they made that back in 1983? crazy

Damn, HBO was around in 1983?

Awsome consept could be good idea to remake this with the new effects. Adrew wish u make something for the style ^^

woau very well done!

Wow, that’s amazing. The sheer amount of tedious work sure makes me grateful for After Effects now!

yeah i sometimes wonder how hard it was in those days to do fx..

Great! Thanks for this!

I remember watching the first time it was shown. I didn’t want the movie to start. I wanted to see the intro again!

The sound is interesting too. After all these years it still elicits a connection – “Hey! get in here the show is starting.”

I remember watching that on HBO as a kid. With Tron coming out just a year before, it really sparked my interested in VFX.

I actually tried doing that interference starburst when I first started using AE back in the CoSA days.

I remember watching that in the 80s. I didn’t know that this was a feat in motion design for its time. I love old intro motion graphics especially the music. Thanks for sharing this and bring back some good memories for me!

And we all laugh when we see corny effects in old movies and tv shows but we don’t think about all the work it took to make things like that back then

Thank you for sharing Andrew!

Wow, that was really good. I can’t wait to try out the project in the morning.

The musical score was awesome back then and is still great today!! Sounds like a Superhero is coming on the scene. Great stuff. I was surprised to see how much of that was done with regular (non CG) techniques.

I remember this and I absolutely loved seeing this every saturday night at 8pm when a new movie came on. I totally just rocked out to the soundtrack just now.

Amazing! Probably not nearly as expensive today though… Even if it was AWESOME

Whoa! I’m 6 years older, but skills…

This music video from Justice seems to be quite on topic (particularly at 0:40).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BBNZ-ejjU

Epic like Rocky, thx for the post. I love this vid so much.

If you havn’t seen, this is cool too (not nearly as cool though):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BBNZ-ejjU

Awesome, it must have been so much work putting that together. The way the camera spun around the HBO logo reminded me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy intro.

hahaha OMG I totally remember watching this as a kid

so that makes you.. 26 years old now Andrew?

Awsome.

When Jerassic Park was first released I reckon that was the turning point for modern digital visual FX just as AVATAR is for 3D

You’re born in ‘84? I thought you’re atleast 30 with a good 10+ years in the movie effects industry! Woah!

P.S. and the same goes for Video Copilot
Giving and sharing tools,information and knowledge.

thanks Andrew very interesting, I still think the model making from ‘Blade Runner’ stands up the best though

Andrew,
I was 14 when HBO started and I remember it like it was yesterday. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I just watched it about 20 times.

“In the old days you would actually have to go hand crank everything… the computer actually does it”

Oh man for me this HBO logo was like yesterday – but now watching this I feel so dated..

Oh well. Now we can say:

“In the old days we used to build models and have a computer use motion control – but now we have computers actually hooked to Andrew”

Now i get that part on DVNO music video!!! Nice!!!

@paul
Blade Runner – is simply a masterpiece – My favorite movie in so many ways – and for me Blade Runner could be released this summer and minus everyone being young – it would pass for a modern movie.

Love the Computer they use to move the camera ! LOL ! Old school man, like when I use to edit on beta tape, and doing a page flip was a bid deal.

Video Toaster with a Kirom for graphics !

I actually remember this very well.

Wow , this is beautiful & PHANTASY. (:

Wowwwwwwwwwww excelent!!
crazy jobs

Reminded me of this Video Toaster commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_K8vnx2ZDc

lol I see I wasn’t the only one who thought of Justice’s DVNO video when I saw this. That’s why I like that music video so much. The nostalgic references are great.

It was really cool seeing how they tackled a project like this in 1983. I love learning about the practical techniques they used back in the day. It’s really interesting to see how people found creative solutions to problems before we could just do things digitally.

It’s crazy that now, the same intro can be created by someone with moderate experience using 2 or 3 programs and take a week or two.

That’s awesome! Very vintage making of! Nothing will be Do like that, now! Great movie, really.

Brilliant! Watch the music video by the french group “Justice”. The song is called DVNO. They adapted such oldschool logo styles. It is a great video.

Greets from Austria

Oldies are a great ressources of inspiring tricks and basics. Good initiative, Andrew.

The other point is : obviously beeing too fashion with your haircut or your clothes is the best way to quickly become ridiculous. So powerfull

Great intro!

Look for ‘Segundo de Chomón’ on wiki, and you will find the first magician of composition and post!!! on 1903!!!!!

