Entertainment Books and Technology

Having written three “entertainment books” I can fully comprehend the technology used to create a physical book. I took print shop in junior high and actually set type, locked it in its “form”, attached that to an electrically powered platen press and printed it at the rate of about thirty sheets (pages) a minute. The technology evolved to photographic plates and sheet presses when, with Frank Enslow, I was publishing our magazine in the late 1960s but the final event was still very physical. How these tomes are converted into eBooks is a whole other event which I do not claim to comprehend.

3 Covers

3 Covers

While watching an episode of Dr. Bull recently we were having a bit of trouble with the on demand video feed. The picture would freeze for a few seconds then continue. It was annoying. Then I got to thinking about how we used to record shows on a VCR and play the tape later and the idea for this essay was born.

In 1949 when I was fourteen Fountain Avenue Baptist Church in Hollywood had a radio show.

Here’s an excerpt from one of my entertainment books, Three Stages:
From 10:30 to 11:00 every Sunday night our radio program was on the air. It was broadcast live over a local station but it was also recorded, direct to disc, with a lacquer master cut in the studio. The large slow-speed discs contained fifteen minutes on each side. I remember the large pile of “hair” that would build up as the grooves were literally cut into the lacquer.

The idea of vibrations transmitted through wires to a stylus that cut grooves in solidified lacquer is comprehensible to me. I certainly couldn’t build such a system and yet the methodology does not seem like magic. Nor does photography on film. Light focused through glass burning the emulsion on a copper plate – now plastic – covered by material that’s then treated with chemicals to create an image, I can understand. Even the pull-down mechanism in a movie camera enabling multiple exposures each second which can then be projected on a screen and perceived as movement is not all that mysterious.

With the advent of audiotape and then videotape (in the 1960’s) this recording media evolution began to enter an incomprehensible phase to all of us but technicians. Sure, we simple artists could use these media but truly understanding how they worked (and why) was mystifying. Still, a roll of film either moving or still, a reel of audio or video tape had a physical presence. One edited them with their hands and with physical machines that made sense, and noise. You could pick them up in your hand, they had weight and shape. A full length feature movie came in big heavy metal containers and ran on huge noisy projectors. The content and how it got onto and off of these tapes was perceptible if not, to most, truly comprehensible.

Then came computers and the digital age was born. I recall hearing tales of explorers visiting primitive indigenous tribes in South America and taking Polaroid photos of the people. These folks were either scared out of their wits or fell on their faces and worshipped the holders of these magical boxes as gods. That’s sort of how I feel when I begin to realize that two or three full length movies in high definition video can be carried around on a phone or a thumb drive that weighs about as much as a small cigar.

I’m a skilled video editor. I do it on a Macintosh computer. I deliver finished videos on thumb drives. I upload them to the internet. I download video files from ftp servers, edit them and send them back the same way. And now there are smart phones. Fuhgeddaboudit!

How is this possible?

Steve Wozniack, our dear departed Steve Jobs, Bill Gates; these men and their descendants are gods to me. Compared to these uber-geeks, rocket scientists and brain surgeons are pikers!

This stuff is Magic.

My magically enabled (and physically printed) entertainment books are available here.

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