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How was the Universal Pictures 1936 opening logo created?
- rwmj 1y agoReminds me a bit of the BBC 1 ident from the 1960s-1980s, which was a physical model that was broadcast live (not even recorded!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(camera) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(camera) It was replaced with a custom-built electronic system which was itself pretty crazy. One of the COWs came up for sale a few years back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World
- netsharc 1y agoWow! There's a look of the Noddy at the end of this video: https://youtu.be/agKiATDgdBs https://youtu.be/agKiATDgdBs (as well as what the broadcasted video looks like before it). Funny how there are other frames like "Temporary Fault", that the camera can point to to inform the audience if there's a problem. The Wikipedia page also mentions how they added "Colour" to promote the fact that colour service is available, and how people were choosing to remain in B&W because the licence fee for colour TV is higher. Meanwhile in 2025 I'm still using 1080p instead of 4K monitors because theye're good enough.
- ghaff 1y agoI had to get a new TV and did upgrade to 4K because it seemed to make sense. But hadn't had an urge to do so previously. I do think a lot of people get obsessed with incremental resolution/sound/network improvements that, in practice, don't really affect the experience.
- doubled112 1y agoI went from a 32" 720p TV to a 43" 4K TV. I don't really notice the difference for TV watching. I don't watch a lot of TV anyway. Now a 1080p monitor up to a 4K monitor? That was a huge improvement to my experience. It's like having 4 1080p monitors without a seam if you get one big enough.
- hnlmorg 1y agoThat’s because a lot of broadcasters are either not transmitting 4k or encoding their streams in such horribly low bitrates that you might as well be watching through glasses made from empty beer bottles.
- doubled112 1y agoWatching hockey this winter I noticed a big quality difference between broadcasters. Nothing that would really affect the experience though.
- freeone3000 1y agoContrast Apple TV with YouTube; or Crunchyroll vs Youtube. Then step it up to BD. There is such a huge difference between 4K “fast”, 4K “main”, and the 4K “high” used on BDs.
- _carbyau_ 1y agoI have suspicions it may be a "passive" vs "active" experience difference. My argument as below: Watching TV when I was younger with PAL/NTSC stuff I suspended disbelief as I could, let imagination fill the missing details, and enjoyed the stories. More resolution doesn't change that process. See shaky-and/or-quickcut cam fighting scenes for example. Playing games, reading/typing words onscreen etc as might be done on a monitor rather than a TV. You are expressly paying attention to the finer details. Resolution helps with finer details.
- adolph 1y agoThank you for posting that video. The wikipedia description doesn't quite capture the visual interestingness of the globe with concave mirror.
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- nxobject 1y agoThink about the logistics of suddenly having to put up a fault slide during an emergency, especially when the best you can ask for is a camera and possibly a chroma-keyer! A camera on a swivel must've been a luxury.
- stavros 1y agoHow does this article not include a video or photo of what the logo actually looked like?
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- masfuerte 1y agoIt does, third picture on the right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BBC_One_colour_1969.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BBC_One_colour_1969.jpg
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- HelloUsername 1y agoLink to the Twitter thread of 24-may-2020 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264630771316404224.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264630771316404224.html
- brcmthrowaway 1y ago[flagged]
- jeffhuys 1y agoTwitter is just another blogging platform, but with more than half a billion users. So, why not?
- voidUpdate 1y agoIf you aren't signed in, you can't really do much
- layer8 1y agoFWIW, that wasn’t yet the case in 2020.
- opello 1y agoIt's not like it was only on Twitter. The thread there mentions a blog[1], that mentions a book, which I was unable to find. [1] https://brighams-blog.blogspot.com/2015/06/17-june-2015.html https://brighams-blog.blogspot.com/2015/06/17-june-2015.html
- stronglikedan 1y agoBecause a great many people do just that to great success on that platform. Why wouldn't they want to reach the most people possible, regardless of niche? Crazy how people would cut off their nose just to spite their face.
- dylan604 1y ago> Why was this on Twitter? Because that's where the eyeballs were. It's really not hard once you get over your own hatred for something everyone else enjoys. I don't use Twitt...er, X, but I understand why others do. Your unwillingness to see the same point is just going to continue to be a source of frustration for you.
- amelius 1y ago[flagged]
- BobbyTables2 1y agoDidn’t realize plexiglass existed in the 1930s!
