Rainmaker Digital Pictures, a Canadian pioneer in dvd technology, in conjunction with Third Planet Entertainment, has released Planetary Traveler, an audiovisual intergalactic journey, the companies’ premiere commercial dvd title release.

Vancouver-based Rainmaker delved into the new media in 1995 with the formation of a separate dvd division, but with so few players on the market, convincing anyone to invest in production of the new technology was a task for the company.

‘Basically we needed a high-end project to take it to more than just your straightforward moving pictures,’ says Randy Berg, Rainmaker sales and marketing account executive. ‘We needed to find a client who would tolerate us pushing the envelope, and Third Planet wanted to do that as well.’

Meanwhile, just down the coast in Seattle, Jan Nickman, producer and director of Planetary Traveler, was finishing up the vhs version of the interstellar space journey and had plans for a cd-rom when Rainmaker proposed a dvd, opening up a galaxy of possibilities.

Planetary Traveler is a fusion of music and motion pictures as it reveals visual flight logs of the explorations of ‘Sumoc, last of the Phleig,’ an almost extinct alien race, through a distant solar system.

Nickman says to his knowledge it is the first show created entirely in a virtual online studio environment where all artists were recruited over the Internet, all production meetings were carried out online, and ideas and images were shipped back and forth via cyber-space.

In addition, Planetary Traveler is one of only three or four shows ever created entirely with original computer animation content on high-end desktop Macs.

With the dvd-rom version of the trip, explorers can visit eight different planets and learn about their geological composition. There is a section for director’s notes, credits for the artists, and a language option which makes it possible to listen to the brief bookends of narrative in a variety of international languages including Japanese and Korean.

In an effort to truly push the capabilities of the dvd format, Rainmaker decided to develop Planetary Traveler as a hybrid disc, which means it can be played on a dvd-rom as well as dvd-video drive. Using a computer, explorers can, for example, link to related Websites or launch helper applications directly from the dvd program.

The vhs version of the show, 40 minutes in length, was composed by Nickman and Grammy-nominated composer Paul Haslinger from the ground up over a period of two years and is a display of brilliant bright colors and graphic images of otherworldly suns, planets, volcanoes and skies that’s been described as a ‘futuristic version of Fantasia.’

When it came to creating the dvd version, seven graphic artists returned to their Macs to create 30 minutes of interactive layers, done in record time over four months, and according to Nickman, since they were planning to take Planetary Traveler technologically further from the start, there was very little work involved in creating the dvd.

‘We (Nickman and animation producer Rodney L’Ongnion) came up with a proposal to exploit the interactive technical capabilities, and in doing so we definitely pushed the envelope,’ explains Nickman, an Emmy Award-winning producer and director. ‘The level of graphics on the interface along with other aspects of the interactive portion had not been done before, so we were definitely on the edge, setting a new standard.’

Aside from Planetary Traveler, which is being released by Fox-Lorber Associates and Third Planet Entertainment, other titles coming out of Rainmaker’s facilities include digitally remastered versions of the court martial drama Breaker Morant, opera cult classic Diva and a sexually charged Swept Away, all produced with Fox-Lorber complete with subtitles, biography and production note options.

Being on the cutting edge of technology has its price. Budget-wise there are many options in the dvd realm, and when it comes to a basic movie on a disc – just a straight encoding job with no menus or extensive options – the cost is anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the quality of the production.

When dealing with something as advanced as Planetary Traveler, with all of its bells and whistles, the cost of production ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.

So far those being targeted by the dvd pushers have been technophiles who bought laser discs and fancy being in the technological forefront. Berg speculates that in the first year of their release, around 330,000 players were sold in North America.

‘It was adopted into a very small number of markets originally, and I think once the marketing of the whole thing spreads it’s going to be big,’ says Richard Mardon, operations manager at Rainmaker. ‘The quality of the video is so incredible [that] once you’ve seen it, you want to have it.’

Penetration of the players is much higher in the u.s. where it costs around us$300 to be on the cutting edge of technology as opposed to Canada where a player is anywhere from $500 for a basic early unit to $700.

The market is separated into three categories: b-titled movies, specialty uses such as Planetary Traveler, and the a-title Hollywood movies, a segment which Mardon says represents a fairly major portion of the market and is starting to solidify.

According to Berg, the ball will really get rolling and the market start happening once computers come equipped with dvd-rom drives. Since computers come already equipped with all the chips and hardware needed, it is less expensive to get a drive for a computer than a standalone box.

As far as competition is concerned, Rainmaker remains the sole Canadian company producing the discs on the high-end, but across the border in California about half a dozen facilities exist, including two major movie studios, Time Warner and Universal, which have their own dvd production systems.