early multimedia adaptors

Corporate video houses have been particularly agile in jumping onto the multimedia bandwagon.

Corporate clients, especially high-tech companies, are drawn to the practicality and novelty of multimedia presentations and training packages. The emergence of accessible and affordable multimedia computer technology has increased this preponderance.

The shift is most marked in Ottawa, with its traditionally strong corporate production base. There, a reduction in spending by government clients has encouraged a move to alternative markets, not the least of which are long-format work and multimedia.

The corporate-to-multimedia transition has forced changes on producers in terms of how they piece together multimedia assignments, as compared with traditional corporate/industrial work.

Peter Kuske, national sales manager for multimedia services at Future Endeavors, a new company in Ottawa spun off from software developer Corel, says multimedia projects use video and audio components that are produced conventionally. At the same time, he adds, interactive video requires additional levels of production: animation, or virtual reality, and 2D and 3D computer processes.

The multimedia expertise at Future Endeavours has been found mostly on the pc platform, as opposed to traditional Macintosh applications.

Kuske foresees multimedia business for Future Endeavours rising to $1 million this year, with its major market being high-tech companies developing computer software and hardware for military and civilian applications. Those companies, he says, will require multimedia projects for training and presentation purposes.

Multimedia, as opposed to corporate video, is also attractive to clients looking to hook non-captive audiences.

For example, to catch the attention of trade show attendees otherwise moving speedily down miles of aisles and booths, the Bank of Montreal turned to Toronto-based Regan Productions.

Using vibrant colors and continuous animation to lure in the traffic passing by the Bank of Montreal booth, Regan’s Raymond Gabala designed a marketing game for the bank on a multiple-disc format that provides a series of programmable screens.

The multimedia game format allowed the bank to glean information from trade show attendees about the sort of banking services that might interest them, without proving an inconvenience.

In addition to the thrill of video-game action, high-impact graphics and sound effects, another advantage of the multimedia game/program is that it can be packaged on cd-rom or laser-disc format for easy transport and installation at trade shows.

And bank employees need not return to Regan to input new questions and secondary information – they can do it themselves. Says Carolann Reynolds, project manager at Regan: ‘They create an interface to enter in questions. So the program is convenient, flexible, low-cost and high-value.’

But value aside, does multimedia work cost more to produce that traditional corporate/industrial video?

Opinion differs.

The cost of multimedia software and hardware is tumbling, making it accessible to professionals and novices alike. But Ken Stewart, president of General Assembly, Ottawa’s largest integrated post-production and production service company, insists you get what you pay for.

‘Multimedia does not mean you have to spend more. But clients should spend more,’ Stewart says. ‘If you do multimedia right, you have to shoot high-quality video. And you will need high-quality graphics.’

Stewart is not alone in criticizing cowboy operators among multimedia producers who have produced sub-standard work, thus bringing down the overall image of the industry.

Shane Lunny, president of The Lunny Communications Group in Vancouver, cautions that quality multimedia calls for far more preproduction and initial design work.

‘There has to be a lot of front-end work,’ Lunny says of multimedia scripting. ‘We ask, what do we want it to do? Where is it to go? We apportion far larger resources to design, both creative and technical.’

As a measure of complex scripting behind interactive video employing a number of media, Lunny’s multimedia technicians were behind the giant Dinosaur exhibition that made its way across Canada last year and is currently touring Japan.

Lunny points out the project called for 28 different interactive programs. None were overly complex, but each had to be designed as a standalone module that could also become part of the larger multimedia experience.

For all the effort and expenditure required for cd-rom and other multimedia technology, producers say the benefit to corporate clients is they can convey increasingly detailed layers of information and messages to end-users in more accessible and user-friendly fashion.

Two-dimensional, linear videos conveying information still have their use, cautions Stewart. He recalls one client who ignored his advice and chose multimedia, only to admit later that the final product suffered for all its interactive interface technology. ‘All of a sudden, we went quickly back into the edit suite and transferred the graphics. But we had compromised the video footage because it had not been designed for linear video. It was dry as video because it had been stronger in graphics than camera movements,’ he recalls.

Some production companies are pooling their staff’s video/ software expertise, drawing from the multimedia knowledge acquired through corporate work and parlaying it into their own productions.

Example: Animatics Multimedia, a computer graphics, multimedia and animation house based in Ottawa, has produced an award-winning cd-rom program called Midnight Stranger, which boasts a first in ‘virtual intimacy’ and is distributed by publishing giant Gazelle Technologies of San Diego.

Over the last five years, Animatics has been doing interactive multimedia projects, such as training cd-roms, for corporate clients, and now the company is starting an entertainment division.

Its latest interactive product, Urban Defence, a two-cd set on conflict avoidance, has one version for each sex.

Alfredo Coppola, Animatics president and creative director, describes it as street-training presented as drama, wherein the player wanders through the urban landscape encountering conflict situations.

In turn, the kind of reel fodder the entertainment product yields will no doubt influence the direction of corporate work.

Whether by double-clicking or using touch-screen technology, corporate video houses expect offering multimedia as an alternative to clients will raise the profile of an industry otherwise regarded as dry and staid.

Says Stewart: ‘We’ve educated ourselves (about multimedia). Now we’re educating our clients. As an optimist, I believe the business will soon start to snowball for us.’