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Brian Wyvill and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Adagio from Sonata Pathétique
59 Plays1 year ago
Joe and Mark join Brian Wyvill, professor of computer science, computer graphics pioneer, rock climber, mountain climber, author and amateur musician (and Joe's brother-in-law) to talk about Ludwig van Beethoven's Adagio from Sonata Pathétique and how it's featured in his writing. They also discuss software he's developing to help writers, and top the conversation off with Brian's story of how he and his team created the first ever computer animation to be featured in a Hollywood film, in Ridley Scott's Alien.
For more information about this episode, please visit the show notes.
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner.
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Favorite Extreme Sports
00:00:08
Speaker
Mark, how are you? Joe, I have a question for you. That's unlike you? I know. What's your favorite extreme sport? It's got to be extreme like with an X. My favorite extreme sport? Extreme. Oh, goodness. You know what? Your questions are getting harder and harder. I'm just getting more desperate.
00:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, extreme. Well, I saw something on an episode of Lost in Space recently, like the new version of Lost in Space. Okay. And what it is is you tether yourself to a large balloon and then elevate yourself into the stratosphere.
Meet Brian Wyville
00:00:45
Speaker
And then once you're up there, you basically you jump and then it's yeah, it's like and then you're like free falling from space.
00:00:54
Speaker
That's interesting. I'm presumably they wearing some kind of pressure suit and they're prepared for that. All the things you're going to face. Yes, yes. What about a parachute? Well, that takes the challenge out of it, Brian. Does it open? Not in the stratosphere. I guess not. No, our guest today, Brian Wyville, is someone who I think would do that.
00:01:20
Speaker
That's why I asked this question, yeah. Oh, ask me, ask me. Hanging out, yeah, what's your favorite extreme sport?
00:01:26
Speaker
Well, obviously rock climbing, but I did just get back from Mexico where I was scuba diving with sharks. It was wonderful. Nice. Like, it's all theoretical when you ask me what extreme sport, but when you ask Brian Wyville, it's not theoretical. He actually does it. I had a feeling, yeah. Why did you have that feeling? I think I saw a picture of Brian hanging off a cliff or something and I figured it wasn't a metaphor. It's fairly normal. So, I had a feeling. And what kind of sharks were you swimming with?
00:01:55
Speaker
Oh, we swam with a variety of rays, including an eagle spotted ray. And he was enormous, like more than two metres across. And there was a couple of nurse sharks of also six or seven feet long, just swam by kind of, you know, they looked a bit bored, actually, bits of diver hanging out of their mouths.
00:02:18
Speaker
If they'd already fed, so, yeah, no danger there. Yeah, they were full. They were no problem. We should give Brian to introduce himself as we like
Books and Creativity
00:02:27
Speaker
to do. Okay, sure. I'm Brian, Brian Weivell. I'm very old and have done an awful lot of stuff in my life. How old are you? But young and hard? Well, I'm 10 years older than it says on Facebook. There's a clue. Because I cheated on Facebook. I didn't want people to know how old I was.
00:02:47
Speaker
Is Methuselah in the pull-down when you can choose, you know, your age? Yeah. You're not going to tell us what you are. Well, no, I mean, I married your sister. You would think that she's made a great mistake if I really told you. That could be the end of the relationship. How old are you? What?
00:03:04
Speaker
So Brian is, normally we don't introduce our guests, but I will introduce you. I'll make an exception in this case a little bit. Brian is my brother-in-law, but a very creative person and for that reason belongs on this podcast. But I will say that although he may consider himself old, he is in fact one of the most youthful people I know. Thank you. That's what your sister says too. We should just put it quite like that.
00:03:27
Speaker
But yeah, you have climbed mountains, you do tons of rock climbing, you're extremely fit and you mentioned scuba diving and yeah, so you're extremely youthful and energetic as far as I'm concerned and very creative because one of the reasons that we invited you into this podcast is because you are an author. Tell us about your writing.
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, I've written two books, one of which was published by Thunderchild Publishing. It's kind of in the time slip naval history era, and I like to say it's the intersection between Dana Gabaldon's Outlander and Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. It kind of hits that sweet spot where I bring back
00:04:13
Speaker
travelers from the modern times to go and one of them what's trying to change history, make Napoleon win so that Canada speaks French in the 21st century. Something Bundy day. And so I've read this twice and it is a fantastic book and I have no doubt that the next one will be even better. Oh, it's much. I know you're working on.
