History - Computer Chronicles

Stewart Cheifet at “Home Base” on the set of Computer Chronicles in the late 90’s

In early 1986 I was a student at the College of San Mateo.  Down the hallway form Studio B was the PBS Affiliate KCSM where, the Computer Chronicles TV show had been produced since 1981. Since I wasn’t a complete screw up in class, the production manager of the station asked if I would like to help out on an upcoming Saturday and be the stage manager for a couple of episodes of the show.

You have to remember that, not only did i not OWN a computer in 1986 but i thought they were a complete and UTTER waste of time. But hey, I wanted to get into the television and this gave me the oportunity to work on a real TV show, so i said sure.

That first Saturday the regular stage manager was not available so they asked me to cue the talent and to ask the host where the first question was going to so that I could prep the director and let him know how to have his cameras ready to start off the interview.  Its not a hard task but apparently they thought i was really good at it and I remember hearing the director on the headset say, “wow, this kid (I was 23 years old) is good, we may have to keep him”. I just remember thinking… “damn… I don’t want to get pidgin holed into this job. I really want to direct.” In less than 10 years, I WAS directing the show.

Stewart Cheifet was not only the host of Computer Chronicles but he was also the Executive Producer and owned every bit of it lock stock and barrel. Not only did I learn television by working for Stewart but I also decided to buy my first computer in 1989 after working on the show for 3 years. 

In my directing years on the show I used to really enjoy the end of the shoot days. It was in that last hour of the day that Stewart would sit at his “home base” desk on the set and I would sit in the control room and Stewart and I developed quite a rapport.

We would shoot 2 show opens, two “Pick of the Weeks” and two teases. I got very comfortable working with Stewart in this manner, he on camera with a quality lav on his shirt, me listening on high end audio monitors in the control room while Stewart listened to me via the talk back speaker in the studio. We had many chats about the tech industry that way and I was always VERY honored when he would take my input and shape what he said on camera.

I owe much of my career to Stewart and I consider it a HUGE honor that I can call him up and just talk today, 10 years after I last directed a segment of Chronicles.

Anyone who has ever podcasted about technology, anyone who has ever watched a show on TV about the computer industry has Stewart to thank. He was the first, he was the original and he is CLEARLY the most copied. Over the years Stewart has received many letters from people who “got into tech” because of watching the show, some of whom now own their own technology companies.

2011 marks the 30th anniversary of The Computer Chronicles which first aired as a local “user group meeting” in the San Francisco Bay Area on KCSM Channel 60 in 1981. Today, Stewart and I had a chat about doing a retrospective online sometime this summer.

I’m REALLY looking forward to this and I hope you’ll join us. 

Starsuckers - Baby Boozers is a bad idea.

Are we addicted to the idea of celebrity?  Yes we are. There are 7 parts to this on YouTube… this is part one.

Sony makes balls bounce.

I remember when this was released a few years ago being totally mesmerized by it. I even have a copy on my hard drive somewhere, but it so much easier to share it here.  Apparently its all practical, no effects… (I find it hard to believe its not enhanced in someway.

Gadzooks... $99 LED Light

Wow... The ALZO 770L a $99 LED light. I want to get one just to see how its built. Yea its kind of small but its just a camera mounted light. 

Interesting... it has a rechargeable battery in it and it is recharged thru USB or a wall wart.

No dimmer, but I guess thats what you get for 99 bux. Maybe they'll make an update.

Thanks to my friend Jem Scholfield at thec47.com for this tip.

Personal Work Timeline

The other night I was going thru old invoices from the 90's. I had to dig out an old Filemaker file to look something up and reading thru it was like going thru a journal or a diary. It was fun and I came across some interesting jobs and even if YOU don't want to read them, I'm putting here so I can have them all collected in one spot.

January 1986 - My First Live Television Broadcast 

I ran camera on a show called "Thoroughbred Review". Back in those days the 'high tech' graphics we did involved me taking apart a race form, using a heavy ball point pen and a straight edge to cross out the horses that didn't actually run, mounting these pages on a black art card with spraymat and then framing up and tilting down the list of horses as the director called for the move. Technology baby!!!

June 1992 - I Bought My First Hardware

One month before I got married in 1992 I bought my first hardware, a "souped up Video Toaster". I remember talking over the fear of the investment with my dad. I told him that I had one client that had told me that he would give me all his work if I bought this hardware.

My dad said, "How much work are you talking about?"

"One job a month."

"How much is that worth?"

"Probably no less then $500 a month."

Then he asked, "What is the lease payment on the hardware?"

"About $500 a month."

Then my dad said, "Why are we having this conversation?"

I went the next day and leased a $10,000 computer that from 1992 to 1997 basically printed a $20 every time I hit the Return Key... Needless to say, it was a good investment. 

Early 1995 - My First Tapeless Production

We had just purchased the Video Toaster Flyer and toyed with the idea of doing a job completely tapeless. We packed the Flyer up in road case and took it to the shoot. I remember that whole day giggling every time we called out "Roll Tape"... yea, we didn't have any tape but old habits are hard to break. Most of us STILL say roll tape even though we normally don't shoot on tape anymore at all.

May 1995 - My First Tapeless Playback to a Live Audience

We were supplying tape playback and director services at the Northern California Emmy Awards night. In addition to directing the live show Phil Azzopardi was floating around during the cocktail hour and pre-show shooting the 'festivities'. While I was directing the live show Doug Johnson, now at Fat Box in Redwood City, was cutting a highlights reel in an empty office about 50 feet down the hallway. An output from the edit system was ran down the hallway and showed up as a crosspoint on my switcher.

We were using Version .9 of the software and a few minutes before we had to roll the highlights reel to the audience Doug jumped on the com and told me, he couldn't determine how much pre-roll he needed to make the timeline play. After testing playback from the $3500 full height 9GB hard drives, Doug told me that the timeline would take anywhere between 10 seconds to a full 60 seconds before it actually started to play. What do you do? We went for it... at the time we HAD to have the timeline play we got lucky, it played quickly and the audience never knew what was going on.

January 1997 - First Firewire Edit

I had met a guy who was pretty high up at Adaptec. He was looking to tryout their first Firewire I/O card. The final feature set wasn't even decided yet. He brought me a PC (I know right??) and asked me to cut together a video about a trip thru the wine country on some train. My friend Phil Azzopardi had shot the footage.

When he asked what I thought of the process I told him that you couldn't really expect a video editor to work without seeing your work on an NTSC monitor. They hadn't thought anything of the downside to working ONLY in the Adobe Premiere canvas window. After my comments they reworked the firmware on the card so that if you kept the camera attached during the edit you could watch your work on a video monitor if you hooked it up to the camera, a work flow that became totally normal in the DV world.

This was 2 years before Apple released the Blue and White G3 Macs with Firewire.

July 1998 - My first 16x9 Animation

No big deal really but the first time I produced anything in 16x9 it was an animation that I did in a piece for Intel. I had done the whole piece in 4x3, it was totally finished when they told me... "oh by the way, this needs to be 16x9. Is that a problem?" I remember thinking how cool it was that I was able to change the canvas size in After Effects, re-position a few keyframes and be done with it.