Interview with Scott Billups
Roger Wyatt of THS caught up with Scott Billups in January 1997.

THS: Right. Exactly.

SB: So basically, we've got just essentially a change in the way we're telling stories, brought about by technogogery, for no other reason. More people have more access to communication tools.

We have a radical reduction in the rate of literacy to the point where people --- the masses --- really don't understand story structure when it's presented to them. So why even create a good story? That's the quandary in Hollywood: you don't need to tell a good story any more to make money. Look at Twister. Look at Jurassic Park. Look at Independence Day. These are not stories, these are "event structures."

THS: Do you think the remote control has anything to do with that? Channel surfing?

SB: Oh, it just enhances the "couch potatoism." But, you know, the thing it does is it really helps pound technology into ubiquity. The more you go like this (click), the less you think about the technology behind it. What's that remote running now? Is it running your television? Is it running your web surfer? Your web TV? It doesn't matter what it's running. Here it is, people are comfortable...Whatever the machine or gizmo is, if you can create a remote that's somewhat reminiscent of a phaser gun, you've pretty much got a market. So I think that just about any technology that comes down will be accepted. There's not going to be any shock.

THS: If you think about Western art, say the last hundred years, if you were going to make any one general statement, one thing you could say would bes. "It's been a hundred years in the demolition of narrativity." So you look at Beethoven, beginning of the nineteenth century, then you've got Debussey, very different, at the beginning of the twentieth. Take any of those pictorial painters ---- like David and then look at Picasso, modern art is really 1903-1913. Anyway, the music would be Stockhausen... This is all the classical world, not even thinking about Tangerine Dream or synthesizers...German synth music of the seventies...

SB: Moog...

THS: Moog. Right. And then you could go...you could look...

SB: Actually, there's some very hip Moog stuff online.

THS: Is there?

SB: Oh, gosh, yeah.

THS: Outstanding.

SB: It's being rediscovered!

THS: Right. Right.

SB: A whole genre of...

THS: 'Cause I think there was a step backwards there for a while. Because I think those German synthesists, in particular, but others too, were using these analog synthesizers to create new sounds.

SB: Right.

THS: And then, you know with DX4 is it? And the sampling machines were then kind of a move back to saying, "All right, here's a way to do conventional music and conventional sound.

SB: But you know, there's only so many variations on a theme, so many ways you can arrange a sine wave to create something new. And there's only so many combinations of pixel dust to create a new image. And so, you know, we really haven't had anything new in a hundred years. Since the first motion on the screen. It doesn't matter that they were silent, because there was noise going on. You know, the old kinescopes were the first of the new genre of storytelling methodology. And nothing's really changed since then. Except now, with the availability of quasi-production quality components, digital palmters 600 lines...You know, everyone can participate in network feeds. And a lot of shows are built around that: point of view/slice of life/reality-based programming is basically that trend. So what it does is, we've gotten to a point where there are not enugh people that understand a story to spend the effort. So why make a story up? It just doesn't matter if it's a good script. How many effects can we tie together with some words, you know, and put it out there? And that's the definition of a movie now. So I think the next big one will be jagging in. We've gotten to the point where everyone's pretty comfortable with interactivity. I mean, let's face it, a book's interactive, front to back.

THS: Random access, everything.

SB: So I think everyone's pretty comfortable with interactivity. I don't think that's a big problem. I think that there's enough people out there that have learned how to construct an interactive story or an interactive entertainment piece that there's a great talent base there to produce from. You know, learning how to tell a compelling story in 650 megabytes is great training for anyone that's ever tried to make a CD ROM. And so when that band pass opens up, those people that learned, in that very constrictive environment, are the ones that are really gonna jump to the front. So the only market that I've seen that really hasn't been developed is --- because people just don't see it coming --- this big wave of interactivity is just about to crest. I mean, it's just a big hokasia wave just about there.