00:04:31
Speaker
My last book is about traveling through multiple dimensions. One of the ways they can define the world is if it's a Napoleon world or not. So, whether Napoleon won in that one. You can always tell by the alcohol. If there's whiskey, then he didn't win. If there's nothing but brandy, yeah, he won.
00:04:52
Speaker
I've got to read that book. We should compare notes. Joe mentioned that he wanted me to talk about something artistic.
Beethoven in Fiction
00:05:00
Speaker
One of the other things that I do, probably not half as well as Joe, is play the piano. His sister actually is a piano teacher.
00:05:08
Speaker
I did learn quite a lot from her. In fact, she taught me for an entire six months before she said I should go and find a new piano teacher or a new wife, and I figured that finding a new piano teacher was slightly easier, you know, so I chose that option. You'll be pleased to know. And what the artistic thing that I would pick for today is Beethoven, because in my latest book, my hero, heroin, I should say, goes back to 1798,
00:05:36
Speaker
where she ends up in Vienna in a big spy story and actually has to play the piano in front of Beethoven in order to get these secret plans which are hidden in the red folder sitting on his piano. Now, is there any particular piece from Beethoven that you want to talk about? Oh, yes. Well, one of my favorites, the piano sonatas are absolutely wonderful, all 32 of them.
00:05:57
Speaker
But the pathetique for me has a very distinct meaning, and it just so happens he wrote the pathetique in 1798. The second movement is the slightly easier movement, which I have managed to be able to play. I'm not saying that well, but you know, I can get through it. And my heroine plays the piano an awful lot better than me, fortunately, so she is able to play it in front of Beethoven.
00:06:24
Speaker
There's a slight snag. He hasn't actually yet written it. So there is a bit of an issue during this session. I don't know if you find that in your books as well, Mark, when people are just a little ahead of their time in that sense. Yeah, they're not really time travel books, no. But I have written a few alternate history books. So in those stories, so in those stories for sure, then yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
you got to get the things exactly right and you could mess up very badly. Well, it's very interesting, although it was not actually published until 1799. He wrote it in 1798. But it turns out that he was still working on it when she plays it to him. So he is familiar with it, but not in the exact form, of course, that she plays it to him. So she's maybe helped him refine the composition.
00:07:15
Speaker
Exactly. Well, there's a guy called Swofford, who's an American author, who's written an absolutely wonderful book on Beethoven. And there's a little quote I put in there, because it turns out that the pianist Charles Neat, an English pianist, said in, I think it was something like 1815 when he met Beethoven, that Beethoven has told him that his deafness
00:07:41
Speaker
comes from meeting with a singer and a quarrel that subsequently arose, which he fell to the floor, had a terrible fit, and his deafness was marked from that point in 1798.
Beethoven's Challenges
00:07:55
Speaker
So of course, this incident occurs in my book because
00:08:01
Speaker
my heroine is actually introduced to him as a singer. And when he hears a play, the second movement of the Pasatec sonata, he actually goes crazy and has a bit of a fit at her, falls to the floor. And she is responsible for his deafness, in fact. Well, that anticipates that question. I was going to say, is this pre or before or after he lost his hearing? And it's a great, it's a plot point, even. It's a plot point. Yeah, of course, she feels terrible. Biggest faux pas in history, she calls it.
00:08:31
Speaker
Is this the adagio from Sanatapat the tikras? Is that something different? Yeah, this is the slow move. It is the adagio. Right. Okay. Now, is that the... Can you hum a few bars for us?
00:08:44
Speaker
I could, but I'm a little hoarse today. I've been singing Palestrina for the last three months, which is very hard to sing. My wife got in, your sister got me into it, and it's really actually been very hard on my voice. I've had to actually resort to having singing lessons.
00:09:02
Speaker
It's terribly hard on me. I'm sorry, you've been singing what? Palestrina. What is that? Oh, he's an old guy that wrote amazing choral music. And he wrote it in a way that's very, if you played modern piano and you read this music, you'll be horrified by it. None of the bars add up to the right numbers. And anyway, they didn't have bars. And
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's before they had that technology, yeah. Exactly. And so why have you been singing this? She made me. My sister made you. So, she wouldn't teach you piano anymore and then she made you start singing 14th century choral music.
