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Over the years, I've been lucky enough to find myself in a position to put together some sizeable facilities. I distinguish here between a Facility being a physical plant, where power, air conditioning, lighting, electrical power, signal cabling, and human comfort all come into play - and a System which is a complex combination of hardware and software dedicated to solving a particular task. |
This is out of order, but I like showing off! This is my favorite facility to hang out in. Its my basement studio, where I produce music and video and do my consulting work.
OK, now we can go back to the beginning to time...
In 1980, I moved to Los Angeles and went to work for one of the first computer animation companies in Hollywood. Image West's original facilities were at 845 N. Highland Ave, and consisted mainly of two Scanimate Analog computers, three IVC-9000 two-inch helica scan video recorders, an Ampex AVR-1200 quad VTR and Grass Valley video switching equipment. The facility was crowded and not so much engineered as thrown together, but I kept it working!
In 1982 Image West moved to
new facilities at 11845 Ventura Blvd in Studio city. I was given the opportunity to design an entire facility starting with an empty floor. Since a portion of the floor was 24" higher than the rest, I opted to build the technical facilities out with 24" of computer flooring, thus allowing for cabling and air-conditioning ducts to be beneath the floor.
Then in 1984 I moved on to Omnibus Computer Graphics, one of the first commercial "digital animation" companies.
Omnibus had raised $6M through a stock offering, and was building new facilities in Toronto, New York City, and in Hollywood at Paramount Studios.
Dan Krech did most of the design work for the Toronto and New York facilities, and I supervised the renovation of an old sound stage (studio G) on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, and the installation of the Foonly/III F-1 system, two PFR-80 digital film printers, and a VAX mainframe computer, along with numerous workstations and office space. The technical facilities were shared with Unitel Video, whose equipment later occupied the blank floor space shown here.
In 1990 I moved back to Kingsport. I set up ZFX inc., producing high-end 3D computer animation and graphics for TV commercials. We developed a lot of software for sending tests stills and movies via the Internet.
In November, 1994, we launched The Tri-Cities Connection, or TriCon, the first Internet Service Provider in East Tennessee. I KNOW I have a bunch of pictures but I haven't found them yet! |
