TRW Commercials, Robert Abel & Associates and the Origins of Computer Animation

[Updated 3/6/2013   I am now quite sure that other companies also did TRW commercials, I remember explicitly one that Digital Productions worked on.  It did seem as though RA&A did get a lot of them, however]

The origin of computer animation lies in part in the very high end advertising production that was done by such companies as Robert Abel & Associates, R/Greenberg, Digital Productions, MAGI and so forth. Among these, highly prized were the very expensive and generally quite abstract  TRW commercials.

TRW was a major defense contractor, originally created to be the project lead on the secret space program of the United States after Sputnik. Their commercials were more about raising awareness of their name among the public and associating the name with cool technology than it was about selling product.  We would recognize their goals today using terms like "brand identification and management".

A typical TRW commercial might have a computer screen with CAD program, the wireframe design of a butterfly which then comes to life and flies off the screen with a voice over that says "A company called TRW". They were always hits at the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre back when that event, the so-called film show, was important.

These commercials seemed to be done at Robert Abel & Associates exclusively as far as I could tell.  If there were other high-end TRW spots done by other companies, I probably was just not aware of them.  I thought it was amusing, sort of, that my peers at RA&A did not have a clue what TRW did whereas I, coming from the RAND Corporation, had a pretty good idea what their business was: spy satellites and related technologies.

So I wrote a fake TRW commercial in my head and now, many years later, I present it to you here.

The logo for TRW itself was slit-scanned, but I have not found an image or copy of it yet, so for now the basic artwork will have to suffice.

Noteworthy Pun About A Noteworthy Mutant

It is rare indeed to come across a really good pun by which I mean a pun that can work on multiple levels, and still be somewhat cheesy.   I came across the following example on the Discovery.Com website in an article by Tim Hall about a three-eyed fish found in a pond in Argentina that is notoriously fed by a nuclear reactor.

Tim suggests that instead of being known as a "fishin' hole" it should be known as a "fission hole".

I think that this demonstrates the kind of spirit and originality that made America great, once.

As for the issue of whether nuclear power is safe or not, what is unsafe about a three-eyed fish? These environmental tree-huggers are being overly precious here, I think.  Who would not benefit from having a third eye?

The mutant fish that inspired the author is below.

See the original article in its splendor here:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/simpsons-blinky-three-eyed-fish-caught-near-nuke-plant-111031.html

The Mighty Mitochondria

When Star Wars / George Lucas started to explain the force by inventing the back story of the Midi Chlorians, a microscopic life form that is in symbiosis with all life, many of my friends in the glamourous and rewarding visual effects industry thought it was the stupidist thing they had ever heard. Which is impressive, given the number of stupid things they have heard or have said in their line of business.

One of the leads at ILM for The Phantom Menace told me that when he read the script in preproduction that he thought the idea was so wacky that it had to have been deliberately created and added to the script as part of the LucasArts technique to help identify who leaked the script should the script get leaked. (People who were allowed to read the script for the Phantom Premise, I mean the Phantom Menace, before the movie came out were given carefully modified scripts with unique plot points so that any leaks, which are common with such movies, could be traced.  They kept an access list of who read which version of the script and could narrow down the possible suspects).  My friend thought that the idea of the Midi Chlorians was so obviously a bad idea that it could not possibly be a part of the real script.

Well I don't think it was or is stupid. I thought it was obvious that "George" was making a reference to the Mighty Mitochondria, which are really, really important and in fact is in ancient symbiosis with all life, or at least all multi-cellular life.

Pretty much any animal or plant that has more than one cell is called Eukarotic, and it consists of cells with a nucleus and a lot of these little buggers, the mighty mitochondria, inside. These mitochondria have an eerie resemblence to bacteria, and in fact they probably were bacteria once. Not only that, but according to one theory they are probably or were probably methanogens and I will let you look up why that is funny.  (OK, I will tell you.  Methanogens are the anaerobic bacteria in cows and in swamps that generate methane, the active ingredient in flatulence and they are our ancestors, some think. )

You simply can not get more important than the Mighty Mitochondria: they power our cells, they are probably very much involved in aging, and the more you know the more interesting they are. Of course, since I am concerned about the mitochondria, perhaps even worried about them, I am probably a mitochondriac.

