Heartland Motion Pictures’ Stephen Onda and Pebble Beach Productions’ Leif Storm have formed multimedia company Pebble Beach Interactive, and in the process have developed a pair of cd-rom titles as well as a philosophy and method for meeting the technological and creative challenges of an emerging industry.

Pebble Beach, named for the childhood school of Storm’s mother, was formed after a long period of contemplation and aggressive research by the two Regina-based producers on the direction of the multimedia industry. The partners approached the multimedia realm with curiosity and caution, says Onda from Toronto, where he and Storm have been meeting with publishers and distributors for the new products.

‘Before, it was new media or multimedia,’ says Onda. ‘It wasn’t until we began understanding that it’s interactive media that we started looking for a project we could undertake.’

To develop the first two cd-roms, aimed at the children’s educational market, the partners assembled a core team of eight developers from various fields to work on the project, with an additional 16 people contributing to the development of the two titles. Developers were sent to an intensive training course in Toronto to become fluent in the technical skills required for high-end cd creation.

Varied elements

The Pebble Beach titles utilize live-action video clips and audio clips as well as QuickTime VR and morphing technology.

The first title, Ideas and Inspiration, is an exploration of Canadian art, featuring 101 contemporary Canadian artists from a variety of disciplines, from Alex Colville to Alfred Sung. The title features 35 video clips and 80 audio interviews with artists as well as a virtual gallery and interactive learning segments accessible in French or English.

The second title, Stories in Season, deals with Native issues and allows users to flip through content in four Native languages as well as French and English.

The unique aspect of the titles, says Storm, is that they can be integrated into a school curriculum, not only as a reference tool but as course material that can be assigned by teachers. The titles will be focus-tested over the summer and will be used in Saskatchewan schools in the fall.

The creation of the cd-rom titles was based on what Storm calls adaptive systems learning. Onda says the development of the titles flowed from an organic business plan which emphasized the importance of building a team that could grow with the emerging markets and technologies.

‘The tools have been around for a while and will continue to evolve; what’s going to be unique is to have the capability to be fluent in the language of designing interactive product,’ says Onda. ‘To do that you have to look at building your team and professionally enhancing levels of skill for as long as your business plan is in existence.’

Acquiring the skills to produce the titles has created ongoing opportunities for Pebble Beach developers to gain further expertise and assume a position at the forefront of emerging technology.

Asking for quotes

‘Because the virtual-reality thing is new and we’ve done something extraordinary with QuickTime VR, we’ve had people asking us to quote on contract work,’ says Storm.

To accommodate the continuity of motion of people onscreen, Pebble Beach used a morphing software called Movie Flow, which was just released in its beta version. While using the software, developers noticed an inexplicable shimmering in the background of sequences.

Onda says the entire file of the affected scene was e-mailed to the Texas-based software developer, who discovered the phenomenon reflected a bug in the software. The bug was corrected and a new version of the software resulted. ‘So we were using a software package that didn’t exist a month before.’

Onda says the Pebble Beach team was assembled in December, and anticipates an August release date for the cd-roms. The titles, which cost about $275,000 to create, were developed with Saskatchewan Education, Industry Canada and Saskfilm, its first equity investment in a multimedia product.

Onda and Storm are looking at a number of possibilities for future titles, and in terms of delivering online product, say at present the emphasis should be on content and which format can most effectively deliver it.