Come on Steenbeck

When I think of editing I still have a momentary image of a big blue table with six plates, the feeling of joining tape under the fingernails and heady anticipation of looking at an answer print. Steenbeck is ingrained into my mind even after years away from editing film.

So I looked Steenbeck up on the web and they're still there. In Holland now not Hamburg but still turning out new machines and repairing old ones. In a fit of nostalgia I wrote an email saying how glad I was that they still existed and got back a very polite reply.

But I think that they're missing a trick. Undoubtedly, the Steenbeck paddle controller is peerless in its sensitive control of the machine's transport. You can be so accurate with it from almost plate tectonics up to full rewind chat and its magnetic detents were in just the right place.

That controller should be driving Final Cut, Premiere or even Avid because it's a part of editing!

Dream Steenbeck

I can see so clearly in my mind how the film transport on the central machined aluminium plate could be replaced with a keyboard, a sound mixer over on the left and a mouse wherever they go. You could hide a Mac under the table where the motors and gears were and even have a few SDHC SxS and PCMCIA slots under the screens...

Come on! I know it's a dream but then that's how everything you're looking at now started. Then we'd have them back to spill coffee on and not have to work in an environment that looks like the Antiques Roadshow hosted on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Next week I reckon to look at modifying an upright Moviola with an iPod Touch and turn an Acmade 8 gang synchroniser into a control surface for Pyramix. Or would that be going too far?

Now people who never cut film might not understand all this but I long to recreate the tactile nature of editing on silver. We've lost a lot more than sprocket holes over the years. Whatever happened to building it in your head?

Comments

Patrick said…
Avid did have a Steenbeck controller. It didn't prove popular. Lightwarks still has a paddle style motion control. This level of control was visceral and physical and immediate. But JKL seems to make people happy.
Am selling both Avid and LW control consoles - write for your piece of digital filmmaking history- pgregston@cox.net
03:50
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