Timeline Analog 2. John Buck

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Art Schneider (above) noticed the radical change in the editing schedule on long form projects like The Julie Andrews Special program.

       The producers estimated it would take more than forty editing hours using Editec to complete this fifteen-minute section. I had a rough cut of that segment in two hours and a final cut in another thirty minutes.

      Schneider had to rent 65 disk packs to store five and a half hours of camera rushes for NBC’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the 600. It was an order that consumed almost all of Memorex's disk supply. Despite the logistics Schneider was impressed:

       Selecting and choosing shots to be edited together was a pleasure. The editing system also had the ability to fast forward or rewind any shot at ten times play speed as well as to jog a single frame forwards and backwards.

      The need for more and more disk space may have been prescient for the industry in the coming decades but it also caused further problems for CMX Systems as a business.

      Jim Adams adds:

       As more and more video material was transferred to 600 disk packs, Memorex was rapidly depleting their inventory. Moreover, disk packs were not purchased by the user, but were leased on a monthly basis.Thus the cost of 600 usage was increasing as disk packs had to be held until the edited program was released to the client.

      The System/600 was more suited to commercials and on-air promotions.

      Robert Lund recalls:

       You had limited storage, so editors would use the CMX to cut the opening montage to a show.

      Metromedia Producers Corporation began editing Sandcastles, a 90 minute CBS Tuesday Night Movie on a CMX 600 system. Lon Priest went to watch.

       Squatting between Stage 3 and scoring at CBS Studio Centre, in Studio City, is a small frame building intriguingly called the CMX editing shack. Nondescript from the outside, it exudes a mystery reminiscent of similar bland buildings at Los Alamos or Cape Kennedy. One just knows something revolutionary is going on within. The shack houses the CMX 600 editing console, the editing portion of a computerized videotape editing and assembly system as far ahead of related techniques as jets are to biplanes.

       Upon entering the building, one is struck by that antiseptic, gun metal grey atmosphere that blares ‘computer technology’. How can this possibly be an editing room? Where is the Moviola, the synchronizer and the splicer? Missing, too, are canvas bins, film cans and pins. It looks more like mission control!

       Hunched intently over a long console containing two television monitors are film editor and ACE president Tom (Thomas) McCarthy, director Ted Post and associate producer Lee Miller.

       All that's missing are white smocks and they'd look like technicians watching an Atlas Agena (rocket) blastoff. Black and white images flick across the screens, while on one an overlay of numerals tick over like seconds on a countdown. However, instead of a rocket, the screen shows actress Bonnie Bedelia and the changing numerals indicate picture frames, not seconds.

      McCarthy and Post were putting final touches on Sandcastles, four days after videotaping had completed on location. Priest wrote for Cinema Editor magazine.

       The CMX 600 system is truly an amazing device, which permits an editor to instantly draw on any of the audio and visual material he needs to put a sequence together. If he so chooses, an editor can play back thousands of frames stored in the computer in any order he wants. The fact that the frames were shot one after another in time is inconsequential to the system. Thus it is a true "Random Access Video Editing" machine.

      Tom McCarthy became the first editor to use the CMX-600 under actual production conditions. He told Priest:

       This machine can truly be referred to as a revolutionary method for editing film. Probably it's the speed at which you're able to make your decisions and have the cuts indicated that is the most startling adjustment for an editor to make. I believe it gives you a better chance to be creative in putting your cuts together, though, because there are fewer interruptions.

       You know, I still marvel at the fact that five days after final shooting on this hour and a half show we were able to have 3 out of 5 acts turned over spotted for music. It seems strange at first, for instance, not to have film in your hands when you make your cuts. Also, there's the fact that although the film was shot in color, you edit black and white and the color comes out only on the final product. It takes a little getting used to. I feel fortunate in being given an opportunity to pioneer this new concept.

       Certainly electronic editing machines and tape will have a definite place in the not-too-distant future and I look forward to my next assignment with this exciting new machine.

      Prophetically producer Gerald Isenberg told:

       This is the beginning of a trend. Three, four, five years from now a lot more television productions will be done this way.

       PEC-102