[HN Gopher] Max Headroom and the World of Pseudo-CGI (2013)
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Max Headroom and the World of Pseudo-CGI (2013)
Author : Michelangelo11
Score : 125 points
Date : 2024-09-11 09:11 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cartoonbrew.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cartoonbrew.com)
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng
|
| (SD unfortunately but then it is old - impressive amount of model
| building to achieve something that would be a CGI nobrainer
| today)
| lelandfe wrote:
| Miniatures are still in use in Hollywood! The weathering in
| your video reminded me of the storytelling from Weta in this
| Blade Runner BTS (which they call "big-atures"):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLxxbfsj8IM
| metadat wrote:
| Whoa, this is so neat! Stunning level of detail, a shame it's
| not even full SD and so fuzzy. :)
|
| What really put me over the top was the reveal for how the
| Stargate Effect works.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I remember this as a kid, but kid memories forget about how
| janky the motion was. I'm assuming that was the best attempt at
| it too.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I think this was posted here in the past year but why not... how
| the Windows 10 wallpaper is, in fact, not a computer graphic.
| https://youtu.be/ewmXizBqjl0?si=ME-US9M5PgQcF4dH
| metadat wrote:
| _Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed
| (2015)_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439515 - May 2024 (268
| comments)
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sounds like the flyby of the HBO logo, to introduce features.
| Another example of when they knew they wanted a CGI look, but
| was still cheaper to build it physically. Edit: see below!
| duxup wrote:
| To me the Psudeo-CGI or straight up non CGI effects have more
| character. Is it intentional or just "found" I don't know, but I
| always feel like there's more of a unique look to them.
|
| Straight CG still looks more often than not, too clean (even if
| trying to look dirty), too polished, too uniform, no character,
| and just feels like CGI for CGIs sake. Something feels lost and
| while I expected it to get better over time, I don't feel like it
| has gotten better.
| swatcoder wrote:
| CGI effects are inevitably samey because any generation of them
| all get built on the same few tools from the same few vendors,
| largely by artists and animators trained to approach those
| tools in the same way, often chasing the mark established in
| the last big breakthrough hit and whatever new technological
| innovations it was built on.
|
| Meanwhile, practical and hybrid effects have a much wider
| palette of material and techniques leverage hundreds of years
| of diversity and maturity in craft technique, and leave plenty
| of room for lead artists to apply their own personal creative
| signature.
|
| We can assume CGI will eventually merge into that latter pool,
| but that won't happen until technological innovation plateaus
| and artists turn focus to clever innovations in technique and
| style instead.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It all comes down to lots of greebles and people who see a
| CD-rack and think 'that would actually make a really cool
| skyscraper for this dystopian cityscape I'm making'1.
|
| 1: I think that happened with Bladerunner (1982).
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I mean you see a combination of cgi and practical
| (puppet/rubber applicae and masks) in some of the newer
| disney+ star wars stuff (and some stuff that is both, grogu
| is primarily a puppet but they do some cgi work on top to
| 'sweeten' him). I think generally a toss-up as to what looks
| worse from a reality comparison perspective, however I think
| the practical work in starwars taps into a lot of the
| nostalgia and legacy from the first three movies and ends up
| being more 'accepted' by that audience.
|
| Other blockbusters have followed suit on this re-adoption of
| practical effects as well, the new Dungeons and Dragons movie
| used quite a bit of practical effects in their creature work
| as well.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This could not be further from the truth. Reality is almost
| the exact opposite from what you are saying. Practical
| effects are severely limited and if you look at movies in the
| 80s and 90s you can see the exact same model + foam + air
| brush + balsa wood breaking + cocoa for dirt + mist canon in
| one shot after the next.
|
| Meanwhile in modern times you are watching movies where
| virtually every shot is somewhere between subtly modified to
| mostly CG and you don't notice. Then people see one awkward
| shot out of 400 and declare that "practical effects are
| better".
|
| Watch batman returns to see a high budget comic book movie
| before modern film making and compare that to the summer
| block busters from today.
| the_af wrote:
| One of the first commenters addressed this [1] with a pretty
| fair point of view:
|
| > _" There's an apples-to-oranges comparison going on because
| while the majority of hand-drawn/made/oldschool animation and
| effects which were very ordinary and uncreative have slipped
| from memory (and are unavailable to view) and we only see the
| cream/best of a hundred years of those artforms, CG is unfairly
| and naively compared to it."_
|
| That is, most old effects before CGI were crap. We remember
| fondly those that stood the test of time (like Max Headroom or
| Blade Runner) _precisely_ because they were good. We forget
| about the majority that weren 't very good.
