If you travel to a grey building located on the southern fringes of Brampton, Ontario, and enter the large ground floor where the persistent hum of equipment fans resonate through the walls, chances are, amid the various racks of video and computer hardware, you will find Paul Vicente clicking and shuttling away at his latest creation.
Paul Vicente is Mr. Everything at Media Masters. He was born in Toronto in 1972, and currently lives in Brampton. When he's not working on some video or another, he's rendering this and that on his farm of computer workstations. When we asked him what he really did for a living, he said, "Basically, I just push electrons around."
Paul enjoys reading and creating, loves swimming, and considers himself to be very persistent; "If you've ever tried to control a stream of electrons, you know that it's going to take a lot of Work!" Paul runs on a 26-Hour schedule which causes him to sleep around the clock every two weeks or so. He goes to bed 2 hours later every day, and the whole process repeats again and again.
He is entirely self-taught. "Everything was learned from scratch." he says. "I knew what the TV guys were doing, so I experimented until I achieved the same look, and eventually, I developed my own." Although he uses a computer all the time, he insists that he's not a techno-nerd. "I just use computers, I don't live for them." When asked who helped him get into the production business, Paul credits the scientist Carl Sagan, who produced the Emmy and Peabody Award-Winning Series, "Cosmos". Paul believes that Mr. Sagan's balance of creative style while still delivering the message was the inspiration that propelled him to do the same; "If I can keep an audience's attention the way he did, then I'd say I'm doing very well."
Paul's future plans include further expansion of his business, getting married to his sweetheart of five years, and having kids. "There's nothing more valuable in this world than children... More than anything else, children are our greatest asset."
By OF, December 1996.
Learn More About Dr. Carl Sagan