00:09:44
Speaker
She wanted to join the Linden Singers here in Victoria, which are very highfalutin choir. And I had to do an audition to get in. So I knew I would never, they'd never pass me. And by some miracle, I mean, they obviously accepted her. She's a real musician. But by some miracle, they accepted me too, which meant I had to suddenly put my money where my mouth was, as it were. So immediately went out and got singing lessons. Okay, okay. Let's get back to the piece that you've chosen. What have you learned?
00:10:13
Speaker
Well I've learned a lot about Beethoven and actually I feel very much more sorry for the guy than ever before because he spent most of his life sick and he battled with all sorts of issues like being deaf which was for most musicians I think would be the end of their careers but it didn't seem to slow Beethoven down the door.
00:10:36
Speaker
And he never had much success with women. People call him ugly, but all the paintings I've seen don't seem to portray him as that ugly. But definitely he didn't pay too much attention to his appearance and the usual things of hygiene that perhaps the modern composer might be more concerned about. I feel that he had a very, very hard life.
00:11:02
Speaker
Obviously he was an amazing genius in the modern sense, not in the original German sense apparently, so Mr Swafford tells us. But I think he had a terribly hard time of it and came through with music that has lasted for 250 years and is probably going to last another 250 years.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think he's an amazing composer. My guy's Mozart, I wrote a book about Mozart. So my question actually was about the piano because one of the things I remember reading about when I was doing my research on Mozart was when he started really, there weren't really modern pianos yet. They were just inventing them.
00:11:44
Speaker
But by the time Beethoven came around, they were modern pianos, is that right? More like the modern piano. I mean, the piano forte, probably missing a couple of octaves, you know, when you look at the piano that Beethoven played. Here in Victoria, there is a recreation of a Beethoven piano, and it actually has the sustain pedal on your knees, little flaps on your knees. Really? And it's missing a couple of octaves, but I've actually played it.
00:12:14
Speaker
Oh, that's so cool. So how long after Mozart was Beethoven? Oh, they met. They lived in the same era. Mozart lived between 1756 and 1791. So he was alive for the first couple of years of the French Revolution.
00:12:32
Speaker
So he wouldn't have seen the rise of Napoleon. Napoleon was a general. Even in 1798, he was off battling in North Africa and Egypt, trying to find a way to attack the British in India, which he was defeated at the Battle of Acre. But he came back in 1799.
00:12:53
Speaker
and then took over the directoire. This is Beethoven, did all this? No, Beethoven did do that. Beethoven was a very talented guy. That was after he'd already basically conquered Italy. Oh yeah, he conquered Italy. Not Beethoven.
00:13:15
Speaker
Okay, so in your work of fiction, your protagonist met Beethoven in 1798. Yes. So how long did, when did Beethoven die? 1827. Beethoven did meet Mozart, but I think it was as far as Mozart was concerned. Beethoven was some young hotshot and there were lots of young hotshots around. So Mozart
Writing with Scene Wizard
00:13:40
Speaker
wasn't overly impressed.
00:13:41
Speaker
Now, tell us more about the piece that you're interested in. Well, the piece is known to be one of Beethoven's most beautiful melodies, and that's certainly something that I take from it. It is an astoundingly beautiful melody. Of course, the sonata form was well established when it came out. It's his eighth piano sonata.
00:14:05
Speaker
And he wrote two others that year as well. But this was the first of what was known as the Grand Sonata. And it certainly was a step up from everything else. If I had my piano here, I could play the first couple of chords of the first movement, which are, you know, I mean, they're not quite Beethoven's fifth, but they're on that same dramatic line, just amazing with the wonderful timing on these giant chords that he opens the first movement with.
00:14:35
Speaker
But the second movement is much softer, much quieter and has its own little dramas in it that just pursues this theme. It recapitulates the theme a couple of times and then the last section revisits the theme but this time is playing it in triplets, which is a challenge for especially amateur pianists like myself to
00:14:57
Speaker
really, really bring that melody out and keep your left hand quiet. It's always a problem, you know, on the modern piano. Does it have other meaning? Like, was there another layer of meaning for Beethoven in the piece that you know of? For Beethoven? Well, let's see. In 1798, an awful lot of his music he was writing to impress various women.
