#scott von freiberg

[thedaveandkimmershow]

I don't know why the thought came to me—okay I sort of do. I just don't know why this time it went one step further than it usually does.

For context, it's a sunny summer day and Kimmer 'n I are driving on Denny toward Capitol Hill. I don't remember what we were talking about but it occurred to me just then as it sometimes does how we'd be hanging out with Scott on days like this.

Scott?

Yeah, Scott.

Maybe he wouldn't be hanging out with us this very day... but we'd share some of this summer even if he was still living in Omaha, Nebraska. Of course we'd talk shop because his ideas were always ahead of the technology of the day and, this year especially, the technology's gotten good. Like seriously.

Would he be satisfied with it?

Would he still somehow find a way to reach beyond it?

How would his creative powers have grown by now?

And so on.

These are pretty normal thoughts, by the way. Scott passed away over a decade ago, 2010, succumbing to ALS faster than we thought possible. The fact that he even had ALS took us by surprise.

And then he was gone.

It was perhaps our first time understanding together that we don't have the kind of time we think we have. After all, we only kind of kept touch with Scott after he set off for L.A. and then established his production company, Market Media, in his home town of Omaha. During that period, our lives gained serious momentum in the directions we all were individually traveling. Career. Family. That sort of thing. And as our lives raced forward, something like fifteen years passed by.

Oh sure we talked by phone a few times. A coupla emails here 'n there. I met up with him once in Omaha while I was with a PBS production moving through town.

But we never shared our lives again. Not like when we were younger, pursuing our careers, figuring out our personal lives in real time... together. Our lives never overlapped again the way friends do. Comparing notes. Sharing victories and losses. Friendsourcing challenges. Laughing. Feeling that fire. Continuing to blaze the path we've been blazing all this time.

Together.

Why?

Why did we allow all that to slip away?

Because we assumed there was time.

No kidding. We thought there was tons.

And so the other day we're on Denny on the way to Capitol Hill on a sunny summer day... and it occurs to me how we'd be hanging out with Scott on a day like this.

Well, maybe not today... but definitely sometime during this summer. Which gets me to thinking about the career we both pursued once upon a time, this career I'm living right now, this very minute. And yeah. These are normal thoughts whenever I get to thinking about Scott.

What's not normal, though, is this:

The absence of Scott from our lives is most likely my greatest regret.

It is.

He should be here with us, is my point. He should be here with us enjoying the life we were all pursuing, this course on which we set out a long time ago. We should all still be the same kind of passionate about our careers together. Enjoying the fruit of our efforts across this long and winding road.

Don't get me wrong. There are people close to us whose loss is staggering. Especially across the last coupla years.

Scott's different, though.

We lost him at the beginning. At the very start. And because of that, his absence represents a life we never contemplated. And thinking about What If?... represents a life we could've had. The one we naturally expected. The one we assumed would come to pass.

The one with our dear friend Scott in it.

I won't lie. It does feel like we got robbed. But good.

So yeah. That happened. These thoughts about regret.

As I was writing this, I couldn't remember exactly when it was Scott died so I tried looking it up online. Instead, I ran smack into the link for Scott's Facebook page featuring a highlighted pair of quotes of which I either was never aware... or had long since forgotten.

"Keep faith, Give hope."

—Scott von Freiberg

"If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

—Henry David Thoreau

The Thoreau quote was definitely Scott when we first met him. His vision ran well beyond what we and others considered possible. And he was all-in on that vision for his life. "Living the Dream", for example, was one of Scott's first mind-blowing film projects. It was to have, if I remember correctly, four or five individual segments of which one was to feature The Blue Angels. Unfortunately, "Living the Dream" as a film project never came to pass... but I'm convinced that title would absolutely have reflected Scott's life had it not been cut short.

He was just one of those people, you know?

In the end, it's left to us, living this life we began chasing way back when we were young. And it is my deepest regret that Scott's not with us to enjoy this life that, once upon a time...

Was only a dream.

