9 ms·
When TV Logos Were Physical Objects
- jstanley 9y agoHere's the photo TFA speaks so much about but fails to include: https://i.redd.it/ecdccauglbxy.jpg https://i.redd.it/ecdccauglbxy.jpg
- throwanem 9y agoIt's like the transition from physical models to CGI in space SF - I don't think we've lost anything in the process, and certainly the quality of visuals we can produce now so far outstrips the pre-digital days that a meaningful comparison is hard to make, but all the same, there was a kind of physical, manual craftsmanship in the old model shops that we rarely see any more, and I'd love to know if there's anywhere that such techniques still survive outside hobbyist and artistic pursuits.
- learc83 9y agoThere's still a lot of physical model making in movies for props, and costumes. Also there are companies that make costumes, animatronics, and physical models as publicity for movies and games. http://www.legacyefx.com/ http://www.legacyefx.com/ http://wetaworkshop.com/ http://wetaworkshop.com/ And then there are the model makers who make prototypes for game pieces, toys etc... Many of them still start with physical models.
- Animats 9y agoI visited Kerner Optical some years ago, which did that kind of work. They were originally a part of Lucasfilm, and were spun off to sink or swim on their own. They sank. Here's some of those guys at work, on the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" film.[1] They were 10-20 year veterans of physical effects. Someone who'd been there five years was the new guy. Tippett Studios was one of the big model work studios. Phil Tippett saw the writing on the wall when Jurassic Park went digital. The original plan for Jurassic Park was to use models of various sizes. Now Tippett is a digital effects house. Not that being a digital effects house means job security. That's become a grind of a business, outsourced and offshored. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urvcYSpiwQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urvcYSpiwQA
- org3432 9y agoMinor clarification, Kerner Optical was the unofficial codename for ILM, the model shop that build physical props was spun off and they decided to name themselves Kerner Optical.
- mavhc 9y agoDo you mean the new Jurassic Park film, because the old ones were mostly models, https://youtu.be/DzCID0HinMg?t=460 https://youtu.be/DzCID0HinMg?t=460
- Animats 9y agoIn the original Jurassic Park, dinosaurs moving in the open are full CG.[1] Close-ups where the actors were directly interacting with the dinosaurs were model work. That was the first major film with photorealistic CG creatures. It's still difficult to do close interaction between humans and CG-animated characters, although, with enough money and a huge team, it can be done. See "Guardians of the Galaxy" to see that done very well. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-park-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-par...
- mavhc 9y agoRight, but there were only 7 mins of cgi dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 1
- mikestew 9y agoIt's like the transition from physical models to CGI in space SF - I don't think we've lost anything in the process I would argue that it depends on the money spent. Cheap CGI looks just as bad as the physical models of a 70s Godzilla movie, IMO. And the comparison to movies about everyone's favorite fire-breathing lizard is apt because Godzilla's model were cheap, too. But no one watches Japanese mutant monster movies for the attention to detail in the model work. OTOH, if you're going to argue that CGI bests the model work in 2001: A Space Odyssey, then we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
- throwanem 9y agoI won't argue that CGI can outdo 2001's practical effects. But those practical effects were the achievement of their century. Matching them in quality, in our century, has become nigh routine.
- GuiA 9y agoThe main takeaway seems to be that master artists can produce amazing things regardless of the medium they use.
- 13of40 9y agoI remember a sci-fi show that was on in the early 80s (Buck Rogers?) that had a zooming-through-stars clip in the credits. It was pretty decent for the time until my dad pointed out it was just someone dumping ping-pong balls on a camera that was pointed straight up.
- femto 9y agoWind tunnels. The workshop attached to DSTO's wind tunnel used to be a model maker's (and foreign order) paradise. I'd imagine that wind tunnels are gradually being supplanted by simulation, but that there is still a demand for the physical test and the associated modeling. I think the biggest thing we've lost in the transition from physical modeling to simulation is the widespread ability to manipulate materials. The process of model making has an inherent value, whose payoff is the ability to imagine what is possible in the physical world and to make it happen.
- EvanAnderson 9y agoThis made me think of the making of the "computer graphics" in the BBC TV production of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbWAwynNf-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbWAwynNf-0
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoMy next-door neighbor’s entire career was this kind of stuff! He did a bunch of recognizable animations for HBO, CNN, MTV… now he's in his sixties and trying to retrain himself in digital 3D.
- DanBC 9y agoHe should do a Youtube series of physical effects - how they would have been done then, improvements that can be made today without going full CGI.
- covercash 9y agoI'd subscribe to this in a heartbeat!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- unexistance 9y agohe needs to document this down somewhere, or do a youtube channel or something
- gregschlom 9y agoThis fastcodesign article from 5/19 is just a re-hash of the original article from This Is Colossal published on 5/15: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were-physical-objects/ http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were-phy...
- dang 9y agoOk, we changed the URL to that from https://www.fastcodesign.com/90125752/the-ingenious-way-tv-logos-were-made-before-computers https://www.fastcodesign.com/90125752/the-ingenious-way-tv-l.... Thanks!
- steverb 9y agoThe whole article seems to be a rehash of the original reddit thread from 5/13. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6azpkv/when_tv_show_logos_were_physical_objects/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6azpkv/when_tv_show_l...
- mixmastamyk 9y agoWow, I remember enjoying the HBO intro as a kid. Never thought about how many people and how much work it took to create. At the time I think I believed the logo was computer generated as I'd seen Tron by then.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoI couldn't believe the HBO letters were real hunks of metal, they look so fake in the final result.