But if you do not know what I am talking about, and/or if you have not read Nick Lane's fabulous book "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life", you should do so at once. You can get started online on Amazon.com by searching inside the book, but you should really order your own copy. The anti-oxident theory of aging comes from the Mitochondria and by reading this book you can understand why merely taking more anti-oxidents is not going to work. It will be your first step into a larger world, as Obi Wan would say, only in this case into a smaller world.

Here are some stained mitochondria that I found on the Internet.

It must be hard to make attractive pictures of devolved bacteria / pond scum, don't you think?

The book is at:

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meaning/dp/0199205647

The Jedi explain the Midi Chorlians here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDmu4f8l8I

The Wikipedia page is here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion

The Firesign Theatre, The "President Ride" & Unemployment

[This post was modified and extended on 9/23/2012]

In the Firesign Theatre's radio play, "I Think we Are All Bozo's on this Bus", there is a theme park and in that theme park is "the president ride" where you can ask a question of "the president".  So someone goes up and says:  "Mr President, where can I get a job?",  and the President ride responds: "Many busy executives have asked, what about the job displacement program? ... " and of course completely avoids answering the question.   Just like the real presidents.   The Firesign Theatre was remarkably prescient.

Both the Democrats and Republicans studiously avoid talking about the unemployed, and the many issues related to it.   There is a good reason for this and that is because they have caused this situation with their policies and their failures to create policy and they have done so in an unintentionally bipartisan way.  They have no intention of changing their policies because they are working just fine and doing what they were intended to do.   Their goals were to make large corporations richer, impoverish the middle class, and destroy worker's rights.  If these were not the goals of their policies then our elected officials must be very incompetent indeed because that is what they achieved.

Yes, yes, I know, you think this sounds paranoid or unfair.  I will explain what I mean by this in more detail below and it is a little more subtle than it sounds at first glance.  No, of course they did not vote to impoverish Americans, not exactly, but if their actions or inactions have the same result, then I think it is fair to hold them responsible.

With great power comes great responsibility.    That is the deal.  When one becomes President, or a senator, or a member of the House of Representatives, then not only is one given a salary in the top 5% of all Americans, but one is also given access to vast resources: money, intelligence, raw military power, and support of many kinds.  In return, you are expected to keep the country out of war when you can, to fight a war successfully when we must, and to see that the people that you represent are free and prosperous.   If you fail through your actions or your inactions, as an individual or as a group, then you should be held accountable.   "The Buck Stops Here."  Perhaps someone else would have had the brilliance, wisdom and charisma to have led us through those troubled waters successfully when you did not.

In the US Navy, a captain of a ship is held responsible for whatever happens to that ship and he is judged by the rules and laws that pertain to the responsibilities inherent in being captain of a military vessel.  If a ship runs aground, even if it does so because of an unexpected event of natural causes, such as a storm, then the captain of that ship is held accountable and his behavior and decisions are reviewed by a court martial (literally, a military court).   And during the time of this procedure he is relieved of his command, and he may only be restored if he is completely exonerated.

There is somewhere between a 15% to 22% unemployment rate in this country.  Our elected representatives have done such a bad job that it is not even possible to get the real number.   There is vast misery and inequality, ageism and racism, and a massive deficit where before there was a massive surplus.  Maybe "globalism" is the cause and maybe it isn't.   But even if it is, we are not a passive victim of globalization, more than any other country in the world we helped to create it.  So if globalism is the storm, then you are the captain that navigated right into it.   However the Great Depression happened, it was FDR and the New Deal who got us out of it.   You guys kicked the can down the road too many times and the 800-lb chickens have come home to roost, so to speak.

As a world class practitioner of passive aggressive behavior, I can testify to you today that failure to act is a form of action.   Failure to have  a coherent policy is a form of policy.   You are our elected representatives and we hold you responsible.

Here is an article I stumbled upon that talks about some of these issues, unemployment and worker's rights in particular.   It is s short and I think it has some good information in it.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/18/the-job-crisis-the-unemployable-and-the-fiscal-cliff/

Enthiran (2010)

As we all know, a lot of visual effects has been outsourced or offshored to India.  But here we have an example of a film made in India, which, according to Brian Jennings, had its effects done in this country.  In order to appreciate this film you have to watch most if not all of these 10 minutes.   Michael Bay would be filled with envy.  There are even Giant Robots that figure prominently in it, so it must be an important film.