[daveinediting]

(L-R: Scott, Jack, & the director)

Now, the music video’s budget was and always had been set at $50,000. It's a figure I came to understand was actually not a whole lot of money. And unlike a more accounting-oriented approach to pitching an idea within the constraints of a given budget, we just came up with these ideas and Scott pitched them.  

Whoops.

Once we became actually responsible for spending that money, though, we quickly realized there might be a problem. Especially after getting an estimate on the effects work from Pinnacle Productions.      

First thing we did, then, is rent a MacIntosh computer (one of the original models) and put it on the floor in the middle of Scott's apartment in Madison Park. We always had it opened on a spreadsheet.      

And that spreadsheet?      

Yeah. It contained every decision that reduced the money we had on hand... starting with $50,000 and making its way to zero. Every creative or logistical choice we made had some financial impact on the budget. For example, paying a crew from director down to production assistant. Renting a film camera, lights, concert lighting, a stage. Paying for film, for film developing, film digitizing, an editor, an edit suite and, my personal favorite, catering.

It was a list. Okay? An incredibly long list once we accounted for everything. And so it was that we discovered how renting production office space along Lake Washington down by Leschi was a non-starter. We also discovered, after round and round and round of trying to make the numbers work... that Scott's effects shots were something we couldn't afford.      

It wasn't even close.      

The price we paid for that, by the way, is that the record company dragged its feet on their final payment to Theatrix Moving Pictures even though the Suzzallo Library location that clinched the deal was prominently, prominently, prominently featured just as originally pitched.      

Let's just say we learned a lesson there.      

In the end, we did it. Together, we produced a music video that aired on VH-1. Not MTV, but still. It was a big deal gig for a real record company for real money. And we felt.

Fantastic.

And even though we didn't get to work with Pinnacle Productions on Scott's effects shots, Pinnacle is where post production for the music video happened on an Avid Media Composer. This was the early days of nonlinear editing. And even though the director's cut was done, Scott added a pair of effects shots that were easy to create on the Avid: a couple of shots to which were added filters that made the underlying video appear hand drawn (ish). The director, a pro from Pacific Data Images in California who was flown up for the shoot and editing, didn't judge them necessary which, truthfully, they weren't. So the director's cut doesn't have 'em but the cut that aired did because Scott always loved to be as cutting edge as he could be. And he couldn't pass up that particular opportunity.      

Here's the cut that aired, by the way. It's definitely of its time and it's definitely a nostalgia piece for Kimmer 'n I. There are just so many friends of ours and friends of friends and kids of friends in this video. We remember them all.      

For us, they're cameos. And its fun to call out the ones we remember whenever we watch it. And it’s maybe our penance to cringe at Jack Wagner and his dreadful lyrics whenever we do.        

By the time we wrapped this production, we were a pretty tight group of friends. And even though we never produced another music video, and even though our careers would land us on opposite sides of the country, there were still two more big productions ahead of us.      

And yes — SPOILER ALERT — a wedding was one of them.      

:-) 

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Yesterday I was at a reunion of producers, directors, photographers, editors, and designers who span my career.

Literally. My whole career.

In fact, I met one of the directors there when I was a college senior. At the time, I thought my career was gonna be in advertising. At the time, I didn't even know editing was gonna be my thing... let alone video production.

I've been to one of these before. Before the pandemic. They're a wonderful trip down memory lane filled with stories and catching up and talking shop. These are, after all, my people. And we know the deal.

These reunions do, however, leave me with a touch of sadness. Of course the older I get the more stories that creep into our conversations about friends who are no longer with us.

Even if that were not the case, though, I would always bear a sense of loss, a touch of someone missing. Because of Scott.

You see he was also there at the beginning of my career. At the beginning of Kimmer's career, too. When we marvelously had these opportunities to work together. And get paid.

We were young. We were working together. And we were getting paid.

Does it even get better than that?

We lost Scott in 2010 to ALS. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Between the time we learned about his condition and the moment he left us?

Three months.

So yeah. We're not okay with that.

We're still not okay with that. His death left a hole in our lives that persists to this day.

