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Max Headroom and the Strange World of Pseudo-CGI
- FollowSteph3 13y agoAm I the only one to feel like an idiot for not knowing Max Headroom was not an animation. I haven't seen the show since I was young, but now I just want to go find an episode to watch and look at the animation to see how they fooled my younger me. I remember thinking I wasn't sue but how else. That's also why tv shows you watched when young where better than you remember, you could be fooled more easily and use your imagination whereas today were so use to the special effects that we almost need them, we can't easily imagine it unless its there and looking real'ish.
- sixothree 13y agoI remember the exact same confusion. But the backgrounds are computer animated, with Max himself (Matt Fewer) was a real person with plastic appendages to his head.
- js2 13y agoWell, I feel like an idiot for not knowing it was a British production.
- brightsize 13y agoId...id...id...id....idiot here t-t-t-t-oo!
- m0nty 13y agoI'm just pleased I'm not the only one here who remembers when this stuff came out. I also had no idea it wasn't computer animated, but (given the feebleness of the hardware available at the time) it comes as no great surprise.
- harel 13y agoI'm shocked it's a fake-nimation... As a kid I loved Max and was amazed what the highest end computers can do. I was patiently waiting for that tech to trickle down to us mortal consumers. Of course I only got that when I became 'grown up' and now I learned it was all fake to begin with... Glad I found out now though, and not back then. I even remember, as an Amiga owner at the time, of a word circulating in Amiga circles (way way pre-internet) that Max is created using Amigas.... Silly me.
- joezydeco 13y agoJust to throw this in, but the original Max Headroom movie "20 Minutes into the Future" is not as bad as the Channel 4 / Cinemax music video show or (oh god) the American ABC series. It's an interesting bit of proto-cyberpunk that even addressed things like digital avatars and real-time viewer feedback nearly 30 years ago.
- harrylove 13y agoFor example: Max Headroom[1] portrayed by Matt Frewer[2] doing vocals in the video[3] for "Paranoimia"[4] by Art of Noise[5] (1986) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character) 2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001242/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001242/ 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YubzvkNh77w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YubzvkNh77w 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoimia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoimia 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Noise
- dualogy 13y agoArt of Noise---still in love with their highly creative early-electronic-music. Truly in awe.
- greggman 13y agoAlso see Tron. Many of scenes that look like CGI are not. Pretty much any CG looking scene with a person visible has no CGI and several of the scenes that look 100% cgi are not as well For example no part of this clip is CGI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiw2FbHBd14 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiw2FbHBd14 No CGI in any of this either. Zero Zilch Nada. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFd9SPuuDM#t=1m10s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFd9SPuuDM#t=1m10s no idea how long this will stay up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrCdMHUNznc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrCdMHUNznc
- joezydeco 13y agoTotally right. Here's an example of a live-action frame from Tron. The scene was shot in black and white with insanely high contrast, then color was added by hand. http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/562635012/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/562635012/in/photostream...
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoAh, so that's why the faces remained eerily black-and-white!
- crabasa 13y agoTron was mentioned, in addition to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy television series and Escape from New York.
- sixothree 13y agoI think the documentary The Making Of TRON is more interesting today than the actual movie. Definitely worth seeking out if you're a fan of the original.
- Stratoscope 13y agoSomewhat related is S. G. Collins' interesting video explaining why they couldn't have faked going to the moon; it was easier and cheaper to actually go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU
- Niten 13y agoYou could also put the LCARS panels from Star Trek: The Next Generation into this category.
- gohrt 13y agoPeople seem to forget that "electrical" effects predate digital computers. Cathode rays (before and after television) create "high-tech" animated vector-drawn images using analog systems to move the tube. Laser light shows are another example. The original digital raster graphics were worse in some sense than the analog vector graphics that predated them.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MacsHeadroom 13y agoVery interesting.
- dmead 13y agothey forgot the display screens in 2001