Michael Rubin | |
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Occupation |
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Alma mater | Brown University |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Years active | 1982–present |
Notable works |
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Children | 2 |
Relatives |
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Website | |
neomodern |
Michael Rubin is an American author, educator and photographer. Author of the 2005 book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution which chronicles the early days of Lucasfilm and Pixar, Rubin began writing books in college. His first book was published in 1982 about video gaming followed by his 1984 book Computer Gardening Made Simple.
Growing up in Gainesville, Florida, Rubin graduated from Brown University in 1985. After college, Rubin worked for Lucasfilm which introduced him to film editing and related emerging technologies, specifically nonlinear editing. In 1991 he wrote Nonlinear: A Guide to Digital Film and Video Editing followed later by several editing textbooks.
In 1993 Rubin co-founded a do-it-yourself ceramics chain then later held senior product positions at Netflix and Adobe. In 2016 Rubin left Adobe to pursue photographic interest and is a fine art photographer who teaches photography workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Rubin grew up in Gainesville, Florida, the son of Melvin Rubin, an ophthalmologist, and Lorna ( née' Isen), [1] owner of a small publishing business. [2] His grandfather was Albert Isen, former mayor of Torrance, California. [3] His brother, Danny Rubin, is a screenwriter and sister Gabrielle, a visual artist. [2] Rubin was taught darkroom and photographic effects by family friend Jerry N. Uelsmann, whom Rubin credits for introducing his family to fine art photography. [4]
Rubin was featured in a 1984 United Press International article for submitting a nude photo of himself with a carefully placed fig leaf in response to Brown University's college application request to "use this space to give us as complete a picture of yourself as possible." [5] [6] He was subsequently featured on December 20, 1984's cover of USA Today for the article "Brown may be 'Hottest' Campus". [7]
Rubin graduated from Brown University with a degree in neuroscience in 1985. [2]
While a freshman, Rubin wrote Defending the Galaxy: The Complete Handbook of Video Gaming in 1982, one of the first comprehensive books about coin-operated arcade video games. A satire, the book covers various genres and game play and also the social and cultural aspects of gaming. In the 2014 book Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife, Raford Guins noted "Rubin's book also addresses (often in a colorful manner) the experience of these games within their varied public environments". [8] Video game columnist Rawson Stovall described the book as "unique". [9] The book and author were each featured in Twin Galaxies trading cards. [10] [11]
In 1984, as a junior, he produced the humorous Computer Gardening Made Simple under the pen name Chip DeJardin, a how-to guide coming complete with two "seeds" (computer chips). The 31-page book received national attention, being reviewed by Playboy and The Los Angeles Times among others, after Rubin targeted several reviewers sending them a copy in handwritten envelopes with personalized notes. [6] Describing the book, Art Seidenbaum of the Los Angeles Times stated "Admirers of the British Broadcasting Co. may be reminded of the brilliant BBC documentary showing agricultural Italians in colorful dress cutting strips of spaghetti from glorious pasta trees." [12]
After college Rubin joined Lucasfilm's Droid Works as a marketing specialist on the SoundDroid (an early digital audio workstation) and EditDroid, an analog nonlinear editing (NLE) system. When Lucasafilm closed The Droid Works in 1987, he joined his former-bosses at The Droid Works in their digital audio start-up Sonic Solutions. Shortly after he joined CMX Systems as the product manager of the CMX 6000, another LaserDisc-based nonlinear editing system. While at CMX, Rubin assisted on projects using the technology, including the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky. [13] A member of the Motion Pictures Editor's Guild (IATSE), Rubin trained Guild members nonlinear editing. Later, he is credited with cutting the first TV show using the Avid, She-Wolf of London before working with Apple's Final Cut Pro. [14]
An ardent nonlinear editing proponent, Rubin wrote the first edition of Nonlinear: a guide to digital film and video editing in 1991, which popularized the term "nonlinear editing" [15] and was used in film schools and in Hollywood as the industry transitioned from celluloid to digital. There were four editions between 1991 and 2001. [16]
He created AFI's first academic online course for Fathom, a joint venture including Columbia University and the AFI, "Introduction to Digital Video" in 2001. [17] After The Little Digital Video Book (2001) he wrote a series of books with Peachpit Press: Beginner's Final Cut Pro (2002), Making Movies with Final Cut Express (2003), a series with Apple on iLife ('04, '05, '06), and a second edition of The Little Digital Video Book (2008). [2]
In 2005 he authored Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution which chronicles the early days of Lucasfilm with a focus on the company's computer division. [14] [18] Writing for the Library Journal, Rosalind Dayen called the book "fascinating", claiming "There are many books on Lucas, but none quite like this one: the combination of Rubin's insider information and research gives readers a view of how movies came to incorporate digital advances." [19]
In 1993 Rubin co-founded Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge, do-it-yourself ceramics studio, with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Kurtz, whom he later married. Santa Cruz based, Petroglyph pioneered the contemporary ceramic studio industry. [20] By 1998 Petroglyph had expanded into a chain of stores in Northern California. [2]
From 2006 to 2016, Rubin held senior product positions at tech companies and founded other startups. [21] During that time, Rubin was director of product at Netflix, and senior innovator at Adobe. [22]
In 2016 Rubin left Adobe to pursue photographic interests, founding Neomodern in 2017, a bricks-and-mortar photographic printing and framing business in San Francisco targeting smartphone photographers [22] which closed in 2020.