And the reason I'm always touched by his loss at industry gatherings is that, even now, I wanna talk shop with him. Talk our latest projects. Gush over the latest production and post-production tools. Compare notes.

And then talk about our kids. 😉

Of all of us back at the beginning, Scott was the one who could convince seasoned professionals and post-production facilities to gamble on his projects. He could pitch professional adults and walk away with the services he needed to fulfill his vision. He even reached out to The Blue Angels and tried to involve them in a dream project of his. They declined... but my point is that, as a young twenty-something, he was already operating at a higher level. He had vision, you see. He pursuit it relentlessly. And a lot of the time, most of the time, okay all of the time... what he wanted was on the bleeding edge. The furthest outreaches of what could be done at the time. And he never balked at starting with the most expensive version of a given plan.

That was infuriating, by the way. But he had more success with that approach than any of us would've or could've guessed.

It's because if that vision, though, that I desperately wanna talk shop with him. Even today. Even right now. Because the tech that enables what he envisioned back in the day exists in a lot of our homes anymore. The horsepower of our workstations outstrips the highest reaches of tech back then. A lot of the software now is powered by AI and is more than a match for Scott's vision.

Most importantly... it no longer costs a home mortgage to take a project into post production.

So yeah.

I want to know what he thinks about all that. I want to know what impresses him and what he's gonna complain about. I really really want to know if his vision still exceeds the bleeding edge of what we can do today...

Or if technology finally caught up with him.

But mostly...

I wanna kick back for beers somewhere. I wanna kick back and talk shop and talk family. Talk about the future.

And talk about what we're all gonna do...

Next.

🤔

[daveinediting]

The drug and alcohol addiction intervention video, "Taking Control" is the project that brought me, Kimmer, and our dear friend, Scott, together as a production team. In general, he had the ideas or got the jobs or found the resources... and we worked out the details and the content.      

"Taking Control" was the first such effort.      

Among the bigger projects on which we worked together over the years, the first I remember was a Hip Hop music video in Pioneer Square that was shot at night. We helped him out as production assistants doing whatever needed to be done including, as I remember, handling cables in the middle of night time city streets. We also shot a party scene on the roof of one of the buildings in Pioneer Square. Pretty cool stuff.      

Quick technical note if you're wondering: for location sound playback (the track to which lip syncing was performed during the shoot) we used DAT, the digital audiotape format with which video easily kept sync. It didn't wander like analog tape.      

Yeah. How big time is that? :-)      

The really HUGE story we have from that time, a similarly huge opportunity, was when Scott scored a music video job he pitched to Jack Wagner's record company for the single, "Girl It's My Baby Too".      

Yeah... I know. But it was such an incredible opportunity for kids embarking on their careers that we didn't process the cringe-y-ness of the title and the song itself. Also, if you don't know who Jack Wagner is... that's okay. We didn't either. Although who he turned out to be was a major star from one of the soap operas who was also blazing a trail through pop music. VH-1 pop music, though. Not MTV.      

He was actually kind of an old dude, relatively speaking.      

We worked with Scott on the pitch for the job, working out local locations including Madison Park, downtown Seattle, and the Graduate Reading Room in Suzzallo Library on the UW campus where we'd eventually shoot from closing to the following morning just prior to opening. Scott had this idea for a shot of Jack flipping through a library card-catalog drawer, stopping at a particular card that would have a video frame of the next shot "printed" on it. And then the camera would move into the shot and we would be in that scene where Jack was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall lip syncing to his song. Scott hoped to accomplish this and similar FX shots at Pinnacle Productions, the production house that was right across the street (ish) from the Art Institute. They did a ton of ad agency work. They had a motion control rig. They had the latest editing and design tech. They ordered in from restaurants in the Pike Place Market. So yeah.      

They were big time, too.  :-)      

Now while Scott had his idea for an FX shot, Kimmer had an idea that was iconic of Jack Wagner's album, "Alone In A Crowd". We would find Jack standing in front of or leaning against a wall near fifth and Pine in perfect focus as pedestrians blurred past him. It was a killer idea that ended up being a real stand out in the finished music video.      

