and hardest for text in Greek.
Format Vol.10 №10 (June 1997) pp.21-22.
All these ventures were relatively straightforward compared to the attention to detail required for the most spectacular commercial produced by Aardman in this period – an ad for the innovative Enterprise 64 computer, which had been developed by a British company called Intelligent Software. It boasted a 64-kilobyte memory (a lot in those days!), and the advertising agency wanted to stress its modern, groundbreaking qualities with a commercial that compared it to other computers, which would now seem obsolete.The Enterprise 64 production was another indication that the workload for Aardman was beyond Peter and David alone. Neither of them would boast that they were born salesmen or businessmen, and around this time they started taking on employees.Peter and David had also just hired their first animator-employee, a young man named Richard Goleszowski, who had just graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Exeter College of Art and Design. He had specialised in animation, of course. Twenty-three years old, of Polish ancestry, he was smart, creative and intuitive. He had a sardonic sense of humour and talent to burn. In later years, he changed his name to Richard Starzak, though in Aardman circles, where he enjoys almost legendary status, he is universally known as ‘Golly’. He seemed to fit in with the company ethic from the word go.Golly played a crucial role in the look of the Enterprise 64 commercial. The ad agency had had the idea of representing older computers as skeletons. Golly sketched his version of a modern museum, sleek and abstract with black granite-style plinths, and inspired the idea of placing the old skeletal computers on the plinths in stark contrast to the Enterprise64.To the accompaniment of the old spiritual song ‘Dem Bones’, these ancient skeletal computers prance around the modern museum; one of them literally crumbles into dust. The voiceover emphasises the point: ‘Some home computers are already obsolescent – their memory limited, their performance slow.’And then came the punchline: ‘The Enterprise 64 . . . could be obsolescence, built out.’ It very well could have been, but, in a savage twist of fate, the company behind the Enterprise 64 – which doubled its memory and became the Enterprise 128 – went broke around the time the commercial was first broadcast.Still, that was no comment on the quality of Aardman’s work, which was widely praised. It had been an incredibly complex commercial to shoot, requiring a twenty-strong crew – including (among others) a director of photography, a camera operator, focus puller, four modeller-puppeteers, a producer, floor manager and two set riggers, not to mention Pete, Dave – and Golly, who animated it. Aardman received ?35,000 for it – an astronomical sum in those days. (Peter and David had submitted a budget of ?15,000 to the agency, only to be gently told by the agency producer that it was not enough to produce the commercial. She revised it for them and more than doubled it.)To put this amount in context, and to highlight the difference between the worlds of television and advertising, Peter and David had shot an entire series of The Amazing Adventures of Morph – twenty-six episodes totalling 130 minutes of film – for ?60,000. Now they were receiving ?35,000 for a thirty-second commercial. They shook their heads in bewilderment,but they couldn’t deny they were rather pleased.
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Playing with a Dragon32 core for the Mister FPGA Ron has found this game:
Lansay, Enterprise et les autres: un beau produitQu'on l'appelle le Lansay, l'Enterprise, ou «celui qui vient d'outre-Manche», cet appareil est un bel exemple d'informatique intégrée avec cet extraordinaire «tour de périphériques» que vient de lancer le constructeur pour l'accompagner. Double unité de disquettes au design chic, extension mémoire de 64 Ko en forme de piste d'atterrissage, sans oublier modem, disque dur et synthétiseur de parole, rien ne manque et en plus l'ensemble est, pour une fois, compact et séduisant. Comme quoi, avec un peu de bonne volonté, on peut éviter l'amoncellement monstrueux de fils et branchements.
Again that rare EP version for left-handed at photo.