Video ergo work
February 16, 1996
I could write about the wonderful experiences and myriad
of learning throughout the PACE and art programs at MHS, but prompted by a
short report on work in the Wall Street
Journal (Glenn Burkins, “American schools don’t always make the
grade.” 2/13/96, p. A1, col. 5) that
says “high school graduates often leave school without the basic skills
required for even low-level jobs in the modern workplace” and voices a wrong
conclusion that “American schools must return to basics”, it is worth noting
that concepts, skills and knowledge provided by the guidance and instruction of
Mike Witsch in the video component of PACE were instrumental in making me
employable.
When I arrived at MHS in the fall of 1980 I already knew a
lot about black and white photography by working on my own after having had a
strong foundation in classes in fifth and sixth grades in the Mamaroneck public
schools. Mike Witsch encouraged me to
continue with photography. At that time,
the MHS Info set included rear view projection over the shoulder of one of the
announcers to place an apropos, or complete non
sequitur, graphic relating to the announcement(s) being read. Mike taught
methods of high contrast or line copy film/slide production to provide material
for this system. In my last job this
knowledge was useful for producing figures for scientific publication with
mixed continuous tone and line copy.
[Since then computers have replaced much of the darkroom and manual
design.]
My freshman year at MHS was the last year of reel-to-reel
video editing. Oddly, since we have to
do occasional video editing at work now and do not have an editing system, the
reel-to-reel experience has turned out to be of real service. Also, although this does not directly presage
job success-- and one of the students I spent the weekend with was instrumental
in getting me fired from a summer job two years later-- that year Mike
generously brought a group of us to the Concord hotel in the Catskills for a
video, film and photography competition.
The next three years of video experience included planning
and realizing my own productions and working with or for other students on
their productions. Creating or finding
content, managing people or managing with people, scheduling and applying
technical minutiae are common skills necessary for business survival. As much as I preferred to work on my own,
video is, like theater or dance, typically a group effort. My senior year I found that I mostly worked
on specific parts of projects for other people, for instance, typically on very
short notice, providing the computer graphics or editing raw footage into a
final product. Sounds very similar to
much of my current work.
I was very involved in, even if just as an observer, the
creation of the new television studio in the space formerly occupied by Martie
Barylick’s dance studio. Given the need
at my job to route RGB, SVHS and composite video signals from different sources
to multiple or convergent destinations within a laboratory and to do it on a
shoestring budget, this knowledge from over ten years previous became
essential.
Just one more specific example from many that could be
used to illustrate experiences in PACE video which directly led to skills or
knowledge useful on the job. A Chyron
video graphics generator was purchased for the new television studio. It was programmed by dumping to it text files
created with a standard word processor on an Apple IIe computer. I figured that this simple graphics generator
could be used for two additional purposed for which it was not designed, 1.)
spaces or doors to spaces created by transparent boxes (including the
possibility of inserting graphics over an announcer’s shoulder such as in
professional newscasts) and 2.) animations of graphics. Using modules written in Basic, which I later
found out I used as rudimentary object oriented programming, I set out to do
these projects and found that other people wanted to use the routines for the
latter animations. Mike took me to the
video program at NYU where he was teaching to expose me to a more powerful
Chyron graphics generator. Putting a
creative twist on a lower and less expensive form of technology back in
Mamaroneck was both more flexible and more rewarding than pressing a button
that yielded an expected and more inflexible result. Later, when I encountered Postscript I
recognized the structure from the Chyron and now it has led directly to my
being an instant novice at HTML (if you have WWW access, you can find my job
description at http://leper1.ca.aecom.yu.edu/~aif). And in addition to the specifics of the
computer system or languages, general knowledge learned via the television
program, such as color mixing and contrast generation or analog versus digital image creation or
modification, has been very useful.
I worry that students, parents and educators do not
recognize the importance and usefulness (as well as the potential fun) of a
video program in high school. Perhaps
the recent ubiquitous access to cheap and high quality home video equipment and
fancy computers have taken some of the allure out of video or computer science
at school. I rue that now so much video
and computer equipment is black box-- operations are performed on a chip or
interactions are mediated by layers of operating systems and preprogrammed
software-- so that students are less able to pick up basic concepts and more
able to knock out facile “professional” appearing images. I tell people that all the skills I learned
to do my job I learned before being graduated from high school. All I did in college was learn to read.
