The Hollywood Section of Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has announced the passing of its long-time member Jim Houston. A 34-year veteran of the entertainment industry, Houston held senior engineering positions with several studios and prominent postproduction facilities, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Pacific Title & Art, Walt Disney Feature Animation and, since February of this year, Samsung Research America. A pioneer in motion imaging standards, computer animation and digital restoration, he won two Academy Awards for Scientific and Engineering Achievement. He died from a heart attack, March 26, in Pasadena. He was 61.
“Jim made a profound impact on SMPTE and the industry in general,” said SMPTE Hollywood Section chair Brian Gaffney. “He was a founding member of the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) committee. He wrote influential papers of topics ranging from the color fidelity of High Dynamic Range images to design considerations for cinemas using laser projection. He attended every industry technical and social event and was a constant presence in the community. He will be missed, and his legacy will last forever in Hollywood.”
Houston was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Cornell University. He began his career with Gould Computer Systems and worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center before getting his start in Hollywood as a technical director with Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1986. In 1992, he won an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Scientific and Engineering Award as part of the team that developed the CAPS production system for film animation. His second such honor came in 2007 for his contributions to the Rosetta process used in digital restoration. In 2014, he was awarded SMPTE’s Technicolor/Herbert T. Kalmus Award for “leadership and contributions in the application of digital technologies to motion picture production processes.” He served as co-chair of AMPAS’ ACES Project Committee and was a member of its Science and Technology Council.
He is survived by his mother, Margaret Houston, and his siblings John, Michael, Martin, Kevin and Cathy, and their families. Funeral services will be held in Philadelphia. A memorial service will be scheduled for later this year in Los Angeles.
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More