00:15:18
Speaker
And of course, people that might actually finance him. And now, to be clear, he was just in his 20s at this time, right? Yeah, he was a young man. Yeah. So, it's not like he was like, you know, 77 years old trying to impress all these. Yeah. No, no, he was trying to impress women because he was desperate to find a wife and that was pretty well true right throughout his time in Vienna.
00:15:41
Speaker
He had something, of course, there's the episode of The Immortal Beloved, which has been fictionalised in the movies. But it was the only time when there was any real potential for him finding a real partner that is recorded in history. And according to Swofford, there were three women who could have been The Immortal Beloved, and there's a series of letters and so forth that have been preserved. And I can't remember their names, so don't ask me.
00:16:12
Speaker
So did he not find a wife then? No, never did. At least Mozart got married.
00:16:17
Speaker
So you referenced ill health. What was the nature of his ill health? Well, that's very interesting. He died of an enormous long list of issues and people credit his deafness to various things. But he did visit brothels and so forth because it was the only real outlet for him in those days. And it is likely that he probably contracted some nasty disease as well as
00:16:42
Speaker
Well, all the water ran through lead pipes back then, so it is highly likely he was severely poisoned by the lead, whether that caused the death in his slot, I'm not sure. I was going to ask a question about, again, I'm thinking about Mozart, my boy, and just comparing mentally. And so one of the reasons that people attribute his early death to is not poison, as they would have believed in that movie, but
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, which is a great movie, by the way. It's just not great. It's that he spent so much of his life traveling. And that was just such a difficult thing to do, even in Europe, to travel because this is before there were trains, right? So, you're going by horse if you're lucky. If you're really lucky, you're in a carriage. And so, just the physical acts of traveling and all of the stuff that you get exposed to from city to city.
00:17:36
Speaker
So, did Beethoven do much traveling in his life? I mean, he traveled from, he visited Vienna as a younger man from Bonn and then he visited Vienna again and stayed there when he was slightly older. And
00:17:52
Speaker
never kept saying he was going to go to England, but never did. He did travel out of the city, but there was a war going on. Napoleon invaded Vienna twice. One of Beethoven's mentors was Haydn. He actually took counterpoint
00:18:10
Speaker
lessons from Haydn. Apparently he wasn't a great student either. So there was, and of course Haydn was the big name of the day, but he lived in Vienna and apparently his house was shelled or shells fell very close to his house and he died shortly after Napoleon dropped shells on him. So there you go. Well that will do it.
00:18:33
Speaker
Now it's interesting Mark that you mentioned Mozart because- I frame a reference is so strongly associated with them. That's why I'm just- because I know I love Beethoven's music as well. I just don't know that much about the man. Well, apparently this piece that Brian is bringing forth is believed to have possibly been influenced by the work of Mozart. Really?
00:18:55
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Well, all his, I think his work was influenced by Mozart and by Haydn, by everybody around him. It would be hard not to be. He did something new. Yeah. He did something new. He went one beyond.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, if you think about it, I mean, it makes sense that he wouldn't really leave Vienna because that was the center of the world in terms of what was happening with music right then. And it was for a little while. It was there when Mozart was there and certainly when Beethoven was. So it kind of makes sense that there would be some influence. They're very different composers.
00:19:29
Speaker
One of the things about the piano sonatas, if you take one of the later sonatas, it's the D major sonata, and I can't remember which number it is, there's second or third movement, and it starts off with this beautiful minor key rumble in the bass line, which is very much one of these arpeggiated basses. And then you suddenly get
00:19:52
Speaker
in the middle of the movement, this kind of middle section where if I'd heard a modern jazz player play the same thing as part of his improvisation, I'd have totally believed it was written in the 21st century or the 20th century. Interesting. Amazing. These little bits of jazz come out of Beethoven. Of course, they invented a lot of stuff, those guys.
00:20:15
Speaker
That's so great. And I really love that the piece is a plot point in the book, your book, that's really, that's such a direct line in terms of the inspiration and the art that it creates.
00:20:27
Speaker
Oh, very, very key. But Mark, I'm intrigued on your book. What made you write a book on Mozart? Oh, no, you've trapped me. I have to say that it's because I lived in Prague and I promised I would never say I lived in Prague. Did you set this up with Joe beforehand? Oh, I lived down the street literally from where he wrote Don Giovanni.