- jccalhoun 1y agoWikipedia says it was first marketed only 3 years earlier so it was pretty new https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate)
- brcmthrowaway 1y ago[flagged]
- evaXhill 1y agoConsidering the breakdown of all the elements that went into it and the meticulous attention to detail, it’s not surprising that the creation of this logo took around half a year to complete. Golitzen really embraced the Art Deco movement and was also a storyboard artist for NANA in 1934, but its hard to find any illustrations online, what i can find is a mention of his name in a MOMA art/cinema expo from the late 70s https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_327139.pdf https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_327139.pdf
- LargeWu 1y agoThere used to be real craft, based on the physical world, in creating that movie magic. It took a lot of knowledge about different stuff - materials, photography - to create this.
- pimlottc 1y agoAnd still today - most people probably don't realized that the Windows 10 desktop background was made using practical effects: https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop
- mxfh 1y agoIt's quite a hybrid would count this a in-camera, not pure practical. not to this discount this but to encourage mixing media. Lots of projection mapping going on which is pretty much capturing a digital screen on other surfaces.
- outworlder 1y agoWhat's the difference? The Universal logo discussed also required compositing.
- SoftTalker 1y agoStill my overall favorite Windows desktop background.
- crazygringo 1y agoWhat do you mean, used to be? There still is, more than ever. You might be surprised at just how many modern effects are still practical, not digital.
- LargeWu 1y agoFair enough, "used to" is probably not the right qualifier. Still, those guys back in the 30's had to be pretty inventive to make some of the stuff they did with very limited technology. Not to disparage people working with practical effects today.
- Findecanor 1y agoI think the reflection of the letters must also have been a separate shot with no gap in-between the letters and the globe. Otherwise you would have seen the backs of letters on the left and right through the globe in the final sequence.
- dylan604 1y agoIt strikes me as funny, because I've been around movie magic for so long, that the wizbang grafix abilities of today have nearly erased from memory the knowledge of practical FX. I do miss the extra features of a nice DVD release with a bunch of BTS clips that showed the various movie magic to make the final version. I'm guessing studios enjoy not paying for all of that now that everyone streams everything and has no time for ancillary content. The Columbia logo is another one that has been updated over the years. I've seen writes up about refreshing it back when it was an edit bay ruled by tape based playback. Each layer of clouds was on a separate tape all played back in sync to generate the final comp. Further back, it would have been separate film strips.
- mistercow 1y ago> I'm guessing studios enjoy not paying for all of that now that everyone streams everything and has no time for ancillary content. Is it that, or is it just that they realized that that stuff is easy material for promoting the film, so they just let various media produce free content about it and put stuff on YouTube?
- dylan604 1y agoYou're saying there's YouTube channels that produce making of/BTS content as the same caliber we'd get as bonus materials on shiny round discs? I just don't see a YouTuber doing something for free over the course of principle photography just on the hopes they'd get enough ad revenue when they could be churning out other content on a more frequent cycle.
- AnotherGoodName 1y agoDoctor Who's original 1960's intro is in a similar vein of "wait a minute, how'd they do that in that year?". This predated any commercial synthesisers and was mind blowing for its time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4 https://www.effectrode.com/knowledge-base/making-of-the-doctor-who-theme-music/ https://www.effectrode.com/knowledge-base/making-of-the-doct...
- zahlman 1y agoThe theme is much more subtle and complex than my mental model. I can recall in an electronics lab in university, we had just built the first prototype of input and output stages for an amplifier, and hooked it up to a function generator playing a sine wave and probably a simple paper-cone speaker. The system had fairly heavy hyperbolic distortion (as I expected from following along with the textbook)... my lab partner (who up until that point I'd thought of as not especially bright, relative to the standards of the course) listened a bit, grabbed the frequency knob, identified a few pitches, and then started playing the main melody of the Doctor Who theme entirely by ear. (And of course I provided a vocal bass line accompaniment, almost instinctively.)
- scottmcf 1y agoThe BBC Radiophonic Workshop was just incredibly innovative. I spent a long time learning about them and their techniques as a music student.
