A Change Of Direction?

During the time of the VCR sales explosion, RS found itself in need of some type of company-wide authorized demo material that could be played in our VCR's to show them off to our customers.  I came up with the idea of showcasing current music videos playing on MTV and then being able to offer the video tapes for sale in the store.  Well, it worked or sorta worked. The first MTV video was called MTV Video To Go and the second was MTV Live Video To Go.  You can read more here including quotes from me.
Radio Shack & MTV To Go  Please be sure to increase the page size so you do not miss my quote.
I am sorry to say that the MTV venture did not go over with the buying public so not many copies of the videos ever got sold.  The idea was dropped and I had to come up with something else.  I bought a bunch of music performance videos from RCA and others and had little luck in selling them to RS customers but it did give the stores something to use to demo our VCRs.  I had one video by the Pointer Sisters that I got a lot of negative feedback from because of a purported nude segment in a song.  So I was about to be kicked out of the business when I asked Chuck if he would help me develop something that we could use in the store as a VCR demo.  I had seen a tape that featured an emerging technology call Computer Graphics (CG) and because the graphics were colorful and had a lot of movement and no nudity, I thought that this might be something we could use and Chuck agreed.  I contact Steven Churchill who had been showing this computer materials at a show he put on in California somewhere (I have forgotten where in CA) and we began to work together to create a video demo tape for the stores.  The results were called The Mind's Eye.  Chuck and I spend hours and hours going over the CG's that were submitted by Steven.  We picked the best and worked to make a story out of the CG clips.  I must say that without Steven and Kip Kilpatrick at Miramar Productions who tied the clips together, added the music and made the duplicates, we would never have gotten this project off the ground.  Just to be very clear there are two versions of the "The Mind's Eye" one made for RS exclusively, and one that Miramar released.  Chuck and I were involved with both releases but only take credit for the RS version.
The sweet smell of success.  Not only was the VHS tape a hit with the stores but RS customers bought the tape to take home.  It was not long before the pressure to come up with a second tape was heaped on Chuck, Steven, Kip and myself.  So back to the drawing board for the second in the series.  Beyond The Mind's Eye.  Again I must remind the reader that there are two versions the RS version and the Miramar Productions version. [Side Note: If you watch the end credits you will see both Chuck and my name. End Credits]  Ok, now it is beginning to be like work, as the pressure again mounted for a third VHS in The Mind's Eye series.  The last Mind's Eye that Chuck and I were involved in was The Gate To The Mind's Eye .  Chuck lost interest, and it was very time-consuming and our boss BBM was not very happy about all the hours [over 30 per show] we were spending away from our day jobs, so we both just dropped out.  Steven went on to produce more Mind's Eye but I had no involvement with the projects any longer.  I received several awards for the Mind's Eye series and have them on my wall to this day.  Please go to YouTube if you want to see any of the segments of the videos or Amazon if you would like to buy any of the tapes or DVD versions that are still left.  As my creative juices were still flowing I got interested in a VHS tape I saw call "The Planets" music by Gustav Holst.  The problem was that it was incomplete as far as the planets are concerned and while the idea was good it did not have the pop it needed for an in store video demo.  I contacted Don Barrett who was involved in the The Planets video and asked if he would be interested in working with me to develop a videotape for in store demo at RS.  He said yes, and we started one of the most fun video projects I ever had. [except for the end] I decided to use the flight of the Voyager I and II Spacecraft and their journey to the planets for the video.  Don did most of the work assembling the NASA pictures, and the computer graphics to tell the story of their flight from earth to deep space.  The Voyager I left earth on September 5,1977 and was headed toward the outer Solar System  (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) and the interstellar medium to study same. Voyager II left earth on August 20, 1977, headed in the same general direction as Voyager I.  NASA used the different planets that the spacecraft passed by to help each one move on to the next planet.  Well, we had the story and we needed sound to go with the pictures.  Surround Sound was just getting started and I decided that we needed to use this technology in this video.  I had to twist Don's arm but he did it and that is how the surround sound got added on to the soundtrack.  The sound you hear as the spacecraft pass through the asteroid belt was another idea of mine, of course, in reality, it never really happens. No sound in space because, there is no air.
My last contribution to the video was the Carl Sagan shot at the end.  Mr. Sagan had wanted NASA to have Voyager to look back at our Solar System and take a picture as the spacecraft left our solar system for deep space.  As always, at the time the NASA budget did not allow for that to happen.  I convinced Don to add that shot to the video and he used CG to do that.  Well the rest is history, the video won many awards and accolades but,  yours truly was never given credit anywhere for my contribution.  Now you know why the credits for major motion pictures are so long.  Everyone who has anything to do with the film gets credit. I really wish I had.  If you ever see Don you might ask him about me and see what he tells you.
Well, there was  a Laserdisc that I was responsible for producing for RS when we got into selling the players and Pioneer used a part of my demo during a Consumer Electronics Show to highlight their LD players. I do have a funny story about the LD.  I was in a Mall with my Son and we stopped by Video Concepts just to look around and the Store Manager recognized me as the author of the Laserdisc he was using as Demo and asked me to autograph it for him.  You should have seen my Son's face as I signed the disc.  I will never forget the proud look he had.  When audio CD's came along I produced three demo CD's as well, with the help of Goodnight Dallas, a production company in Dallas TX.