We were still in the coming-up-with-ideas phase of production, though. We were in pre-production. We didn’t even have the job yet... so of course this was all pitch. Eventually, we won the job and, as I understood it, the clincher for the record company was the Suzzallo Library location in which a concert stage would be set up complete with concert lighting.      

They chose Scott over other production companies. They chose his company, Theatrix Moving Pictures.      

Yeah. That was cool. It was amazing. It was incredible. We couldn’t believe this was happening.

We celebrated this victory at a restaurant in Madison Park one night. After that, though, we were forced to face up to a specific reality: the budget.      

More on that tomorrow. And — SPOILER ALERT — we wouldn't be able to do everything Scott pitched.      

:-(  

[daveinediting]

Okay so we're at the point where I was let go from my first full-time job as a bona fide video production professional after about a month.            

Completely not good.            

But, on the other hand, it was a relief. This had not been a healthy situation.

Fortunately, I'd kept my part-time job at Instructional Media Services even though it was only one day's worth of availability a week. I simply opened my availability up again across the entire week.            

Now at this point I can't, with any credible specificity, tell you what happened when and in what order. What I can tell you was that what happened after was huge... and made indelible imprints on my life both professionally and personally.     

So I guess I’ll start with —

Nope.

We still have some backing up to do. Like back into the latter half of my Art Institute days. Maybe the last coupla quarters if not the last one. Because in July of that year, 1989, I got a call from a friend's sister who was working with a group from the Chinese mainland that was putting together an English version of their documentary on the Tienanmen Square massacre. She knew I was attending the Art Institute and presumably knew something about putting together such an endeavor from a production point of view. July 5 is when we met at her place to discuss the project. And, over the coming weeks, we met again and again to discuss it, in cafes and restaurants and bars until it became obvious to both of us that we were actually, you know, dating            

At the time, she was a nursing student at Seattle Pacific University.           

Okay. Let's pause that part of the story for a moment.            

Because around the same time, sooner really, I was aware of another student at the Art Institute in the Music and Video Business Program who was chosen by our department director, Charlie Kester, to produce a video for which the school was very recently approached. There were some hard feelings from other students regarding the fact that no one else was even given a shot at the gig... but Charlie was blunt in his assessment that given the project and such short notice, it was his professional opinion that Scott was the most qualified.     

Period.            

Now Scott was in the class ahead of me so we didn't hang together. Didn't know each other. But that was about to change in a big way.           

You see in my final quarter at school, Scott's first months as a graduate, the school was approached by an organization looking for someone to produce a video about drug and alcohol addiction intervention. The project came with a title: "Taking Control".            

Of course Scott was given the call and, interestingly, so was I.            

I'm not sure what the school was thinking, whether they thought they were giving each of us an opportunity at the project independently or whether they actually meant for us to work together... but the truth is we were perfectly complimentary. He knew his way around production and post-production resources in town and I was a writer/editor. He could put the project together. And I could fill in the content.

With me so far?           

Because this is the part where my girlfriend, Kimmer, re-enters the story because I'm telling her about these developments and how Scott thinks the best way forward is a studio forum of professionals discussing the issue of drug and alcohol addiction intervention.            

Which is exactly as far as I got in the conversation before being unequivocally informed how that was the wrong approach. You see addiction and recovery was solidly within Kimmer's scope of experience as a nursing student at Seattle Pacific University. So it turns out she was actually connected to the contacts we'd need to do this right.            

And so, after the briefest of conversations with Scott, Kimmer joined the production team as a consultant.            

It's a turn of events that saw us through a lot of wonderful professional opportunities, deep friendship, and even — SPOILER ALERT...            

A wedding.           

But that's for a story for next time...           

:-)    

[thedaveandkimmershow]

We were walking down Dexter Avenue last night having detoured off our usual route along the southwest shore of Lake Union. We were walking this street we've known for years but seem not to recognize anymore. It's so developed.

Seriously.

