Bio |
Norm Strassner grew up on Long Island, New York. He went to the University of Colorado at Boulder, graduating with honors in 1975.
He began his professional career in Florida as an on-air director at a local television station. In 1977, Mr. Strassner moved to Hollywood, CA and secured a job selling broadcast video equipment. Impressed with his ability, an entertainment producer hired Norman the spot to edit cable television specials. Mr. Strassner went on to direct and edit shows like "Entertainment Tonight", "America with Sarah Purcell and McLean Stevenson", "Real People" and "On Stage America".
Mr. Strassner was accepted into the Director's Guild of America as a full director and was one of the first few videotape editors invited into the Motion Picture Editors Guild.
In 1982, Mr. Strassner purchased a computer system and set about teaching himself computer programming. After learning the Basic programming language, he began to teach himself assembly language programming. Mr. Strassner contends that he gave himself his own version of a master's degree in computer programming by disassembling Microsoft Basic figuring out what all the routines did. The C programming language was next, followed by C++ and then object-oriented models, although Mr. Strassner's first successfully marketed software products were written entirely in 8086 assembly language for MSDOS based computer systems.
In 1985 Mr Strassner became the co-owner of SUPERSCAN, An optical scanning and data management service.
Mr. Strassner has spent the years after SUPERSCAN editing for television, directing shows and absorbing technical information about the post production process. He began writing a videotape edit controller that would fulfill his personal wishes. Many editors were excited at the prospect of an editing system created by an editor instead of an engineer. He was approached by a small rental house in LA who offered him equipment support and the CASE Edit Controller software was born.
In two years, CASE sold over 200 units (a significant number market) with virtually no advertising or marketing. It was strictly by word-of-mouth.
In 1991, it became necessary to take over the sales and marketing of the system. The company name was changed to STRASSNER EDITING SYSTEMS and became the editor of choice in Hollywood. His first year in business on his own, over 60 systems were sold and a national dealer network was established.
Norman's combination of post production knowledge, his expertise in the complexities in software development, and his authoring of articles for major industry publications, has made him a well known name in the Hollywood post production community. Not only as the developer of a system that editors love to use but also as the most responsive manufacturer of editing systems in town.
In 1996, Strassner Editing Systems merged with Videomedia, Inc., of San Jose, California, using Boulder, Colorado, as the base for its division operations. Mr. Strassner was given the position of managing the broadcast editing division. After three years with Videomedia, Mr. Strassner and his wife formed Strassner Entertainment Group, LLC and purchased an existing Boulder video production company, Flashback Video Productions.
Mr. Strassner has been married for over 28 years to wife Marcie. They have one son, Case Edward.