logoalt Hacker News

How was the Universal Pictures 1936 opening logo created?

531 pointsby azeemba07/31/202572 commentsview on HN

Comments

roughly07/31/2025

Someone once described the secret to making magic as putting in far more effort than any reasonable person would, such that no reasonable person would think you'd done it the hard way.

show 5 replies
rwmj07/31/2025

Reminds me a bit of the BBC 1 ident from the 1960s-1980s, which was a physical model that was broadcast live (not even recorded!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(camera)

It was replaced with a custom-built electronic system which was itself pretty crazy. One of the COWs came up for sale a few years back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World

show 4 replies
AnotherGoodName07/31/2025

Doctor Who's original 1960's intro is in a similar vein of "wait a minute, how'd they do that in that year?". This predated any commercial synthesisers and was mind blowing for its time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4

https://www.effectrode.com/knowledge-base/making-of-the-doct...

show 5 replies
evaXhill07/31/2025

Considering the breakdown of all the elements that went into it and the meticulous attention to detail, it’s not surprising that the creation of this logo took around half a year to complete. Golitzen really embraced the Art Deco movement and was also a storyboard artist for NANA in 1934, but its hard to find any illustrations online, what i can find is a mention of his name in a MOMA art/cinema expo from the late 70s https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_327139.pdf

LargeWu07/31/2025

There used to be real craft, based on the physical world, in creating that movie magic. It took a lot of knowledge about different stuff - materials, photography - to create this.

show 3 replies
SoftTalker07/31/2025

The original HBO "Feature Presentation" intro was shot with minatures and similar sorts of effects, all before digital/CGI existed or was feasible. There's a documentary about it on YouTube

https://youtu.be/agS6ZXBrcng

HelloUsername07/31/2025

Link to the Twitter thread of 24-may-2020

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264630771316404224.html

show 1 reply
fortran7707/31/2025

The stackexchange post is a copy of the information in a blog which is a copy of the information the this X thread: https://x.com/That_Chair_Guy/status/1264632757856198658

dylan60407/31/2025

It strikes me as funny, because I've been around movie magic for so long, that the wizbang grafix abilities of today have nearly erased from memory the knowledge of practical FX. I do miss the extra features of a nice DVD release with a bunch of BTS clips that showed the various movie magic to make the final version. I'm guessing studios enjoy not paying for all of that now that everyone streams everything and has no time for ancillary content.

The Columbia logo is another one that has been updated over the years. I've seen writes up about refreshing it back when it was an edit bay ruled by tape based playback. Each layer of clouds was on a separate tape all played back in sync to generate the final comp. Further back, it would have been separate film strips.

show 1 reply
BobbyTables207/31/2025

Didn’t realize plexiglass existed in the 1930s!

show 1 reply
serf07/31/2025

related aside : the 'This Island Earth' MST3K is a great episode, which apparently features a part of the effect.

'This Island Earth' is great all by itself if you're into campy early-ish scifi.

show 1 reply
slg07/31/2025

It is interesting to see a post like this at the top of HN considering the vibe here lately.

The popularity of this post seems to show an innate understanding of the value of investing a lot of thought and effort into creating a piece of art. When you do that, the process of its creation becomes part of the art. There is something incredibly human about creating art like this. We have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. "Wasting" time meticulously carving things out of stone or mixing paint to use on our cave walls. It is an inherently human thing to do.

And yet browsing HN most days gives the impression that many tech folks see that truly as time wasted and instead just want to give some black box a prompt and have "art" spit back out at them. I just don't get it.

show 3 replies
Findecanor07/31/2025

I think the reflection of the letters must also have been a separate shot with no gap in-between the letters and the globe. Otherwise you would have seen the backs of letters on the left and right through the globe in the final sequence.

sitkack08/02/2025

For other amazing examples of practical effects, check out the Visual Music artist Jordan Belson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6ag2n5sjc

linotype07/31/2025

Side note: highly recommend MST3K The Movie, which features the classic movie “This Island Earth”.

WrongOnInternet07/31/2025

Scott Manley made a video talking about what would happen if the modern logo was real: https://youtu.be/cBxb6LRFG08

CGMthrowaway07/31/2025

I love practical effects in cinema

InstaTunnel07/31/2025

[dead]

brcmthrowaway07/31/2025

[flagged]

amelius07/31/2025

[flagged]