00:20:56
Speaker
He would leave the city at the time. So Smikov was the little village. But when I was there, it was part of the city. But the Bertramco was a little vineyard and villa that he retreated to. And that's where he wrote most of Don Giovanni. So I really felt like the Prague claims him as much as Vienna does or Salzburg does. So his face is plastered everywhere. So that's what inspired me to use him as a character.
00:21:26
Speaker
Now, Brian may not realize that listeners of this podcast have to drink every time Mark references Prague in this podcast. I haven't mentioned Prague in at least 10 episodes. I figured this was a trap. So dangerous. As soon as we got out of Mozart, I knew Prague was going to come out.
00:21:48
Speaker
But now, so Brian, did this piece inspire that section in your novel or were you writing that section and had to come up with a piece and chose this one? Well, it was just serendipity. It was already a piece I played on the piano and absolutely loved it.
00:22:08
Speaker
I would love to be able to play the first movement, but I'm not sure I can get my left hand going fast enough for page two. I looked up the publication dates and found out he was writing this in 1798.
00:22:23
Speaker
and it exactly fitted with the timeline that had already been fixed because of the first book, so this is the second of the series. So the dates were fixed when she was going to be in Vienna, according to the plot, which is already kind of well underway. I mean, I don't know how you write, Mark, but I'm definitely a panzer.
00:22:44
Speaker
And I love that moment, especially in the first draft, when suddenly something unexpected happens because the characters do what they damn well like. They do something which is so unexpected and she goes to Vienna for Christ's sake. What can I do with that? Over the mountains in the male coach, I should point out, that's a tough journey in 1798. She does get weight laid by high women. Of course, that's what happens back then.
00:23:14
Speaker
I'm a pantser too now. I used to plot it a lot more, but now I'm a pantser. But even when I was a plotter or a plotter, some of my critics might say, I would say that those moments when your characters just take a life on their own, they do their own thing, are the best moments because that's when you go, oh, I didn't think of that. That's interesting. Okay, that might be a better way to go. My characters know something I don't. Of course they do. They do what's in character. Yeah, exactly.
00:23:42
Speaker
And just for the sake of us, any listeners who may not know, so a pantser by the seat of your pants that's coming up at the plot as you go along as opposed to working it all out beforehand. There's two schools and then there's variations between the two. I saw a pantser plotter alignment chart describing, you know, the six or nine different, you know, places you could be in there because people sometimes describe themselves as plantsers now halfway between a plotter and a pantser.
00:24:13
Speaker
That was like a lawful neutral. Yeah, basically like the plant the neutrals with the planters and yes
00:24:20
Speaker
Now, I should actually, in terms of working out the plot of your book, mention that Brian has actually invented software to help authors do that. Tell us about that, Brian. Oh, well, I was finding that my books, especially both books, had rather complicated plots. I love complicated plots and told from multiple points of view. So you get different takes on what's going on.
00:24:46
Speaker
And these involved plots sometimes had, because of the different characters telling the story, sometimes had jumps in time as well. So things weren't necessarily told linearly in the order in which they occur, because I had several timelines going on at the same time. And it makes for kind of interesting, more interesting reading in my humble opinion.
00:25:11
Speaker
And so keeping track of it from point of view, the author is really quite an issue. You've got to really have it all organized. So I looked at all the software that was out there.
00:25:23
Speaker
And none of it actually took any notice of what you'd written in your book. All it did was allow you to make notes. And none of them had any kind of notion of chronological order and the order in which the reader read the book. So very much they would written these pieces of software, visualise things as the reader would see it.
00:25:47
Speaker
And I figured out, well actually I want to visualize these things as the author. I don't care what the reader sees, well I do, but I want to see what the author sees because it's not necessarily the way I'm going to tell the story, but it's very important. I know exactly what happens chronologically to every character in the book. So I wrote a visualizer for that.
00:26:09
Speaker
and time stamped every scene so I could change it to chronological or indeed have it come out in a visualization that shows what the reader sees. So it's useful for readers too and it's also the author needs to see how it's going to be presented to the reader.
00:26:29
Speaker
The other visualization I added later was the thought that actually there's also story threads. If you imagine Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship, where these guys get together, and then they all split off and go their separate ways. We follow each story, so each one represents a different story thread built around that character.
00:26:50
Speaker
You can now stamp your scenes with which thread they can belong to, so they could belong to multiple threads. As you see the threads, you can see how they split and merge. It's really useful if you've got a complex story.
