Is it just me or is stuff like this way harder to appreciate these days (with the ubiquity of CGI), unless you work in the industry, or see a behind-the-scenes look like this?
This is simply incredible, and yet I don't normally pay the title sequence any attention at all...
This is the pre-Tron era, where the easiest way to get a picture of a chrome logo is to build one out of brass. The starburst and light ribbon effects later in the video are similarly brilliant examples of pre-CG CG.
Now I'm reminded of the video to Justice's DVNO, which is almost entirely made of homages to '70s and '80s title effects, including a huge reference to the HBO logo sequence.
There's this cool trade off between how much you can charge for commercials, and for how long you can take up an audiences interest. The cable shows have longer intros. I think this is because of how expensive it is to shoot the footage, but they know they can capture the audience for a full hour, so they'll grab any way to get to that full hour cheaper.
Cartoons are an extreme example, being very very expensive to animate, many cartoons in Japan have an intro of almost 15 minutes, then ~25 show, then 5 minutes outro! (these are cartoons targeted at teens/adults)
I was going to add this to the list, because I think the Homeland intro is really interesting and well done. Usually I fast forward through them, but I notice something new everytime with this one.
This is simply incredible, and yet I don't normally pay the title sequence any attention at all...