2000
I jumped right onto the Watchout bandwagon... happy days were here again. Just when I was lamenting the demise of multi-image, suddenly Mike Fahl had made it all possible digitally. Making the change was expensive and involved a year's time to "switch over" into digital mode... which included moving into digital photography. This was no easy task as I am essentially a Luddite.
2000
This picture, taken at Sound Images, sums up the transition from slides to digital. In the new Watchout world of digital multi-image, just a few video projectors replaced that huge rack of 100 slide projectors in the background. Producers and programmers who had been involved with slides "understood" Watchout and adapted easily. Those without slide-show background tend to use Watchout as a video server system, missing many possibilities. At the time I was working with Dave Frey and Steve Farris at Sound Images. We collaborated on the Watchout equipment and both bought the same kind of stuff so that my gear could supplement their system, if ever needed. Hah…within a year we needed all that gear and more.
2001
Sound Images always thinks big and once we had a couple of little successes with the new Dataton Watchout system, confidence quickly grew and with it the size of the shows. This is a nine-screen production for a Nike meeting. Steve Farris is at the Mac G4 servers in the picture at left and manning one of two production PC's, at right.
2001
Sound Images always thinks big and once we had a couple of little successes with the new Dataton Watchout system, confidence quickly grew and with it the size of the shows. This is a nine-screen production for a Nike meeting. Steve Farris is at the Mac G4 servers in the picture at left and manning one of two production PC's, at right.
2001
Photomation© is my name for animated still images. No it's not an oxymoron. We used to call them "motor-drive sequences." It is a process of step- animation shot with motor-driven cameras. I used to shoot with the Nikon 250-exposure back to get really long sequences that were played back at different speeds for different effects. With digital we are relegated to "bursts" up to about 24 frames. Photomation has a unique and very powerful look because the images originate at 4,000 or more dpi... that's resolution!
2002
It took people a while to catch on to Watchout. One of the first was TPN, The Production Network, in Seattle. For them I produced a Samsung keynote for CES in Las Vegas. I got to work with colleagues from the Watts-Silverstein days who had since dispersed throughout Seattle: Charlie Watts was Creative Director, Cindy Kreuger was producer in charge assisted by Patti Kapler. Many beans were counted.
2002
CES Keynotes are BFDs (big deals) and Watchout was the new guy on the block for staging companies. Nobody was quite sure of what to expect. Given the complexity and size of the show, the pressure was on for Dataton to deliver the goods. They did. TPN (The Production Network) built an elaborate set for the Samsung keynote at CES. Beneath the panoramic Watchout screen they built complex reveals. During the show a growing collection of people and props appeared on the stage, I-mag'd back to the big screen. Staging Techniques handled all the AV, sound and lighting. It was the first time I had worked alongside Bryce Will after years of comraderie with his father, Randy Will.
2000
One of the first changes I made in the new house was to knock a hole in the wall separating studio from the lounge. I wanted to be able to use long telephotos and that gave me a 40-foot shooting span. I got rid of the pool table because it had become an elephant instead of an amusement. All the decorations came from Sweden... in fact the whole color and nighttime lighting scheme was inherited from the Hornsgatan studio.
2000
Perhaps because I am gerontophobic, I have overcompensated for that shortcoming in the past by playing the social animal... ever since the dancing school incident I have never felt comfortable in social situations. Computers have replaced the darkroom as refuges. But then there is that social side of me that -- for whatever reason -- likes to entertain. In this case it is a Mesney-Hetler family get together during the holidays.
2000
New Year's day 2000 was occasion to shoot a set of portraits of the Mesney clan. This one of me was shot by Anna Raus… or was it my sister?… hmmm.
2000
Anna Raus… my once beloved wife.
2000
Barbara Mesney, my younger sister, is a production designer in Hollywood. Big stuff.
2000
Kathryn Mesney-Hetler, the elder of two sisters (I am eldest of the three siblings). She teaches drama and dialect at Cornish College for the Arts in Seattle.
2000
Lou Hetler… my sister Kathryn Mesney's late husband… taught stage direction. Kathy met him at Brockport State College back in New York where he was her teacher. They fell for each other; he divorced his first wife and married Kathy.
2000
Just the three of us… Kathryn Mesney, Barbara Mesney & Douglas Mesney.
2001
The bubble of the world Anna and I shared was about to burst, but I didn't have a clue and so was blindsided by the events that followed our break-up in the summer of 2002. There are conflicting points of view. Inevitably, people take sides. There are wins... mostly losses. There are no coincidences… and I'm glad to be where I am on the Karma wheel.
2001
Anna Raus and I went to Istanbul in 2001. It's a place I will return to someday.
2001
Anna and I were on the first flight out after 9/11... heading for Turkey. Everyone said we were crazy but it turned out perfect. Most tourists cancelled, so we didn't have to deal with crowds of them.
2001
Greece preceded Turkey and we actually spent a longer time there, which, next time will be reversed with the schedule favoring Turkey.
2003
Watchout production studio on Vashon Island. This is a "behind the rack" view of the programming room during production of the14-display Skechers Sales Meeting show.
2003
Watchout production studio on Vashon Island is set-up for Dataton Watchout and comfortably handles up to 2 dozen displays. It is designed as a "live-in" space with complete kitchen facilities and sleeping accommodations.
2004
Dean Rossi and I collaborated on a Burning Man project… a "High Deaf Theater" with a three-projector Watchout show rigged onto an old truck. We got neon-trimmed lounge sofas from a casino Dean works with, and he crafted a sign with with programmed multi-color LED lighting effects. The bottom picture is a reverse-angle shot showing the campsite behind (and anchored to) the screen and truck. It withstood sandstorms and desert winds that gusted up to 60mph.
2004
Dean Rossi (left) and Joe Ness (center) of Quantum Audio Video, up on the truck, and yours truly by the door. That's my van in the background. In addition to the lit-up casino furniture, Dean and his wife Andrea Rossi also put an ad in the local paper for old couches people didn't want... we got too many and fit as many as we could on the truck. I think this project was about as quintessentially Burning Man as you can get.
2004
Here I am showing Dean Rossi a decoration I put on the front of each projector housing's projection port. Note the triple fans on top... they sucked air through HEPA filters on the bottom. The boxes were, of course, hermetically sealed. In the top picture, Dean Rossi cuts the Uni-Strut from which the screen framework was built.
2004
My old van served as the control room for the Dataton Watchout show as well as the camp's ambient music system. Dear Rossi is a totally purist audiophile so you'd better believe that the sound was superb. (Somehow I slept in there, too.)
2004
Dean Rossi (left) and I set up the Burning Man show in the parking lot of Quantum Audio Video behind the Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nevada. While he was building the screen in Reno, I was building the projection modules at the Vashon studio… then I drove the van down to Reno to meet up with Dean. Once we confirmed that everything was working, it all got packed up for the two-hour drive out to the Black Rock Desert.
2005
At 15,000 feet up on Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Mero (behind me) looks like you can reach out and touch it. Back in 1995, Hita von Mende had taken her son Jesse up "Kili" to mark her 55th and his 18th. I couldn't go on that trip because it was a mother-son thing, but I decided then to mark my 60th on Kilimanjaro's summit. It became an odyssey, in no small part just meeting the digital challenge(s)... a story that will unfold on these pages soon.
2005
Funny about mountains... getting down is almost as hard as going up. That takes a lot of people by surprise because they trained to go up, not down. Makes you wonder what life might have in store. Anyway... as the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro was the high point of my life (so far) it is also a good point to put this Profile on pause. Updates to come.... Thanks for reading about me.
2005
