A 1950’s movie about an atomic bomb blast that isn’t science fiction. The Turner Classic Movies viewing experience brought to the blog.
Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley introduction from TCM.
Split Second (1953), Directed by Dick Powell
Eddie’s follow-up.
Saying it’s time for the Baby Boom generation to let go of its political hold requires thinking that those born between 1940 and 1950 are Baby Boomers. The 1950’s is the true Baby Boom decade. There has never been a President who was born between 1950 and 1960, and it seems there never will be.
Lately I have been reduced to embedding Twitter posts. But I hate Twitter and want nothing to do with it!
Perhaps this psychiatrist can help me to understand my self-contradictory behavior. He seems to have a good grasp of Trump’s knotted thought process.
https://twitter.com/DMRDynamics/status/1558485280067268608?s=20&t=lcD3YhEw6YBYiygy3zD0pg
I’m staying with the EditDroid documentary from the previous post. Warning: This will be extremely nerdy.
Hidden and forgotten in George Lucas’ archives is the last EditDroid system. Why do those two Pioneer LD-V8000 LaserDisc players look familiar?
That’s because I also have two of them. One to play and one that I hope will be useful for parts, now that I’m having a mechanical problem with the other player.
A composite video source, like LaserDisc, must have the color portion of the signal separated from the brightness, aka chroma and luminance. Towards the end of the analog video era, the best comb filters (some LD players had a built-in filter) were doing a decent job of separation, but there were still artifacts. The digital comb filter in the Onkyo receiver shown above achieves essentially perfect separation of chroma from luminance, converting the composite signal to HDMI.
Why does that poster in Ben Burtt’s studio look familiar?
That’s because I also have one.
What became of the EditDroid? It was a case of “hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Lucas sold his financial interest to Avid Technologies, which saw synergy between the EditDroid and what they were doing with Pro Tools. My first house was in the town where Avid had its headquarters. I read in the paper that Avid had a satellite link to Skywalker Ranch.
Joe Kane’s groundbreaking LaserDisc A Video Standard was hugely influential on the television and video industry. Kane did more than anyone else to raise awareness about poor television picture quality and getting manufacturers to move away from their grossly inaccurate “improvements.” Kane’s influence is seen today in the Filmmaker Mode setting in new TV’s.
I used to follow a magazine called Widescreen Review, with “widescreen” in those pre-DVD days referring to letterboxed movies on LaserDisc. I enjoyed reading the magazine so much, it inspired me to draw this cartoon.
Joe Kane was a Widescreen Review contributor, and in one of his articles he praised the picture quality of the Pioneer LD-V8000 LaserDisc player. Between that and being aware the deck was used in the EditDroid system, I was determined to own one.
Finally, in case someone stumbles on this post wondering if I am the Doug Pratt of The LaserDisc Newsletter, I am not him. Along with yet another Doug Pratt, who used to moderate the Cartooning and Animation Forum, the LaserDisc Doug Pratt is one of the reasons why my Internet handle is DOuG pRATt.
“Gang of Outsiders”, Part 1 of Light & Magic on Disney+, is a fascinating delight to watch. The trailer is a bit over-hyped, as the history of a bunch of obsessed young guys finding each other and working their butts off to take on an impossible technical challenge doesn’t need “Don’t Stop Believing” for emphasis.
Much of the Spring, 1978 issue of Cinefantastique magazine was devoted to Star Wars. If it wasn’t the first coverage of Industrial Light & Magic, then it was certainly the most extensive at that time. I’ve scanned a few pages from the issue.
One tidbit in the Disney+ documentary is something that I apparently knew from Cinefantastique, but had forgotten long ago. Richard Edlund created the original Pignose guitar amp. Still in business today, I remember seeing ads for the Pignose in Rolling Stone.
The costumes in Star Wars weren’t the responsibility of ILM, but this is the funniest picture in the magazine. Greedo’s trans secret is out!
I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series, although I expect my interest might start to taper off once they’re deeply into the digital era and everything turns orange and teal. *Blech!*
An early use of computers in film was the EditDroid, another Lucas technical initiative. I don’t know yet if the system gets mentioned later in the series. Built around programmable LaserDisc players, EditDroid was intended to take the drudgery out film editing.
Hey, tastewar! Here’s proof that I was playing around with Microsoft Cluster Service — on Windows 2003! — years before we had to make it work. Not that the alleged customer demand for supporting the feature was ever really there.
