Meet the Engineer Preserving The Last Analog Motion Graphics Machine

one of the life-changing events for me was in high school they were building a Media Center and I walked past this door and there was all this equipment and a guy look at some blueprints scratching his head and I couldn't stay away I said what's going on in here he said this is gonna be a TV studio you want to help me put it together that was where I got the bug I've been involved with video ever since my name is David seek we're here in Fletcher North Carolina and zfx with my ancient scan of eight machine the primary thing the scale made did that nobody could do before was easily move words so really it was the beginning of motion graphics from about 75 to 85 if you saw moving animation on TV it was either shot frame at a time on film which took forever or it came out of one of the ten scan of eight machines that was ever built NBC sports ABC sports CBS Evening News we had a scene in the first Star Wars it was everywhere this is the scan of a room who it's gotten hot in here these are the only two that I know of there were I have the first rnd machine and I have the last one ever produced it's got a very distinct look that can't be replicated it's sort of the visual equivalent of like a mug synthesizer with analog it's it's a continuously variable thing that you can adjust when it's in the initial position I'm going to put an oscillator on depth [Music] one of the nice things about this candidate is that as you adjust something is you turn the knob you immediately see it it's just continuous that's analog you plug in things to make your animation I mean that's really where the term plug-in came from it's very tangible you can affect the image with your hands I mean it's you can always touch it you can't touch any of this digital stuff it's in the computer somewhere with discs animate you're literally photographing light that's coming off a phosphor screen this is a very abbreviated version of the animators teeth look for example if you've got a logo and you want it pushed back into perspective your photos on ramp to assembly amp with a biased pot multiply them together into a gain pot and feed that to final section vertically so these were fairly simple effects oh that's those NASA machines that's what's recorded on this tape I'm gonna have to get that working when everybody went to high def they literally threw all of this stuff in on we're in a throwaway society your iPhone quits working you go get another one and throw the old one away but this stuff was made to be fixed it doesn't matter what the machine is if there's a guy that has been responsible for maintaining and keeping the machine working for years and years he hates to see that machine go into a landfill I could give it to the computer museum tomorrow but the fact that it's working to me is the value of it I don't really want to just have it be a static display somewhere you listen to an old album it takes you back and I think this kind of animation this kind of look sort of takes you back to that era I don't care that much about moving words the thing that's fun with the SCANA mate to me is to plug Isolators in and have these patterns that are just endless there's not anything like I guess you know some people would say I'm crazy and it'll never amount to anything but it's been worth it to me you

Channel: VICE TV

Views: 1,277,835

Keywords: Viceland, vice, vice tv, tv, television, tv channel, documentaries, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, vice magazine, vice videos, ellen page, eddie huang, action bronson, ancient aliens, balls deep, hamilton morris, scanimate, Animation, video, Analog, film, media, art, technology, stop motion, motherboard, scanimation, retro, pixar, disney, vintage, behind the scenes, motion grpahics, cal arts, experimental, photography, plug-in

Id: 0wxc3mKqKTk

Length: 5min 4sec (304 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2017