Question :: Ive been using AE for about 4 years. It’s an amazing tool. It’s easy to do simple titles, green screeen etc. The question is before it was digital how in the world did they get it done. I just don’t understand the concept pre digital days . May just be me

@jer et al

yes indeed the last release of Blade runner had one of the most comprehensive in depth “making of” docos I have ever seen. The section on model making and the ‘accidental’ use of light to generate lens flares is truly breath taking..although now days Riddly would probably use Andrew’s flares in a heart beat..its amazing how many people think this movie is CG

Jajajaja!, what a flash back!
I saw this so long ago… The making is great!

Amazing that what took an entire FX crew months and months to create can now be done by one person with a computer in a week.
It will be interesting to see the tech we have in 25 years from now.

Hey, fantastic !

Look at 10′00, in the right corner in bottom. That lasts just 1 second but there is a man who appears !!
(or maybe my eyes are crazy !?)

@ Blade Runner fans, here is that “making of” documentary Paul mentioned. Pretty cool.

Part 1 of 6 (the other 5 are on this persons channel.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-YKLdunaIM

it was at this exact moment i realized AK is younger than i am. kind of demoralizing to be so far behind…

I was like.. euhm.. born in 1983 Really cool to see this.

OMG, i think we are sooo sooooo lucky now
Thank you

I’ve always wondered, spoiled as I am with the new generation of softwares, how they did such effects way back when. It’s astounding how innovative they were.

no CG at all!!!
uaaau:|

Really cool stuff, how do you find things like that?

A lovely work. Just a few days ago I found this on youtube, it’s amazing the level of detail.

Now I know so much more!

1983.???wow, that’s awesome!!

I remember my first visit in the USA in the 80s.
i ve heard about something called “cable tv” and watched one of this hbo intros coming after the one Andrew showed us here. i was pretty amazed about the filmmaking and crafting skills. sometimes i wish we would build more real visual fx then making all that stuff using our computers.

The most amazing thing were the crews haircuts and clothes (ha). I also liked the “computer” they used for the camera moves – yikes was that MSDos? I still refer to layers in compositing as “plates.” They used to use glass plates to composite shots together. Model making is still an art although you’d rarely get a chance to make such a detailed physical model for a TV spot these days when turn around times for a project are way shorter than the three months this opening took to put together. It makes you feel lucky to have the technology we have today. I feel very retro after watching this and a little nostalgic. Thanks for the blast from the past.

1983??? is my date born LOL, great, that’s awesome

I remember that intro. It was the coolest intro I had ever seen. I think I even saw a behind the scenes as well. It was very inspiring. And shows the power of practical effects. We use both.

OMG!!!
I REMEMBER THAT!!!

I FEEL OLD!!!

God I love the glossy and shiny logo’s of the eighties. Sure, people might find the design a bit dated.

But for the kick of it I like to recreate some of the effects I see in these oldish productions. Part this I would call the “moire”-effect where you take two or more textures and blend them together, animating them to produce moving patterns and glowing them up for that extra spice. Just as in the example-project Andrew posted here. Though I usually see this effect when late 80’s early 90’s anime are simulating water and/or creating dimensional rifts in time and space.

Maybe it’s an Idea for a tutorial? and I know you already have the light-streaks but I’d love it if there’s a way to get similair light-tracing-streaks a la old tube-cams based on the luminance of the image. The method I use (making a crushed black overlayed matte with time-echo & glow) takes forever to render in HD and isn’t exactly sub-frame accurate.

Could be a nice add-on to the luminance-guided flares of the lens-flares package perhaps?

Oh. And that DVNO video was just awesome!

Aw all this makes me wanna watch Darkplace yet again…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpdgEv9us5A

YouTube.com has been blocked by the goverment of China, sigh

I remember this intro so well, and being SOOO captivated and wondering how they did it. I must’ve been…. five? Wow.

Great scott marty! we’ve gone back to the future.
some nice effects there.

That was a blast from the past.

Anyone know where I can get the soundtrack? Oh god, that song will be in my head all day.

I was just going through the comments. Wow you people are so young. I remember watching the Behind the Scenes special. I was in my late twenties at the time. I remember watching the original series Star Trek and wondering how they did some of the stuff they did at the time. Things never really change. Except the software. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

These people are so amazing.

Dang, very nice. Thanks for this!

back then it was awesome i saw that when i was a child back in 1993 i was about 6, and i thought i was great, looking at it now it just seems like…..uhh wha>>>???

but still it was classical and innovative and still make me feel proud to be alive to see this

Got a certain “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” feel about it, don’t you think? lol

the funniest part was seeing how clunky the computer they used was back then. It reminds me of spending an entire week coding just to get a small truck to move across the screen……thank goodness I can use AE now….definitely a time-saver.

