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