Sunday, March 31, 2013

Standby…Lights! Camera! Action!


I forgot to post this on Wednesday so I’m posting it today.



Classic Nick Wed. – Standby…Lights! Camera! Action!
March 26, 2013

Leonard Nimoy is known the world over as the Lieutenant Commander/Commander Spock a half human-half Vulcan who served on the Starship Enterprise. Nimoy is an accomplished actor, film director, poet, singer and photographer so when the executive producers of Standby…Lights! Camera! Action!, Roger Yager and Michael Bauhmol, were looking for someone to host their innovative television series they knew just who to turn to.

The shows main focus was to teach children of all ages about what happens behind the scenes of movie productions many times going on location with the movie being disgusted. Other topics included movie character costumes to script writing, to directing and producing, to filming and special effects. In one particular episode Nimoy taught the audience how to created a haunted house by painting glass windows with a mixture of warm water and Epson salts. (Simply mix together and “paint” the mixture onto the windows. When it dries the water will evaporate leaving the Epson salt behind giving the window a dry craggled effect.) During the same episode simple cobwebs were created using double-sided tape and a role of cotton.

This educational television series aired on Nickelodeon from May 1982 to December 31, 1987 and was rated Nickelodeon's #1 show in 1983, and went to #2 in the ratings in 1984 after You Can't Do That On Television became #1).



==Some of the movies shown on Standby: Lights, Camera, Action! included==
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
The Secret of NIMH
2010: The Year We Make Contact
The Dark Crystal
Rock & Rule
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Monty Python
Star Trek
James Bond
WarGames
Octopussy
Beast Master
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Splash


==Special Guest Stars==
Fred Astaire
Matthew Broderick
George Lucas
Jackie Gleason
George Takei
Howard Zimmerman – Editor of Starlog Magazine
Eddie Eagan – Paramount Senior Publisher Trek III Search for Spock

5 comments:

  1. Hello, I am trying to find infomation on a short film that was shown on Standby, Lights, Camera, Action. The film was about a box-like robotic servant whose owner became increasingly dependent on it. The owner's friend was worried so he took the servant away to show his friend how bad the situation had gotten. Back at his own house, however, the friend then started to become dependent on the servant, too.
    I would really like to see this again.

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  2. Hi Cowboy,

    Forgive m for taking so long to get back to you, the class I’m taking is kinda kicking my butt right now.

    Are you sure this was on Standby, Lights, Camera, Action and not a Speical Delivery? SLCA went behind the scenes of different movies to see how they’re made, they interviewed the actors and even showed us how some special effects were created.

    Special Delivery on the other hand showed movies and shorts that were not on the normal Nickeldeon schedual. But either way if you can remember anything more about this it would help a lot.

    For instance: how old are you? Believe it or not age makes a big difference in tracking this stuff down. Another factor in tracking down this film is narrowing down about what year you saw it. Was it early, mid or late 1980’s? Or did you happen to see it in the 90? See if you can remember any names or settings, that will help a lot as well. Then if you still haven’t remembered anything by next week I’ll do a speical Classic Nickelodeon Wednesday post for you.

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  3. Hello, thanks for the reply! I am sure I saw this short film on Standby… Lights! Camera! Action!
    Also, I think this 8 minute segment that I found on YouTube MAY have been from the same episode:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjcmtlkwsTU

    The poster’s description states Leonard Nimoy “interviews a Young Joey Ahlbum about his SVA Thesis film 'Bandits'. I believe this is from 1983 or thereabouts.”

    When Standby debuted in May, 1982, I would have just turned 12.
    (Yes, I am now 44 years old….)
    Thanks again, John

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  4. There was also a segment on this show that was about the stunts in The Princess Bride. I remember it was the scene where Buttercup was in the water with the electric eel coming towards her.

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  5. I found the name of the film: "Roublex O.M.F." by Damon Santostefano.

    ReplyDelete