![]() While Carter is unconscious, an AI program based on his mind is created. At the time, UK clearance height signs used the phrase "Max. In the movie, Edison Carter (portrayed by Frewer) is a journalist fleeing enemies into a parking garage, crashing his motorcycle through the entrance barrier reading "Max. Max Headroom debuted in April 1985 on Channel 4 in the British-made cyberpunk TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, his origin story. Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television. According to his creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of television hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to youth culture yet weren't a part of it. Harsh lighting and other editing and recording effects heighten the illusion of a CGI character. Max was advertised as "computer-generated" and some believed this, but he was actually actor Frewer wearing prosthetic makeup, contact lenses, and a plastic molded suit, and sitting in front of a blue screen. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton. Advertised as "the first computer-generated TV presenter", Max was known for his biting commentary on a variety of topical issues, arrogant wit, stuttering, and pitch-shifting voice. ![]() ''There are people who are trying to do it now.Max Headroom is a fictional character played by actor Matt Frewer. ''It is one of our biggest challenges,'' he says. We were going to do it all through postproduction editing.''Ĭully adds that it will be a long time before the technology is in place to create a totally computer-generated character. In addition to having all of this, what they have done is develop a custom system to combine the audio and visual. ''You have to have the Ultimatte, the Chromakey, the computers to create the background, the cameras and the digital sampling devices. ''To do what they have done you have to have all the right tools,'' Cully says. ![]() The Max footage is then processed through audio and visual processors with real-time digital delay sampling effects (a sophisticated computer system that allows its operator to manipulate the videotaped image by freezing the frame and quickly releasing it).''Ĭully believes this process accounts for Headroom`s ability to interact spontaneously with guests on his show, and for such peculiar mannerisms as Headroom`s stuttering. Max appears to be in a box, and our thought is that it is either a set or a computer-generated effect. He is shot against a Chromakey or Ultimatte background (processes that separate a character from the background, allowing the character and the background to remain independent of each other while at the same time appearing in the same frame). He is an actor who has been made to look fake, to look like a computer-generated character. ''But we do know Headroom was created with a tremendous amount of plastic prosthetics- for example, his hair and makeup. ''We can only guesstimate how they created Headroom,'' Cully says. Cully and his staff recently used their company`s sophisticated computer animation and video editing systems (including the new Alias-I High-End Computer Animation System) to design a character similar to Headroom for a commercial client (the client decided on a different advertising approach, and the Post Effects` character will not be used in their advertising campaign). Erie St., animation and special effects producer Mike Cully has his own opinions on the technology used to create Max Headroom. And the technology used to create this illusion, while representing leading-edge video technology, exists at a number of the larger video editing facilities in Chicago.Īt Post Effects, 400 W. Max Headroom is not a totally computer generated character he has been designed to create the illusion of such a character.
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