Tales from the GDC Vault returns with newly-digitized lectures
[Digital historian Jason Scott returns to his "Tales from the GDC Vault" series to introduce freshly digitized lectures from GDC's past, including a keynote from The Matrix's John Gaeta.]
Hi, it's Jason Scott, GDC archivist. My job has been to digitize older materials from the GDC archives and get them into the GDC Vault site, so that years and years of GDC talks can join their more modern brethren and educate and entertain for years to come. I also disappeared for a while.
What, did you think I was gone forever? Actually, I've been very busy, even though it hasn't translated to any blog posts for a while. Without further ado, let's talk about what I've been up to.
First, take a look at the picture above. that's what 173 Betacam SP tapes look like after you digitize them -- just a hard drive in a dock. Besides the 200+ hours of tape this translates to, it also has dozens of hours of audio recordings as well.
They range from a couple choice pieces in 1996 up through to 2004. After 2004, GDC switches to MiniDV tapes, and I've got that box waiting for me in the future, but it's the oldest material that we're going for right now.
During this time, GDC organizers upgraded the back-end of the GDC Vault, moved some servers, and I held off too much aggressive uploading. But we're in back in full now, and I've got some dedicated machinery creating the .FLV files of these long-lost talks and getting them to you.
I've also been transcribing the session descriptions from a library of programs provided to me, so you can get a solid preview of what you're going to see and hear. Or, in a few cases, not so solid at all.
The winner for me in the "description bonanza" category has to be special effects wizard John Gaeta, who did the effects for the Matrix series and is credited with the "bullet-time" effect that is still showing up in films more than a decade later. This description of his 2004 keynote leaves... well, perhaps it leaves everything to the imagination.
The session's lengthy description covers topics from all over the map, spanning issues such as using "computer graphics for curing the criminally insane," "the rise of telekinetic programming," "the persistence of Japan," and much, much more. It's an eclectic, sometimes confusing list to be sure, and experiencing the session itself is the only real way to make sense of it all.