1987: Max Headroom in Popular Mechanics
If you’ve never seen the Max Headroom* television series then you’ve been missing out on a subversive classic. The show is admittedly cheesy fun, but the stories and approach are begging to be updated for a remake today. Just imagine how much fun a modern Max Headroom series — extrapolating today’s world “20 minutes into the future” — would be for someone to adapt and modify to a new television series. Think Black Mirror* with more humor and bite.
If there were a Max Headroom remake I would hope that the creators duplicate the old “digital” effects to create the character. This Popular Mechanics story from 1987 gives a pretty good overview of the process used to create the Max Headroom character, and I love how back then it was cinematic secrets and magic and how the effects artists didn’t just come right out and say “it’s all trickery and not really a computer.”
Related articles
- The Max Headroom Incident (gonzarro.wordpress.com)
- Max Headroom in Starlog Magazine (battlegrip.com)
- “There’s a million toys at ToysRUs” in 1989 (battlegrip.com)