...since I ran around in Los Angeles to meet more interview partners on the West Coast. Sorry for telling about that only a month later. I was lucky again to meet the most interesting people who readily made time for me and this project. As we know, for busy people this always is quite a challenge, so thanks to all of you once more!
An amazing side effect for me was also that this way I got to places I had never been before - like the beautiful, somewhat historic city of Pasadena, the PromaxBDA headquarters office in a pyramid-like building right in the heart of Hollywood, or to this odd little assembly of family homes on a hill not far from the airport, overlooking a field of oil pumps on one side and the far distant pacific ocean on the other. I also explored riding the new fast train from Culver City out to the Science Museum to see the PIXAR exhibit which was really worth seeing.
Back to that fast train: who had ever thought that L.A. would build something like a subway, an elevated one here to get the millions of people who usually are stuck in traffic on freeways for hours on end...? Not me. This is really good. Very fast, comfortable and so much better for the environment - yay California!
The people I could talk with in L.A. were first
Elaine Cantwell who gave me a great interview by telephone as our L.A. timing was one day apart from being perfect.
Once I had arrived in L.A., I first went to the PromaxBDA office to meet and do an interview with
Steve Kazanjian, President & CEO of the BDA, who had also started out as a designer, but then found his talents and interest more in business and management - and this combination, I believe, is really supportive for the association, as he understands and represents both sides.
Next interview date:
Juan Delcan who I was really lucky to meet, as he is busy directing commercials everywhere around the world these days. He - as many of my New York interview partners had already pointed out, was obviously the most imaginative and creative broadcast design wizard in the 90s and 2000s. And he definitely is an artist, maybe even more an artist now than a designer, as his free time from directing goes into most interesting paintings and objects.
New day, new place:
Seesaw Productions in Culver City and its director and long time designer and producer
Judy Korin - long standing experiences and design work are to be seen and felt there. After our interview she gave me that great idea to ride the new fast train which had a stop around the corner from her studio to get out to the Science Museum. Thank you Judy, that was great!
The next morning I drove out east of the city to Pasadena to meet
Curt Doty who had been part of the Pittard Sullivan team (...it seems, most of the people I met in L.A. were, too). Curt had been in the PS design teams working on several of the PRO7-SAT1 channels in Germany in the 90s.
This little trip turned into an interesting review of the past with those historic Pasadena buildings, Curt's memories and at the same time into the present as we had met in a new office building where lots of youngsters were buzzing around to get ready for a Halloween office party.
And then it was already my last day in L.A. before I was going to fly out west across the Pacific and south to Sydney/Australia. I got a last minute interview with
Andy Hann, who made time for me on a Saturday - how good is that? He suggested to meet at "The Grove" near Beverly Boulevard. "The Grove" is a world of its own: a small and very fine open-air shopping complex with all kinds of brand stores with one of those elegant Apple stores in its midst. It felt as if any moment one of those Hollywood stars with big sunglasses in their faces would come along. Quite a special place – at the same time very easy-going, cool. Andy had made his way from being a designer – he had once been part of the famous Pittard Sullivan teams, too – to the very present fields of social media marketing and strategizing. He seems to have a lot of fun with it all and has some good leads and ideas on new ways for broadcast to go forward into unprecedented distribution possibilities via mobile media, apps and stuff we do not even know about yet. We might learn more about that as we go.
But of course this has not been all there is or was in the US. Some people central to the picture will szill get covered, interviews with a few more are being scheduled now, as possible dates for me in Boston, New York, San Francisco or L.A. just didn't match. And I couldn't travel for meeting everyone in all their respective places. The USA are just too big for that. But we can skype which is great for interviews, too.
Meanwhile my partner Carmen has been busy in the UK with some BBC heros - I'm sure she'll add some great information on how that went, soon. Stay tuned.
