The independent thread — Nine Feet Tall , and an animation pioneer

1981–1992 · the documented independent work of record

Nine Feet Tall (1992): The documented independent feature work of the city's record runs through the production company above. Bob Mowen, a 1989 graduate of New York University's film and television program, had directed a twenty-minute student film, Nine Feet Tall — a dark story of two friends, an accident in which a young girl dies, and a younger man's loss of innocence — and could not afford to finish it in New York. A friend at Golden Dome Productions offered him a job as cameraman and director; living in South Bend, SHOOT's profile records, he was able to complete the film — and the finished Nine Feet Tall won the Special Jury Prize at the 1992 USA Film Festival. Mowen's South Bend years were spent inside Golden Dome's working record — industrial videos, documentaries, the PBS series, local commercials and network-affiliate promos — before he returned to New York and the national commercial career the profile was written to announce. The entry is printed at the size the record gives it: one short film, finished here because here was where the work and the cheap living were, and honoured at a national festival; it is the city's documented independent featurette, and there is no second one of its standing in the record reached.

Computer Creations (1981): The other independent entry is earlier and stranger. The program of the First Annual IPS Computer Film Show, held at the Capital Children's Museum in Washington in June 1981 — the first show of its kind — lists, among the commercial reels, Computer Creations of South Bend, Indiana, and among the art films a South Bend piece: Dilemma (1981), credited to Computer Creation of Indiana. The program's note on the company says it was formed in 1975 and had developed a method it called videoCel, a digital raster-scan system working to videotape. In 1981, when computer animation was a laboratory art practised in a handful of places, one of the places was South Bend; the program is the whole of the record reached on the company, and it is printed whole.

Sources

1. SHOOT magazine (SHOOTonline), "Spontaneous Adds Mowen" — Mowen's NYU graduation of 1989; Nine Feet Tall as his twenty-minute student film; the Golden Dome job of 1990; the film completed while living in South Bend; the Special Jury Prize at the '92 USA Film Festival; his Golden Dome documentary, commercial and promo work.
2. Program, First Annual IPS Computer Film Show, Capital Children's Museum, June 18–21, 1981 (the Vasulka archive copy) — the commercial-reel listing of Computer Creations, South Bend, IN; Dilemma (1981), Computer Creation (Indiana), in the art program; the company note (formed 1975; the videoCel method).