Computer FX was founded in 1982 by Craig Zerouni,
Andrew Berend and myself, Ian Chisholm. Andrew fairly
quickly left to found The Computer Film Company with Mike
Boudry.
CFX's initial raison
d'etre was the ability to animate wire frame images in real time
using a vector display device called an IMI500. This was
the first real time animation system in Europe. The image
quality was limited but the interactivity was incomparable for
the time. Output was produced by filming mutiple passes on
to 35mm movie film through coloured filters, a technique
pioneered by the late Robert Abel.
CFX produced TV
commercials, broadcast titles for The BBC and many others as
well as corporate and architectural work. In time the
sytem expanded to include video output and to use Side Effects
Prisms software.
Xerox TV commercial
"To do one job, I recall, we had no way of getting
digital video back and forth to a post-house, so we ended up
taking our 100lb Abekas A60 and putting it in the back of a taxi
as a method of getting the D1 back and forth. It took two
or three people to do this plus a little wheely cart thing we
had. It was, like everything else about this business,
completely mad."
Craig Zerouni, quoted in CG101, Terrence Masson, 1999.
Computer work in
feature films was much less common in CFX's time but the company
worked on Beyond Rangoon (1995) and First Knight (1995).
CFX lived and died
before the internet became ubiquitous, never had a web site and
Google reveals very little evidence of its existence. A
significant part of what there is relates to the wit, wisdom and
sayings of Craig Zerouni. My favourite, which doesn't seem
to have found its way into wider consciousness is:
Creative to Client, "Why not tell me what you want
before I do it instead of telling me what you don't want after
I've done it".
Sigh.