to my plans, gave me work and remained an unwavering friend throughout.
Donna, Manny, Tillster, Miranda, Elena, Mario, the Colettes and Wild Matt encouraged and humored me.
Bill Warner (above right) changed editing forever. Without Bill there would be no Avid. There would be no book called ‘Timeline’. He encouraged me at every turn, welcomed me to his home, selflessly assisted my research, lent me documents and tapes, drove me around Boston, twisted former colleagues’ arms to talk, and opened up his heart to the project.
Without reservation. Bill has faced challenges that would humble most, and never gave up. He is an inspiration.
The Bucks, Waddells and Kuehs have been hugely supportive of Timeline. Mum and Dad gave me the freedom to dream.
Tan gave me patience and understanding.
Imperfection
The Timeline books are not meant to be a definitive history of editing, photography, films and filmmaking. There are topics and people missing.
Much of editing's early history was not recorded or was recorded with bias. I have not mentioned all inventors, filmmakers and editors.
I have though, tried to address one issue over all others.
If you are sitting in front of a current Macintosh computer running Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro X or Avid Media Composer, and the question comes to mind:
"How did we get here?"
"Where did these tools come from?"
I hope Timeline answers those questions.
If you wonder while you are reading:
"Where is this going?"
The answer is the opposite.
The Mac with Final Cut Pro X in front of you.
Yes it can be frustrating to read. I get it.
By its very nature, and somewhat ironically, the timeline of editing history is non-linear. It zigs and zags. That's because I did not set out to write the story of, for example, Georges Demenÿ or Randy Ubillos - and place them in neat chapters. I simply added them, and so many others, to the timeline as they appeared. Random. Hectic.
Oh, and the other elephant in the room.
Despite being an Australian author, versed and schooled in UK English, I have adopted US spellings and grammar for the Timeline series. In general, I have assumed the book style and grammar benchmarks as set by the Chicago Manual of Style. With a few exceptions. If a contributor is quoted or interviewed from the UK or Australia or a country that speaks non-American English, I have kept 'their' spelling.
Especially if the material is from historical text. Colour may remain Colour, not Colour. Acknowledgement doesn't become Aknowledgement. If you spot a mistake, my bad, email me. If it's English vs American English, hang in there.
I invite feedback at all time [email protected]
Preface
In the spring of 1924, a small Germany company Lyta Cinema Works built the first dedicated editing device. A few months later the American made Moviola went on sale in Hollywood and become a huge success but it was sixty five years before a digital equivalent arrived for professionals.
In the intervening years individuals, and teams imagined tools that could join images together in the blink of an eye.
They trialled technology, experimented with the impossible, quit secure jobs for the unknown, and ran out of money. All the while, they tried to ship the best editing product possible.
For many years their stories went untold.
Hoping to solve an amicable dispute with Boris Yamnitsky, who had just acquired Media 100, I found myself at the local library staring at books that talked about 'how to' edit but not how editing came to be. My casual conversation was now a niggling annoyance.
I turned to the web and found two names listed in submissions to the U.S Patent Office about electronic editing. Adrian Ettlinger and William Warner.
One had created something called the CBS RAVE, and the other, Avid. They graciously took my phone calls, retold stories of electronic editing’s rich history, and connected me with lesser known individuals who had created the tools we use today.
Adrian and Bill not only helped, but they actively encouraged me. Bill made time to talk, linked me to others and poured me coffee in his kitchen. Adrian braved the wet streets of Manhattan to tell me, over lunch at the Chiam, about a remarkable period of innovation.
My part-time quest changed again when two key contributors passed away.
Art Schneider and Jack Calaway both made huge contributions to editing, yet their efforts had gone largely unheralded. I decided to record the history of editing because it fades. Timeline zigs and zags from people to places, within companies, across continents. People's lives rarely run from A to B.
Former Xerox scientist David Canfield Smith told me: “In any revolution, technological or otherwise, there are interesting characters. In fact, the characters often are the story”.
This Edition
1991-1996
This edition Timeline: Analog Five is the fifth in a series designed for students of film and television and small screens everywhere. It was substantially updated in October 2015 to add more of the Media 100 story.
I have recently added a new interview with Kieth Sorenson and David Fung. Email me if you wish to make corrections.
© John Buck 2018
Timeline Analog 5
Movies aren't just made on the set. A lot of the actual making happens right here on a Moviola. Here films are salvaged, saved sometimes from disaster, or savaged out of existence. This is the last stop on the long road between the dream in a filmmaker's head and the public when that dream is addressed.
Orson Welles.
26: Don't give up
THE AUGUST COUP
In August 1991 members of the Soviet Union's government tried to take control of the country from Soviet President and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the August Coup.
Days later Boston's Bayside Expo was home to the seventh Macworld, the twice-annual Macintosh trade show.
The Bayside Expo Center was a convention center located in Dorchester, Massachusetts that started life as a shopping mall in the 1960s. When the mall eventually failed it was converted into a convention center.
With QuickTime set to ship at the end of 1991, Macintosh users were keen to see what third parties could do with the new Apple extension. RasterOps, Gold Disk, Digital F/X, DiVA, and Letraset dueled for the attention of desktop video makers.
John Pavley and Richard Trismen from Letraset were set up in Apple’s QuickTime preview room with a "technology demonstration" of Media Blender. Their video editing program visualized the contents of a QuickTime file as a set of horizontal bar graphs. Pavley recalls:
Many other development teams had come up with the same idea