Here are a couple spots I did during my time in Charlotte, NC at a post house called "Creative Post & Transfer." This was my first job out of college. I had interned there in the summer of 1991 during my last summer in college and made a good enough impression that they hired me after graduation. When I started at Creative Post, they had a
DaVinci -
Rank Cintel Film to Tape telecine, a linear Online suite with 1" and betaSP decks, and a
Quantel PaintBox for graphics. Clients would get window dubs of their film transfers and go to a tape-to-tape edit bay to rough together the off-line version of their spots. The timecodes would then either be written down by hand or simply transposed by the online editor as the spots were conformed in the Online edit suite. The spots below represent the emergence of non-linear editing. Creative Post bought one of the first
Avids in Charlotte. It was a media composer (version 4.5 if I remember correctly). The top editors at the time were so busy they didn't have time to learn the system. And frankly at the time Online editors kind of looked down on offline editing as being crude and not too sophisitcated. Online ruled! So I had pretty much unfettered access to this new technology. Before long a client named Mark Claywell recognized the creative potential and freedom non-linear could offer. Mark was an emerging director with Boulevard Films in Charlotte. He had lot of creative energy and was excited about trying new technology. Lucky for me he was generous enough to give me a shot at working with him. The Presbyterian spot is pretty straight forward stuff. The footage really does all the work here. But, we were free to play with timing, version and add dissolve transitions in Avid that would previously have had to wait for Online.
Presbyterian from Jon Dilling on Vimeo.
This next spot was a spec spot that Mark wanted to cut to fill out his reel. He had shot a bunch to athletic footage for a
Belk department store campaign. He brought in a bunch of CDs and had me pull in several tracks which we assembled in a montage fashion. I was fascinated by his vision and the way he freely embrace the possibilities that multiple versions and non-linear editing opened up. I knew just enough about the system to keep up with Mark's vision. By the end of the session I was hooked.
Nike from Jon Dilling on Vimeo.
I believe this spot of conformed in Creative Post's new D2 online suite. Oh, the heady days of composite digital!
