VTA Wins, Hires, and Acquires VTA Wins, Hires, and Acquires
John Mandato, Visual Effects Designer on VTA's new Henry V8
Video Tape Associates' (VTA) Senior Audio Engineer Dave Wheeler won a Southern Regional Emmy Award for "Outstanding Collaborative Achievement in Audio." Wheeler had received two nominations in this category for work done for FOX SportsSouth. The winning entry was the opening segment for the network's "Countdown to Signing Day" series that spotlighted the top 250 high school senior football players from around the Southeast. FOX SportsSouth Producer Tommy Kane supervised the audio session for the open, which had "a lot of rotoscoping and layering and was very effects laden," said Jim Claussen, Vice President of the network's promotion/creative services department.

Wheeler's second nomination was for a takeoff on "Men In Black," called "Men In Teal," a campaign for FOX SportsSouth's coverage of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets. Although it didn't win the audio category, it did score an Emmy for "Promotional Announcement / Topical," and VTA congratulates the production team of Claussen, Kane, Kathy Weisbrod, and Chris Jordan. The network garnered 11 nominations in all and won in three categories.

VTA and Dean Pernaci of DP Editorial recently announced an upgrade of the AVID 8000 Media Composer to the 9000 level with AVR-77 resolution. Pernaci says the biggest improvements in the 9000 are the increased AVR-77 resolution; uncompressed title crawls, and rolls that will now look as good in off-line as they do in on-line; the ability to cut and animate mattes in off-line; 8 channels of digital audio, in and out; customized 3D effects; and the capability to correct and track a color throughout the scene. In addition, Pernaci has purchased the newest "fast & wide" 18-gig media shuttle drives and upgraded his 9-gig drives, for a total of 78 gigs of available media storage. The 9600 computer that drives the AVID system was upgraded to the fastest processor that the AVID can use. The upgrades also prime the computer for the G3 processor, as soon as it is available.

VTA President Ken Chambliss also added Quantel's Henry V8 with the future V-Infinity upgrade to VTA's roster of digital edit suites. In addition, former New York Freelancer John Mandato is the Visual Effects Designer for the system. Mandato has worked with the system since its debut in 1992. Mandato has been freelancing at most of the major post houses throughout the U.S. for the past two years. With clients such as Nissan, Lexus, Lucent Technologies, NFL Films, MTV, and A&E, he was responsible for effects editing on numerous national spots and corporate films, as well as design, concept, and compositing for television, film, and interactive CD-ROM. In 1996, he was one of three designers on the NBC design team that arranged the look and functionality of the network's coverage of the Olympics in Atlanta. Because of his expertise with Quantel systems and extensive reputation with broadcast clients, Mandato has also been in demand worldwide as an instructor and demonstrator on Henry, Hal, and Editbox. Mandato has earned multiple Emmy awards and Broadcast Design Awards.

To announce the arrival of Mandato and Henry, VTA's account executives delivered "Oh Henry" candy bars to clients and invited them to attend demo sessions.