Rather than relay a very similar UK story, the BBC vt site speaks for
itself.
http://www.vtoldboys.com/
I am in there (1965) somewhere, went straight from school to BBC sep
1959
hey thats 50 years ago! Why am I still working?
On 9 Oct 2009, at 00:38, Jeff Kreines wrote:
> My, you all came to this so late! (Except maybe Barry...)
>
> My first VTR experience was in 1965, with an Ampex VR-1500 (2"
> Helical, cheaper version of the VR-660). Weird joystick control.
> Went to an Ampex VR-7100 1" Type A in rollaround box with popup
> monitor shortly thereafter. This was in -- gasp -- junior high
> school. My school had a CCTV setup and was an Ampex beta test site of
> sorts. I had three years to get video out of my system, and got out of
> a lot of classes dashing down to the studio (as it was) to fix
> something.
>
> Just so you don't think it was too posh, the "switcher" was a box of
> relays with a little pendant with 4 buttons -- we had 3 cameras but
> were optimistic -- hit the button and "switch" to the next camera.
> Since the box was in the studio you could hear the relays and see the
> picture roll a bit -- the audio picked up by a pair of Unidyne IIIs on
> goosenecks mounted on the very low ceiling. Our film chain, as it
> were, was a B&H 285 projector with the shutter ripped out aimed into a
> Wilson Device -- a card with rear projection box with latex screen
> stretched over. Lovely image quality! We aimed a terrible Sylvania
> 600 Vidicon camera at it. This was before "camera 3" arrived -- a
> snappy little Ampex CC-323 that was always my favorite.
>
> Our most popular shows were one that taught "cursive writing" (the
> school system didn't let you write script until 6th grade) and Dr.
> Lola May's math show, taught by a very funny Amazon math whiz whose
> catchphrase was "a rubber cigar to you." (I will leave the double
> entendres up to the rest of you.) We did produce some non-
> instructional shows, all terrible, including one called "From Then To
> Now" that was apparently history (of everything) in 5 minutes, not
> intended as funny, just a way to get out of regular classes for a bit
> and produce this.
>
> Went to high school where they had an insane 2700 mHz instructional tv
> station, with a quad machine, a real film chain (well, sort of), a
> pair of GPL cameras, one with a 15-150 Angenieux, and in the end the
> first U-Matic I ever saw -- the consumer machine. Shows still sucked
> but I did do camera on one with Margaret Mead. Funniest technology
> there was a bizarre Ampex machine I have never seen since -- their
> attempt at the cart machine market -- an audio recorder that used a
> 12" floppy magnetic disk, as I recall not in any container, just
> floppy plastic with oxide on it. Dumb idea!
>
> But this high school had a great photography department, which is
> where I spent a lot of time until I started making films -- aided by
> the discovery of an unused Moviscop and synchronizer and rewinds that
> I cut my first two sync films on.
>
> Dropped out of high school (hey, it was 1971!) to make films full
> time, and ended up soon after at the MIT Film Section, a hotbed of
> cinema verite activity, and the perfect place for me to be. We had
> better toys -- the oddest of which was a Kodak Videoplayer --
> essentially a desktop Super-8 flying spot scanner. Ugh! Ricky
> Leacock was very interested in democratizing filmmaking (he thought
> everyone had at least one movie in them -- something the video
> revolution proved was very wrong indeed!) so MIT developed a weird
> Super 8 sync system, that I did use on some short films for WGBH.
>
> But I never touched video again until I got and hacked an early 8mm
> camcorder. Still prefer film. These days I spend a lot of time
> dealing with very old film -- I make archival film scanners for places
> like the Library of Congress that can deal with the most shrunken and
> damaged film without harm.
>
> What got me started on this? Perhaps an effort to avoid work?
>
> Jeff "old fart indeed" Kreines
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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