The S&V Interview

Homeowners love what technology provides but many prefer to keep its presence at a minimum. Such was the case in this beautiful Southern California home in the upscale Pacific Palisades area. "This project had a good sized budget of $100k to provide whole-house distribution of audio, video, phone and data," said Mark Schafer, President of Custom L.A. "Still we all encountered a few challenges such as the family room, where the client wanted a completely invisible Home Theater in a wide open space".

Who says you can't get quality work completed in less than a week? Talk to David Frangioni, CEO of Audio One Sound & Video in North Miami Beach and he'll tell you anything is possible. He knows because he's installed a world-class home theater with high performance AV in only three days.

We all know that California has it own unique car culture. Here a person's automobile and their personality are often closely aligned. One homeowner loved their Bentley so much; they couldn't get enough of it and choose it as the theme for their dedicated Home Theater.

Shannon McGinnis is one of the few people who has found that his hobby/avocation is also his vocation. In 1997, he started his Custom Electronics Design and Installation company as a one-person operation; it has grown to include three additional installers at present. Home Technology Systems, Inc., currently provides Wichita, Kansas, and the surrounding areas with a single-source solution for all custom home and small business electronics needs and desires, including home theater, systems integration, lighting control, structured cabling, multiroom audio, and security.

How’s it going?

The most popular movie of the year and breaker of just about every box-office record, Spider-Man 3 owes much of its success to its seamless, high-impact visual storytelling. Vast portions of this were rendered in the computers at Sony Pictures Imageworks, the digital production studio that helped bring life to all three arachno-adventures. On the occasion of the release of this latest chapter on DVD—and the entire trilogy in a magnificent Blu-ray set—Sony invited HT to speak with three of the very dedicated men of Imageworks. Digital effects supervisor Peter Nofz, special projects computer graphics supervisor Jonathan Cohen, and animation supervisor Spencer Cook are all gifted artists and masters of their individual technologies. Each has different responsibilities, yet is proud of his role within the elaborate team. And their work speaks for itself—even when you don't notice it.