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- sitkack 1y ago> Composed by Ron Grainer, realized by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
- SoftTalker 1y agoThe original HBO "Feature Presentation" intro was shot with minatures and similar sorts of effects, all before digital/CGI existed or was feasible. There's a documentary about it on YouTube https://youtu.be/agS6ZXBrcng https://youtu.be/agS6ZXBrcng
- serf 1y agorelated aside : the 'This Island Earth' MST3K is a great episode, which apparently features a part of the effect. 'This Island Earth' is great all by itself if you're into campy early-ish scifi.
- evan_ 1y ago"This Island Earth" was featured on MST3K: The Movie! When "Universal International" appears on screen, Mike Nelson quips "Doesn't the fact that it's universal make it international?"
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoI love practical effects in cinema
- roughly 1y agoSomeone once described the secret to making magic as putting in far more effort than any reasonable person would, such that no reasonable person would think you'd done it the hard way.
- genter 1y agoPenn & Teller, although someone else might've said that before them.
- MengerSponge 1y agoThe Prestige says that (in as many words) in 2006. Someone probably said it before then.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoThe Lawrence of Arabia line is from the 1962 film. Perhaps there's an HN'r who knows an earlier variant. https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1ja9kdy/why_is_the_matchstick_cut_in_lawrence_of_arabia/ https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1ja9kdy/why_is_the_...
- ploxiln 1y agoTeller, from Penn and Teller, I think https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller
- ethbr1 1y agoSee #2 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-his-secrets-100744801/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-h...
- yard2010 1y agoI would cut my own finger if it's not from prestige. :)
- slg 1y agoIt is interesting to see a post like this at the top of HN considering the vibe here lately. The popularity of this post seems to show an innate understanding of the value of investing a lot of thought and effort into creating a piece of art. When you do that, the process of its creation becomes part of the art. There is something incredibly human about creating art like this. We have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. "Wasting" time meticulously carving things out of stone or mixing paint to use on our cave walls. It is an inherently human thing to do. And yet browsing HN most days gives the impression that many tech folks see that truly as time wasted and instead just want to give some black box a prompt and have "art" spit back out at them. I just don't get it.
- nancyminusone 1y agoPosts like this are the only reason I come here. I've never been employed as a programmer or software engineer, have never been to California and don't care much about startups. The "other" category here is pretty wide though.
- autoexec 1y ago> There is something incredibly human about creating art like this. There's also something a little sad in that it's just one more artistic work created as an ad. Advertising has been one of the few ways artists have been able to actually make money in this world. So much of the artistic creativity and ingenuity of humanity has been funneled into outputting lies, manipulation, and corporate promotion. I have to wonder what artistic works we'd be able to talk about if these artists were able to make a living creating something other than marketing/propaganda. I suspect that AI means fewer artists working on ads and it'll probably be a while before companies get sick of just regurgitating the history of artistic talent fed into their models and start employing artists again to make something new.
- slg 1y agoWhile I agree that it would be great if artists had more freedom to create whatever they wanted, I think it is overly cynical to dismiss commercial art as somehow lesser. I think this specifically is a great example of that. It isn't really an ad for anything else beyond other art. It doesn't need to be as intricate, involved, and for a lack of a better word, artistic as it is. The only reason it ended up that way is because artists had personal pride in making it. This is true for countless pieces of art. Nearly all the music or movies people listen to and watch today are commercial art. That doesn't make them any less noble than art created by someone who has no financial incentive to create art.
- linotype 1y agoSide note: highly recommend MST3K The Movie, which features the classic movie “This Island Earth”.
- fortran77 1y agoThe stackexchange post is a copy of the information in a blog which is a copy of the information the this X thread: https://x.com/That_Chair_Guy/status/1264632757856198658 https://x.com/That_Chair_Guy/status/1264632757856198658
- InstaTunnel 1y ago[dead]
- WrongOnInternet 1y agoScott Manley made a video talking about what would happen if the modern logo was real: https://youtu.be/cBxb6LRFG08 https://youtu.be/cBxb6LRFG08
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- sitkack 1y agoFor other amazing examples of practical effects, check out the Visual Music artist Jordan Belson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6ag2n5sjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6ag2n5sjc
- qingcharles 1y agoAmazingly McDonald's just went full practical on their new McDonaldland commercial, which is wild considering how many elements it combines. I have a feeling they did this as a pushback to everyone complaining about everything being made with AI. Here's the making of: https://xcancel.com/HuinGuillaume/status/1955301767740096659 https://xcancel.com/HuinGuillaume/status/1955301767740096659 (could only find it on X)