HBO Feature Presentation: Difference between revisions

'''Bumper:''' The camera travels down an infinite loop of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where we see several movie-related items (including a glass slipper, a box of popcorn, and a soda bottle, among others) on the left and right sides of the screen. The screen then zooms into a screen that shows a color-changing background and the aforementioned objects moving around while briefly morphing into blobs, before cutting back to the Walk of Fame where we see a box office gradually zooming in as the sky turns to a night sky and searchlights move around it. When the box office comes close to the screen, it cuts to the "{{color|red|{{Font|Impact|HBO FEATURE MOVIE}}}}" text animating as usual.

'''Bumper:''' As the sequence starts with a man tuning the cable on a TV set for a channel (to HBO) in his apartment as he settles down on the couch with his wife. The camera pans backwards and outside the window to show a somewhat busy city intersection with figurines of vehicles and people standing on the sidewalk at twilight. The music starts, and the camera "flies" forward down the street, through several intersections. At one point, a movie theater with "HBO THEATRE" on the marquee can be seen. The camera flies over some buildings before going into the suburbs, with lots of trees, then several houses and a clock tower. Then the camera pans up into the sky, which briefly takes sunset hues before becoming {{color|blue}} and black with a starfield. The camera goes up into space, eventually panning up to reveal the source of the light; a star (positioned near the top center of the screen) that gets brighter and brighter, and eventually explodes in a {{color|orangered|scarlet}} and {{color|blue}} gemstone-shaped flash, leaving behind a shiny chrome model monolith. The monolith moves down and across the screen and rotates clockwise, revealing that it is the HBO logo, then turns around one more time as the camera then zooms in on the side of the "{{color|silver|'''O'''}}". The side of the "{{color|silver|'''O'''}}" disappears in a flash of light, revealing a stream of {{color|red}}, {{color|#FFD900|yellow}} and {{color|blue}} rays streaking counterclockwise around a {{color|silver|silver}} axis, and "{{color|violet|'''HBO FEATURE PRESENTATION'''}}", in a heavy, {{color|violet|lavender}} 3D "gaspipe" font and with each word stacked on top of the other (as well as a line under "{{color|violet|'''<u>PRESENTATION</u>'''}}"), appears against an array of {{color|darkviolet|purple}} lines. Some more rays sweep across the words and shine, then the background fades to black with more flashes from the surrounding rays.

*For HBO's [[HBO/Silver Screen Partners|joint venture]] with Silver Screen Partners, the HBO logo portion was adapted for its logo; this was seen only on the 1984 movie ''Flashpoint''.

*On HBO Hungary in the mid-1990s, a bumper has the full logo playing as normal until the end where the HBO logo fades away before the rays appeared, then a still "HBO" logo appeared in front of the space background.

'''Technique:''' Not a single computer-generated image was used to make this bumper. The city is an intricately detailed model with lightbulbs placed under the houses, from which a motorized camera was used to film it. There were also crew members who puffed smoke into the city to add the atmosphere. The starburst before the HBO logo appears is the "stargate" animation, made with two pieces of art and is moved around and animated traditionally, frame-by-frame. The HBO logo itself is a model made of brass and is chrome-plated and combined with the starry sky background. The part with the colored rays was actually a series of fiber optics with motors and gears and pulleys used to change the colors and move them around and put inside the chrome "O". All done by Liberty Studios in New York City.

'''Audio:''' The sounds of the TV in the opening scene (beginning with a TV host saying "On your big bonus question for..." before getting cut off when the man changes the channel), followed by some honking horns and city noises (or, in the short version, a whoosh, and the fog variant contains wind sounds) A piano/string chord is heard, which leads into a dramatic orchestral theme that gets progressively more tense. When the star explodes, phasing sounds are heard, culminating in a very loud, upbeat, almost disco-style horn-driven overture, ending with synth sweeps (representing the rays "inside" the "O"). Composed by Ferdinand J. Smith with a 65-man orchestra.

*For its 2019 appearance, the fanfare was re-recorded at a lower key.

* The Hungary variant has a voiceover at the end.