did not know that. But I suppose if i got the Blu-ray box set, I could have answered my own question.:rolleyes

 

Here is the back side of the flyer with Jennifer's handwritten note. I grabbed it from the Blu-ray, cut it out and inserted it in correct size, position and angle into the flyer's back side.

Now you just have to wait for my PDF's!

 

Great job Roland your a MASTER of accuracy I love it :cool

Thanks again for sharing the pdf that's when you do of course.

 

Here it is: my PDF's of the flyer!

At first the standard file for an ordinary print out on a pale blue US-Letter sheet:

Save_the_Clock_Tower_remade_by_Roland_Zubcic_US-Letter.pdf (paper size 8.5 inch × 11 inch)


Your printer doesn't print borderless and cuts off some parts of the flyer text? Or you aren't US citizen and have no US paper sized sheets? Use one of the following PDF's to print on a larger sheet and cut out the flyer yourself at the marked points:

Save_the_Clock_Tower_remade_by_Roland_Zubcic_US-Tabloid.pdf (paper size 11 inch × 17 inch)
Save_the_Clock_Tower_remade_by_Roland_Zubcic_A3.pdf (paper size 29.7 cm × 42 cm)


The last two PDF's are for those lazy people, who don't want to buy blue paper sheets. The flyers here have a blue grain paper background, so you can print it on an ordinary large white paper sheet:

Save_the_Clock_Tower_remade_by_Roland_Zubcic_US-Tabloid_blue.pdf (paper size 11 inch × 17 inch)
Save_the_Clock_Tower_remade_by_Roland_Zubcic_A3_blue.pdf (paper size 29.7 cm × 42 cm)


Well, have fun with it.

 

I just downloaded your PDF...
Thank you for puting the front and back together!!!!!
I have printed this before and i could not get the two sides to match..
Now i have it !!!!! Thanks Roland..

 

Thanks so much for this Roland!! Ever since they shut down the ride at Universal Ive been looking for a way to get these nostalgic items for my personal collection. After being referred here by a friend only a few days ago I keep getting overwhelmed by the talent this collective has.

Thanks Again!!

Joe

 

Thank you guys for the kind words. There was never any reaction to my version of the clock tower flyer in this thread. And I thought people have no interest in it. :lol


@Joe

I uploaded a few other BTTF paper props of similar quality that might be of interest for you. Look at the BTTF paper prop thread: http://www.therpf.com/f40/back-future-67267/ - my contributions begin on page 22 (Marty's driver license).

 

I will def check those out.. any idea why its only printing half of the flyer? I was trying to print it at work so it may have been on my end? I'm going to try here at home in a second.

I'll let you know what my results are.

 

I had the same problem when I tried it at work on an old PC with less power: parts of the text had disappeared on the printout. I tried it on another newer PC and it worked fine. The flyer is very detailed and you probably need a PC with more power to print it out.

 

I'll be honest, I had NO IDEA this was even posted here.

 

I got it printed correctly and am framing it now.

Thanks again Roland!!

 

This is really great! Thanks.