Star Trek but it’s Cheers – TNG x Cheers Intro

Details

Description

In the 24th century, everyone still wants to go where everybody knows your name.

This mashup reimagines Star Trek: The Next Generation’s crew in the style of Cheers. "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart-Angelo and recorded by Portnoy in 1982, is in my humble opinion the greatest TV show theme song of all time. I tried to stay as true to the original as possible, for both the music and video, for some true 80s crossover nostalgia. Engage and Cheers! 🚀🍺

More technical details for those interested in how it was made:

For the music, I recorded the song with me singing and playing piano on my phone. Then used Suno cover feature to add drums/bass/improved singing. Then downloaded the stems and put into Ableton Live where I removed some of the instruments (no need for the violins and synths that Suno added, I wanted it simple like the original). I didn't quite like the drums so added some drum samples in parts, and also added harmonies which I recorded. Then EQ'd everything, added a bit of saturation (FabFilter Saturn 2) and bit of glue compression (don't need much with stuff coming out of Suno). Sped up the song and reduced pitch a little to give it more of a 'filmed on VHS' sound. You might ask why use Suno at all and not just lay down a few simple tracks in Ableton - well, it's purely a time saver. Instead of a few hours its a few minutes to get a rough version to start mixing/editing, plus I'm not a great singer and this saves me bringing in a singer to record.

For the video, ChatGPT helped generate the images as close to the shots in Cheers as possible, then I used Photoshop to add some old-style filters and de-saturation (to look more like the original where oranges and reds pop). I tried to mimic the panning and zooming of each shot in the original as much as possible. The 'StarTrek' logo took me forever because I didn't know how to create the metallic shine effect that runs across the logo in the original show so I used Photoshop to generate 50 images frame by frame (with varying outer glow/emboss effects) and animated it manually. It's not as good as the original but it's the best I could muster. The text credits also took a while because I couldn't color the fonts (only the outline colored) so I rasterized every thing, selected colors, added fill, etc. Yes it's not a perfect orange-to-yellow gradient fill but this is the kind of detail that only an obsessive person (like me) would notice. In Resolve, I added some adjustment layers for blur and a bit of Analog Damage (love this effect) with 80s preset and some settings tweaks. For the opening scene, used Wan to create a video from the image of the shuttle on the street, to mimic the original show which has cars and traffic outside the bar before transitioning to the still shot.

So yeah... this is how a simple looking 1 minute video can actually take about a dozen hours to make. Hope you all enjoy it.

PS - Whilst making this I couldn't help but think DS9 is the real 'Cheers in Space' but I know the show and its characters are far less recognisable to the average viewer. Maybe I'll look into this for a future project.

#startrek, #cheers, #parody, #mashup