The film is called Enthiran, and it is in the Tamil language.

At about 4:10 or so in the excerpt, if you look at the helicopters, you will see a good example of why you should not use Viewpoint (or possibly "group sourced") models very close up.  A distant shot would probably have been ok.

I am pretty sure that it was Steve Speer in NYC that first made me aware of this fabulous cross-cultural triumph of visual effects filmmaking.

Excerpt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysbbPStfWw

Wikipedia Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthiran

Introducing "Lithic Fragmentation"

Lithic Fragmentation is a bold new therapy designed to reclaim the lives of otherwise worthless human refuse who have fallen into shame and degradation. These poor dregs of former human life, forced to endure their hundreds of millions of dollars of unearned wealth, or to exercise their power as leading yet corrupt members of our society, now have a way to correct the course of their formerly pointless lives and learn new and better skills.

The process of Lithic Fragmentation is simple yet subtle. It begins with the therapy candidate being volunteered by their fellow citizens in local "therapy committees" where suitable candidates are proposed, discussed and elected, all without the concern or knowledge of the potential therapy receiver. We do this for their own good and we have no doubt that they appreciate all the effort that is expended on their behalf.

The therapy process continues with the transfer of all their wealth to the therapy centers. This totally voluntary wealth transfer, which is provided for them at no cost and without them having to do anything, is the second part of their therapy. By receiving their ill-gotten wealth, we selflessly take on the burden, and the therapy receivers immediately experience a great sense of relief at not having the guilt associated with their ill-gotten and undeserved riches.  Already the therapy receivers can sense a great improvement in their lives.

Before we get to the core of the therapy, the patient is relocated to special centers which are dedicated to this work.   These centers are located in beautiful parts of our great country such as Death Valley or the Jornada del Muerto.  Each patient is given their own private suite with bed and private bath and a view of the stark yet beautiful countryside.  In order to foster a serious feeling of dedication, they are given new clothes for their stay which are simple, comfortable and distinctive with fashionable black stripes on a white background.

Every day at dawn, our therapy receivers are led to a new location, filled with big rocks. There, armed with only a simple hammer, the therapy recipient proceeds to turn big rocks into small ones, hence the term "Lithic Fragmentation".  Oh, how happy they will be as they realize that for the first time in their lives they are doing something productive with their own two hands!  How eagerly they will return each day for the pleasant 12 or 16 hours of daily exercise outside and in nature continuing this process!  With each rock that they fragment, they will experience a great sense of pride and feeling of accomplishment!  No more a life of shame for these lucky men and women!

And there is other symbolism as well. That big chain that connects them to their fellow therapy receiver? That is the "great chain of being" that reminds them that we are all connected on this planet, and have a responsibility to each other, unlike their former, disgusting lives before therapy.

At the end of the day, the happy fragmenters return to their individual cells and receive a healthy bowl of soup and a solid 4-6 hours of sleep before the next day of self-improvement begins.

There are other aspects to this therapy that are used to enrich the lives of the therapy receivers. For example, therapy providers "Jerome" and "Big Julie" give private and personalized therapy to worthy candidates, all of whom report a unique and transforming experience.   In addition, the therapy receivers can look forward to regular sessions of group discussion in which they criticize their prior lives and actions in a spirit of honesty and sincere desire to reform. Usually one therapy receiver in particular is the subject of this therapeutic group criticism.

After an all too brief period of self-improvement, rarely more than 10 or 12 years except in special cases, the happy fragmenter returns to the world, a changed and much better person, and with a prestigious certificate to indicate successful completion of the course.  

Here is a picture of happy therapy receivers awaiting a personal session with Jerome and Big Julie.

Linux / Unix / Nvidia Update 9/13/2012

I am going to briefly digress from the topics of metaphor in space opera, and national security policy, to discuss the critical and related topic of which OS, specifically which Linux, to run.

The occasion comes about because we are going through a season where various collaborators (occasional collaborators, usually) are choosing their OS and seem blissfully unaware of the implications of their choice.   I believe that the choice of an OS is similar to choosing to use the Dark Side of the Force, forever is your destiny affected.

