It was the year 1998, quite after I had started to study computer sciences I also begun to work for a regional television broadcast station as a freelancer. The name of the station is “Nordsachen TV” (translated: North Saxony TV). It was situated in Eilenburg, which is the neighbor town of my home town Delitzsch.
At that time the editor was using analog equipment even though they had already bought a digital system. It was a DraCo made by MacroSystems with a 30 GB SCSI hard disk and it was my first mission to get it known and to educate the editor afterwards. Because the computer had only got an AMIGA processor it was very slow at computing effects compared to PCs of the same time but it was very good at getting your video done a fast way if you could abstain from transitions and effects. You had to use hard cuts, which are fortunately the most professional ones. After I referred my knowledge to the employed editor I got the chance to become a supporting one. Every Monday I was cutting articles considering the specifications of our journalists.
After a while I said the business manager that I would like to make some animations. He gave me the chance and said analogously: “Try if you can create an advertising character to represent our TV channel.” I was doing so but the result did neither satisfy me nor my boss because it was my first attempt on characters. Luckily enough I got a second chance later. It was the opportunity to revise the introductory, the news and the promotional animation. I combined filmed clips with computer generated images and the results were much better than the originals.
I was slowly evolving away from the broadcast station with my second semester, in which I had not enough time anymore to work a whole day. Someday someone, whose name I only knew from advertisements, was calling me. He said that “Nordsachsen TV” was sold to a new group of business people and he is one of them. They changed the graphical design, relocated the station to Delitzsch and hired new workers. A lot of investments were made and new animations matching the new design were being required. So I came back in, drafted some of my ideas and got green light to realize them. Now I was also director, who instructed a camera man to get my visions to tape. Because of the large amount of animations I had work for some month. Here you can see one of the results: News.