About a year and half ago, I was given the opportunity to work with J.J. Abrams to create the intro graphics for the Fox show Fringe which I mentioned on the blog.

Now this season, the producers wanted to flash-back to 1985 for one episode and asked if I would be interested in recreating a title sequence to match the era. I thought to my self, “Radical!”

They wanted to include science concepts that would have seemed cutting-edge at the time, such as “Personal Computing” and “Stealth Technology”, and it was my job was to make it look like Atari!

I did some youtube research and began building the retro sequence in After Effects. It was a very fun project that included some strange challenges as well. The way video was produced at the time was quite different and I didn’t want to do anything that seemed too modern.

One thing that I tried to avoid was using Easy-Ease keyframes to keep the animation more mechanical. I also used a font that implied “High-Tech” called CyFy. The text overlays were also stylized to match the Chyron process used to composite text on video.

Hat’s off to Charles for creating the 1980 version of the music too.

Watch original title sequence, followed by the 1985 version:
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Now those seasoned folks, please feel free to share you stories of actually using the technology from the 1980s…