Or said another way, a moment of pleasure, a lifetime of regret.

But the answer to the question of which OS is a moving target because we live in a fast-paced world and also because the Linux community is working very, very hard to destroy any chance it has to become mainstream by splintering into as many small factions as they can as often as they can.

The Lisp community also splintered but were in general quite smart and had interesting reasons to splinter, even if in the long run it was very counterproductive.  But the Linux people aren't that smart, they just splinter because they are immature and can not compromise.

But I am holding back my real feelings, you may wish to read between the lines to see what it is I really think here.

Anyway, this is a brief update on Centos/Redhat, Ubuntu and FREEBSD (the descendent of the original Berkeley Software Distribution to which we are all beholden) and also a discussion of support for graphics hardware for Linux because there is so much misinformation out there.

Centos/Redhat is the professional version of Linux, as far as I can tell.  The people who are using Linux on their thousands of Apache servers, for example, seem to be using Centos / Redhat.   Centos is Redhat, but recompiled, and without formal support.  It is literally Redhat and those who need support (large corporations usually) buy directly from Redhat.  For the rest of us, Centos is free to download.   There is now a version 5.8 which I plan to upgrade to, and a version 6.3 that has many features I do not need, especially involving managing virtualization.

Centos should be your default Linux OS for professional work, unless you are bleeding edge, in which case you may prefer their developmental version, Fedora.

Ubuntu used to be the best choice for a primarily desktop user who needed an OS for their laptop, or for an office worker.  The latest version of Ubuntu however has moved to their own incompatible window system, and clearly indicates to me that they are out of their minds.  I wish all you Ubuntu users the best of luck.

For fun, and because I had never tried, I downloaded and installed FREEBSD on a system here.  It installed flawlessly.  And to my surprise, when I logged in, it had a classic beautiful Unix login shell.  No damn window system for these guys, they are manly men.   I love this, its so pure and unspoiled.  I would look seriously at FREEBSD if I were in a position to to change OS's and wanted a serious Unix as a base.

I want to publically thank NVIDIA for doing such a spectacularly good job of supporting Linux. ATI/AMD's support of Linux has always been minimal, and NVIDIA has always done a very serious and professional job of supporting Linux for all their many hardware products.  The confusion comes from people who have never seriously tried to do graphics with Linux, I suspect, because if they did they would quickly discover, as I have, that there is only one mainstream graphics vendor who seriously supports Linux.

Remember, whatever choice you make here will determine dozens if not hundreds of other choices you make in the future.   Changing OS's is very difficult, upgrading to a new release is very annoying.   Adding a new OS to a mix in a working studio always adds complication.  Choose wisely, as your destiny will be affected.

Does Star Wars Have a Line of Dialog With a Double Meaning?

With this post we now broach a topic of central importance to all of us: the role of ambiguity in cinematic Space Opera.

Near the end of the final Star Wars film, Obi-Wan says something that set me back a moment and made me think. Is it possible that a character in a Star Wars film said something that was layered with meaning? Actually having one meaning on the surface and another at a different level? Could this be?

Arguably there is one other potential case of a double meaning in Star Wars, that being the sequence where Obi-Wan famously tells Luke something about his father, but certainly not everything.   He says that his father was a good friend, a great pilot, fought in the clone wars but had been "murdered and betrayed by Darth Vader", failing to mention that Luke's father and Darth were the same person. Now maybe that qualifies as a double meaning, or maybe its just plain old lying by omission, and that is not quite the same thing.

The case I am referring to is different. It takes place during the the climactic fight between Obi-Wan and his former pupil, Anakin, the proto-Darth. They are fighting over a lava field and of course have time to have a discussion while they try to kill each other.

So Obi-Wan and Anakin are fighting and talking, and they say things like this

Anakin: If you are not with me, then you are my enemy.

Obi-Wan: Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.

Anakin: You will try.

They fight for a few minutes, then Obi-Wan says

Obi-Wan: I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.

Anakin: I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over.

Obi-Wan: Anakin! Chancellor Palpatine is evil!

Anakin: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.

Obi-Wan: Well then you are lost!
Anakin: This is the end for you, my master.