- logicallee 9y agoI have a question for you! Back in the day, did the HBO intro give you the same impression as Mr Roger's Neighborhood intro, of miniature models? Or did it 'trick' you - did you think it was an actual helicopter flythrough?
- mixmastamyk 9y agoBelieve I could tell it was miniatures, but it was such high quality (for the time) I was still impressed.
- jessaustin 9y agoI thought it was a drone!
- logicallee 9y agoyou got downvoted - as though this is not a serious response - but you're a very high-karma user so let me ask - this is a joke, right?
- jessaustin 9y agoI occasionally crack jokes on HN. More often, I write ironically with no regard to humor. Sometimes these contributions are appreciated by HN voters. I don't know enough yet to predict when this will be the case, but I'm happy to experiment. HN voters might be wrong for a short time, but in the long run they always have something to teach me. I probably downvote attempts at humor more than I upvote, but typically I just ignore them. It seems this is the first time I've been referred to as "a very high-karma user".
- drblast 9y agoI loved the HBO animation when I was a kid, and I've seen that behind-the-scenes video a number of times since. Conceptually I get the idea, but I'm still baffled as to how they composite all that together to get the final polished result, especially the fiber optic spinning lights with "lens flare" effects at the end. It looks completely computer generated.
- jdboyd 9y agoI believe that predated digital compositing being used. However electronic analog compositing is still much easier than film compositing (like what was used to combine passes for Star Wars). For instance, blue and green screen was originally for video. You would do it using an Ultimate brand device that was completely analog. That device launched in 1976, but it's creator had been building a analog compositing devices since at least 1964 when he won an Oscar for it. If you are curious about how it worked, I would imagine patents can be found and read. Ultimatte just generate an alpha channel (then called a key and it was actually a separate b/w video signal). Other devices would act in the key to combine the foreground and background together, etc.
- buzzybee 9y agoReal-time video composites were achieved on analog hardware such as Scanimate [0] starting around the 1970's; traditional film matte techniques [1] had also been used for well over a generation by that point and a travelling matte would suffice for compositing that image. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHjkMThH0aE [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_(filmmaking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_(filmmaking)
- tyingq 9y agoThis Chive article has some movie effects from the silent movie era. Scroll down for the Charlie Chaplin roller skating one, it's stunning. http://thechive.com/2017/01/10/how-movie-effects-were-pulled-off-during-the-silent-film-era-10-gifs/ http://thechive.com/2017/01/10/how-movie-effects-were-pulled...
- rkachowski 9y agoon the same level - one of the intro "computer vision" scenes to Escape from New York was performed by moving a camera over a model of a city landscape, where each of the buildings was outlined in fluorescent paint, as CG was outrageously expensive at that point in time
- porsupah 9y agoSimilarly, TRON's CG was only wireframes, which were then cel-painted by hand, as performing that filling by computer would have been too expensive at the time.
- jameshart 9y agoArticle seems to be under the mistaken impression that these tv idents were built, put in front of a camera and recorded and then the recordings broadcast - possibly after even applying postproduction effects. Actually they were generally broadcast live by pointing a camera at them. This is one of those artifacts of digital era thinking which misunderstands the nature of analog era technology. These idents needed to be able to be shown on demand, in the event of a breakdown in some other piece of equipment. They needed to be able to run for arbitrarily long periods of time. They needed to be shown many times per day during regular programming. And you couldn't just connect up a computer and stream mpeg video - you would need some sort of a device that could generate the TV picture. TV was recorded on video tape and video tape wouldn't work for this application - it would need to be rewound every time you stopped showing it; it would wear out with continual use; it would have a fixed maximum duration. Having a camera standing by pointing at the appropriate device, on the other hand, was relatively easy. Most tv stations just pointed a camera at a piece of card. The BBC obviously had to go one better and use a crazy globe and mirror setup.
- Nition 9y agoThis is contradicted directly in the article re the BBC logo. It says the globe and mirror setup was rotoscoped/traced over to create the final cartoon look that was broadcast. Or is the article wrong? Edit: The article is wrong! The colour was added to the camera's output live!
- Zikes 9y agoThere's an update at the bottom of the article for this: > UPDATE: It turns out the BBC Globe ident wasn’t rotoscoped or animated, instead it was recorded live using the Noddy camera system and the color was created by adjusting the contrast. Thanks, Gene!
- Nition 9y agoThat's good. Although that's a bit wrong. You can't take a monochrome image and add colour just by adjusting the contrast. I'm also not sure you can say it was "recorded" at all if it was broadcast directly, but that's a language question.
- abalone 9y agoThe Justice DVNO video is a massive homage to old school titles. They do the HBO one at 00:40. I can't believe the original was almost all practical! https://vimeo.com/30371091 https://vimeo.com/30371091
- digi_owl 9y agoInterestingly using smoke/fog to trick our brains into thinking the distance is longer than it is, is done in computer games today.
- kowdermeister 9y agoThe Windows 10 logo animations were created in the same way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL8BBOwupcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL8BBOwupcI
- Lukas_Skywalker 9y agoI get pretty cool artifacts on the first logo when scrolling. Kind of looks like a spotlight centering in on the line intersections.
- ericwood 9y agoThis somewhat related and equally fascinating look at Scanimate, a video synthesizer used for all kinds of idents and motion graphics in the 70s and 80s is a fun watch: https://vimeo.com/172607783 https://vimeo.com/172607783
- Splendor 9y agoRelated: How Saturday Night Live created their title sequence http://www.alex-buono.com/how-we-did-it-snl-titles-sequence/ http://www.alex-buono.com/how-we-did-it-snl-titles-sequence/