The cable modems, the direct digital satellite modems, all this stuff...As soon as it drops, there's huge bandpass, it goes two ways, in and out, so you're a receiver or a broadcaster. And the one thing that no one has taken into account is: all you have is cold, sterile 3D worlds. Where are the characters that go in there? How do you create a lifestyle in there? And everybody who's ever tried to use live actors in an interactive piece has only come up with multiple choice. That's as good as you can get, is multiple choice, basically. It's multiple choice, it's not interactivity.

To be interactive, you really have to use synthetic characters. They have to be driven by synthetic protocol. It has to be prosodically correct. Prosodically --- the gestures have to match, the intonations have to match the mood and the meaning. This is all combining. These are all branching event structures that drive the character of the synthetic character along the timeline. And there's been some great work done at that. The stuff at the University of Pennsylvania: Provost and Prochard. Great work.

THS: The Thalmans?

SB: The Thalmans; they've just been doing synthetic manequins walking around. They've really not gotten into the psychology behind it, the driving forces. They're just modelers. That's all. I mean, they've done some great work, but they don't understand where this is going. The physiology of these characters is not the important thing; it's the motivation and drive of these characters.

You know, by the end of the century, some of our favorite people won't be. You'll have dead people. [Synthetic people.] One can carry on a more compelling conversation with you. You know, a database that understands your interests, dislikes...you know? And has the entire information of the world to fill it's conversation with you. Or, somebody that's just walking along and you're just having a conversation with, and they don't understand what you're doing and you don't understand what they're doing. Where is the more compelling conversation going to come from?

THS: Yeah. So also in a certain sense, a synthespian has kind of passed the Turing Test.

SB: Been here for a long time. I've made probably a thousand of them for movies. They're just basically digital stand-ins. There's no inherent intelligence there. That's pixels movin' around. That's not what it's about. What it's about is the artificial intelligence, the dynamic agent persona. You know, creating an intelligent being. We are predisposed by our context to be...to have a natural carbon bias. And this is very inappropriate to our carbon bias. You know, "I'm a person and this is a box." You know, that's very inappropriate. There's some things that humans can do but as boxes develop, or actually the workings within them, as they develop, we're actually becoming less and less useful. I mean, really look at what a person does! And it's a bunch of randomly associated movements and gestures, hopefully culminating in a paycheck. (Laughter.) And who do you know that really knows what they're doing? Very few people really know what they're doing. Whereas with an intelligent agent as your sidekick, your alternate persona, you know, mensch, whatever, you could actually become a more powerful, more focused, a more successful, more competent person.

THS: Sure. And it's interesting because the kind of archetype for that seems to me is deep in our literature --- Sancho Panza would be that if we were thinking about him today.

SB: Go to Don Quixote! Or go back to Dante! Go to cave paintings, where the spirit is painted on the wall.

THS: Sure. There you are.

SB: There you are, and you go and you sit under all these pictures and communicate with them.

THS: What are the hard problems in moving that forward?

SB: You [currently] have a guild mentality: "This is my whatever..." "This is my button, don't push it!" You know, "This is my cable, don't plug it in." And it's that professional specialization... that era has ended. And unfortunately, in communications, that's the entertainment environment, that entertainment production environment, is the last bastion of that type of mentality, outside of the Teamsters, or whatever. Take Teamsters, for instance. These guys are driving enormous, massive vehicles on public thoroughfares...I like the fact that they're driven by a guy that's qualified. You know, I like that! I have no problems with that. I like that there's that airline pilot's union. I like this stuff. But for a guy to move a C stand or, "I'm the director. Nobody can play unless we all agree that we can play." Well, you know, what have you done that's truly notable? What have you done that's gonna go down in history? Who are you to make that judgment call? You know.

THS: Too many people with names above the title.

SB: And there's so much...Look at any poster. Look at any movie promotion. The ego just sprawled out there. It's just ego, ego, ego. How many egos can you fit and whose ego is on top? And, you know, screw this. This is just inappropriate. So that's gonna go. The biggest block is for these people to understand that they really aren't relevant to the future of communications. They've already destroyed the storytelling structure, to the point where...