00:27:08
Speaker
I think it might also be useful for readers who want to later analyse the book to be able to see what the author's thinking was and see how a book might appear in chronological order. So my dream is to get this, although I am distributed to the stopwatch called Scene Wizard, if you go to www.scenewizard.com, you'll probably see under construction at the moment, but there will be a new release of the software coming out this year. It's all very musical too, isn't it?
00:27:36
Speaker
in the sense that, you know, the way that motifs repeat and how you have threads in a composition and how they echo and come back and yeah, that's kind of neat. Oh yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Can I use that in the advertisement? Yeah, sure you can. Go for it. How's the take up been on that? Here on the West Coast, we have something called the Creative Academy, which was started by Eileen Cook, who teaches at the SFU Creative Writing.
00:28:04
Speaker
of course in Vancouver, Crystal Hunt and Dona Barca all great, written some wonderful books, also on craft as well as books on their fiction books. But they started this sort of support group for authors and it's grown to the last time I saw there was about 1500 members I think.
00:28:27
Speaker
For me, it gives me access to all these people who can test out my software. So I've had some pretty good feedback and responses for them. And now we're on a development stage to improve the user interface. All software has to have better user interfaces, but I wanted to improve the user interface to make it more reachable to people who are less nerd like than I am. I've been a total geek, the ex-computer science professor. It's hard for me to understand why people can't do it.
00:29:00
Speaker
I have a question for you. I do have stuff for characters too. I sometimes have this problem where I can't remember the characters eye color.
00:29:10
Speaker
You know, like, is it blue? I'm pretty sure I said blue. You know, those kinds of little details, continuity details that eventually you do catch in your edits, but it'd be so much easier to go, I'll just consult my database and see what it says. You describe each character with all those characteristics. One of the things that took me all of like 30 seconds to program
00:29:33
Speaker
which the authors think is the best thing since sliced bread, you can put the date of birth down for every character. So in any scene, you could see how old they are. Now, time travel messes that up a bit, I might point out. But the other thing that happens is that if you're passing artifacts or information, as you do in spy novel, for example, you can see at any one point exactly who's come into contact with that information.
00:30:02
Speaker
So you're on scene 97 and you want to know who has seen this particular secret document, you get a list of all the characters who've had contact with it and could have read it. That's fabulous. I find really useful. I'm going to drift even further away from Beethoven now.
From Animation to Alien
00:30:23
Speaker
Because before we started recording this podcast, Brian related to a story about his encounter with the director Ridley Scott. And I think we would be remiss in wrapping up this podcast before letting everybody know about this. And we actually mentioned Brian in a previous podcast when we were talking about the creation of the movie Alien. Brian, tell us about your involvement with the movie Alien and your encounter with the director Ridley Scott.
00:30:47
Speaker
I was finished my PhD in computer science and got a job at the Royal College of Arts working for a guy called George Mellon who ran a company called System Simulation.
00:31:01
Speaker
is a very forward-looking computer guy, simulation guy. He started this company and one of the things they were really keen on doing was getting computer animation out there because it was pretty primitive in the late 70s. He'd managed to negotiate a contract with 20th Century Fox
00:31:21
Speaker
to supply some sequences for alien which was what was going on on the screens in the spaceship Nostromo and the first thing you see of course is the distress signal comes in from the alien planet and there's a whole bunch of simulations of the orbit of the Nostromo as it comes into orbit around the planet.
00:31:47
Speaker
Indeed, land on the planet. And of course, that's when all the trouble starts and things come in. For the listeners benefit, Brian is waving his hand around in a claw-like fashion. He's doing a very believable alien pupae or whatever that's called. Totally stoked. With accompanying facial expressions.
00:32:08
Speaker
Anyway, of course finding a computer big enough with an output device that would actually output a 35mm film in the late 70s was pretty tricky. There was a machine called the FR-80 which was a vector film plotter and would project right on to 35mm.
00:32:30
Speaker
And so we were lucky enough to be able to use one at the Rutherford Laboratory government run lab in Ditka, Oxfordshire. And we would spend weeks at a time up there getting our computer animation system working. I worked with a guy called Colin Emmett, who was a genius animator.
00:32:53
Speaker
a programmer but not a self-taught programmer. You could certainly write software. I was kind of there to make sure that it worked basically. I had a little sanity. And we together developed this system which outputs our animation sequences to the film plotter.
