The (Painful) Way it Was

[Burt Hazard]

Funny and excellent article.

It does never cease to amaze me how much people whine and complain nowadays about editing, color correction, compositing when it is so much easier to do this stuff now.

To take rotoscoping for an example, CINEFEX had a 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY retrospective in which they described having the roto artists painstakingly paint the outlines of the Discovery model shots that were projected onto their work tables. Then they had a second team (low paid art students) paint in the outlines. Then they had to bring each cell-sheet to an Oxberry animation stand, make sure everything was correctly calibrated and registered, film each plate frame by frame. Then, of course, they had to develop the film and run the travelling mattes through an optical printer along with the painstakingly created starfield backgrounds. And if they had a problem in the process, they had to do it again!

[Rafael Amador]

No point to go back there. But a look back is worth to see what we have got now.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Jeremy Garchow]

It reminds of the making of Tron. A must see.

[Tom Matthies]

Many years ago, just when getting started in this business as a college student, I ran across just such a video tape editor at the TV station is was working at part time. At that time we were still using 2″ Quad tape for production and editing. At that time (early 70’s) we had ONE tape machine equipped with that marvel of technology Ampex’s Editec electronic editor.
After stumbling on the edit block in the back room that doubled as the Engineering Shop, I asked one of the older (read “curmudgeonly”) engineers about the splicing block. His normally grouchy eyes lit up and he proceeded to explain it to me in detail. It seems I had hit upon a favorite soft spot in him. A
Anyhow, just for fun, we took an old Quad tape and proceeded to perform a couple of edits and then play them back just see if we did it right. It was an experience to be sure (they worked!) and made me friend in the normally cranky Engineering Department. With this foot in the door, I managed to acquire quite a bit of technical information from those guys that normally don’t share their experience with “kids”. It was a little experience that I will remember for a long time.
(Ah, the sound of the tape hitting the heads when the vacuum guide pulls in!) ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz….

PS: I’m not sure but I think that I remember reading that “Laugh In was one of the first network shows to be edited electronically…but I could be wrong.

Tom