The unions were formed, these guilds were formed. A guild is a craft organization, from medieval times, and they had iconic representation, because nobody could read. There was an icon that represented them. Icons aren't new.

And they had a secret lingo. Now Lingo is an authoring text by Macromedia. Now it's tech talk. But the thing is that the guilds all [had their own lingo]. "Give me a bull frog on that half apple..." And, you know, somebody knows what their lingo is. And to make a movie, to be a director, you have to know every little guild's full list of lingo.

And the thing is, when you get a computer, when you get into computer production... Well, you know, I've probably done a hundred digital mattes. Those are thousands and thousands of people who didn't paint some stuff on canvas, that didn't make the canvas. You know, I've made hundreds and hundreds of little digital extras in the background. Those were hundreds and hundreds of people that, we just don't need them. The storytelling process is so devoid of content. It's just event, event, event, pieced together with some drivel, so that there's no need for the guilds any more. They've put themselves out of existence. They've said, You know, we're just going to rape this industry," and that's what they've done. I have no compassion for them. I don't feel the least bit of compassion. Or guilt. I'm glad to see them go. You know, I've been associated with all the major guilds and I choose not to be. I think there's nothing there but decrepitude and retrovision.

THS: That's wonderful.

Usually the storytelling process is one person. Puccini...not the Puccini Production Company. Maybe they implement it, yeah. But there's Puccini. There's Walter Scott or Michael Crighton or...something like that. It's ultimately one person, not a committtee, that puts it together.

SB: Example: Congo --- great book. One of Michael's better books! The movie sucked! Why? Well, because you've got Kennedy-Marshall. They don't care. Event, event, event; we don't even care if they're good events any more! They'll buy it --- it's got Crighton on it! You know, it's total market opportunism. And it has nothing to do with telling a quality story. Consequently, the moviegoing public, their expectations have been so lowered...All you've gotta do is slap them across the face a couple of times, give them two or three good effects, they'll be happy as clams, send them on their way.

THS: Do you see any shift in that happening, either on the part of the audience or the...

SB: Oh, no. It's going to get much worse. It's going to get much worse. There is still a market for a good story well told. But the trouble is, there's not a budget to tell that story. What this does, what this whole art structure does, is it enables people who actually enjoy the process of storytelling.

You know, my Dad was a Baptist preacher in West Virginia. I got storytelling in my bones. You know, it's in my genetic code. You know what I mean? Both my parents were teachers. Dad taught college, Mom taught high school. You know? That's in my genetic structure, that a good story well told is how you tell a story. These are the elements that go into a good story: know what you're talking about, and deliver; wrap it in a nice package and deliver it. This is the oldest profession. It's older than prostitution. You know? The two actually have a lot in common. Both must seize your interest. And they both have to leave you with a profound sense of fulfillment. As I see it, there's not that big a difference. Very little.

So I think there is a market for a good story well told. I think it's pretty much gonna be the same kind of niche market as opera. Or a good orchestra. Or a day in the art museum.

THS: Sure. But those are global businesses. You think of the Jasper Johns show at MOMA. That's gonna go around the world for a couple of years.

SB: You ever checked out any of his work?

THS: Well, I saw the show a couple of weeks ago when I was in New York, which is where I'm originally from, so I was visiting my parents.

SB: The only guy I don't like...I don't like Pollock in that genre. I can't see see a nine by twenty cobalt blue called cobalt blue selling for a million five... I just don't see it. There's a lot of splatter painting going on. I'm not into splatter painting.

But you know, irregardless of the components that you put together...And I think Jasper Johns is a good example of that...Taking disparate elements and putting it together to evoke an emotion. That's genius. That's art. And I appreciate that. I think he's inspiring. There's very little of that going on. There's a lot of splatter paint going on.

Same thing in media. All the big movies are splatter paint. there's very few Jasper Johns out there trying to tell an intricately woven story, actually worrying about the context. It's basically, you get a script. You go to page 128 to see if there's a plot point there. Then you go to the end, to make sure there's a 142 pages. Then you go to 78...95...You look for character arc (if ever). It's just so wierd. So formulaic.

