“A true teacher would never tell you what to do. But he would give you the knowledge with which you could decide what would be best for you to do.”
― Christopher Pike
The path on my journey of creativity has never been straight, clear cut or predictable. My path West to California disintegrated before my eyes, my film and video educational path crisscrossed North and South from Queens (the college I attended) to Staten Island (the college I didn’t) with occasional stops West to Manhattan. I thought for sure Manhattan was where I’d start my professional journey after college. That’s where I thought I needed to be. Instead, the path led East, to Long Island.
Looking back, I’m still amazed I was hired after showing a music video along with my demo reel from a group called The Bleeding Hemeroids. It won an award, but it really was not the best thing to show when the interviewer was 71 years old and a fan of Jazz and Folk music.
“Problems” – The Bleeding Hermeroids – 1991. The only copy I could find at the time of posting is a VHS dub. Please excuse the degraded color and poor image quality.
Nevertheless, I was hired and led down a path that welcomed my resourcefulness and gave me a wealth of experience from a Master of Resourcefulness. I slowly learned my boss George had been a photographer and filmmaker since the 1940’s and besides his amazing catalogue of photography from around the world, his studio photography constantly called on his skills with light and props during his years with Three Lions to create unique and fun images for calendars and album covers. He also created elaborate synchronized slide shows using up to a dozen projectors to make compelling visual experiences.
A sample of the hundreds of album covers George Pickow created in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Just to properly frame the technology of the time, it was 1993. The internet had only just begun to be accessed by the population, the videos we made were shot on ¾ inch video tape and edited from tape to tape between two ¾ inch decks and a video switcher called the Video Toaster through an Amiga computer. Photoshop was only at version 2.5. George created graphics and animations with Deluxe Paint on the Amiga before investing in Photoshop later on. We were working on the cusp of analog and digital technology with video production.
My tools of the trade in 1993: 3/4 inch video tape, U-matic Video Deck and the Video Toaster on the Amiga 2000.
Our biggest project each year was the Treasurer’s Report for the Hadassah National Convention. Each year centered around a theme that we would have to illustrate visually with the treasurer occasionally appearing on camera. This is where magic on a limited budget had to happen and where I learned the most. High quality scanners for photographs weren’t available yet, so we had motors that pulled the photos across a surface as we shot and zoomed to create movement on images. Physical tricks and sleight of hand to be used with lighting, smoke, shadows, colored gels and Vaseline on glass to create looks which can easily be applied digitally today with the click of a filter. I believe this education in the analog world gave me twice the power in the digital world as I grew with it because I had a base knowledge of how to physically create illusion and can “find back doors” or push digital applications to their limits to make them do what I want. I will be forever grateful to George for passing on his vast experience in such a subtle way that it organically worked into my creative process, but I can still catch it once in a while and go, “Hey, that came from him!”
Next week: Favorite creations and the stories behind them.
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