[HBO Theme Music]
[People in a Stadium]
[Horns honking & City Noise]
[HBO Theme Music]
What you're looking at is one of the most precisely constructed model cities ever built.
It was made as part of HBO's new on-air look and is one of over 60
visual elements that were combined to create HBO's new program opens.
This film is a peak behind the scenes of how this new look was achieved.
When HBO decided to create an opening to introduce our exciting new programming,
we didn't want just a sign we wanted to
communicate to the viewers that when they turned on HBO
they were tuning in an entertainment center.
It all began with an idea at Liberty Studios in New York.
We had to come up with a concept that would be
unique that it would look unlike anything else on cable or on network television.
I took the viewer and put him in a home
environment and he turns on his television set and the camera slowly
pulls back and goes out his window and magically we start this tour and flight.
As we swoop down through a city. Well the thing was that the shoot that they're
trying to do they couldn't do it with an actual city. They couldn't run down the
middle of a city with a helicopter or shoot it out of a plane or what have you.
So the effect they were trying to get they had to have a city built, a model city.
We started off by building a cardboard mock-up and we marked off on the buildings
detail areas that we felt we would see.
From there, we actually architect the building and we built it up from that.
Six craftsmen worked for over three months to create
nearly 100 unique buildings for HBO's City.
The models were all handcrafted with painstaking accuracy.
First they were shaped and molded,
they were painted to look weather-beaten and finely detailed with incredible accuracy.
You really don't know how much detail was put into something like this.
But a lot of people take things for granted when they walk down the street or
look into a storefront, or what have you but if there's
something missing you know something's missing but you don't know what it is so
you put as much detail in it so the eye picks up every little thing.
There's a working light bulb in every room in every building and headlights in the cars and buses.
Foliage? There are hundreds and hundreds of trees all
handmade, all different sizes and shapes.
The model was carefully covered with a tarp so an artist could paint the
16-foot tall Cyclorama that creates the illusion of Twilight.
The length of the model is 30 feet long. And it's actually broken up into thirds.
Your city, your suburbs, and your country.
This would be a great place to have children come. Because it's fascinating, it's like it's better than
going to toy land around Christmas time. Because this place is just filled with toys of one kind or another.
I like the way we really went into the sculpture on the buildings.
We research that a lot and tried to see the architecture that's
found many of the cities and most of its Victoria. That's what we were really
excelled in, trying to detail and the stone carvings on the buildings.
We through a few extras in, seeing if people would spot them. Ah, we put a few bums on the street,
a few hooks on the corner. Those little things like a calling card.
Little things we wanted to add to the monotony, the three months of building this thing.
While some workers were building HBO City, others were constructing the letters that form the HBO logo.
These letters are made of brass and chrome plated.
In the finished effect, they appear to be a giant HBO Space Station floating towards you.
It bursts forth following the Star Gate effect a
special piece of animation created by David Bruce. It's actually pretty simple
you might be surprised when you see it on the table. It's two pieces of art
they're simply placed on top of one another and offset slowly. It gives you
this huge blast with dots that move down and out from the center of the explosion.
Shooting at one frame at a time, the computer will move them slowly
across one another to build up the special effects that you see.
The Stargate effect is combined with a star-filled, the HBO chrome logo, and
several other components including a musical score with a 65-piece Orchestra.
Ferdinand Jay Smith, composer and producer of the music. Well what we were trying to
achieve with this particular project on HBO was that they would have the biggest,
most exciting sound on television. In other words you can see some sitcoms
alive kind of inky tttt kind of openings and wanted all the music to reflect how
big an enormous a project this is, 24-hours a day of programming that interests people that just isn't movies.
Another special effect enable streaks of colors
to race around the "O" in the approaching logo.
So that special effects rig we built to put color arrays into the inside of the chrome "O".
Basically what it was is a series of fiber optics so with motors and gears and pulleys so
that we can change the color and also move it around. Well you know you can set
up a camera out on the street at night and as the cars move by their headlights
and taillights leave a long streak. It's essentially the same effect.
Reid Paul explains the smoke effect. Well the smoke effect has gone through a lot of changes
first time we did it we didn't have plastic in the room, we didn't have masks
we had no control over it, and it looked like a fire and it smelled like a fire
and when we were done we did too. What it does is it gives the model atmosphere so
that when you're looking down the street a block of two blocks away isn't quite
as sharp as where you are it made our mountain soft so when you're in one part
of the model the next part which is really five feet away looks like it's
hundred miles away.
When the model is finally photographed, it is done with a
specially designed computer-controlled camera that can perform extremely
complicated moves. It is filmed one frame at a time and takes up to 14 hours to
shoot a scene that lasts only 20 seconds in the finished product. When you do a
model sequence like this as you shoot it with a motion control system which is a
camera motorized to make moves and in the old days
you would actually have to go and hand-crank everything but now with computers we
have the motorized and computer actually does it.
The last thing photographed is the first thing you see. The actors portraying
typical HBO viewers about to enjoy an HBO presentation. Suddenly the work the
precision the endless hours of trial and error all seem worthwhile.
The HBO illusion is complete, ready to tease and tantalize your eye.