Timeline Analog 3. John Buck

any blind alleys for weeks on end because we could quickly assess the value of our ideas.

       It was a small team but if I had more people, it would have taken twice as long!

      Kiesel recalls:

       My first assignment was to built a simulator for the system and have it capable within 3 months of performing simple cuts and splices of material from a pair of laser disk players, including the user interface with scroll wheels and buttons and 14 monitors showing picture labels. I immediately realized that I couldn’t possibly accomplish this task alone.

       I convinced Ron that we needed a mechanical engineer to design the actual controls, or we’d wind up with a wooden contraption that would give the operator splinters every time he pushed a “button”. A contractor was hired within a couple of days and he quickly developed a panel with heavy brass detented wheels that felt really luxurious when you turned them.

      Kiesel then convinced Barker to hire an extra contract programmer to help him make the deadline for completing the Simulator.

       We used Chet’s Masscomp computer with five memory boards of 1MByte each to hold picture labels. It was a Multibus II computer and Chet had a frame grabber board for it already.

      Bill Westland recalls:

       We chose the Multibus II over the VME bus, even though the VME bus had bigger boards, because the Masscomp computer used Multibus and that allowed us to use the same screen display board for the Simulator and for the real product.

      Kiesel continues:

       We only needed a display board with 14 video outputs for the picture labels.

      Schuler commissioned engineer Gil Drake a highly regarded engineer who had worked as a circuit designer at Dennison Paper Company, to develop a board as Kiesel recalls:

       Gil Drake was a brilliant engineer and he knew video really well. Gil came to work for us along with his two sons.

      Barker recalls:

       We rented some space in and built a preview suite that became nicknamed ‘The Simulator’. It was essentially a representation of what we intended to build before we actually did! We literally built a mock-up in one room with white foam board and drew or cut out the video screens and the pictures on the screens and the wheels and knobs and control levers.

       Then I went out and bought a Philips videodisc player and got a couple of discs burnt with demo material on them. We put the computer and the disc player in another adjacent room away from view.

      Kiesel continues:

       At that time my software experience was limited to assembler and I learned to my dismay that I would have to use C with the Masscomp. There simply wasn’t time for me to do this and get a real time simulation running with the time left and I was getting quite panicked.

      Barker recalls:

       Then we sat down and worked out a way for the computer to play a sequence of events that would look like what would happen, as the machine in the room would respond to my commands. It helped prove the sexiness of the approach without solving any of the problems.

      With the 'Simulator' complete, Barker invited post-production industry leaders from across the United States to view the mock up. Everyone who came to the room dominated with dark green carpet on the ceiling and floors were under strict non-disclosure agreements. Barker explains:

       Of course the whole idea was actually to show people and get them to tell as many people as possible about our system! We knew if we told them not to talk about it, that was the best way to get them to talk about it.

      Away from the ‘Simulator’, the Montage engineers were able to experiment with building the real system. On the software side they dealt with VCR machine control, tested different sized gray scale images for legibility, tested labels to represent time code locations and printed sample storyboards.

      For hardware design they had to confirm control lever, wheel and button user interface requirements. Schuler recalls the first of the hurdles.

       The biggest problems we were to face weren’t the digitising or storing of the data but displaying it for the editor. How could we show the video rushes on displays or monitors? There were no multiple 'windows' on a single screen like you have with computers nowadays.

      The Montage team proceeded with prototyping while Barker and Schuler debated the interface.

       I remember that our investors Prudential continually harped on about the need for a keyboard. They would get through to Chet and then Chet would come into my office and pitch the idea of including a keyboard. And as far as I was concerned the only Montage people who were ever going to have a keyboard were Bill Westland and Mike Tindell, who were writing the code. End of story.

      Bill Westland recalls that even the work at the keyboards was causing stress.

       I guess the work that Ken had done with the ‘Simulator’ was more obvious in the early days and when the focus came onto us, it looked like we hadn’t done much for five months. Then over a period of a few weeks we made great progress and suddenly we were up with or ahead of the Simulator team.

      All the while, the Montage team were concerned with Lucasfilm's status.