Those still thinking the World Wide Web is a B horror movie starring a giant spider are out of the loop. The Internet isn’t a weave of pantyhose, water isn’t necessary to surf, and flaming isn’t the same old verb. Welcome to the ’90s. To play the game, multimedia cyberlingo has to come naturally, and by now, everybody with one foot in the real world can speak the language.

Like the rest of the Western world, the commercial production community has heard futurists predicting the rise of new communications beasts. Best case scenario, the story goes, cd-rom production will create new demand for visuals and with it a new revenue stream for those who live on making pictures. The Internet will speed up communication and give Canadian production houses a new inroad to the global marketplace.

Adding to bottom line?

But in the here and now, jargon in hand, how much is more than just futurespeak? How much of the business is really being conducted via computer? Is anyone actually as dependent on the computer as the phone and the fax? Maybe most importantly, is it adding to anybody’s bottom line?

Not much, very little, no, and definitely not, say executive producers from commercial production houses across Canada.

While many have the latest Wired on their desks and an interest in the leading-edge technology, staying in the game day-to-day in the commercial biz is commanding all the attention. As of yet, that business isn’t any different than it’s been for three decades in spite of all the hype, say commercial production folk.

‘No one’s phoning me to say we want to do this Internet project,’ says Don McLean, president of The Partners’ Film Company. Since there’s no demand from the agencies, the Partners’ group of companies, like the majority of spot shops, is taking a wait-and-see approach.

‘We’re just as confused by the whole thing as everybody else is, and what we’re trying to do is anticipate the environment and move when there’s some kind of clear direction to go in,’ says McLean.

Ditto on the West Coast, says Greg Bosworth, executive producer at Apple Box Productions in Vancouver. ‘Nobody’s asking for it. The agencies are tripping over each other trying get the few accounts that come out of here, trying to make ends meet. We’re serving their needs and they certainly aren’t multimedia-related.’

Montreal houses echo the same sentiment, with Jet Films being the one exception. Jet has just launched InterJet, a production house specializing in edutainment and commercial products/concepts destined for the cd-rom market, the Internet, interactive television and display kiosks.

‘At this point, we’re investing in brain power, but a number of major projects are in the works,’ says Guy Laflamme, InterJet’s vp marketing.

In English-speaking Canada, multimedia projects being produced are for the most part coming directly out of the agencies or specialized multimedia and computer graphics companies. With the exception of The Kessler Group, which has its own multimedia divisions, albeit with a corporate market focus, and a cd-rom reel by Circle Productions’ Shin Sugino, commercial production houses aren’t seeing much action from the exploding cd-rom market.

There are a few things holding commercials back from being a big part of the cd-rom bonanza, says Brian Kieller, marketing consultant for Toronto-based Dunedain, a multimedia, presentation graphics, and advertising design house.

Rarely, if ever, are commercial directors used to shoot footage, says Kieller, whose company just wrapped a cd-rom for Microsoft’s ‘Welcome to the Carnival’ campaign and is working on an educational cd-rom on black history. Multimedia houses normally go to the smaller video houses, usually for footage shot on Betacam, to keep production costs down. Directors are usually paid by the project or the hour with hourly rates running between $75 and $125, small potatoes compared to a commercial director’s day rate, he says.

The landscape might look a little different when the customer has the capacity to easily and cheaply download full motion, but right now commercials on cd-rom are mostly limited to quicktime video, where the end user clicks on a Coke can, for example, and a part of a spot comes up.

‘But this way you lose the interactivity. It’s very linear. You also have to factor in that multimedia isn’t really broadcast quality yet, so we don’t go to the broadcast houses,’ says Kieller.

Toronto-based advertising agencies are taking the lead in figuring out where multimedia fits in the traditional scheme of things. Leo Burnett, bbdo, Vickers and Benson and MacLaren McCann have created either positions or new departments over the past year to research, generate creative ideas, and simply keep an eye on what’s up ahead.