By the way, Dexter's where you wind up when you're coming southbound off the Fremont bridge and go straight instead of left or right.

Anyway... we're walking along Dexter Avenue, marveling at all the condos and apartments and rooftop gardens and courtyards and corporations and restaurants and cafes and little shops. We're walking... trying to remember what used to be here once upon a time.

Then Kimmer wonders aloud what our friend Scott would make of all of this. All this high-end development. All this transformation and art direction.

All this change.

I said he'd be lovin' all the production and post-production tech that's at our fingertips anymore.

He woulda absolutely loved it.

Were he still with us, Scott would've reveled in today's tech like a kid in a candy store. He would've appreciated the changes with a critical eye. And he would've been walking down Dexter with us at some point.

It's a helluva thing that we still wonder what he'd think about this or think about that.

He's been gone, oh my, it's been such a long time by now.

Yet we still think about him this way. Actually, the thoughts just come at us from out of the blue.

They're just there.

I wonder what Scott would think?

Yeah.

Helluva thing.

Scott's from the very beginning of the Dave & Kimmer Show, by the way. Legitimately and separately a friend to each of us. We were at The Art Institute of Seattle together. The three of us made videos together. He was Kimmer's roommate for a while. He was also her mentor when it came to video production. And she was a big sister to him.

We were a team.

Best of friends all around.

And the funny thing about him is that I wouldn't consider Scott a big personality as we usually think of such people. He was persuasive, though. And passionate.

But in a softspoken way.

What can I tell you? That was the package in which Scott existed on this planet while he was on this planet.

At the time he passed away, Scott was living in Omaha, Nebraska, his hometown. So we were used to, in this era before widespread cell phone use, to not be in constant touch with him. Just, you know, every so often. But with the perfect knowledge that he was here on this planet with us no matter where he was.

And that state of things, even though we know he's gone, persists in our minds to this day. To the point where these thoughts just naturally come unbidden to us.

I wonder what Scott would think?

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Friday, December 21, the end of the week before Christmas. I had a light workload so decided to start the day off by soaking in some of the local Christmas vibes. The day ended... on an unexpected, though sweet, trip down memory lane.

Now usually I walk straight across the four blocks first thing in the morning from the UW Medical Center next to the Ballard bridge... to my bus stop on 15th & Market. On this morning, though, I lazed my way 4-5 blocks east, 7-8 blocks north, and then 4-5 blocks back to my stop. Along the way, I focused my full attention on the colors and shapes, the feel and the celebration of Christmastime the way the good folk down in Ballard celebrate it.

For the sake of a Facebook photo album, I called the experience Looking For Signs Of Christmas On A Friday Morning In Ballard... a thoroughly peaceful time of walking and observing and taking it all in one morning in December within sight of Christmas Day. If you click on the “Looking For Signs...” link, you’ll get a look at all the photographs I snapped whilst doing my Christmastime walkabout.

I still had work to do, though, so by ‘n by I made my way to the bus, to the UW, to my edit suite... where I finished up the work I was doing. A short day, I found myself with some time on the back end so I walked over to Suzzallo library and made myself comfortable in its reading room. Something I’d never done before.

The reading “room” is actually more of a cathedral space with plenty of headroom and quiet to spare. 

It didn’t take long, sitting there in contemplation, for me to realize how long it’d been since I was here. Not as a student, though, but as an associate producer (along with Kimmer) to this guy...

...Scott von Freiberg.

A fellow graduate of the Art Institute, Scott’s focus was always to be a film producer. And he had the whatever X-factor it was to get projects off the ground and crews together (sometimes on spec). He was great at pitching projects... and later I thought of him as a kind of Walt Disney. An idea guy. Someone with vision. The Big Picture.

So it’s 1993 and Scott successfully pitches the record company on an idea for a music video for one of their artists, Jack Wagner. At the time, Wagner was best known as an actor for his role on the soap opera General Hospital. He’d scored a Billboard #2 hit a decade earlier and released three albums since then. He had a new album slated for release and a song to kick it off “Girl It’s My Baby Too”.

