Remember that incredible Star Wars fan film set I wrote about the other week? Here’s the software equivalent: Folks, the Star Wars Title Sequence Generator is a steaming hot plate of awesome! I like this thing so much, I actually debated whether to write about it, ’cause I selfishly wanted to keep it secret and use it on the fan film I  daydream about making someday. There’s no way it’ll stay under the radar for long though—this thing is just too cool—so it’s time to spill the beans.

SWTSG is Mac-only freeware by Darel Rex Finley that does exactly what the name implies: It lets you create an opening sequence for your fan film that will mirror the beginning of the Star Wars movies. Now, you might say, “Big deal; even iMovie can do text like the opening crawls. So what?” Buddy, that ain’t half of it. This program replicates all of the openings!

The 20th Century Fox logo, remodeled with whatever you wanna type in.

Your production slate in the Lucasfilm Ltd. style, complete with lens flares, color changes and so on. (I call dibs on “Doofusfilm,” BTW)

The “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” screen.

The retreating logo—again, made from any text you want…

…and the opening crawl, moving at the traditional snail’s pace.

The results speak for themselves. There’s a great tutorial on Finley’s website that I strongly recommend, but here’s an overview of the utterly painless process.

First off, you don’t have to know squat about graphics or animation; just fire up the program and add the text you want. Next, you pick from a list of choices for screen style (small, medium, large, anamorphic DVD NTSC or PAL, HD low or high, or custom) and frame rate (Quicktime movie, PAL, NTSC or custom). Make a destination folder for the results to get dumped into, click the ‘Go’ button, and as the tutorial suggests, head out for a coffee break while you wait.

While you’re out, your Mac will vomit up roughly two minutes worth of video frames as individual .BMP picture files—we’re talking potentially over 3,000 individual pictures (see why you made a destination folder?). It’s gonna take a long time. When it’s done, you can turn all those pictures into a single video easily using Quicktime Pro, or if you’re cheap like me and don’t own that program, you can jump through a few hoops to accomplish the same thing using iMovie instead.

The results are impressive, especially for a freeware app. The only downside to this program is that if you use it for your fan film, your opening sequence is liable to be the best part of your movie, so use it with caution!