AHH, the good ol days, I still remember the show Movie Magic. That show made me go into movie making. I love the reasons, no matter how simple, that make us kats go into movie making

Wow, that cheesy music about illusions was over the top. That sounds like a great lead-in to a Video Co-pilot tutorials, and make Sam dance to it to pull off the shot.

hah.. very cool… ‘83? wow..
so u’r born 84? (so it’s the answer to one of the series one questions ;D

Wait. You were born in 1984? That’s crazy.

I thought Andrew was older….not that he looks old by any means but just because he is so well versed in so many areas of design and FX

Nice 1983. can’t wait to open the project file.

awsome, this is incradable …. 1983

cannot wait to see the latest tuts….>.<

I saw this before, that was ramdom.

Be careful about saying you could do this by yourself. There is still a lot of production work going on here that would be quite a lot of work for even a good size crew.

THANKS, AK!

Now I’m going to be singing “Illusion… Take a closer look…” all week long!

Born before ‘83? I’m getting my best stuff from a kid!

Yea… I remember this intro as if it were yesterday (and also the behind the scenes wayyyy back then)! A lot of times I cared more about the intro than I did the movie. Didn’t understand why so much then, but now I know: because I LOVE MOTION GRAPHICS!

Thanks for the reminder, Andrew!

Yes, this was back in the day when we used to walk up hill to school…both ways! Back when we used chewing gum for wall tacks and read a 50 page manual to set our Texas Instrument watches. Funny though, didn’t Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood use that same set of hot wheel cars in their set? Yep, those were the days.

(Mr. Rogers was a public television figure who many of us grew up watching on one of the four channels we had to watch on the Cathode Ray Tube thingy)

I am showing my age…..

Thanks Andrew for educating a few of us old farts out here!

hehe !! Nice intro, special effects exist since long time ago !!

It would have been a lot easier if they had a 3D program lol

And this is the modern way of flying through a city.
http://studiodaily.com/main/video/10352.html

Sorry Andrew but no lens flares that I could see.

I think , Andrew you should have a go at recreating this on After Effects and keep the Originally of the opening..grain and all..as I’m toying with recreating old Intro sequences for a new video review project I will be working on this year..

Epic Win to whoever chose the tunes to that behined-the-scenes video! “pay a little closer attention..TO DETAIL…” I’ll have to dig around and find that song to play in loop while I do my next composting job!

Detail! pay a little attention to detail! “ail” “ail”!

Wow! The light from the lamps do that cool LENS FLAIR effect where the light brightens up as it leaves the shot. very cool.

Whoa! Talk about flashback. Man…I remember how big of a deal it was when my town got cable back in ‘83 (i.e. I am old).

The music by Jon Segal was the best part of the whole thing. He is and will always be, a lyrical gangsta.
“The Illusion” – download it before they sell out on Itunes.

This is very interesting. And I think 3D Max is hard…

I remember watching HBO when this was the intro to every movie, and watching the original of how they made this, and was always fascinated by this intro.

it just makes me go “awwww, how cute”

That’s so awesome! Man, this reminds me of so many old “TV-Specials” memories… good times, good times.

I remember that intro as a child. Every time I heard it i would run and say MOVIE TIME. haha

oh man i remember that!! i always knew they were gonna show a cool movie next lol. ahh to be young again and not worry about bills or problems.

Ahh- (Dreaming like J.D. on scrubs.)

Holy CRAP you and I are closer in age than I ever thought possible! Here I was just thinking you aged really well.

nice!! The time special effects where still hand crafted!

I remember this so well as I was born much earlier.

Nice !
It’s fun to see that those techniques don’t change : in the “Lord of the rings” movies, they also used miniatures (Minas Tirith, Helm’s Deep,…)

How much they spent on this intro?

this is a really amazing piece of work. thanks to sharing it and refreshing.

Thanks Andrew! I watched HBO at my aunt’s all the time. I even caught this making of documentary when it was first-run, but I hadn’t thought about this stuff in years. Now a young whipper-snapper like you has to come along and remind old-timer’s like me that there’s inspiration in them thar memories.

Great fun to watch again, and I really like your example mix. Wish I had some free time today to play around with it, but I’ve got a ton of actual work to do before LOST starts this evening.

Hope your day is FANTASTICO…

waiting for a new tut! ^^

Oh wow, thanks for sharing this link. I remember this from when I was a kid. (Although I never saw the opening shot with the man turning on the TV, I think they must have created a shorter version that picks up on the street)

I was most surprised that they actually fabricated the chrome letters rather than creating them via computer animation.

Miniatures rock! I hope they don’t disappear altogether from film making.

That brings back memories. How many times I watched that intro before an HBO movie with my family. That really makes me think about what that must have taken to produce that intro.