Somehow Scott knew the record company was looking for a production company to translate that song onto film for VH-1 and, like I said, he pitched them and got the gig.

Which is where we came in. 

As the numbers people. 

You see, there was a definite budget... and Scott’s vision exceeded that hard and fast number. So instead of us being the bad guys saying “No!”... we left that job to one of the original Mac computers we set up in the middle of his apartment. Every idea he had was attached to a number that went into a spreadsheet contributing to a total. And our collective job was to wrangle Scott’s vision into that budget, a challenge involving both cutting costs and finding more bang for these bucks wherever we could. 

Here’s how our collective efforts turned out...

And yes. The video’s very much a product of its decade. It may even be a kind of hold-out of the eighties. Definitely it’s a time-capsule.

A sweet reminder of Once Upon A Time with our dear friend, Scott. 

No longer with us... but very much still in our hearts.

[daveinediting]

We didn't get the funding to continue with Seattle Singles beyond the demo into which we poured our efforts. Still, it was an important experience for us as producers and for me as a director and writer. 

Putting the Seattle Singles demo together, by the way, was as straightforward as it gets. There was a title animation on which Scott had worked with one of Pinnacle Production's graphic designers. I'm guessing Scott figured out the music as well. The rest was, in order, our host stand-up followed by a graphic introducing our first "single", then the video of that individual, followed by the next graphic and the next individual until we were through everyone. Mary White finished off the segment for us followed by a Seattle Weekly graphic.  

Fade to black.                  

Our demo of "Seattle Singles" was everything we hoped it would be. Unfortunately what it was not... was a compelling reason for Seattle Weekly to provide full funding. Or even any... funding. That's just the way it goes in the big leagues. But it's still an experience that I appreciate and which I remember fondly.

After that, Scott would go on to produce a documentary on the local grunge music scene based on interviews shot by students at the Art Institute when we were both students there. He was one of our closest friends who shared in our experiences growing up as twenty-something as we shared in his.

He was part of our group of friends who helped us plan and produce our wedding. He was with us on the day Kimmer 'n I said our vows.

Later, he moved down to L.A. to further his career as well as increase the prospects of his production company, Theatrix Moving Pictures.  While he was there, he met the woman who was to become his wife who also happened to be from his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. They decided to move back to Omaha where Theatrix Moving Pictures eventually became Market Media, a full service production company complete with its own high tech production and post-production gear. 

And so we went on with our lives like that on opposite ends of the country. I remember one time my work took me through Omaha with a travel series production and we got a chance to hang out for a bit. It was lovely... but also underlined how great it would've been to keep growing up in the same city.

By early 2010 it'd been awhile since we heard from each other.  Then one day either he got in touch with us or we got in touch with him. After that conversation, Kimmer 'n I were struck by how slurry his speech was. As if he was drunk in the middle of the day. Kimmer called me at work the next day 'cause she was seriously worried about him so I went online to see what I could find. Ten minutes later, I had it. The reason for why we hadn't heard from him in a long time. The reason for his slurred speech. 

Scott had ALS. Amiotropic Lateral Sclerosis.

He was losing control of his muscles. Like, all of them.  So we had some pretty tough conversations with him afterward about what was happening, what was gonna happen, and why he hadn’t told us the second there was a problem.

By the way, there's only ever one outcome from his diagnosis, the only variable being how much time there was left. 

In Scott's case, it wasn't much. He died on August 10, 2010. 

And you know what?  We'd been living parallel lives on opposite sides of the country for so long that to this day it's easy to think he's still living there and we just haven't caught up in awhile. 

We miss him, you know?  He was such a huge part of that time when we were growing up into adults. Growing up into our professional selves. And the stories we lived together are absolutely etched into our DNA...

And forever will be.  

[daveinediting]

After the music video production with our friend, Scott, the other big production on which we worked with him as a team was a thing called "Seattle Singles". This was for a local paper called Seattle Weekly which, as I understood it, featured a pretty involved dating section. And Scott had an idea for them: a weekly video segment that featured singles looking for other singles. The pitch was intriguing but the paper wanted to see what he was talking about first. We'd have to do it on spec... but if they liked what they saw they'd fully fund us.                  

