Count me in, initiated in '94 on Flame 4.0
I had a family obligation this afternoon, but I’d be happy to get a few words in on May2.
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Thanx for recognizing me Renee 
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You, Steve Scott, and Gray Marshall are the ones who encouraged me from the very beginning. I will always cherish our days together when you sat with us hooligans in i/o, playing your guitar and doing shots on Flame.
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Rendering batch setups in 5 frame lots punctuated by crashes - not fun.
Buying flame 5 for a ton of money as it was getting editing… even got stream for the audio… then they rethought and released fire. We didn’t get the edit stuff and flame never used stream so after about 2 years we sold it back.
My favorite OLD FLAME stories include:
The only way in or out to tape involved an A60 that would get frames dumped to it via a script directly from flame’s output module. Once the frames were Rcp’d to the A60 the D1 would setup an insert edit based on the time code entered into the output modules in point. As the D1 pre-rolled a GPI would trigger the A60 to play at the right time. Here’s the big problem, the A60 only held 720 frames of standard def footage. So, a minute long spot took at least three rounds of output to get to tape.
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Oh I know. I’m firmly on the record back then regarding the hot mess that was the transition. I just always thought the speed of the pen was great on RE2.
That’s all…
When we bought flame running on a 4d 70gt it was pre discreet logic and we only had an a64. When flame arrived it wouldn’t work with flame so Gary Tregaskis flew to Malaysia and wrote the A64 drivers in our cg room on a personal iris.
Many years later when discreet accused us of having a cracked flame the receipts from his hotel and flights are what proved we’d bought it as everyone had forgotten the sale 
Fun times.
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They also had a small stone called pebbles that could work on flint.
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We had a Flint RT with a Pebbles! Ah…the memories!
Hey All. Just a heads up: I need to move the Stories of Old Flame Show back to 5/16.
We had a Flint RT w/Pebbles when I worked at Tape House Digital/Black Logik.
We demo’d FlintRT at Red Car, Pebbles and all, for a month. It was fine, I guess, I was a child and wasn’t really in a position to be evaluating major systems purchases. But SGI had announced Octane already, and I very clearly remember two or three discreet demo artists looking us dead in the eye and saying, “do not buy this, wait for Smoke.”
Smoke did not yet have an official product spec, it might have ended up being flame with editing, but we got on the beta and that was that.
I also remember that, in true discreet fashion, they dropped the price by 100k after the initial launch. When we complained, they gave us a flame license. Larry Bridges walked up to my desk, dropped the install cd on my tablet, and walked away without a word. And that’s how I got my hands on flame…
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All this talk of tracking in the 2022 thread reminds me of a story:
I came into the orbit of the tech marketing unit the year after Method appeared in a customer video where they showed a breakdown of an excellent Mountain Dew commercial. The highlight of this video was Alex Frisch tracking a bicubic to the spots on a cheetah (so that “do the dew” could be written into its spots). People inside Discreet loved that bit. “Give us more of that!” they clamored, basically any time we went to shoot anything.
Problem is, that is a very specific problem with a very specific, very fast, and unusually photogenic solution. We spent a lot of time chasing that high, but nothing satisfied like that one glorious cheetah and that pack of perfectly synchronized, perfectly pinned trackers.
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Actually, Andy, it was “Maximum Risk” a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. He was hanging off an overpass. Lots of smoke blowing, which you would think would help wire removal, being so random. But every paint stroke stuck out unless you animated it with the smoke.
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lots of memories but 2 that stand out:
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that time someone accidentally replied to the flame news group with the details of their ongoing divorce settlement
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not sure which version but anytime you hit the comma or period key flame instantly crashed.
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I worked on that spot with Alex 
Super Bowl XXXIV (2000): Mountain Dew "Bad Cheetah" on Vimeo
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Jeez…where to start…More to come. This is just the first 3.
Digital Domain…Nov '93. I get a license of Flint (on Indigo 2). No video I/O. Backup was via exabyte drive. I forget if we had disks locally. First shot I did was a proof of concept split screen for True Lies.
People are amazed because I did it in an hour. (I’m thinking to myself…“jeez…it was just a friggin split screen”)
Digital Domain…Dec '93. I do the Dennis Hopper “ref” spot with David Fincher. I’m so curious to see if it all worked I go into Digital Domain to try and put a test comp together after the shoot. First time doing a job where the tracker was essential to the success of the project. I’m so excited after I put it together, but it’s a Saturday and no one is there to show it to except the guy at the security gate. I go get him from the guard gate and show him the shot. He must have thought I was a nut. You can see crappy versions of it below. You have to look hard for Dennis Hopper. Tracker worked great. No motion blur yet. Had to do it manually with H and V blur on specific frames.
Digital Domain…Jan '94 Nike “Magazine Wars” with David Fincher. Probably the most complicated spot I’ve up till this time. Shot by Harris Savides. Really planned this one carefully. Still no automatic motion blur. The hardest part was tracking the full pages into the page flip sequence. My curve editor looked like spaghetti. Came out great. Cannes Lion, Clio, and MoMa
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These are great! I’m still kind of obsessed with DD & Fincher’s Nike “filmstrip” spots for the 2000 Olympics. Deceptively simple looking, but must’ve been loads of work.
Also, @fredfx , it may not be an accomplishment that rates as high as your commercial work, but I remember that you caused a tremor of joy to shudder through the marketing department when you said “oh, and it has a kick-ass paint system” in a flame promo video in, what, 2003?
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Amazing @fredfx i remember these spots and the excitement level around flame at the time. it was just an incredible time. I had no idea Harris directed Magazine Wars. What a wonderful and talented man. RIP Harris.
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