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One last note about AT&T pre-divestiture (pre-1984) -- The
primary governing principle of the<br>
Regulated Monopoly was "Universal Service" -- Sounds like the
opposite of the "Digital Divide" to me.<br>
(Maybe even Net Neutrality? Assuming all connections are two-way --
You can produce as you consume.)<br>
<br>
And on to "Lawnmower Man".<br>
<br>
1987 was THE FIRST GREAT CGI CRASH -- The Big Three 3D computer
animation houses all went<br>
bankrupt simultaneously -- Digital Productions, Cranston-Csuri
Productions and Omnibus. Then<br>
came the Writer's Guild strike. I arrived at The Post Group in
Hollywood in January, 1988. The Writer's<br>
Strike was already well underway.<br>
<br>
Pacific Title & Art Studio teamed up with The Post Group to
develop a CCIR 601 4:2:2 digital video to<br>
35mm theatrical film transfer process with digital image processing
for improved picture quality and<br>
a one-light printing process which produced electronic effects on
camera original background material<br>
which could be freely inter-cut with the camera negative.<br>
"Video Signal Processing System". United States Patent 5,191,416;
Issued March 2, 1993. <br>
In *most* types of scenes you couldn't see the video scan lines,
though 1024 lines is stretching it for<br>
35mm film. <br>
<br>
Bill Villarreal wrote the Cray drivers for the Laser Scanner at
Robert Able & Associates. Stephen R. ("Bruno") George was
Optical Supervisor on "Ghostbusters". Bill specified the CRT to
use for the film printer,<br>
mounted the CRT on the optical lathe bed and developed the camera
control hardware and software driver.<br>
The camera controller counted vertical scan intervals in the video
output (1024x1024) and blanked<br>
the video after a fixed number of scans were recorded. This kept
exposure constant and eliminated<br>
the shutter-bar effect. Bruno did the film end of the optical
process. I did the programming.<br>
<br>
The system was called The Gemini Process and it filled a niche at a
time when it was still prohibitively<br>
expensive in terms of disk storage capacity and network bandwidth to
do electronic effects on <br>
full-resolution theatrical film. The Post Group, on the other hand
had CCIR 601 (Sony D-1) Rank<br>
Cintel flying-spot video digitizer (TeleCine) and the Abekas A-10
4:2:2 video switcher. You could do <br>
zeroth-generation, lossless video editing. <br>
<br>
There was also a thing called the Abekas A-60 digital disk
recorder. It was kind of nifty. It was a<br>
hardware RAID system which could record and play back a minute of
CCIR 601 4:2:2 uncompressed digital <br>
video. At 2/3 MByte per frame, that's 1-1/4 GBytes at 20 MBytes per
second in and out. It also had a SCSI <br>
interface so that you could record video into it from Sony D-1 tape
and then pull the digital image frames <br>
into a general-purpose computer for processing.<br>
<br>
In The Gemini Process, the A-60's SCSI port was on the high-speed
interface of a Pixar Image Computer <br>
(PIC). The same kind that was used in Disney's CAPS system. The
PIC did 4-way-parallel 12-bit integer <br>
pixel arithmetic and had 10-bit Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs)
in its video output. Plus the <br>
Catmull-Rom cubic spline image resizing algorithm was extremely
high-quality and fast. I wrote (with help <br>
from Loren Carpenter at Pixar) a 4-way parallel converter from
16-bit-per-pixel YUV D-1 video to RGB in<br>
Pixar Channel-Processor (CHaP) Assembly Language (ChAs). I could
pull a frame of video off of the<br>
Abekas A-60 and process it in about the same amount of time it took
to the camera to record the frame to <br>
film. The PIC had dual frame buffers, so you could be doing image
processing in the inactive frame buffer<br>
while the active frame buffer was displaying a finished frame to the
camera.<br>
<br>
All of the electronic effects for "Lawnmower Man" from Angel Studios
in San Diego and Xaos Effects in<br>
San Francisco went through The Gemini Process on their way to get
cut into the film.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, I had gotten my digital sculptures on the cover of
Science News on August 3, 1991. Brian<br>
Vandellyn Park was in the Marketing department of one of the Rapid
Prototyping vendors (DTM Corp.) to <br>
whom I was sending exotic STL files for them to build to exhibit at
their trade shows. Some times they <br>
would send me copies of what they built. Brian was the inventor of
the Flogiston Chair, which is what Jobe is<br>
sitting in when he is learning at an accelerated rate in Virtual
Reality in "The Lawnmower Man". Brian<br>
put me in touch with Jacqui Masson, the Set Dresser for "Lawnmower
Man", who rented four of my<br>
mathematical stereolithographs to put on the shelves in Sebastian
Timms's office.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://stewartdickson.cgsociety.org/gallery/876907">http://stewartdickson.cgsociety.org/gallery/876907</a><br>
<br>
So, that's how I wound up in multiple roles on "Lawnmower Man". I
got to go to the Cast & Crew screening<br>
at Columbia/Tri-Star Studio and to the Premier in Westwood.<br>
<br>
On 9/5/12 2:18 AM, Frantisek Apfelbeck wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:1346829534.97925.YahooMailNeo@web112420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255,
255); font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif;
font-size: 12pt;">
<div><span>Thanks Stewan for the info and links I will do some
more studying! <br>
</span></div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family:
bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color:
transparent; font-style: normal;"><span><br>
</span></div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family:
bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color:
transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>And by the way as a
child from behind the "Iron curtain" The Lawnmower Man in
which you have been involved was I think first "computer
heavy" graphic movie which I have seen, I guess around
1994-95.</span></div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family:
bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color:
transparent; font-style: normal;"><br>
<span></span></div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family:
bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color:
transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Sincerely,<br>
</span></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker</div>
<br>
<br>
<div><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org">http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org</a></div>
<div><br>
<br>
</div>
<div>"There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Ghandi<br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
...
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