My life up to now. Part 4: A film set, a marriage

I was 21 when I met my wife Robin. While still working as an editor, my friend introduced me to a young screen writer who was in the film program at ULM. I met Robin and we seemed to hit it off pretty quickly. I told her what I did for a living and she told me about a student film that she would be working on in the coming weeks. When she found out I also did visual effects she convinced me to do a shot for her film. More about the vfx shot later. Robin also asked me to crew on the film, I was stoked. I had never worked with a film camera or film crew before! I told her a resounding YES and also said I will do anything for this opportunity. (Thats when she muscled me to the ground and made me swear I would do her visual effects for free). We shot the film "Turn About" on a Bolex 16mm film camera, recorded sound to a reel to reel Nagra, edited on a Moviola. People this was 100% analog in every way. When you use a razor blade to cut your film, you have a very unique perspective on how all this is put together. This project was instrumental in me furthering my path and I am so grateful for Robin and her classmates giving me the opportunity to share the experience. OK, back to my expertise, the VFX. The shot required an elevator snapping it's cables and plummeting down the shaft to it's doom. I designed and animated this 6 second shot which took 21 Pentium Pro computers running 24 hours a day for about 8 days. The computers were all networked together using screamer net. Once the sequence was fully rendered to 2k, Duart in Dallas outputted the sequence to 35mm film then downconverted to 16mm. When we got the film back, we spliced it into our movie and sent the whole thing off for master. That same year, Robin and I got married a mere 3 months after we started dating. Hey, when you know… you know!