https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/128020/how-was-the-universal-pictures-1936-opening-logo-created Skip to main content Stack Exchange Network Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Visit Stack Exchange [ ] Loading... 1. + Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site + Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have + Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site + About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products 2. 3. current community + Movies & TV help chat + Movies & TV Meta your communities Sign up or log in to customize your list. more stack exchange communities company blog 4. 5. Log in 6. Sign up Movies & TV 1. 1. Home 2. Questions 3. Unanswered 4. AI Assist Labs 5. Tags 6. 7. Chat 8. Users 9. 2. Teams [teams-promo] Ask questions, find answers and collaborate at work with Stack Overflow for Teams. Try Teams for free Explore Teams 3. Teams 4. Ask questions, find answers and collaborate at work with Stack Overflow for Teams. Explore Teams Teams Q&A for work Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Learn more about Teams How was the Universal Pictures 1936 opening logo created? Ask Question Asked yesterday Modified today Viewed 38k times 40 I've always been fascinated with the opening logo used by Universal Pictures in movies starting from 1936 and running a few more years. Searching on the subject it may have coincided with the change from Universal Pictures Corporation to Universal Productions Inc.. I've also seen it referred to as the 7th logo: Still frame of Universal Pictures opening logo sequence 1936-1947 [Still frame from Logopedia] Comparing to their previous logos, it has so many moving parts, transparency, and reflections everywhere, and I would really like to know how it was made. Strange enough, I seem to be the only one because my cursory internet search did not uncover anything. I extracted the relevant opening sequence from the arbitrarily chosen movie Shadow of a Doubt from 1943 and put it on YouTube: * effects * cinema-history * cinematography Share Improve this question Follow edited 23 hours ago pipe asked yesterday pipe's user avatar pipepipe 53311 gold badge55 silver badges1313 bronze badges 3 * 3 Its spectacular really, for the time. It competes with many of the subsequent logos except for being solely black and white. - iandotkelly Commented yesterday * closinglogogroup.fandom.com/wiki/Universal_Pictures/... - Paulie_D Commented yesterday * And it used a real physical moving model rather than computer graphics generated motion. - Trunk Commented 13 hours ago Add a comment | 1 Answer 1 Sorted by: Reset to default [Highest score (default) ] 54 A quick Google search turned up the following on a forum link which explains this originated from Tim Dickinson, who has a complete explanation of how this logo was done on Twitter Alexander Golitzen, famed Art Director, who worked at Universal for over 30 years. With new owners behind the studio, the biplane that had circled the Earth since 1927 was dropped. Golitzen embraced the Art Deco movement, using plexiglass for its replacement. enter image description here The differently sized spinning stars were filmed first, using the thinnest plexiglass. The top was coated thinly with a silver-activated zinc sulfide - highly reflective, and often used in x-rays and cathode ray tubes enter image description here The stars were independently rotated with several lights (two of which were moving, circling the stars) and a very tight camera aperture so that the lights and reflection of the stars would travel down their length. enter image description here The resulting footage looked like this: enter image description here The next job was to join the stars to the globe... enter image description here The globe had an interior coating of the same phosphor, diluted by half, limiting its reflectivity. It was painted black, eliminating its transparency. The first pass of the image was made without the lettering, with the globe in front of a 6 foot front projection screen. enter image description here The footage of the stars were projected on top of the globe, creating the spectacular light patterns reflecting off of it. enter image description here The following pass used a second globe - larger, polished and painted jet black. This globe had the company lettering mounted to it, and was then mounted on a metal rod, rotated by hand. enter image description here Special Effects artist John Fulton photographed the spinning globe at a low angle with the self illuminated lettering at high speed (estimated 32 frames per second). This image was then triple printed over the original globe footage, the first pass to create the reflection of the title, the second pass was shot with no lights on the globe or lettering. enter image description here The background was a rear projection screen. This created a silhouette of the globe that was used as a matte in which to overlay the final layer -- the actual title. enter image description here The creation of this logo took around half a year to complete According to Golitzen, the globe was later seen, covered in smaller spheres, as the 'Interociter' device in the Universal movie 'This Island Earth' (1955).. enter image description here Share Improve this answer Follow edited yesterday answered yesterday Paulie_D's user avatar Paulie_DPaulie_D 146k2323 gold badges535535 silver badges480480 bronze badges 5 * 1 You might also want to note that the perspex globe made a re-appearence in the multi-Oscar-winning This Island Earth (1955) as part of the set dressing, specifically the centre of the gigantic atom; i0.wp.com/retrozap.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ ... - Valorum Commented yesterday * 15 Somehow it makes me happy that it took half a year to complete this masterpiece. I have a feeling they took pride in this job, probably more than in many of the movies. Well deserved. - pipe Commented yesterday * 8 "...how this logo was done on Twitter": really, really advanced for its time! - Ari Brodsky Commented 17 hours ago * 5 One of the quotes uses the word "reflective" to describe ZnS, which is correctly described as a phosphor later. This is the compound found in glow-in-the-dark signs and stickers, etc., and has the very useful property that you can hit it with blue light (a gel on your spot) and film with a yellow filter on your camera, so you don't see reflected light at all, only the phosphorescence. Because that's emitted over wide angles, unlike reflection, it means that your stars' brightness is maintained as they rotate, rather than getting a disco ball effect (as you would with reflective material - Chris H Commented 9 hours ago * 2 I don't follow how the described setup creates the shimmering streamers on the stars. You don't get that just from a "very tight aperture." It almost looks like the 2001 slit-scan effect. - ghostly_s Commented 9 hours ago Add a comment | You must log in to answer this question. Start asking to get answers Find the answer to your question by asking. Ask question Explore related questions * effects * cinema-history * cinematography See similar questions with these tags. * Featured on Meta * Will you help build our new visual identity? * Upcoming initiatives on Stack Overflow and across the Stack Exchange network... 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