While the agencies are seeing fit to pioneer, on the whole the commercial production community in English-speaking Canada isn’t convinced the new media is yet worth an investment in time and resources, despite stories like that of Richard Winkler, executive producer at Curious Pictures in New York, who set up a Web site early this year to reach the European and greater u.s. marketplace. To date, he says his site is drawing resumes, requests for reels, and played a role in his company landing a job through Foote, Cone and Belding/San Francisco.

These kinds of cyberhappenings are the exception not the rule, and with the dog days of July just over and the economy still lumbering on, there isn’t the cash to be a pioneer, say local production houses. But everyone is feeling the pressure to keep up with the latest, especially since multimedia may have the potential to add to the progressively tightening bottom line.

Toronto commercial production house Magic hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about how their skills might be used to make multimedia, but given the economy, that might change, says Carmen Dolgay, executive producer at Magic.

‘As an industry, broadcast volume is shrinking, budgets are shrinking, so we’ll have to tap alternatives as they come up.’

Similarly, Andy Crosbie, executive producer at Sparks Productions, says commercial production houses have to think past tomorrow or risk being left out when the doors open.

‘When this comes around, if as a supplier we’re thought of only as commercial producers, we’ll be overlooked. We have to keep up,’ he says.

Crosbie, a self-confessed technopeasant, has been in the audience at information seminars on advertising and multimedia sponsored by the Canadian Advertising and Research Foundation. It’s just homework, yet without a practical application, and to talk about convergence like it’s already happening is misleading, says Crosbie.

New media production certainly hasn’t had an impact on the pool of work commercial producers have at their fingertips, but it’s beginning to change the industry’s perception of what it does.

‘As a group, we’re beginning to see ourselves a little differently,’ says Crosbie.

William Craynor, executive producer at Spy Films, agrees that the traditional perimeters of the commercial producer’s mandate are blurring. When Spy started up last year, having a house of multifaceted directors with skills in a variety of related disciplines, from editing to multimedia, was key to the company’s positioning.

Spy hasn’t seen work along the cd-rom, interactive, or Internet lines yet, but the directors are prepped for the day they’re invited to the party, says Craynor. Ideally, new tech work will add to the bottom line, ‘but since the clients don’t know when and how it will contribute to their bottom line, how do we know?’ asks Craynor.

Because a multimedia-generated cash cow is far from a sure thing, production houses aren’t making any big investments in techno toys to train for the bankable beginning of a new advertising stream.

‘The tech is just the tools. I don’t need to know the noodling of how it works. We’re the people that are going to position ourselves with the creative,’ says Craynor.

Derek Case, director and owner of Magic, recently refused an offer to invest in a cdi company for the same reason. ‘My answer was, ‘Why? What’s it going to change for me as a producer, photographer, filmmaker?’ My expertise is images. That’s what I produce and I’ll sell it to whomever. Someone will set up the technology and probably make a lot of money from it, but I come in when they come to me for visuals.’

On the tech side, what some production houses have been willing to invest in are sophisticated computer systems for their directors to play on. For example, last month Avion Films bought an Apple system, complete with a number of graphics and publishing programs, scanner, and trainer coming in once a week so they can maximize the system’s capabilities. It’s the only investment in technology that looks worthwhile right now, says Michael Schwartz, executive producer at Avion.

New revenue streams make sense and everybody has to run the gamut now, but to wade into the new wave costs a lot of money for gadgets that no one’s sure will pay off. ‘That’s okay for the big guys but we’ll invest in creative talent and let someone else be the facilities pioneer,’ says Schwartz.

La Fabrique d’Images in Montreal has upgraded its Apple network to include cd-rom drives for the first time so staff can screen cd-rom titles, and Groupe Image Buzz will likely buy a major workstation before the end of the year so directors can have a hands-on look at multimedia design and applications, says Louis Morin, a producer with the La Fabrique group.