So Scott pulled a production crew together including a Steadicam rig and light package also on spec. He found a studio just east of the Ballard bridge that agreed to throw in its lot with us. Pinnacle Productions kicked in their graphic design and editing services with the same hope as we that this could lead to actual revenue. Scott even got local radio personality, Mary White from KUBE FM, to join us as on-camera host.                  

This wasn't a paid gig for any of us but I will say this: it was fully staffed and it spared no resources.                 

All of which left one massive question:

What on earth were we gonna shoot? 

Now for this one, Kimmer shared the producing duties with Scott once he put the crew together and secured Pinnacle Productions. I was the director and writer for what we were gonna do and, yes, I had an idea.                  

The idea was that we, as viewers, would be kind of eavesdropping on conversations where singles talked about what they were looking for in an ideal date. They would be seated as if talking to a friend across a table and we'd use the Steadicam rig to do a 180 move from one side of each individual around them and to the other side. Most of that time we'd be watching the person talking to someone else. But as the camera curved in front of them, the individual would catch our eye. They would talk to the lens and, after the camera passed in front of them they'd re-engage the person they'd been talking to. It's an idea I still love to this day because it mimics how we sometimes find dates. We see them before we talk to them.

This was the perfect use for a Steadicam rig which, at that time was a beast. An absolute beast. It was not at all like the gimbals we use with one hand with DSLRs these days. In fact, by comparison, it's a little like when they tell you that computers used to be the size of rooms. This thing was heavy and bulky and basically used the camera operator as a moving platform.                  

So that was the Production of "Seattle Singles" we tee'd up for ourselves.          

I'm pretty sure all the singles were friends of ours. Kimmer worked with each of them on their stories in-studio before they sat down in front of the camera. She may also have handled the make-up duties.                  

The rest of it went without a hitch. It looked good. The camera move looked just as I imagined it. Our "singles" were perfect. The make-up and lighting was just right. And Mary, our host who showed up on set after her morning shift at KUBE FM, was an absolute pro and a delight to work with.                  

This production was shot on Beta SP and not long after we took those tapes to Pinnacle Productions where our footage was digitized and ingested into their Avid Media Composer. This was my first experience with nonlinear editing. It was definitely also my first experience with a production house that had its own kitchen. You could go in there whenever you wanted and whatever they had in the cupboards... you could have. All kinds of goodies and treats they had in there. It was a revelation. And I guess it's one of the perks of a production house that does a ton of ad agency work.                 

I was in love. ;-)                  

Now the work I was doing for Small World Productions (story to come) prepared me for the kind of post production we were doing here. It taught me to be prepared. But what I wasn't prepared for was the speed of editing on a nonlinear system.                  

For example, the standard at that time was linear editing. Meaning that whatever you were editing had to start at the beginning and end at the end. You couldn't start in the middle of the show. You couldn't mess with the order of shots once you laid them down. You couldn't make the show longer or shorter once you mastered it. At least not without a lot of re-editing.                  

And then this:                  

In order to execute a single edit, you used a controller to fast forward or rewind a tape machine to the first frame of the shot you wanted to use... then you hit a key to mark that spot. Then you forwarded the tape to the end of that shot... then you hit a key to mark that spot. And then you'd use the controller to fast forward or rewind your record tape to the spot where you wanted to place your shot... and then you'd hit a key to mark that.                  

With me so far? It's just a touch involved.                  

Then you'd hit a key labeled “Preview” on the controller that would roll both tapes, both machines, to the starting points you marked. Once the machines found those spots, they would both roll five seconds before those spots and, once they both of them did, they'd both start playing. That five seconds, by the way, is where the machines would synchronize so that each edit was frame accurate.      

So, basically, you got to see what your edit of that single shot would look like and, if all looked well, you'd hit Record and the machines would do their thing again only this time for real.                  