Then they fight some more when suddenly Obi-Wan jumps to a nearby ridge, looks down at Anakin and says ...

Obi-Wan: It's over, Anakin!  I have the high ground.

You see, it seems to me that Obi-Wan is actually saying something here that is both literally true and metaphorically true. He has the high ground, standing on a ridge and all, but he also has the high moral ground. Is this possible, could it be that a Star Wars character would say such a thing?

Well, if it is true, it doesn't last very long.   The next lines of dialog are:

Anakin: You underestimate my power!

Obi-Wan: Don't try it.

But of course, Anakin does try it, and for the first time in the history of the cinema, someone who does a stupid move in a sword fight (like spinning around or jumping over someone) is rewarded as they should be rewarded: they are cut off at the knees. Or worse.

Of course, I can't be sure that I am right about Obi-Wan and his high moral ground but nevertheless I wanted to alert you to this exciting possibility.

The scene itself is located on Youtube at the following location.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwy412nttI

Everything Old Is New Again or Frame Rate in Hollywood

Once upon a time, movies were projected at 16 FPS (frames per second) and each frame was flashed three times, for a total of 48 flickers per second. At 48 or better FPS you get so-called "flicker fusion", and the viewer does not perceive the light going on and off. It looks continuous to him/her.

Then, as time passed, we moved to 24 FPS (double flashed). This had a variety of advantages and this is the reason that when you see old movies they appear to be running around like mad, they were designed to be projected at 16 FPS, not 24.

But although movies seemed to stay at 24 FPS (and then video at 30 frames, or 60 fields per second), in fact there was an arm of the entertainment industry that always played with the frame rate. This is the world of "special venue" which includes theme parks and world fairs. The special venue people experimented with everything from 30 FPS to as fast as they could get film through a projector. Showscan is famously a company that Doug Trumbull and partners started after doing experiments which they believed told them that 60 FPS was the optimal rate for human perception.

So now that Jim Cameron and Peter Jackson want to play with a faster frame rate, everyone and their brother is running around with their heads cut off wondering what they are going to do. Well, I am here to tell you what was learned from Special Venue and suggest you talk to some of the players in more detail.

The major results were this (or this is how it seemed to me, from my very limited view point, obviously not having access to the inner thoughts of major players, but nevertheless...):

1. Yes, a faster frame rate can help, especially with fast action, exactly like you imagine.

2. But not all scenes or topics benefit equally from this technique. In some scenes, slow moving mood pieces, for example, it may even be counterproductive, because more information is not always better.

3. The other thing to realize is that when you change the frame rate you change many, many things with it. You change how you light things, how makeup works, what kind of actors and actresses you cast. The reasons for this will be obvious after you shoot your first tests, and what you do about it is to be determined. But do not think that you merely increase the frame rate and now action scenes just look better. That isnt how this works.

4. Some people find the increased frame rate annoying. I know that my own response to it was that it was amusing for a few minutes but I wasn't sure how I was going to like watching 90 minutes of something like this.

Here is an image of Dr. Emilio Lizardo watching a high frame rate test in Buckaroo Banzai.

5. You will hear people say that an increased frame rate makes things look like video. It certainly does for me.

I want to encourage anyone involved in this matter to pick up the phone and call some people you know in the world of special venue. There is a weird overlap between special venue and motion pictures, some people go back and forth between the worlds, some people stay in their own world. But I would certainly begin by talking to Douglas Trumbull, his partner Richard Yuricich (you can reach both of them throught the ASC) and probably someone involved with the work at Imagineering. (I do not know who that would be, but I am as certain as I can be that there is someone there who has done a lot of work with this).

A separate topic is whether the digital projectors really have the bandwidth to do this. My feeling is that the answer depends on which projectors we are talking about.

Bob Lambert (1957-2012)

My good friend Bob Lambert has passed away at the age of 55.    Bob was a fellow Virginian and I have known him forever, since the earliest days of Computer Graphics in the 1980s, when he was running the tiny 3D group at Walt Disney Feature Animation.

Here is a picture that David Coons just sent me of Bob and myself at SIGGRAPH in LA maybe two years ago.

Goodbye, Bob.

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/08/haiku-about-rodney-king.html