The Pride of the Pioneers

The Pride of the Pioneers
(continued from page 2)

Optimal Viewing Audience
The film brings up a number of points that can be educational to a wide variety of audiences. As a result, there are mixed feelings about who would be the best target audience for this documentary. However, everyone agrees that it is a must see, especially aspiring youth.

"Definitely the people who deal with CG art on a daily basis. It is jam packed with high tech information that people outside of the industry could somewhat relate to but not as much as someone who is surrounded by the industry on a daily basis. Furthermore, the computer arts veteran who had been a part of the evolution of technology would have the most appreciation." - Jayson Whitmore

Though it sounds good and makes a lot of sense, others had a different opinion.

"Certainly not the people that lived through it! It would be good more as a history lesson to students still in high school looking for answers to questions they don't yet have; it would establish a good baseline to work from." - Jon Gilbert has been going to SIGGRAPH since he was in high school himself.

"I think the film will be very educational to those who see the CG films and take the CG tools for granted. Jr. High, High School, Film and Art schools would benefit greatly. Young educated talent equals power." - Robert Abel

"The people behind the movie did a great job summarizing lots of information and presenting it in a way that a layperson can understand and enjoy. I took my parents to see it and they understood what the movie was about." - Isaac Kerlow

I think it is safe for me to say that the target audience is very wide. I'd love a copy of the film to show both to my students, and to reflect upon myself from time to time.

The Evolution of Computer Animation
One of the major points of the film was showing how the evolution of computer graphics ran its course. Carl Machover, one of the Executive Producers of the documentary and long time advocate of CG, tells us about the rapid growth and accessibility of the field.

Carl Machover.

"[The key growth of CG was] the accessibility of the technology. The stuff they were showing in the early stages literally took hundreds and thousands of dollars for very primitive equipment. Times today [have changed] when people are practically giving these things [hardware/software] away. In my point of view this has created a democratization of computer graphics, which was just simply not possible when this all began." - Carl Machover has been to all the SIGGRAPH conventions.

Others have experienced this treasured democratization of CG, but it's interesting to note that it wasn't done intentionally.

"No one proclaimed to have changed the face of animation, only that we pushed the vision as a collective body, or birds of a feather. The computer itself can't animate, but we built off each others successes. We improved upon each other for the challenge of it. And with this challenge we began to communicate, entertain and excite others. We really enjoyed it! It's made our work and studies fun. None of us ever intended it to play a role in film making, it just evolved.

"The beauty of this evolution is that it's still happening. Back when my mentor John Whitney, Sr. was experimenting, computing power wasn't cheap to come by. As time went on, computers became more and more affordable and accessible. I believe this started with Jim Clark's vision to bring the tool to the masses. This accessibility made it possible for the back-yard inventors (programmers, artists, visionaries) to rise to the top. The true knights of R&D." - Robert Abel

Have We Hit the Promised Land?
It could not have been foreseen 50 years ago where the digital world currently stands, but have we neared our limit?

Carl Machover.

"I think it was good that [the film makers] took a negative report on computer graphics a little bit too. They're saying, `We're not out of the woods. We can see the promise land, but we're not there yet.' That was wonderful. I think that it was great of SIGGRAPH to be open minded enough to say there is a promise land but [that] we're not there yet." - Kevin Kain from San Francisco has been to SIGGRAPH 7 times.

"Computer graphics is 50 years old. To try to show everything in 90 minutes is virtually impossible. One of the thrusts that we were trying on the film was to emphasize how this technology has changed the way everyone lives. It changed the way we do our work. It changed the way in which we play. And we could show only some of those [ways]. You know there's room for another film." - Carl Machover.