THS: It seems to me that sometimes things that are written in stone tend to have a monopoly on things. You know, we were talking about Hollywood as the storytelling capital of the world a little earlier...And that sort of ozimandious effect that Shelley told. Where a new technology has blindsided the old in huge ways. Do you think the World Wide Web, the Internet, whatever that may evolve into, as it develops (as bandwidth increases, as compression improves) becomes another distribution format that then can support the kind of tales you're talking about?

SB: Oh. yeah. There's just too many external events that are transpiring against the conventional theatrical application of motion pictures. First of all, the funny money, funny accounting of today's studios. You can't make any money on domestic release.

And the conventional theater-going experience is one of the unhealthiest things you can do (next to going to Disneyland)... For communicating diseases. think about it: what's darker and danker and tighter. Where can you go to breathe other people's spent air, more than in a theater? It's a very unhealthful place to be.

It's all now digital. And now we've got people that can...There's a lot more people in the storytelling process, consequently, there's gonna be a lot more crap out there. But there's also gonna be, in that crap, for people who search through it, a few gems. And voices that might otherwise not have been heard, will be heard. 'Cause everybody's got a great story. You know, it's hard to meet somebody that doesn't have a good story. So now people can tell that story.

It's going to be very interesting. But the monopoly's going to die. That's the most important thing for communications.

THS: How would you describe what it is that you do?

SB: I'm retired.

THS: OK. Well, before you were retired, or on the side, what do you do?

SB: I was a cinematographer for quite a few years. When I was a kid, I was a photographer. And then in college, I was a stringer. You know, 16mm...WNBC and a little National Geographic stuff here. I was a stringer at Woodstock. Unfortunately, I was tripping so hard, I walked away from my camera --- and lost it! Luckily, another stringer from WNBC saw it and put it in their trunk. But I never worked for them again!

But the day the draft ended, I majored out of Vietnam, which was an eight and a half year major for me...and the day the draft ended, I went to James von How's house and knocked on his door. He was the best cinematographer at that time --- in the world. And I was naive enough not to know that you didn't do that, lucky enough that he had just fired his 400th apprentice for the year. He was quite brutal, but I loved him after that, and worked for him up until his death in '75. We were doing Funny Lady. He was doing a lot of commercials on the side. He had cancer of the larynx so I was shooting, I was doing all the camera operation.

After he died, all these agencies called up saying, "Hey, where are you? We've gotta shoot." "Well Jimmy's dead." "Well, come on down!" So, we were doing Levis and General Motors and a lot of big stuff.

Next thing I knew, I had 85 employees and so that's basically up until Apple. And I'd had enough supervision...Been there done that...that I was done pretty much. I was at a level where I could be comfortable forever. Call it quits and go play.

So now I only work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I have a nice one-bedroom, six office house. So this is what I do. I develop CD ROMs. I do a lot of web design. I do a lot of network IDs. I do network logos and IDs for CNBC and CBS. Or special kinds of stuff. I do some Fox stuff. I do a bunch of European broadcast logos. I do graphics and write for television shows. And I do 3 to 5 movies a year. I do all the effects on them. So I've decided to retire again. Now I'm only gonna direct.

What I really wanna do...Actually, I've been getting quite a few scripts to direct. And, ah, somebody came up and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Pick my favorite book, pick my favorite writer, and they'll go get 'em. And it took them 5 days!

THS: Outstanding!

SB: A book that was already optioned ad infinitum and a writer that was untouchable...They packaged them up in 5 days. I was really impressed.

THS: Wow. Will this new work incorporate some of these concepts of synthetic actors?

SB: Pooh! You can count on it! It's basically an $80M movie that, they're very hesitant, but they're letting me make it for $8M. 'Cause I promised I could make this for 8M dollars. And so, "Okay, well, we'll see." But it's a huge movie. Unusually large.

THS: So that's what you're on preproduction on now?

