XPost: alt.tv.max-headroom, rec.arts.sf.tv, rec.arts.tv   
   From: weberm@polaris.net   
      
   anim8rfsk@cox.net wrote:   
   > Arthur Lipscomb wrote:   
   >> On 1/27/2020 12:25 PM, christopherl bennett wrote:   
      
   >>> I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from   
   >>> Netflix.   
   >>   
   >> I bought the DVD set when it was released 10 years ago, but never got   
   >> around to watching it. I guess I haven't watched the series since it   
   >> originally aired in the 80s.   
   >>   
   >>> This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being   
   >>> rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that   
   >>> it was cancelled after only 13 episodes (out of 14 that were made).   
   >>   
   >> Same.   
   >>   
   >>> And it's certainly been acclaimed in the years since for its innovation.   
   >>> It was a cyberpunk show just a few years after the term “cyberpunk” was   
   >>> coined — just about the only case I know of where a television show was   
   >>> right on the cusp of a new science-fictional development rather than   
   >>> lagging a decade or two behind prose SF. It was prophetic in predicting   
   >>> broadcasting trends like a proliferation of hundreds of channels, the   
   >>> 24-hour news cycle, the existence of a global computer/entertainment   
   >>> network dominating people's lives, and the manipulation of the news by   
   >>> corporations. And it was daring for being a network television show whose   
   >>> whole raison d’etre was to satirize and critique television networks.   
   >>> Not to mention that it essentially launched the career of genre stalwart   
   >>> Matt Frewer, who played the heroic journalist Edison Carter and his   
   >>> computer-generated alter ego, Max Headroom.   
   >>>   
   >>> (For those who aren't in the know, in real life, Max Headroom was created   
   >>> as a novel kind of host for a British music-video show. The idea was to   
   >>> use something completely computer-generated rather than the usual human   
   >>> hosts, a literal “talking head.” They didn't have the CGI technology to   
   >>> pull that off for real, so they put Matt Frewer in prosthetic makeup   
   >>> simulating the slick, angular look of '80s computer graphics and used   
   >>> editing tricks to make him jerk and stu-stu-stutter so he'd appear   
   >>> artificial.   
   >>   
   >> I had *no* idea! I knew Matt Frewer voiced the character, but I always   
   >> thought it actually was primitive CGI.   
   >   
   >LOL, nope, big rubber mask - hence the sunglasses, to hide his all too human   
   >eyes.   
      
   I think I vaguely knew that as the time, or at least CGI or a computer was   
   used.   
      
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