What you were watching on Saturday nights 30 years ago.
December 14, 2013 4:44 PM   Subscribe

The making of HBO's classic "Starship" feature presentation introduction clip. Also, what "Starship" may have looked like if done by Best Brains.
posted by mediocre (32 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've got nary an idea what this is, but it sure looks pretty. I am a sucker for model porn like this.
It also looks a little like the intro to the 1980s Twilight Zone series, down to the creepy clock tower.
posted by Mezentian at 4:53 PM on December 14, 2013


c.f. Night Flight
posted by stbalbach at 4:57 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


Oh yeah, I remember how totally awesome I thought this was back in the day. Thanks for the flashback!
posted by dnash at 4:59 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


I believe there was a post about this previously but the links contained in that previous post are now apparently dead.
posted by smcameron at 5:00 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


I can no longer look at that without wanting to sing "DVNO... four capital letters..." But then, the Reading Rainbow intro does it too...
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:33 PM on December 14, 2013 [5 favorites]


I am gobsmacked that we used to be willing to sit through a minute and a half of a little movie we'd already seen dozens of times. I have this same reaction to old TV show intros full of clips.
posted by not that girl at 5:40 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


All i can ever think of when i see this anymore is this kickass remix.
posted by emptythought at 5:53 PM on December 14, 2013


I am gobsmacked that we used to be willing to sit through a minute and a half of a little movie we'd already seen dozens of times. I have this same reaction to old TV show intros full of clips.

I know! That's 90 seconds of prime-time air just sitting there, unmonetised.
Where's the voice over? The spiit screen advert? The logos? The little intrusive animations running along the screen... and I am looking at you GhostChasers on SyFy....
I am so glad someone though of the brand creatives in the 1990s.

(Also, remember when credits used to come at the start of a show? Arrow recently didn't pull the credits sequence until about 20 minutes in. Crazy.)
posted by Mezentian at 5:58 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


"We threw a few extras in... We put a few bums on the street, a few hookers on the corner. Those little things were like our calling card."
posted by bicyclefish at 6:02 PM on December 14, 2013


I want to know where the chrome plated HBO logo is today.
posted by localroger at 6:06 PM on December 14, 2013


It was melted down, recycled and forged to make the Iron Throne.
posted by Mezentian at 6:09 PM on December 14, 2013 [5 favorites]


30 years ago, the idea of staying in and watching anything on TV on a Saturday night would have caused me to top myself with shame at how empty my life had become at such a tender age.
posted by Decani at 6:18 PM on December 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


I had so many movie tapes with that last little bit where you go into the O and get the "HBO Feature Presentation" sign. Watching that was like watching clips of old Sesame Street skits...blast of nostalgia.
posted by snwod at 6:27 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


I read this FPP very quickly and thought it was going to be Bad Brains covering "We Built This City" by Starship, live on HBO.

I am... relieved? disappointed? What is this feeling?
posted by escabeche at 6:45 PM on December 14, 2013 [4 favorites]


It was melted down, recycled and forged to make the Iron Throne.

I seriously doubt that. Nothing like that gets discarded, because it might be needed again, and nothing like that ever gets reused either because it's more reliable to redo it with new and better tech. I'm sure both the logo and the town model are in a warehouse somewhere.
posted by localroger at 7:27 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


Mer ner neenerneenerneeeeeen neen neen ner ner

Da Da Da ditty da ditty da Da Da Da ba da dah dah dah BA-DUP BA-DUP

Which has been one of my ringtones for years!

I remember the logo and the making of so well. I was just blown away by all the work that went into a 1 minute brag screen. That model! The flying camera! The giant metal HBO! The fiber-optic robot!

Today, it'd be a half-days work in CGI.
posted by Frayed Knot at 7:27 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


Holy crap, the sign is real? And there I was chuckling at the obvious fakeness of the 80s ray tracing.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:39 PM on December 14, 2013


That the Best Brains intros were not our actual intros means we live in the Worst Of All Timelines.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:49 PM on December 14, 2013


I also had always assumed that the chrome logo and the going-inside-it lightshow were primitive CGI. So I... learned something.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:53 PM on December 14, 2013


For some reason I thought this was a double. I'm glad to see it again.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:10 PM on December 14, 2013


Oh man, those little songs in the background of the piece though, so terrible. Did they hire some poor jingle writer for that dreck or is it just a horrible song I was lucky enough never to hear anywhere else?
posted by emjaybee at 8:21 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'd forgotten how disco the song is.
posted by professor plum with a rope at 8:39 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


I remember seeing this making-of featurette back in the day while sitting on the couch, flipping between channels on the push-button cable remote with the fake wood paneling, waiting for the MTV bumper with the guy jumping into an empty pool to run again so I could tape it. Good times.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:44 PM on December 14, 2013


Man I wonder if the LED robot guy could feel in his bones that this was the last hurrah for his line of work...

Also is that Night Flight intro landscape done with CGI? I can't really imagine any other way, but it looks better than I thought 1985 was capable of, especially for some budget shit like Night Flight!
posted by SharkParty at 10:06 PM on December 14, 2013


Watching this again after all these years, I'm thinking "why use miniatures? I could do that shot with my quadcopter these days."
posted by smoothvirus at 10:15 PM on December 14, 2013


In my small town, everyone had cable even in the early 70s because there was exactly one broadcast station we could receive with an antenna. So I grew up with cable and both HBO and Showtime. I used to watch a lot of WTCG before and after it became WTBS and before it became TBS, too.

Anyway, that old intro was very effective. It was quite impressive back then and I think the music still has a very strong "spectacle" vibe to it. The music was more familiar to me after all these years than the visuals.

IRC, this wasn't played before everything; they'd have little shorts and previews and stuff to fill between movies and this would signal the real movie, like after the previews show in a theater.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:37 AM on December 15, 2013


Oh man, that song! I always felt completely taken in by it - like you just KNEW something cool was going to happen after a song like that, even if the end result was Lucas, with Corey Haim.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 4:59 AM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]


This one always struck me as having a Jitlovian touch, though I may just be conflating it with the Mikey Mouse Satellite station promo that the Green Wizard did for the Disney Channel when it first went on the air in 1982.

I wonder if this production company was influenced by Mike's piece for Disney, or if the were even aware of it.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:31 AM on December 15, 2013


Imagine all that build-up, and then the drop is you're watching, like, Oh Heavenly Dog.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:38 AM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]


I was just thinking about this the other day. Uncanny!
posted by Kitteh at 8:40 AM on December 15, 2013


Man, so many memories. Practically every frame of that opening triggered long dormant parts of my brain. Even the documentary was nostalgia because I remember watching it at the time and being absolutely fascinated that they would do things like make a special spinning light machine thingy. I never really understood until now however that the flash of light was supposed to be a stargate and that the chrome logo was a ship. That's kind of cool. And I love that a network would go to all that trouble to distinguish themselves. Totally awesome post.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:40 PM on December 15, 2013


We got HBO for free when I was a kid. The cable company was trying to get everyone to sign up. We just got the basic package. But the guy across the street had the whole deal. HBO and Showtime. My dad was a bit of a techie in those days. He noticed the only thing about the neighbors cable box and ours was one little screw-in filter. He came home took ours off. Boom! HBO for years. The filter rolled around the back of the TV for a long time. As far as I know the cable company never noticed.

You can all blame my family for HBO's lost revenue. I'm sure that's why they are stingy with their programming these days. Why you can't get HBO go without actually having HBO.

So sorry everyone.
posted by hot_monster at 11:08 AM on December 16, 2013


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