SB: Yeah. It outta be fun. I'd like to take the production experience online. And this is another thing that the studios, even though I've done web pages and set 'em all up, they all take a look at them and go, "Eh...lawyers won't pass on this," and close them back down. Because everybody's created these post-event hype factories and people are just...click here, click here...to see Kevin Costner's latest hairpiece. Well that's NOT entertainment.

There's a lot of people out there that understand the technology and they're trying to get a fix on how they fit into other lifestyles, other ways of making a living. Is this a direction they want to go? Is this going in a direction that they want to go in? You Know?

So what I'd like to do, is make the whole movie online. All the way from casting call to videotaps. You know directors always look at a video that comes off the videotap. So, whenever the film isn't being exposed --- by the image --- the film's only exposed for a very short flash of a second. The rest of that time, it's falling on a CCD, which goes to your little monitor. And the CCDs have actually become quite sophisticated. Videotaps are quite sophisticated now. And read aspect at 16-9s...You've got some really nice image coming through. Well, you know that tap just put a T junction B&C on that and ran it off to Videovision. It can go into CU SEE ME and right onto the Web. And so somebody that really has the motivation to sit there, with everybody else that has to sit there, can actually see if this is for them.

THS: Sure. I've come to a very similar conclusion. I started this project, it's now in sort of it's third year, and it's called "Songs of Steel." And "Songs of Steel" is what I'd call a Roman noir kind of film set during the fall of the Roman empire. Very esoteric stuff. And I figure there's probably 2,000 individuals and institutions in the world that might be interested in that. But the way to connect with them is through the Web. And I was thinking, everything becomes flattened; it's no longer a linear preproduction, production, post, distribution format; everything is happening at the same time. So, running ambient video of the writer at work...Engaging your audience at the earliest possible stage for something, building it right through.

SB: There's not a huge market share. And it's not something you do for profit. It's something you can do as an equity trade. You know, you're giving something back to your market. That stuff comes around.

So you have to do it in an independent environment. You can't do it in a studio environment. And this was one of the largest independent producers there is. He made me this offer, so they love it.

THS: What is the name of the project?

SB: It's called "Software." It's a Rudy Rucker book. It's excellent.

THS: Yes! He has this wonderful classification --- hardware, software, wetware.

SB: You've got it! Software's the first of the series. And I got Larry Wilson to write it. Larry wrote Beetlejuice, Addams Family. He's a great writer and he understands the methodology of telling a story with set pieces in it...Using set pieces in a visual way that sequences the story. So, rather than stringing a bunch of visual images, on a string and saying, here's the big visual images...they're context to a well-told story. And there's a big difference in that.

THS: Oh. yeah.

SB: So that's basically the nine yards of it right there. We'll see...We'll run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it. It might be a catastrophic failure to the press, but as long as a couple of people get off on it...See that's the positive aspect of the Web, is that there's no immediate financial remuneration. Which makes it a really neat place to work, you know? Because people are trying stuff out. People are doing things that are actually for other people. I think it's the only real, true altruism that exists in the industry.

THS: Sure. And I think that on the Web, the real market is the after market. And that's a very difficult way for people to think who have been schooled in "the real market is the market."

SB: So...We'll see.

THS: Was there anything that struck you about MacWorld? I know you just came back from there.

SB: The unsensationalism...The unsensational aspect of it just drove the point home that the computer has reached ubiguity. Nobody really cares what box it is. You know, a box is a box. Who cares? What I'm interested in is the process: what can it do for me? What can it help me do? Now these are software statements. Software-based questions. They have nothing to do with hardware.

The thing I am happy to see is that people are wising up to the big SGI hype. You know, they've been running their hype for a long time. They've really abused their marketplace. They've let their developers run rampant; everybody's got their own interface, their own design. Everybody thinks their design is the best design. Then they have this licencing thing. You never buy the software, you just license it. And, Heaven forbid, you're late on payment in the middle of a production. You know, it's just: How can we just abuse our market to the maximum? There's no need for that. I mean, a Raptor NT, runs twin deck Alphas, five hundred mega . I mean, gee! You need more speed than that --- you're in a different league than I am! That's some definite crunching! It's just nasty. You know, Soft Image has wonderful animation, and just about everybody I know is trying to get out from under that huge encumbrance of SGI. And then I see them pumping out this oxygen system.

