There's something both wonderful and slightly terrifying about decades of film history being preserved because one person at an auction happened to notice a folder full of old CD-ROMs
I recall my first live action blockbuster I got a vfx job on, "Charlotte's Web".<p>Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) in Australia had pitched for Templeton, the rat. But Templeton had already been given to Tippet.<p>So RSP got the option to either take Charlotte, the spider, or get no work on the show at all. A scary proposition for a company of 20 people at the time that only done hard-surface work and no creatures until then. They hired a lot of people in a short period and I was lucky to be one of them.<p>The work coming out of Tippet we saw in the first dailies of Templeton intercut with our work was jaw-dropping. [1]<p>I also remember feeling weirdly proud to work on a show that had Tippet involed because of Star Wars ofc. But more so because of Starship Troopers which I love. I can't think of any other movie that manages to be an in-your-face critique of facism while at the same time scoring as a "quality" popcorn flic.<p>I recall Tippet's test footage for the Arachnids being on the Softimage showreel years before that movie was released. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYFQ9vVqiMA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYFQ9vVqiMA</a><p>[2] <a href="https://youtu.be/IPcFGleYsgs?t=73" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/IPcFGleYsgs?t=73</a>
Tippett Studios or Phil’s name should probably be in the title here to give this the audience it deserves. He’s a legend and many many nerds will know his name.
Due to AI I've been thinking a lot lately about his "I've just become extinct" quote.
Ah yes, the infamous Dinosaur Supervisor!<p><a href="https://www.cbr.com/jurassic-park-phil-tippett-dinosaur-supervisor-dislikes-meme/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbr.com/jurassic-park-phil-tippett-dinosaur-supe...</a>
Hosting 90GB on Internet Archive is step one. Mirroring the torrents is step two, before copyright lawyers notice the auction bypass. Seed it while it exists.
Anonymous hero rescues 90GB of content from CD binder spotted at auction. Beautiful.
Huge thanks to him. It’s a real shame that so much material in this world, for one reason or another, will never see the light of day.
Strange linking at Archive. Clicking on Tippet, gets you to a bunch of other people named Tippet.
I assume the stop-motion studio's troubles were because everyone has moved on to CGI.
This has Textfiles vibes.<p>EDIT: Yep: <a href="https://discmaster.textfiles.com/cd-rom?search=tippet" rel="nofollow">https://discmaster.textfiles.com/cd-rom?search=tippet</a>
this is great to see. Losing all that material to private collections would have been a shame. thanks to everyone who helped preserve and share it.
Direct Link to the digital archive at Internet Archive -<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/tippett-archive/" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/tippett-archive/</a>
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I think the context makes it clear. But, equally, you can argue that the CD format was physically locking the files to that binder, but now the data is digitised it is more easily accessed and shared.