Buen video,,, esperamos un video similar, pero hecho hoy, con el After effets cs4, estaría buenísimo, ya que lo visual y real que se puede lograr hoy es excelente.

Wow, I am a few years older than you Andrew and have that intro etched in my brain…reminds me of watching some great 80’s films at my Grandmothers since she had HBO and we didn’t…thanks for the nostalgia! Looking back it was very well done!

If you haven’t checked out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BBNZ-ejjU (DVNO – Justice) do so it’s awesome and actually incorporates the HBO spacecraft idea in it.

I also just found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfAoA_AQM9k which goes through some of the logos in DVNO and shows the original inspiration.

Anyway, loved this post and have shared it with a number of friends.

Great. I graduated high school in ‘84. Nothing like getting kicked in the gut in the middle of the day. Thanks a lot! haha

makes you wonder what they’ll be saying about our stuff in 20 years!

Andrew, I am glad you posted this. This intro was a very revolutionary graphics piece that may have set a new standard in broadcast design. As someone who admires these designs, it’s important to remember where we came from and where we are going in the future of design. Thanks Andrew.

OMG!!!
I had totally forgotten all about that. Thanks for sharing A.K. This brought memories of my dad when he was still alive and I was just a kid. I was sitting in this old style sofa with weird wall paper my mom had put up in our livingroom which was kind of red and silver with silk on it. Yeah that was weird! It felt like a real old episode of sopranos. Anyway there I was about 8yrs old excited because when I got home from school my dad the plumber got HBO! And this awesome freeking thing came out on the screen and my eyes and mouth were open so big it was awesome! I was amazed and loved it! It was great… Damn I miss those day!!! I didn’t have a single bill…

does anyone have tips on recreating the stargate effect? attempts so far produce thin lines of light rather than smaller dashes. thanks in advance.

Man that intro brings back all kinds of good memories. Awesome post! That’s a timeless intro. They should be very proud of that work. It seemed to capture a feeling that something great was going to happen. It always set the mood that something great was about to come on. Just wonderful!

1983 – the year I turned 19. Man, I feel OLD….

That’s just amazing what was accomplished back in the times of no CG and computers. 14 hours for a 20 second clip to film….Amazing!!

was 11 in 1983…and sadly yes, i do remember that intro very well

OMG!!! I graduated high school in ‘88

Awesome post! Thans a lot.

I’was 1year in 1983

yeahhh andrew, make some 80’s style tutorial
whith a lot of glow, flares & splinters

greetings from france, you have some fans

I graduated HS in ‘88 as well.

In ‘83 I was 13 and about a year away from getting a Commodore 64 (8 bit processor, 64KB of memory). The great thing about the last 10 years is that home users with only a couple of thousand dollars worth of investment actually have access to high end animation. Even in the late 90’s that wasn’t true.

I remember when you could pirate HBO by tuning your radio to like 88.3 FM and taking two three foot long sections of copper tubing and using alligator clips and speaker wire to connect the tubes to your antenna, then “tuning” the connection by carefully moving the rods apart…

Ahh, Humanoids from the Deep, I shall never forget thee…

That was ace, making of is the shizz too.

One year before you were born? You got married like when you were 21, Kramer?

One of the most amazing things is to read about how this intro affects us emotionally. I can only hope that something I work on will be so ingrained into people’s minds that they connect it with an entire period of their lives! Something to think about.

I was 13 when that came out. I feel like a relic. I always loved the music for that intro.

That fanfare brings me back. A good musical piece can really draw focus and make the viewer anticipate the presentation even more.

haha wow and that actually looked goos in 1983? that was like heaven for them or something.

ah the good ol’ days of HBO….makes me feel old.

brings back memories, thanks for the share… neat to see older-school fx how-tos… also cool was the mtv rocket logo animation from the same time period.. and the theme music

here’s that mtv logo… 1980s style… anyone else remember it? maybe i’m the ‘old guy’ here sigh..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiwramAinP0&feature=related

I’m two years older than AK? FML…

The sound track is weird…

Wow.. you’re my age and you’ve accomplished all this? Wow I feel lazy.

I was 21 yrs old in 1983, Thanks Andrew for making
feel as old as that HBO intro looks
witch is surprisingly good looking for it’s age! Haha

Ah…HBO. Watching scrambled nude scences…that was the life of a teenager back then…

wait a minute did he just say we put some hookers on the corner? lol

wow its amazing

i can´t wait for the set extension project you are making

Wow, you’re only 26? Lol not saying you look 40 or something, I just never thought about how old you are. Your parents must be proud, hope I”m as successful as you are in 4 years

Wow!!!
May i know which softwares they used to Create this…:)
and
Thx AK

I remember this too! It freaked me out. Not sure why but I hated it and would leave the room until it was over.

