Fandom for Mark Schubin

Mark Schu­bin pon­ders.

Over the years, jour­nal­ists and tech geeks have learned to turn an avid ear when­ever Mark Schu­bin rises to ask a ques­tion. At the trade shows, his tar­get usu­ally includes those in upper man­age­ment of Sony, Pana­sonic, and any num­ber of other man­u­fac­tur­ers of video gear who, lick­ing their lips in ner­vous antic­i­pa­tion, have learned to respect ques­tions from this bearded, Hawai­ian panted and sandal-shod savant–for those inno­cent sound­ing queries often punc­ture their care­fully crafted mar­ket­ing mes­sages. Schu­bin, we have all learned, knows the his­tory, physics, and engi­neer­ing behind most video devices—and audio, cin­ema, and who knows what else–better than most any­one you can find who talks about this stuff for a living.

So even though today’s pre­sen­ta­tion The Fan­dom of the Opera began at the unnec­es­sar­ily early hour of 7:30am, I was there at the Sam­sung show­room in the Time Warner Cen­ter on time, and eager to hear the sched­uled talk. Bill Sobel, of Sobel­Me­dia, pro­duced.

Schu­bin, a multiple-Emmy-winning SMPTE Fel­low, is the engineer-in-charge of the Met Opera’s media depart­ment; he’s the techie behind their now wildly suc­cess­ful The Met: Live in HD broad­casts. But as usual, his slide show and talk wasn’t some dry dron­ing of facts about the his­tory of media tech­nol­ogy, but dense with odd bits of knowl­edge gleaned from his exten­sive research. Did you know that the first opera sync sound movies were shown in 1900, some 27 years before the first such accred­ited movie, The Jazz Singer? Or that an 1886 patent was granted for the use of ani­mated movies for back­ground pro­jec­tions dur­ing opera per­for­mances, even as Edi­son and W.K.L. Dick­son were work­ing on their first cam­era system?

These and a bar­rage of other intrigu­ing facts and insights are avail­able from Schubin’s web­site, Schu­bin Café. While you don’t get the ben­e­fit of his witty com­ments, at his site you should still be able to find a down­load of the exten­sive PDF of the lec­ture. Check out the other down­loads, and the daily blogs, too; you’ll always find intrigu­ing, fun to read, tech insights.

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