Master Control

Remember that scene in Star Wars: Episode IV when Grand Moff Tarkin ordered the destruction of Alderaan? It contained a few brief shots of the Death Star Control Room and for some reason those few seconds have always stuck with me. I really liked the idea of flipping levers and pushing buttons to activate such a massive device (though if it were me I don't think I would have been able to go through with the annihilation of an entire world), and though the chances of me ending up on the Death Star to flip said levers and switches is somewhat remote, we have the next best thing at my job: video edit bays.

The title of this post is a bit misleading, since it's meant to be a reference to the main telecommunications control room where I work at Oklahoma State University, but the picture itself is in fact showing one of the nearby video editing bays. It's where members of our production staff monitor incoming video feeds, edit live and recorded footage, and work to produce polished final co