My point being that every edit took time. Especially if you're not the editor, there's a bunch of time where the editor's doing his or her thing and the machines are rolling this way 'n that doing their thing.                  

With nonlinear, locating start and end points was faster. You used a mouse to scroll very quickly through the digitized footage (or, you simply jumped right to it using timecode) and, once those start and end points were located and marked the editor would hit another button that would do the edit. Just do...                  

The edit.                  

Man, I was used to enjoying food or reviewing my notes during Previews. But this was Big Time and the tech our industry was using was changing right before our eyes.      

If you haven't guessed by now, at the time we were all becoming professionals, the technology we used was not only moving from bigger to smaller it was also changing from analog to digital, a transformation that would ultimately put an edit suite and the tools that used to only exist in expensive production houses... onto a desk in our apartment.  So please forgive my detour into the way we used to do things. It really did used to be so expensive and involved that it's a wonder anyone wanted a career that was so defined in many ways by what the existing technology couldn't do... and what it demanded of you that had absolutely nothing to do with creativity. 

Next time, I'll finish the story about our Seattle Singles demo. SPOILER ALERT: it was magnificent but didn't score us the funding to continue past the demo we’d done on spec. That’s just how it goes sometimes. 

After that, though, I'm gonna hit the gas really quick and show you where our story with Scott finally landed.  :-)

[thedaveandkimmershow]

There are people in your life you know will be there for the rest of your life. 

Our friend, Scott, was one of these. 

The photo above was taken when Kimmer was my girlfriend. She’d joined Scott and I working on a drug & alcohol intervention video. She was working rehab at the time so it was a natural fit.

I’m pretty sure this is the only one we all worked on together because Scott eventually hit the road for L.A. and, not long after, Omaha, Nebraska, his hometown, where he founded Market Media.

He was another of our friends who was there before the beginning. When it wasn’t yet officially the Dave & Kimmer Show. He was one of the first to know we’d gotten engaged. He was one of our crew.

When you get married, of course your parents are a part of the planning (and the financing), but for most couples it’s the first time you and your friends adult as a group. You’re all like a little company where the product is a married couple. You’re all working together. And it’s kind of a test for all of you.

In the days leading up to our wedding, Scott made himself indispensable, ultimately making sure our reception hall looked just the way we wanted. Plus, when he was over at Kimmer’s place in Lake City (our unofficial planning and staging center), he’d sneak through the fence across the alley into the back of Dick’s Drive-In which was right there. Snag us some cheeseburgers and bring ‘em back.

I dunno. The burger thing really jumps out after all these years.

He was there when we took our vows. He was there to see us away as we were driven off to the Palisades in Magnolia for dinner and dessert. We got that dessert free, by the way, ‘cause I told them we were just married.

Heck, after that, I told everyone we were just married. Got a lot of free stuff that way.

After that, the Dave & Kimmer show was quite up and running. Scott moved down to L.A., met a girl, fell in love, and they moved to Omaha. They had kids, a girl and a boy, and we didn’t hear from him for a long time.

On a good day, life’s like that.

Early in 2010, Kimmer spoke with him on the phone and afterwards expressed her concern to me that he might have a drinking problem. He was slurring his words in conversation, you see. Out of habit, I did a little poking around the internet to see what I could see until I ran across an ad featuring Scott.

An event raising money for ALS. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's disease.

Oh God.

We got back on the phone with him right away. Asked him why he hadn’t said anything. And I guess somehow he thought he’d disappointed us. I don’t why. Maybe he didn’t want us to remember him as he fought the good fight against the inevitable.

And though we talked back and forth about getting him out here to visit one last time (we couldn’t afford flying to Omaha), he died before our plans could come to fruition.

That was August of 2010.

But he was there at the beginning. 1992. Before the beginning. He helped to launch us on our way. He was instrumental in helping us become the people we are today. Our dear friend, Scott.

And those memories, believe it or not, the ones right up to and including September 12, 1992, are the ones we carry with us as we embark on our next 25.

Thank you, Scott.