Hi!

Here’s how Avatar was made with the tools by adobe.
I think you should watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMfym3SN_1E&feature=player_embedded

Oh man, who knew that shiny “HBO” was a practical effect!? I loved this intro, including the music.

Haha I remember that like yesterday …that and paying 40 bucks for seeing star wars on ppv in the 80s

That is amazing I still have some old tapes with that intro….it takes me back…lol wow that was bad ass….thanks andrew

OMG! I LOVE this kind of retro vibe. I would give anything to see Andrew do a tutorial or better still a series of tutorials on creating this kind of retro look. (i would have thought that the :starburst” effect would be easy to recreate using layer modes etc but just been playing about and I can’t seem to get it working like it does in that video… awesome!

Please Andrew… indulge us!

1983! The year i was born , very good intro for it’s time, got me wondering on what kind of tool’s they used back on the 80’s, those particular like effect’s sure remind of the first superman movie dunno why.

And thus, After Effects was born.

hi, Andrew!
this is the sixth time i watch star trek (i am a old trekker and i love the new version) since i have the dvd, and…

Why don’t you post a making of your end title-fx of the movie?
Could be great…

why beside me video file not see in program?

Check out the video for DVNO by Justice.. they did TONS of these 80’s effects and they are INSANE! It looks so legit, i’d love to see how they created some of the effects.

hey andrew please plase can you make a tutorial of how to make film look better like HDR technique but fot video,, how to make an image look more pro and just better quality

Wow! I remember that like too vividly!

THIS WAS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART ABOUT WATCHING HBO WHEN I WAS A KID. Even more than the feature presentation. I loved the small city fly-over. Thank you for posting this.

I’ve done the same with a pre-compose polystar shape layer. One was white over black, the other was the same but in multiply mode. The animation that you can achieve is amazing and incredibly looks like planet Krypton exploding!

Yep I remember seeing that when I was little. I remember liking the models; it reminded me of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.

When I think back I think I was always drawn to Special FX and motion graphics. Thanks for sharing this so we can reminisce.

That starburst thing… if you take any two black and white images, layer them and multiply, then move one of them… awesome.

Thanks for all this help Andrew, i buy all your softwares and all are nice…..Action Essentials 2 very very awesome thing

thanks for all things…..

That HBO fanfare is one of the iconic things I remember from my childhood.

It just goes to show how much TV I watched as a kid.

Hey Andrew, you were born in 1984 too? Coolness. I like HBO too, partly coz I work there!

David hit the nail on the head. This into illicits the same excitement as openings on the big screen as the lights dim to that cinematic blue glow followed by any one of a myriad of company logos. That HBO opening has still not been bested by their competitors.

80’s tutorial, please! That would be awesome, AK! Redo the whole commercial….

massa!! melhor vídeo que já vi na vida

Wow I got chills watching this – I was 14 in 1983 and we were one of the only families in the small PA town (where I used to live) that even had HBO. We weren’t rich or anything it was a random adoption program where you were picked by a lottery.

But I used to watch Fraggle Rock on HBO (when it was new HBO was producing it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraggle_Rock and used to spaz on that HBO intro.

That fly-over of that physical city model is amazing for the day.

Loved it – thanks for the throwback feeling

- Dax (Creator of The Devil’s Minstrels)
- Devil’s Minstrels Productions, L.L.C.
- http://www.devilsminstrels.com
- http://www.myspace.com/devilsminstrels
- http://www.youtube.com/devilsminstrels

1 word! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!

I.ve been visiting your site for about a year now and this time you brought a tear to my eye. I’m telling my age but I remember laying on my couch and imagining i was flying through HBO’s imaginary city. Truly amazing!

BRAVO BRAVO!! Wow, I remember this like it was yesterday. I was 13 years old. I do believe they made the video in my home town of Rochester, NY. Jay Advertsing I believe.

Thanks for the link, Andrew.

Same here! I was 9 (and probably shouldn’t have been watching HBO late night) but I remember when they made this intro and it was hugely inspiring for me. I also remember watching the making-of on TV and wanting to create this kind of thing when I grew up. And now I do!!

Whoa, never realized we’re the same age or that we’ve both attempted the stargate effect. I always loved this intro. It’s one of my clearest memories from the 80’s. The ones that came later were never as good.

You must see it!!

love it… just love it

makes me want to keep doing this forever

freakin’ awesome:)))

that’s the imagination of an artists which brings us today of CG…. there were no 3d logo animations, no particles, no flares to inspire… Pure imagination… BRAVO!!!