The thing is, there's a good platform for every purpose. Okay, if you're scientific visualization, quantum physics, maybe something like that on a high scholastic level...SGIs are great. Good. That isn't my industry. My industry is the entertainment industry. And this is basically a bunch of artists collaborating on something. The SGI is not a collaborative environment. It never has been. UNIX is a very uncollaborative environment, unless it's got a nice shell to it --- like the NeXT system is a very nice shell. You know, you have to conform to certain interface parameters. That's what a Mac is.

What it comes down to is: where are the tools to tell stories? That SGI environment has never been a storytelling environment. It's been an 'event creation' environment. And now, other platforms that are good for telling stories, that are good for collaborating, have really passed it up. I mean, the 9500 in there, with the twin Daystar processors outrenders an SGI five to one. And besides, I can get pieces from all over the world. There's thousands of people that can create for that. Now, if you want to be a monkey, working in a construction line, assembly line mentality, well, SGIs are good for that because they are a hubby, networky kind of thing, and if you're working for ILM or Digital Domain, that is a good place for them. And that's the only place for 'em in this industry, is ILM or Digital Domain. Those are the only two places that are big enough. They have a lot of people where this person just does one thing. The age of specialization. Very retro-tech. And fine, if that's your need. But the fact that they're selling these poor, misguided people that this is a creative tool for them, that they can actually go out and get a job with this...Yeah, well they can get a job working on an assembly line. That's all they can get.

There's no other collaborative environment you can work in: NT, Mac ---that's about it. And that's where it's going. The next jump --- the new computers --- are all going to be genetically engineered. And this again echoes the commonality of interface design, peripheral modalities (everything's going to become more and more homogenous...again, we're ubiquitous. We're talking about ubiquity here; we're not talking about somebody standing up and saying: "We're different from everyone else. Everything on our box is different." That point and time has passed. That mentality has passed. And everybody that I know that has SGIs, is trying like hell to sell them to somebody. But nobody wants them! Everybody wants to get a nice little Raptor or the Integraph machine or these four processor Daystars. There's some great machines out there.

THS: Do you think there's a life for the Harry, the Flame --- any of the Kyron stuff --- in this world?

SB: Well, again, that's a studio...That's a studio mentality that does post-online high-end broadcast production. And there's always going to be a need for realtime. People that cannot previsualize. People that need it full res at real time, to give a yes or no. And there's always going to be those people. That is the definition of a broadcast executive. That is the definition of an agency account executive. They have no creative vision. And for those people, they need it real time. And these are devices that are very specialized; they're computers, they're just very specialized computers that can give you very high-end real time, effect-based stuff. As far as I'm concerned, After Effects has much better compositing capabilities, has a much broader effects and production bundle, has much better motion tracking. The motion tracking on Adobe After Effects is far superior to a fling --- and look at the price point difference! You know, you're missing three zeroes! Not one, not two, but three zeroes in the price difference! But you don't get real time, unless it's a little bitty 240. And even that, it has to process.

Is real time important? Yeah, it is, to a certain select group of people. But to people who are actually creating something, that already have it in their mind's eye, it's irrelevant. In fact, that Render Wander, when you get thick, you wonder: What am I gonna do next? As you saw, I have computers side by side, so boomph, boomph --- I'm just back and forth, and back and forth. And when those computers are full, I have four other rooms that are full of computers. I can keep them all humming, just by myself. What would I do if it was real time? I'd go out of business! Just sit down and burn out.

THS: So what kind of advice would you give somebody who's entering this stuff, maybe coming out of college or something like that, and wants to achieve the same kind of level of retirement that you are today? What do they need in their bag of tricks? What should they be studying?

