Ménage Á Pop is a three times a week intimate discussion between two people and a piece of pop culture.
In the early '80s people owned pens, phones hung on the wall and the only place to stare at a computer screen was the video arcade. It was a mysterious technology so, to gain a glimpse of its inner-workings, we turned to the electronic spectacle of Disney's TRON. Well… at least TWO of us did. And they are both on the show today as Tim welcomes actor Jason Dugre (GILMORE GIRLS) to relate how the film design blew his mind while simultaneously not really explaining computers in the least.
You can watch today’s guest JASON DUGRE in GILMORE GIRLS (season 4 episode 12: “A Family Matter), GILMORE GIRLS: A YEAR IN THE LIFE (episode 3: “Summer”) and the independent feature film SAINT BERNARD available for rent and purchase on AMAZON PRIME.
POP NOTES
Released on July 9th 1982, TRON opened in second place ahead of POLTERGEIST (in its 6th week of release), FIREFOX (in its 4th week) and ROCKY III (in its 7th week). E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL retained the top spot for its 5th week in a row.
Steve Lisberger first began developing TRON as an animated feature in 1975. His concept was inspired by the video game PONG that had debuted in 1972.
The ground-breaking computer animation appears for a total of 20 minutes of the film’s 96 minute run-time. Most of the visuals inside the computer world were achieved by first filming the scenes in black and white and then overlaying the footage with hand drawn animation and back-lighting effects.
The computing power required to generate TRON’s digital effects included 2 megabytes of memory and 330 megabytes of external storage space.
Visualization for the film was comprised of character concepts by French comic book artist Jean Giraud Moebius (THE AIRTIGHT GARAGE) and vehicle designs from futurist Syd Meade (BLADE RUNNER).
The original color scheme for the computer world inhabitants was yellow for the good alignments and blue for bad. While the final version was blue for good and red for bad, the original color choices are visible in Flynn’s light cycle being yellow and the light cycles for Sark’s troops being blue.
The film’s score was written by film composer Wendy Carlos whose prior credits included A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) and THE SHINING (1980). Its was one the first works to combine performances from Moog analogs, digital synthesizers and a full orchestra.
The film was nominated for both Best Costume Design and Best Sound Oscars at the 1983 Academy Awards. However it was denied a visual effects nomination as the academy felt the use of computer imagery contradicted the guidelines.
Tune back on Wednesday when Jason rock and rolls all night and talks for fifteen minutes that day about his child hood worship of rock band capitalists KISS.
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MUSIC FEATURED IN TODAY’S EPISODE:
“Three Ways To Do That” (opening theme) composed and performed by The Madeline Prior. All rights reserved with Not A Holograms podcasts.
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