Building on a platform

Undertaking an interactive multimedia production

Some of the basics one needs to know before undertaking an interactive multimedia production: what platform to use? The answer can be tricky to work out, for it depends not only on the content of the work and its audience but requires an assessment of the rapidly evolving technology and shifting marketplace.

Your first basic choice: computers or tv? Meaning cd-rom for pcs or Macintoshes, or interactive video?

The cd-rom market has exploded this year. Worldwide shipments of cd-rom drives in 1994 will reach 17.5 million, according to Dataquest. By the end of this year, nearly 20% of the world’s 122 million pcs will have a cd-rom drive. The worldwide home market for cd-roms is forecast to exceed 60 million units within two years. And one statistician says more pcs were sold in the u.s. last year than tvs or cars.

But those figures may be less impressive when considered against the fact that there are almost a billion television sets in homes worldwide, and that the bulk of those owners will never, come what may, buy a computer.

How many will buy an interactive video player, capable of playing music cds, feature films, games and educational programs on their tv sets? And then, how many will do so before their cable or phone company offers a direct interactive service?

One executive with Rogers Cablesystems envisions the latter scenario as arriving as early as 1996.

The games player producers are now coming out with more sophisticated equipment, capable of running cds, and some of them, such as Sega, are planning to offer other software, such as entertainment. But the battle of the giants, just reaching Canada now, is that between Philips’ cd-i (compact disk interactive) technology, and 3DO.

Philips, the forerunner in interactivity, is launching two Magnavox cd-i players, and last month Panasonic released the REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Many other manufacturers are producing players for both formats, and Sony is said to be coming out with its own system late next year.

Philips currently has 200 cd-i titles available, with another 100 due by Christmas. By contrast, 3DO currently has only 60 titles, expects to have about 100 for Christmas, and another 200 in development. The battle, which many see developing into a Beta versus vhs kind of fight, has seen epithets being hurled on both sides. One producer describes cd-i as ‘a lame technology,’ while another says it is antiquated.

But Luda Tovey, whose Toronto-based Oberon Productions produces cd-i titles for pharmaceutical manufacturers to market new products to doctors, says 3DO’s authoring tools are ‘very complicated. That is particularly why there are not many 3DO titles out there. Anyone wanting to get into cd-i would find it relatively easy.’

As far as the actual process of creating a cd-rom is concerned, ‘it is not too dissimilar to a video project. Essentially, it’s the same,’ says Gary Chaikin, founder and president of Toronto’s Sierra Creative Communications. Sierra is producing the feature previews which will begin running on interactive kiosks in the lobbies of Cineplex Odeon theaters next month.

Currently located in a loft in the heart of Toronto’s Parkdale area (the company will be moving soon), Sierra began five years ago as a corporate video producer and, with cd presser Cinram as a partner, evolved into the interactive field in just the last 18 months.

This month Sierra will also be unveiling kiosks at Eaton’s for customer information and in a number of hospitals for pharmaceutical and medical information.

Chaikin outlines the following procedure for an interactive production:

– Conference with the client to lay out the parameters: i