Robert Abel(1937-2001)
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
One of the genuine visionaries of Digital Computer Graphics and Visual
Effects. From the early 1970s through the mid-80s, the Hollywood-based
studio Robert Abel & Associates (RA&A) pushed the leading -- sometimes
bleeding -- edge of visual effects. Working primarily in television
advertising, (the only consistent market for such work at the time)
RA&A created 33 Clio Award-winning commercials, including the dazzling
7Up "Uncola" spots and the influential CG "Sexy Robot." This body of
work, as noted by New York's Museum of Modern Art, "changed television
forever." Abel was primed for this path since his undergraduate studies
at UCLA, where his mentor was the "father" of computer graphics,
John Whitney Sr.. Working with an
analog computer strapped to a camera, Abel happened accidentally upon a
look that evolved into the 'slit scan' effect used in
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
His friend Con Pederson, who pursued the
technique in that film's famous 'stargate' sequence, would eventually
become Abel's first partner. By the time the pair set up shop in 1971,
Abel had become an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, with
credits as varied as
Making of the President 1968 (1969)
and
Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1971).
The first visual effects job which the fledgling studio produced was
the now-famous Whirlpool "streak" logo, which opened the door to
assignments in TV graphics, commercials and films. Abel and Pederson
were joined early on by
Richard Taylor, and the list of
accomplished effects experts who worked at RA&A would grow over the
years to include -- among many --
Richard Edlund,
Richard E. Hollander,
Robert Legato,
Mark Stetson and
John Hughes.
