It was great to see an old colleague, Gideon Smith, the other day. He’d discovered a couple of old VHS tapes as he was packing up to move house and I’d offered to take them off his hands.
The tapes are probably less than 12 months apart but date from a critical stage in Parallax Software’s history. At Siggraph in 1994 we were the cool but geeky guys who’d figured out how to do some really cool stuff and could get ILM to say say so on video (thanks Sandy and Tom).
A year later we had had the image consultants in and then sold ourselves to Avid Technology. Our customers were positive about the move, the VHS had acquired a slip jacket (above) and we were wondering why Avid didn’t want us to have a fridge for beers on our booth.
If you were directly involved in these heady days, a word of warning is necessary. Not only do people look incredibly young, but the sight of the software, projects or customers may provoke strong physical reactions.
Parallax Software, Siggraph 1994 Show Reel
Includes interviews with Sandy Houston and Tom Williams at ILM, Cynthia Taylor at CBC, Craig Zerouni at CFX, and Peter Moyer from The Post Group.
Parallax Software, Siggraph 1995, Interviews
Includes interviews with Sandy Houston and Tom Williams at ILM, Cynthia Taylor at CBC, Craig Zerouni at CFX, Phil Tweedy at Excess, Bruno Simon at Renault Design and Mike Simon and Mike Haig at Psygnosis
Parallax Software, Siggraph 1995, Show Reel
Parallax Software customers’ footage using Matador and Advance (Media Illusion).
Thanks for the memories Gid.
Oh, and thanks Rob, for suggesting that I had to completely re-write the code multiple times over 10 days!
Enjoy.
Worked out of LA for Avid in 1994/1995. Remember the acquisition, Matadore, Illusion and Spectrum (yuck). You guys were great, sorry to see not much happened with the tools.
What a lovelyt blast from the past.
Does anybody have a copy of the Compositing Olympics they could post online :-)
Mik
Good to hear from you Mik.
You could ping JB, he might have. In those days capturing video was a bit problematic without £100ks of kit!
Compositing olympics?
Do you remember the Aberdovey outward bound trip? The food was shit and my wheels were nicked off my car on the last night, but on the plus side, I almost wet myself watching the short films we all made during the week…
Hope you’re well Mik!
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