Podcast Interview with Viva Amiga’s Zach Weddington

One of several magazines dedicated to the Amiga.

Back in April I posted the first in a series of occasional blogs on the use of now-vintage gear in university, including Newtek’s Video Toaster, with links to Viva Amiga, Zach Weddington’s great doc on the iconic computer which housed the Toaster, and enabled musicians to perform & compose, graphic artists to create striking images, and programmers to craft vivid animated games.

Just posted at KQEK.com is a lengthy conversation with Weddington, and our discussion goes beyond the usual making-of, touching upon the history of the Amiga, and some vintage computing & video gear, making the podcast more of a film & filmmaking hybrid for KQEK and Big Head Amusements readers.

Our Q&A is available via Google Play, iTunes, Libsyn, and YouTube, and you can read a review of Viva Amiga at KQEK.com (which also covers some of the extended interviews available digitally at Vimeo).

Near the end of the podcast I mentioned an Ikegami ITC-380A ENG camera, which was slowly ‘reawakened’ after I managed to find a reasonably priced power supply on Ebay.

Fact sheet for the iconic Ikegami ITC-380A three tube, Saticon camera, in its organge-red glory.

My first & only ITC-380A, repainted grey, with extra black tape to add sublime comfort to the cameraman. She’s been through a few knockaround assignments in her life.

I actually bought the camera for its lens and tripod mount that happens to fit my other Ike, a ITC-735, but after tracking down the proprietary power supply, I followed my standard protocol with new cameras: record to disc the first images of the camera as it’s powered up – partly our of curiosity & posterity, in case something unusual happens.

More than likely the camera hadn’t been turned on in a decade or two, and what emerged was a gradual transformation of blown-out images to relatively stable three colours as each tube warmed up, and the image went from green to red to bluish.

Here’s a trio of frame grabs from the footage which I’ll edited down into a tight montage an post on Vimeo and YouTube within a week or two:

First comes green as the corresponding tube of an Ikegami ITC-380A warms up and produces an image after a likely 10+ years.

Then red flares over faint three colours.

And a balance of red, green, and blue, which requires manual registration of the 3 colour tubes.

Also coming to KQEK.com is an expanded review of Josh Rizzo’s Welcome to Macintosh (2008), and reviews of the Mind’s Eye, the compilation series from the late 80s / mid-90s which showcased then-cutting edge computer graphics (many done on the Amiga).

Thanks for reading,

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
Big Head Amusement

Podcast Interview with Viva Amiga’s Zach Weddington

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