00:33:15
Speaker
Now it turned out that I'd been brought on slightly later in the development of the animation that was going on. They were a bit worried that we were behind in the timeline that the 20th Century Fox had set for the movie. So we were called one day into the studio to show the rushes of what we'd done to
00:33:37
Speaker
Ridley Scott, and it was a big moment. They decided they could choose the mad artist Colin, or the crazy computer scientist Brian, and they decided I was the lesser of the two evils, I think, to actually display to Ridley Scott. Even though I think Colin would have talked his language much more, but Colin was a fabulous artist. I think Colin could have talked to him better than I could have in many ways. But anyway, they chose the geek.
00:34:03
Speaker
So I went along and as I mentioned earlier, I was paid £7 an hour, which in those days was an absolute fortune. It's the most I ever earned in my life and in relative terms, probably even as a computer science professor never got paid that much. So we went along and we were kept waiting seven or even eight hours at the studio on the outskirts of London.
00:34:28
Speaker
This was fabulous, I was being paid every hour I was there. Of course, my boss George Mallon was completely up in arms about this because his time was worth a lot more than mine. But eventually Richard Scott turned up familiar with these things. And Richard Scott is British, but he'd done a lot of work in the US and of course had somewhat of what we refer to as a transatlantic
00:34:54
Speaker
accent and he'd say status instead of status which a Brit would say and he'd also he'd interchange the words logic and logistics. So he looked at the rashes and said he wanted it to be zero and
00:35:10
Speaker
more stuff on the screen and the logistics of this is that he wants more logic statements coming out to make it look like a computer had done it. Anyway, I took this to heart and went back and added some
00:35:25
Speaker
graphics around the edges and you'll see this if you zoom in and I should incidentally just point out that although we did have in written in the contract that system simulation would get a mention in the credits this never actually happened but it was okay because I made sure my name was mentioned but I did put system
00:35:48
Speaker
BL some numbers changing OB blob because that was my login ID on the UNIX system back then. And your nickname. And also my nickname in the rock climbing fraternity. Anyway, so I put system BL these numbers changing OB and then logistic status and a flag that went on.
00:36:11
Speaker
You know, just like that. So a stealth credit in the movie Alien. A stealth credit in the movie. And you can see this if you watch the beginning of the movie, just up to the point, you know, before that. Before that. And did you ever get word? Was he? The lunch we'll never forget. Yes. Yeah. And so did you ever get word that he was happy with the final result or?
00:36:33
Speaker
Um, no, actually, I don't, we ever got that feedback, but I mean, except that I guess if it made the final cut, it did make the final cut and it comes full screen on the big screen. And really it was the first Hollywood movie that had any amount of computer generated animation on it. I mean, people talk about Tron and Tron was much more advanced in terms of the animation that was shown, but alien preceded Tron by a couple of years, I think. Yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
Are you saying that the first computer animation in a Hollywood movie was computer animation that you made? Yeah, I guess so. And a number of others were on the team. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Congratulations. That's neat. All that means is I'm old.
00:37:24
Speaker
And now we have some idea how old you are. Yeah, there you go. I was very young in 1979. So yeah, he did all this when he was six years old. Ladies and gentlemen, that's Brian Wyville. Brian, any final thoughts on Beethoven? Well, I love Beethoven. I have a fabulous piano teacher at the moment and I hope to be able to play all three moments of the Pathetique one of these days. My dream before I get to 90.
00:37:51
Speaker
You'll get that left hand under control. No, I don't. I enjoyed this immensely. This was a delight. Thank you very much for being on our podcast, Recreative.
00:38:28
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity. Talking to creative people from every walk of life about the art that inspires them. And you're probably wondering, how can I support this podcast? I am wondering, Joe, how can I support this podcast? I mean, apart from being on it.
00:38:45
Speaker
There's no advertisements in this podcast. There's no tip jars. There's nothing about, like, buying us a coffee or anything like that. But there is a way that you can support us. And what is that? They could buy our books. And how do they find us? Recreative.ca. Don't forget the hyphen. There's a hyphen in there. Re-creative. I took your line, sorry. Well, because I stole your line. So, yes. Re-creative.ca. Janks. Oh, yeah. I stole your line again.
00:39:12
Speaker
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