SB: Stay away from programming. Unless you want to write programs. Unless that's your proclivity, you're a totally left-hemisphere person. And then, find somebody who's a true craftsman, and get to know them and why they do things, and that'll tell you what kind of code to write.

Other than that, if you want to get into production, if you like to make things move, you like tobuild things, you like to see things through to completion, you like to tell stories; whatever your motivation, there's just so many tools out there, and there's so many ways you can go,...You need to learn some basic interactivity, because that's going to be a communication structure that's going to be with us for the rest of time. It's already been with us, but now it's an interface modality. So they need to learn what interactivity is and how it is. As far as graphics go, whether it's 2-D or 3-D, all you really need to understand is the Alpha channel. The difference between 24 bits --- red, green, blue --- and 32 bits --- red, green, blue, and black --- or Alpha or hold out. That's the difference between hacking around --- playing with yourself --- and production, is that 8-bit Alpha channel. So whatever package it's in, if it's 2-D in Photoshop, or it's After Effects, or if it's 3-D packages like Strata, or Electric Image, or you're in Soft Image on an NT, or Amazon Paint, or whatever the package is, really learn how to manipulate and handle an Alpha channel and all the things it can do for you, because that's what determines the believability and compositing, and it's what gives geometry its attributes, and judicial use of it determines the quality, the inherent quality of an image. So that, and actually learn the methodologies that go into production. And this is something that a lot of people gloss over.

We tried to drive it. Mike Backus and Nick Demartino and myself, cofounded the American Film Institute Media Lab. And we founded that as a place where film industry and broadcast industry could come and digitally retool. They were too busy. Or didn't see the urgency of it. And this was back in the late 80s. It turned into a place where people with computers could come and start to learn the methodology of storytelling. Those people are out there making history! They're doing some stuff! We've got some great courses up there. It's something that we're all very proud of. It's not what we intended it to be! It's something totally different. But it's a great place to learn the legacy, the history of storytelling. And, you know, knowing the difference between a gaffer and a grip. You know, eventually, you're going to have to get on the set. The sets are still --- even if it's shooting people in blue screen or green screen --- and you really need to know that terminology. You need to know why a 5K is not appropriate for this or why kenaflow lights give a better falloff on a backdrop. Because you want to get your backdrops as flat as you can. Certain kinds of light do that better than other kinds of light. You want to learn how to separate people. These are basic, inherent methodologies that have been with us for a hundred years.

This is a very geriatric industry, the industry of production, film production and television production, and the methodology hasn't changed in a hundred years. The technology has just leapfrogged! But unfortunately, you have a lot of people out there that really don't understand lighting. And lighting, if you look at a lot of stuff, lighting is the shortcoming. When filmmakers go to composite people, and they didn't use the same lights, locations, sets, strengths in the blue screen as they did to light their sets and...there's something wrong. Nobody knows what it is, but there's something wrong.

And the other thing is matching grain. The inherent grain of a texture map...or a digital matte...or a background...has to match the grain of a character. So if you're shooting people with film, 16mm or whatever, and then compositing them into a digital backlot, well, you know, zoom in and look at the edge there. Is the grain structure on the person (because they were shot in film)...You know, you have to echo that in the background. And look out at the horizon. The farther away things are, the grayer, the less contrast, the less saturation...Echo that in your interface design. The last thing computer dweebs like to hear is to step on their image! Look how crispy this is! But crispy isn't life. Nothing in life is crispy.

So, learn integrations. The single biggest factor in selling an image and making it work is integration. And that has to do with matching the light direction, matching the lenses, shooting a person with a 50 so that you can get him in the frame and then shooting your scene with an 85 --- it's not going to match! There's different focal lengths involved.

So do a little retro work. Go to a bookstore and get some basic books on film production....the classic retro tech; low-tech film production. That's the best thing you can do for a high tech production career. Because then you know why you're doing this. Then you know why something doesn't work, instead of sitting there wondering: Is something wrong?

That would be my recommendation.

THS: Thanks a lot.

SB: Hey, my pleasure.