Hello, everyone. I’d like to thank all who answered my query sometime last week. I eagerly await when i can come across a question i know about, to pass it on.
On to the subject…I watch a lot of old tv shows, old news broadcasts, games,etc. from the 70s or so, and as anyone else might notice, the on-screen graphics are remarkably different than the hopped up computer generated ones of today. My question is, does anyone know how they did the graphics for, say, credits, titles on screen, and things along that bend? Thanks a lot.
With a whole boatload of dedicated electronic devices like titlers, character generators, chromakey hardware, etc. Many different devices for different techniques and effects.
The really old TV shows put the words on a black card, then did the electronic equivalent of a double exposure.
Later devices superimposed the words electronically, using a character generator. That looked much like a modern computer keyboard and monitor; there were about 8-12 lines of text, and you’d type them on the screen, then electronically superimpose them.
Chroma key is still used today (check out The Weather Channel). You could electronically set things up not to show a certain color – it came out blank – and then superimpose an image. It used to be blue; now it’s green. Occasionally, the weatherman would wear the wrong color tie, so that it was too close to the color being blanked out and you’d see the weather map on it.
There was a great link at memepool.com a couple of months ago to a site detailing the history of analog video synthesizers. They were used throughout the 70s to create titles, credits and effects, probably in the vein of what the OP is talking about. One of them, the Scanimate, is legendary in the industry; it was used to create the graphics for the Death Star’s targeting system in Star Wars.
This isn’t really what you’re asking about, but I’ve wanted to comment on it for some time.
When you watch tapes of old broadcasts, look at the graphics (the actual drawings, not the methods for imposing white letters on a background every seems to be referring to above). In the days of black and white TV, the artists responsible for putting an image on screen did a wonderful job with a pallette that consisted only of black, white, and shades of gray. Network logos and announcements reallt stood out even in so limited a choice of shades.
This isn’t really what you’re asking about, but I’ve wanted to comment on it for some time.
When you watch tapes of old broadcasts, look at the graphics (the actual drawings, not the methods for imposing white letters on a background every seems to be referring to above). In the days of black and white TV, the artists responsible for putting an image on screen did a wonderful job with a pallette that consisted only of black, white, and shades of gray. Network logos and announcements reallt stood out even in so limited a choice of shades.
For television shows that were shot on film, sometimes the titles and credits were literally inserted the old fashioned way- with Optical Benches. Take that venerated show MAS*H. The titles in that show have the look of standard opticals.
I looked around a bit, and can’t find anything on the production of the show that would tell definitively, but to my eye, it sure looks like standard Hold-Out Opticals.
Cartooniverse
The only hardware/software that I am aware of by name that was used in British productions especially was the Quantel Paintbox. It was a very simplistic, but powerful for its day, digital imaging system, allowing you to add special effects like lasers and whizzy titles.
http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9410cs.html
The BBC used it a lot on shows like Dr Who.