|
| ---
|
| [1] 11 year ago! Wow that article is old, especially given how
| rapidly tech progresses
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Go find some early Hanna-Barbera, such as _Huckleberry
| Hound._ It 's like watching a slide show. This was low-budget
| TV animation, the early years.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _CG still looks more often than not, too clean (even if trying
| to look dirty), too polished, too uniform, no character, and
| just feels like CGI for CGIs sake._
|
| The truth is that this is what you notice. Most of the effects
| fly by and you have no idea. When you see slivers that don't
| work as well you think of that as 'all cg' and the 'cg look'.
|
| "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdMAEtLrPSc
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGPHy3yWE08
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8oQ1jV859w
| codeulike wrote:
| This article is missing any clips of Max Headroom so here is one,
| an interview with Max on the Wogan chat show in 1985
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_hWGCsY1g
|
| The effects were great for the time, and done in real time,
| allowing Max to ad-lib
| tempaway4575144 wrote:
| And the Max Headroom style was notably copied for the Back To
| The Future 2 "80s Cafe" scene, with Max Headroom style version
| of Reagan, Michael Jackson and Ayatollah Khomeini.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEU-Lf60LA
| airstrike wrote:
| Exhibit #infinity for why this movie and the first
| installment are so god damn great
| schlauerfox wrote:
| and the angular robot makeup reminds me of Stan Winston's
| work in HeartBeeps (1981).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Also receives an homage by Eminem in the video for Rap God
|
| https://youtu.be/XbGs_qK2PQA
| burningChrome wrote:
| Who could forget the Signal Hijacking in 1987?
|
| _On the night of November 22, 1987, the television signals
| of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, were hijacked, briefly
| sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentified person wearing
| a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home
| viewers._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_signal_hijacking
| friendlyHornet wrote:
| And his manner of speaking is an inspiration for the iconic
| voice of SHODAN from System Shock, though SHODAN removes all
| the comedy and dials up the terror to 11
|
| Example: https://youtu.be/5iZMD_eCpEo?feature=shared
| flannell wrote:
| I kind of got vibes of this AI video using streaming king
| Asmongold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjoYy5IVtfo
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > Of course, if Max had been made using actual CGI he would have
| ended up as a creaky old relic, rather like the "Money for
| Nothing" video which came out the year after his debut. Instead,
| Jankel, Morton and Frewer came up with a genuinely iconic
| creation that has aged surprisingly well.
|
| Ouch! Just last night, I couldn't sleep and wound up watching a
| deep dive on youtube regarding the video, one of the original
| animators even commented on the thread
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHJj25PBIhg)... calling "Money
| for Nothing" creaky and old is like criticizing 8 bit pixel art
| for being blocky. Yeesh.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Underrated video. Underrated song.
| rapind wrote:
| Knopfler is a magician on the guitar.
| havblue wrote:
| Money for Nothing is underrated now? I thought MTV even uses
| it when they splash their logo. Everyone knows it's great,
| video as well. I think it's neither underrated nor overrated.
| It's just rated.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Agree. I associate this song with wandering the halls of
| home depot, it is Poe's law in a song, indistinguishable
| from that which it satirizes
|
| (I can't find what podcast it was that tells the story of
| the band absolutely not wanting to do this video, they
| hated MTV, "I want my MTV" at the head of the song is sung
| mockingly, but it's so iconic that MTV co-opted it as their
| brand - an amazing example of "what you resist persists")
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Underrated video? It got a dozen Video Music Award
| nominations and won two, including "Video of the Year."
| clwg wrote:
| Piling on a bit, but it was also the first video they played
| when they launched MTV Europe.
|
| https://direstraitsblog.com/blog/30-years-ago-money-
| nothing-...
| bitwize wrote:
| Old CG has a vibe all its own. Look at the Mind's Eye stuff for
| good examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35rjDpBHBxw
| blipvert wrote:
| There are actually some scenes with a proper CGI Max (at least
| in the British/Channel 4 feature) where Bryce is working on an
| early demo, which show how this would have looked!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think the music video actually holds up today, especially
| compared to some CG even in the 2000s (i.e. The Rock in the
| Mummy Returns). The 3D world is clean, bright and colorful.
