It's just a website with some pictures on it, dammit!

I’m working with this nice, young designer to finally get myself a professional looking / acting website. And being the perfectionist that I am, it’s driving me a little crazy.

I produce and creative-direct multi-media stuff for a living. My history with interactive multimedia is not inconspicuous. In 1993, I was hired by a company called Interfilm to help them produce an interactive proof of concept thing so that they could go public. Remember that this was a good five years before the silly Internet company stock market explosion / implosion and the Internet itself was just beginning to reach households. The four guys who started the company had this wacky idea that they would invent the technology that would allow a group of people in a movie theater to control a film (which they would make too) at certain points and determine the outcome of the narrative. Sound crazy? I thought so, but I was game.

We had to establish a set of rules, since nobody had done this before. The films would be controlled by specially created and installed pistol grips with three colored buttons on them. These would correspond to color-coded choices during the film. The theatres would only hold 100 people, a financial decision made in regards to the pistol grips and anyway, 100 is a nifty, round number. When a choice was offered during the film, the audience would have 5 seconds to vote on one of the choices. They could vote as many times in that 5 seconds as they could push the buttons. The votes would be tallied live on the screen so that everyone could see the where the audience was leaning. And lastly, the majority ruled.

Well, we also had to invent the system that played these films. Sort of like inventing the projector and the stuff that goes through it simultaneously, which in retrospect was a horrible idea, but hey, Edison did it! That system, for the technology buffs, consisted of 4 Pioneer Industrial Laserdisc players, synchronized and controlled by a state of the art 386 PC. The concept was that one Laserdisc would be playing while the other three were cued up to the upcoming three choices and voila, after the voting window, the winning scene would seamlessly play. And it actually worked!

“How do you make an interactive film?” I asked my new bosses and they said, “Beats us!” So we went to work trying to figure it out, making it up as we went.

I produced the proof of concept piece, which was to play at matinees with the help of our new production partner, Sony Entertainment. “Sony Wonder Saturday” was to be a 30 minute variety show featuring cartoons, music videos, and educational segments that were totally interactive. Hey kids, what music video do you want to see? Living Color, Soul Asylum or Mariah Carey? (The damn kids always chose Mariah). But here’s the catch – for 30 minutes that the audience actually saw, I had to produce 75 minutes of total programming, two out of three choices outvoted.

To make a long story short, we did it, we went public and raised something like 25 million dollars and then spent it all on three “feature length” films that played in 48 theatres all over the country. I worked with all sorts of Hollywood folks, some of whom are still friends and I got to delve deeply into the philosophy of non-traditional narrative and interactive storytelling either done by a group or by an individual. "Run, Lola Run" and "Memento" did not seem very ground-breaking to me...

The company went under abruptly after the last dollar was gone and the stock pennied out and we all went home.

There is a book called “Digital Babylon” that talks all about the Interfilm days. I’m mentioned as “The Producer” and it’s basically described as an idea ahead of it’s time. Maybe. I ended up traveling all over the world speaking at conferences, consulting for corporations and clients and eventually started my own multimedia production company that lasted right up to the aforementioned Internet Bust.

I keep having to remind myself that all I want now is just a website for my pictures. A decent little thing that shows off my work that I can send to reps, art directors, photo editors and galleries all over the world.

Working on your own identity is always difficult, I guess I can’t help but over-think it. It’s in my blood.

(Photo is of my friend Alyz from Paris. Seemed like a suitable illustration for the title of this rant.)