Spec versus Screenplay, Engineering the Story


Speaker: Michael Poimboeuf, Consulting Engineer Avid/Digidesign, SMPTEsf Section Manager
 

  • Date & time: Thursday, 17 Oct 2002
    • 6:00 - 7:30 PM No-Host Pizza Dinner*
    7:30 PM Program
    Meeting organizer: Michael Poimboeuf
     
  • Program:

    • In the motion picture and television industries engineering serves storytelling. Spec is to engineering as screenplay is to storytelling. A screenplay specifies how to tell a story.

    Engineering is grounded in thesis and scientific proof, storytelling in premise and dramatic action. Both resolve in a synthesis of thesis and antithesis.

    Michael is an analog and digital hardware designer who has been doing audio, video, and computer design since the mid eighties.

    Michael was lead audio architect at SGI, and also the technical lead and senior manager of the SGI High Definition Video program. Prior to that he was with the Grass Valley Group and prior to that he founded the startup company, Personics, here in Menlo Park.

    Since January this year Michael has been a full time Consulting Engineer at Digidesign, part of AVID technology. He is also one of our San Francisco SMPTE section managers.

    Michael plays a little guitar (actually medium size, a triple-Oh Martin acoustic) and writes feature motion-picture screenplays. He’s an AVID kayaker and whitewater nut. He has three kids, and his wife is a Firefighter serving as Chief of EMS at the Berkeley Fire Department.

    Welcome:

    SMPTEsf  welcomes members and friends to attend without charge. Reservations are not required for this meeting.

    Location:

    Round Table Pizza
    1225 El Camino Real [at Oak Grove Ave.],
    Menlo Park, CA 94025-4208

    *Food and drinks are availiable on a no-host basis (means that you pay for yours) from Round Table.

    PARKING: The Round Table in Menlo Park has two dozen spaces of its own, plus there's a huge, free municipal parking lot only a few yards from the restaurant, behind the buildings on the south side of Oak Grove Ave.
     

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