[Tig] More memories please

Thu Dec 20 09:29:41 PST 2007

In the early 80's Steve Dichter, Marshall Bosches, and I helped
Eddie Richmond and Dan Einstein at UCLA Film and Television
Archives to put on a historical equipment exhibit at the SMPTE
Conference at Century City.

We had on display Red Skelton's TK-41B, a perfectly restored RCA
CT-100 showing a 1961 Skelton Studios Christmas color videotape,
a RCA Trinoscope color receiver on a turntable, a working field
sequential CBS Color System receiver, a 1938 RCA Field Test
RR-359B Receiver, and a 1938 Don Lee W6XAO television receiver -
quite some major hitters in television history equipment.

The Skelton tape was from Ampex Redwood 2-inch tape collection.
They made a transfer from their 2-inch on a 2000.  I had the list
of their tapes.  They had much footage recorded on a Ampex VR3000
while it moved on a camera truck throughout the San Francisco
area.

That major Ampex collection of tapes was lost when Ampex was
dissolved.  It was reported on a pallet at an Ampex plant in
Colorado which was lost, and then people reported to me buying
individual tapes off of ebay.  Alas, a major slice of history
lost.

Ed Reitan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Reitan" <ereitan at novia.net>
To: "Bob Kertesz" <bob at bluescreen.com>; <tig at ns1.colorist.org>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Tig] More memories please

Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
 ====

Thanks Bob,

Does anyone know of a surviving Ampex VR3000  "suitcase" quad
recorder?  One should be preserved in a collection- maybe in the
UCLA Film and Television Archives "Collection of Television
Technology and Design".

It was quite a example of excellent packaging.

Ed Reitan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Kertesz" <bob at bluescreen.com>
To: <tig at ns1.colorist.org>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 10:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Tig] More memories please

Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
 ====

>The remotes we did sometimes used the Ampex portable 2"
recorder, a
>wonder in miniaturization for it's time. I shuddered when a
bicycle
>messenger returned our only machine to the 57th street studios
having
>banged around Manhattan with it.

That was the Ampex VR3000, a "suitcase" style quad recorder. I
traveled around
the world for Editel with two of those and the Editel MKIII
handheld camera
for a couple of years in the early '70's. The deck weighed about
80 lbs, and
the only reasonable way to carry them was to have two of them so
you didn't
lean over too far in one direction and both your arms stretched
equally.

It took 20 minute loads of small reel 2" tape, had one audio
channel, and no
timecode channel. The vacuum for the guide and air for the air
bearing head
(14,400 rpm, remember?) came from what was essentially a small
aquarium pump
inside the unit.

The Editel MKIII handheld was based on the Ampex BC230 studio
camera. We
bought those and pulled the boards and optical blocks/preamps out
of the
heads, and built our own handheld heads with just yokes and
preamps, going to
a backpack we also built containing the rest of the head
electronics through a
10 foot piece of cable the size of my wrist. Then back to the CCU
through much
smaller multicore able to go several hundred feet. The CCU's had
RGB out, and
needed an external encoder and an external enhancer to make
proper images.

The whole road show was in 11 cases for a one camera one vtr
setup.

Here is a picture of me in 1972 getting it ready to go on the
road, taken in
the alley behind 729 N. Highland, home of Editel L.A. The picture
shows half
the cases for a complete one camera one vtr package

http://www.bluescreen.com/pix/BK-72.JPG

--Bob

Bob Kertesz
BlueScreen LLC
Hollywood, California
bob at bluescreen.com

The Ultimate in ULTIMATTE® compositing.
For details, visit http://www.bluescreen.com

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