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I also enjoyed this little mini-documentary about the production of the HBO intro:
Back from the day when you couldn't CGI that **** in an afternoon. I also find it interesting that "Theatre" is spelled correctly and not as the now-more-ubiquitous "Theater".
Back from the day when you couldn't CGI that **** in an afternoon. I also find it interesting that "Theatre" is spelled correctly and not as the now-more-ubiquitous "Theater".
The 1980s were an interesting time, from a video production standpoint. Modern CGI was just starting to become a thing, however it was prohibitively expensive and thus limited to cinema use.
Meanwhile, all sorts of other effects were being developed to produce imagery which looked similar to computer animation, without the actual expense.
Some were totally manual processes derived from slit-scan technology. In the movie TRON, for instance, all of the glowing effects on the characters outfits were done totally by hand, using backlit techniques on huge blow-ups of each film frame similar to rotoscoping.
Meanwhile, those cool animations you saw on Sesame Street and 3-2-1 Contact were mostly done on an electronic system called the Scanimate, which was a completely analog video synthesizer.
Don't bother turning up the audio on this one, just bask in the visuals:
I'm pretty sure that the AI has never seen video of an actual cat playing a guitar. And yet it's done an excellent job with the movement, inertia, etc. The drummer is especially impressive.
We're not far from the point at which it will be impossible to distinguish fiction from reality.
The sticker that was on the wrapper would have been single digit $, probably the ubiquitous $9.95, when I bought it from a box of 'on-sale' dvds a few years ago. I buy 'interesting' films on dvd, if they are cheap enough. Still looking for Solvent Green though ...