I can’t think of any sci-fi, the production of which predates flat sceens, that features flat screen T.V.s or computer monitors as an element of the future technology depicted in the film.
Anyone have any examples?
Side question: If I were making a sci-fi film in, let’s say, 1973 and I had the foresight to predict flat screen monitors, if I had the props department construct a flat screen prop what special effects available at the time could I have used to show graphics, images, and changing text (words appearing as they’re being typed) on the screen?
Depends what you mean by “flat screen.”
I recall an episode of Space:1999 when they were contacted by a future Earth through a modulated neutrino emission thingie. The Earth-side control center had screens simulated by projecting text onto a vertical sheet of plexiglass or something.
Total Recall had the entire wall as a TV that was used as a fake wallpaper simulating a different location. maybe it’s a projector? it’s probably not the first. Back to the Future had one too didn’t it? it came with multiple screen channels. it loses points for having fax machines though.
I’m far from knowledgeable (and perhaps this is your point) but it’s pretty obvious 99% of them get it wrong. Part of the fun in watching old Sci-fi is catching things they missed by a huge margin. The Star Trek franchise may have one or two flat screens in a portion of the movie…but then show a closeup of a panel with a small CRT in it.
Based on the way technology is going now, unless the future uses aerosol spray self-assembling screens, it’s going to look dated! Or, perhaps, a personal augmented reality type display where the ‘display’ is any surface you happen to be looking at, and everybody’s looking at some surfaces with the same information. But it becomes hard to convey that message to the audience without it sounding like ‘bad sci-fi’
I used to think 'non technical people’s living areas were so very boring, because they didn’t dedicate part of their life to a TV, Stereo System, Media storage. Now I’m thinking that the home of the future (say 50 years from now) will LOOK like that, when the displays are off. Esp if you consider how unobtrusive tablet displays are. If it’s off, and someone isn’t looking at it, it’s just another thin book-looking thing.
With regard to the sidequestion, you could probably do something with a bit of creative greenscreening. You film the scene with the actor looking at a flat screen with a green panel on it, then you film a normal monitor on another camera, and overlay the two shots. It would be a bit tricky with 70’s tech though. You would need to lock off the shot (ie the camera isn’t moving), as you wouldn’t have to the software to track a moving shot. You would also need to make sure the screen you filmed was in precisely the same relative position as the panel you filmed, so that the overlay lined up.
Making it synch up with whatever the actors were doing in realtime would be tricky. In theory, the second shot could be set up to run simultaneously with the first one, but this would probably be very difficult to actually achieve on set. Its more likely that you would shoot the actor scene first, and they worry about synching it up when you are filming the computer. Most directors would also compensate for this with a couple of different camera angles. ie, show one shot where you can see the actor typing, but can’t see the contents of the screen that closely, followed by a second close up of the screen, where you can’t see the actors fingers anymore, but can hear them typing (added by the sound guy later of course).
I think you would also need to employ someone to tidy up the footage after it was filmed, to get rid of that annoying line you used to get on old greenscreen footage. I can’t remember how they used to do this, but I think it involved getting someone to manually correct each shot of film. I think George Lucas did a fair amount of this sort of thing back in the 70s.
Depending on what you wanted to show, you would have issues generating the content of the screen with 70’s tech though. The actually screen outputs at the time were a bit limited, and there was no chance of doing anything with CGI. If you wanted anything particularly flashy, you would probably need to employ a traditional animator.
Plenty of examples of flat screens. Look at George Orwell’s 1984, in which the telescreens can hang on thye wall like pictures. I recall lots of images of futuristic societies from 1960s comics in which the screens were flat and thin. Early images of telephotes and similar devices that predated any actual television were shown as pretty flat. I certainly got the impression that most of the telephone/television combos featured in films like Metropolis were intended to be flat, although there’s not enough shown to verify this – but, before the Cathode Ray Tube was invented, there would have been no reason to think that the viewing screen would require a bulky space for its “guts” behind it. After the CRT, people were continually speculating about ways to get rid of that heavy, bulky mechanism with its dangerous high voltage. So Dick Tracy’s “2-way wrist teloevision” (which his wrist radio had evolved into by the 1960s) was a thin screen (or else it couldn’t have fit on his wrist). Franz Josepg designs, in putting out the Star Trek Blueprints and manuals in the 1970s talked about “flatscreen” and apologized for showing the tricorder with a mid-20th century aproximation with a mini-CRT.
Flatscreen has a long history in pop culture before it became realized with LEDs, LCDs, and plasma.
:smack: This Thread topic is one that came to me a while back, but I never got around to posting. Reading your reply, I remember now what made me first think of it!
Yes, in Back to the Future II at the McFly house they have a flat screen T.V. (with “Picture-in-Picture” capabilty no less!) which doubles as a video phone when Flea calls. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times over the years, but it was just a recent viewing a few months ago when it struck me just how rare and prescient the T.V. was. As I could think of no other examples, I thought to start a Thread on the topic . . . only, I didn’t until quite some time later and forgot about the example that inspired the topic in the first place!
I’d had this conversation with some geek friends of mine…how TV shows showed they were modern by including a computer on a desk off to the side (Miami Vice), then REALLY showed they were with it when they showed it plugged in (Miami Vice. ) then when it was a PC compatible computer…and now these shows look hopelessly outdated with an office FULL of PC’s with great big CRT screens.
I had a relatively difficult time finding a 4:3 aspect ratio LCD for my MAME cabinet…soon the shape of the LCD will show us how dated that TV show was.
I was commenting ‘what will happen over the next 10 years to make my 5 year old Apple Cinema Display look old and dated’ when it occurred to me, it’s kinda thick at 2" already.
2001: A Space Odyssey was full of flat screens - from the videophone, to HAL’s displays, to the pod readouts, to the astronauts reading the news on an iPad-like device. They achieved the effect with rear projection.
That’s the one I came back to post. Looking at the photo in your link, it appears that they even got the modern aspect ratio correct. Although not too surprising since 16:9 was in use in movie theaters by then.
I remember a short story from Galaxy magazine, back in the early 1960’s, in which every home had a TV screen the size of a wall. Even more unusual was the content broadcast on those huge screens–insipid, plot-free depictions of daily life. Back in the day when scripted shows ruled (except for news, sports & game shows), the writer predicted Reality TV…
On Max Headroom most of the A/V equipment was made purposely retro. So it aged much less than if they’d tried to make it “futuristic.”
And that prediction is more striking when one becomes aware that when the sequel 2010 was made, the monitors of “the future” suddenly changed from the flat screens of 2001 into huge box shaped CRT monitors, talk about devolving technology!
The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody (which was actually published in 1974) had a line about the future’s flat-screen, 3-dimension “smellovision” TV’s you could take off the wall and roll up.
) then when it was a PC compatible computer…and now these shows look hopelessly outdated with an office FULL of PC’s with great big CRT screens.