| Yeah, it's blocky, but that can be seen as a style choice.
| These characters, microwave ovens, etc. could easily fit into
| the world of Katamari Damashii [0], for example.
|
| I think Max Headroom was going for a different mood, and that
| style wouldn't have fit, but the style is perfectly fine in a
| vacuum.
|
| 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHsFcSNFUMc
| jimbokun wrote:
| > calling "Money for Nothing" creaky and old is like
| criticizing 8 bit pixel art for being blocky. Yeesh.
|
| Just tell the kids it's a tribute to Minecraft.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| Let's not forget that behind all this was actor -- including the
| improv and adlibs -- Matt Frewer.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| Apparently 1.9 meters tall which is a bit ironic considering
| how small the screens generally were back in those days. :)
| tabtab wrote:
| Similarly, those of us who cannot afford high-end AI have to use
| Photoshop to fake the AI look for our memes, like gluing extra
| toes on people.
| qingcharles wrote:
| And most of those old panels on spaceships etc were just gel
| printed, often with hand-applied Letraset etc
|
| https://propstoreauction.com/lot-details/index/catalog/347/l...
| Triphibian wrote:
| If I want one thing out of AI (besides not destroying humanity)
| it would be an old CRT in the corner of my house with an AI Max
| Headroom I could talk to.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| the usual version, or the Chicago version?
| Triphibian wrote:
| Maybe a bit creepy to keep in the house.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I was thinking, could you trust train a modern LLM with content
| meant to emulate Max's personality (not sure if there's enough
| content just from the shows), plus synchronized blocky
| animation to generate Max Headroom?
| Triphibian wrote:
| honestly I don't need Max to summarize wikipedia pages for
| me: Non-sequitur jokes with the occasional riff on something
| I said would feel real enough.
| lordfrito wrote:
| They did it with Seinfeld "Nothing, Forever" [0]
|
| It should be easier with Max... what a great idea someone has
| to do this.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfmTofQLL0
| sumtechguy wrote:
| wait... this might be possible to do...
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Great video on why Max Headroom is wildly missunderstood.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU
| nabla9 wrote:
| Max Headroom TV series, 2 seasons 14 episodes total is a really
| great cypherpunk series. If you watch it today, its cypherpunk
| and 80's nostalgic retro scifi.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Cyberpunk is the gritty near future Blade Runner inspired style
| of max headroom (which takes place "5 minutes in the future")
| and the works of William Gibson. Cypherpunks are the gen x
| people behind things like PGP and Bitcoin. To quote wikipedia:
| "A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of
| strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a
| route to social and political change."
| nabla9 wrote:
| I made a typo.
|
| Should have written cypherpunk (a subgenre of science fiction
| in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a
| combination of "low-life and high tech")
| mulderc wrote:
| I really enjoyed the show, but I'd suggest checking out the
| original TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future
| first. It provides great context for the series and stands on
| its own as a unique piece of cyberpunk history. Last time I
| checked, it was available on YouTube
| joezydeco wrote:
| Totally agree. _20 Minutes_ introduced the "Operator, get me
| out of here!" trope that showed up later in The Matrix...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZY-yQYVf38&t=825s
| bitwize wrote:
| My parents named their car GPS "Mrs. Wiggins" after a Carol
| Burnett character.
|
| My wife set her GPS to use a British accent. Following in
| that tradition, we've named her GPS "Theora".
| zh3 wrote:
| Favourite bit, as best I remember it.
|
| Edison Carter asks why the cops have busted into some girls
| apartment and dragged her off:-
|
| Edison: "What's her crime?" (she was in front of a TV)
|
| Cop: (turns over a cushion) "Look! An off-switch. She'll get
| years for that."
| nabla9 wrote:
| s/cypherpunk/cyberpunk/g
| voytec wrote:
| Sci-fi Interfaces is a good source of similar content
|
| https://scifiinterfaces.com/
| RichardCA wrote:
| Thanks, I was unaware of Annabel Jankel, sister of Chaz Jankel.
|
| https://youtu.be/uf0JKWSLd3I
| Animats wrote:
| Today's pseudo-CGI effects are the distortions Youtubers apply to
| stock shots. The dust-and-scratches insertion filter, the camera-
| jitter insertion filter, the sprocket area visible filter, the
| sepia tone filter, fake analog TV noise, fake zoom and pan...
| Usually narrated by a neckbeard with an oversized microphone.
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