Denise gallant
Briefly: Created a very advanced analogue video synthesizer in the late 70's.


Starting in 1976, and carrying through to early 1981, Denise Gallant, working in tandem with CBS engineer Rob Schafer, designed and built a unique prototype video synthesizer, which is considered by many as one of the most advanced analogue video synthesizers in the world.

In 1980-83 founded a small LA-based production company called Synopsis. They worked on many early rock videos and orchestrated frequent live video performances with the synth. They also worked on about 10 films, the most notable being Brainstorm, directed by the brilliant visual effects master, Douglas Trumball. XY signals normally routed to the a laser scanhead were fed into a medical oscilloscope, and captured with a B&W camera, which fed to the vsynth which then processed the imagery.

Denise has spent 25 years in the LA based video and production field, and worked at a company called Image West which owned a Scanimate and is aware of Dolphin, a NYC based firm, that also had one. She produced visual imagery for the early new age video "Watercolors".

Other achievements:
-Received the 1986 Billboard Award for Independent Video and an American Institute Grant for a movie pilot using the effects of the vsynth.
-Produced a very early CDROM with her effects called NightClub Earth, but ran out of copies in a few months.
-Still does raves with the vintage synthesizer, which by the way, has NEVER broken down.
The raves she did over the past 5 years were with two companies that do 3D stereoscopic raves with 3D glasses. (Lenny Lipton's company is one - he is the grandfather of stereoscopic) It is a blast to mix videos in 3D. It is hard to describe - surreal.

She made two smaller synthesizers which were orders from the US Festival (Mac's huge concerts in Los Angeles), but never made copies of the whole thing. They were proprietary designs, except for the built in Pitch Follower (Gentle Electric ala 1978), and an adapted design of a Surge sequencer (San Francisco late 1970s) for a simple sequencer. The main pieces, however, were custom built, and still create effects never seen before.


Denise can be reached at: SynopsisKM@aol.com


-Return to the Video Synth Main Page
-Go onto the next Video Synth


hallway | reception | tools | library | lab | lounge | hangar | school