Joe Fisher is Communications Director, Rainmaker Digital Pictures, Vancouver.

Seen through a post-production facility’s viewfinder, the past decade might resemble one of those Capra-esque stock shots in which the passage of time is represented by a succession of calendar pages flipping past camera in a surreal, confusing blur of numbers, except that in our case the pages are Engineering Department Purchase Orders.

Our commonly held belief that people are the heart and soul of our business notwithstanding, post houses habitually chart their history according to equipment purchases. We remember things happening just before the DVR1000 went in, or around the time of the new ursa, but definitely after the onyx. Like department store sales, the importance of such events is largely self-serving; in a post facility, Major New Equipment Purchase is really just business as usual.

Besides, given the occasion I feel obligated to offer something a little more thoughtful than a nab shopping list.

First, though, get a good fix on how long ago 1986 was. Forget Top TV Show or Current Event; think of it this way: it’s back before any of us had a cell phone or a fax machine. Jurassic, huh?

So if the post business has undergone 10 years of unremitting reinvention, enslaved to endlessly mutating technology, so what? So has everything else. (Indeed, anyone who envies the post world’s addiction to high-risk, high-cost equipment upgrading can now indulge in similar reckless behavior with a simple personal computer purchase.)

There were changes, however, that resonated beyond the rate cards and routing switchers.

The big story – it’s still unfolding – was The Digital Thing. Going digital was much more than an equipment issue. Whether regarded as problem or opportunity, there was no ignoring digital’s impact on every aspect of our business, from scheduling to shipping.

Digital technology came in with a classic divide and conquer approach, splintering the traditional industry into byte-sized pieces and converting it one sector at a time.

Offline went nonlinear and never looked back. Desktop video gave pro-sumer and corporate producers a viable, affordable alternative to pricey Broadcast Quality Facilities. The bqfs, meanwhile, followed CCIR-601 (the digital video standard established by smpte) to higher ground, replacing their analog systems with digital components that delivered ever better image quality, which was important as their clients were increasingly delivering product to a global market where ntsc was considered Not To Spec, Chum.

Having completed the first phase – replacing the analog boxes with digital boxes that do the same job – these post facilities are now undertaking the second phase – replacing the old single-purpose digital boxes with new open-architecture digital boxes that can do everything.

Essentially, these digital tools let us do our basic job of post – getting the pictures from the camera to the consumer – faster, fresher and fancier.

That was another big shift: how we defined our consumer, our client. Video proliferated through world culture, showing up in all kinds of unexpected places.

The original World Wide Web – broadcasting – grew continually, vcr and satellite sales roared on, specialty channels multiplied, new avenues and applications for video kept appearing, and then there was this Internet thingin short, the market for a post facility’s products kept expanding exponentially. We weren’t just making television anymore; we were in the entertainment software biz, and it seemed bigger than we’d ever dreamed.

Meanwhile, from a novelty niche of flying logos and fractal psychedelia, computer animation exploded into a major filmmaking resource that further blurred the distinction between production and post. Today cgi is convincingly replicating the basic building blocks of life, the very dna of imagery: from water, wind and fire to dragons, dinosaurs and dancing pigs.

Synthespians exist; datasets for virtual people can be licensed for a song and downloaded while you hum it. Is it live, or is it Alias? All of a sudden the post folks aren’t just cutting the stuff, they’re creating it.

Re-engineering was a way of life in our business long before it became mba-speak, but no denying that the pace of change has accelerated lately. Like much of life, the post world has become infused with submenus and user options.

Still, behind every tlc and edl and sgi, there remains that component of the business that doesn’t change, and never will, no matter what wonders of technology evolve. It’s what every post place knows.

It’s not the device. It’s the driver.

Till ’06.