Rubin is the director of The Rubin Collection, a large family collection of 20th-century photography which includes works by masters such as Ansel Adams and Henri-Cartier Bresson among others [22] and is a fine art photographer who teaches photography at Santa Fe Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [23] [4]
Rubin published The Photograph as Haiku in 2023, outlining his curriculum and philosophy of photography. In his review, Nicholas Klacsanzky of the Haiku Society of America stated, "This is a pivotal book in the realm of photography and haiku as an intersection. It’s both a page-turner and a space to contemplate." [24]
Rubin married Jennifer (Kurtz) Rubin in 1994 (divorced in 2013)[ citation needed ] with whom he shares two children. [2]
The X-wing starfighter is a name applied to a family of fictional spacecraft manufactured by the Incom Corporation from the Star Wars franchise. Named for the distinctive shape made when its s-foils (wings) are in attack position, the X-wing was a class of starfighter used by the Rebel Alliance in their conflict with the Galactic Empire. It made its theatrical debut, as the T-65B model, in Star Wars (1977) as the spacecraft piloted by Luke Skywalker and the Red Squadron when Luke destroyed the Death Star. The starfighter featured extensively in the Star Wars original trilogy and in the Expanded Universe that followed, and has been merchandised as a variety of toys and models.
Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized software. A pointer-based playlist, effectively an edit decision list (EDL), for video and audio, or a directed acyclic graph for still images, is used to keep track of edits. Each time the edited audio, video, or image is rendered, played back, or accessed, it is reconstructed from the original source and the specified editing steps. Although this process is more computationally intensive than directly modifying the original content, changing the edits themselves can be almost instantaneous, and it prevents further generation loss as the audio, video, or image is edited.
In the Star Wars space opera franchise, a droid is a fictional robot possessing some degree of artificial intelligence. The term is a clipped form of "android", a word originally reserved for robots designed to look and act like a human. The word "android" itself stems from the New Latin word "androīdēs", meaning "manlike", itself from the Ancient Greek ἀνδρος (andrós) + -ειδής (-eidḗs), itself from εἶδος.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began production on the original Star Wars, now the fourth episode of the Skywalker Saga.
Rescue On Fractalus! is a 1985 first-person shooter computer game created by Lucasfilm Games. It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit family and the Atari 5200 games console. It was also ported to other popular platforms of the day, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Commodore 64. The game was one of the first two products from the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group led by Peter Langston. David Fox was the project leader and designer. Music was mainly composed by Charlie Kellner.
Ballblazer is a futuristic sports game created by Lucasfilm Games and published in 1985 by Epyx. Along with Rescue on Fractalus!, it was one of the initial pair of releases from Lucasfilm Games, Ballblazer was developed and first published for the Atari 8-bit family. The principal creator and programmer was David Levine. The game was called Ballblaster during development; some pirated versions bear this name.
Filmmaker, or "Filmmaker: a diary by george lucas", is a 32-minute documentary made in 1968 by George Lucas about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 film The Rain People.
The EditDroid is a computerized analog non-linear editing (NLE) system which was developed by Lucasfilm spin-off company, the Droid Works and Convergence Corporation who formed a joint venture company. The company existed up through the mid-'80s to the early '90s in an attempt to move from analog editing methods to digital. EditDroid debuted at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 62nd Annual meeting in Las Vegas in 1984 concurrent with another editing tool that would compete with the EditDroid for all its years in production, the Montage Picture Processor.
The CMX 600 was the very first non-linear video editing system. This Emmy Award winning system was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems, a joint venture between CBS and Memorex. CMX referred to it as a "RAVE", or Random Access Video Editor.
Maggie Taylor is an artist who works with digital images. She won the Santa Fe Center for Photography's Project Competition in 2004. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe and is represented within the permanent collections of several galleries and museums.
Sonic Studio is an American company manufacturing digital audio production tools for engineering professionals. The company was created when Sonic Solutions divested itself of its audio product lines in order to concentrate on DVD and multimedia–oriented products.
Danny Rubin is an American screenwriter and playwright. He wrote the original story, and then co-wrote with Harold Ramis the screenplay for the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day, for which the two received a BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay.
The Audio Signal Processor (ASP) is a large-scale digital signal processor developed by James A. Moorer at Lucasfilm's The Droid Works. Moorer programmed a number of digital signal processing algorithms that were used in major motion picture features. Sounds processed by the ASP were used in the THX logo's Deep Note, Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and others. ASP provided the technological basis for the SoundDroid.
The SoundDroid is an early digital audio workstation designed by a team of engineers led by James A. Moorer at Lucasfilm between 1980 and 1987. It was a hard-disk–based, nonlinear audio editor developed on the Audio Signal Processor (ASP), a large-scale digital signal processor for real-time, multichannel equalization and audio mixing. The ASP was connected to a then-new SUN/1 workstation, and with a physical console, could replace multi-slider mixers and provide new tools for audio spotting, editing, and mixing.
James Anderson Moorer is a digital audio and computer music engineer, responsible for over 40 technical publications and four patents.
Kerner Optical was an American practical visual effects company based in San Rafael, California.
Steve Arnold is a Co-Founder and Partner Emeritus of Polaris Partners, a venture capital firm active in the field of healthcare and biotechnology companies.
A list of books and essays about George Lucas:
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