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Mickey Mouse |
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Mickey Mouse |
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silver screen flickered to life. Then over the moaning sounds of the
16mm projector came a moving image with a voice. “Hi boys and girls, I’m Mickey Mouse and I’d like to talk to you about polio”. It was 1954 and I was in the sixth grade, at Multnomah grade school, and this was the first time I had ever seen a film produced just for kids. The producer was Walt Disney and the subject was the scourge of polio and a new vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. It stared Mickey and Goofy and was animated, in full color, from start to finish. How fascinating! But I was just as fascinated with the projector that showed the film. When the class asked to see the film again, I asked the teacher if I could watch her reload the projector. “Sure…and if you stay after class Brian, I’ll teach you how to run the projector”. |
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That’s how it all started. That very evening I told my folks, over the dinner table, that when I grew up I would produce educational films. They smiled and reminded me that I wasn’t a very good reader or speller so what kind of films could I make? They were right, but at age twelve I had already determined my career path! In the seventh and eighth grades I was put in charge of all the audio and visual equipment at the school. We had overhead projectors, film strip projectors, record players and two heavy and awkward 16mm film projectors, along with screens and carts. The little AV room was full of equipment and I was the only student to have a key. If a teacher was going to use audio/visuals I was called in. I would set-up, project, remove and maintain all the AV equipment. I even spun ‘platters’ (music records) at lunch time and at the ‘sock hops’. Guess you can say I was first ‘technical-nerd’ in my class. |
When I graduated from grade school all these skills were forgotten. Not until my junior year at |
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