The Triple-I Movie Project
I really don't feel qualified to say much about the Movie Project at Triple-I, or Information International, Inc. Triple-I was primarily in the business of making film scanning and printing equipment for the newspaper industry. In the early 80's, John Whitney Jr. and Gary Demos convinced Triple-I to convert one of their film recorders for use in motion pictures. They marketed their services as "Digital Scene Simulation", and did several spots for Mercedes, KCET, as well as much of the work in the film "TRON". My impression is that the shortcomings of the PFR-80 led to the development of the Digital Film Printer.


Whitney and Demos left Triple-I before TRON was done, and began setting up Digital Productions, using the Cray, the DFP, and with financing by Control Data Corp. Omnibus bought the F1 system from Triple-I in 1985, and that was my first exposure to it. One of the most amazing pieces Triple-I produced with the F1 was the famous scene of "Adam", or "The Juggler". A very primitive form of motion capture was done, painstakingly, frame by frame to capture live-action footage of an actual juggler, which was then digitized and applied to Adam. In the sequence, he juggles a three-dimensional cube, cone, and sphere, and in the end, dives into his hat. For its day, in 1983 or so, this was a truly amazing piece of work!

Note: This still appeared in the Omnibus Annual Report for 1984, and was taken from the Triple-I 4X5 files. Art Durinski pointed out that Adam's hands are blue in this still, not flesh-colored as in the final animation.

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Please email me for more info: dave@zfx.com