A team comprised of Redrover Studio’s Andy Knight, Hero Films’ Linzi Knight, Imported Artists director Richard D’Alessio and former Revolver Films producer Allan Weinrib has put together a new commercial production company known as UnpluggedTV.com.

UnpluggedTV is best described as a spot shop that helps agencies and advertisers extend their brands to the Web. In the gray area between Web ads and commercial production, UnpluggedTV plans to guide advertisers and their agencies through the confusing zeros and ones to a solid end product – a fully-produced animated or live-action broadcast spot suitable for the Web. If the client is up for exploring the new frontier, its spot can be viewed on the UnpluggedTV website, which can be linked directly to the brand’s own home on the Web. Pepsi and AT&T have already signed contracts, and the founding partners expect other major clients to follow suit when the company begins performing.

‘UnpluggedTV originally started as an idea to create a Web TV channel as a venue for advertisers,’ says partner Andy Knight. ‘What it has developed into, the real business model, is to do Web design for other companies and then to use UnpluggedTV, the Web channel, as a showcase. We’re going to push to get advertisers to use it as a place where they can put their ads, and it’s okay if it is attached to a sponsorship as long as it is entertainment based.’

According to Knight, Unplugged TV makes its money the way any other production company would, with the only major difference being the possible interactive component it offers. He says the team at Unplugged TV will try to include the agency as much as possible in the process, and that their experiences will build awareness of what a valuable marketing tool the Internet can be.

‘I think the agencies have a bit of a conundrum when they’re selling to their clients,’ says Knight. ‘It’s difficult to do something other than Ford.com or GM.com [for example]. If you go to GM.com, the surfer has an expectation of what they’re going to find. It’s a challenge for them to expand that into an entertainment-based medium, which is what is going to bring you back.’

Knight says retaining the quality of the commercial, especially a live-action spot, is of the utmost importance to everyone involved with the project. He admits he, Linzi Knight and D’Alessio are all sticklers for quality within their own media, but they also have to deal with the restrictions of the technology.

To generate the best quality for animated spots online, Knight uses USAnimation, a vector-based coloring system. However, instead of outputting the spot to bitmap for broadcast, UnpluggedTV outputs to vector base (similar to what is done with Flash animation), which helps to keep the file small.

‘The key to all this is that it works extremely well for animation, but it’s not so good for live action,’ says Knight. ‘When you get into live action you have to get into streaming video and Quick Time, which are not small files. There is a market out there for that, but most people have small modems, so the advantage of animation is that the average person on a smaller modem can view without a substantial waiting time.

‘We’re not trying to force the Internet to be something that it’s not,’ he adds. ‘We don’t want the files for these things to be so big that the average person can’t look at them, so we’re not sacrificing technical ease for quality. It’s like anything and we work within our limitations. You can make a beautiful, simple image or you can make an extremely complex beautiful image; it just depends on which one will suit the medium better.’

The site has two characters who act as hosts for the online world of UnpluggedTV, Rebecca and Ulf. They offer differing opinions on the spots on the site, which Knight says adds an appropriate bit of color to UnpluggedTV.

As one may expect, the site is geared toward a more Web-savvy demographic of 18 to 40. With a small advertising campaign underway in Toronto, Knight is confident many surfers will come upon the site, but admits getting them back will be the tricky part.

‘You have to continually update,’ says Knight. ‘One visit is not going to satisfy you, so you keep on with new information, new animation. It’s the Web, so people can turn it off and people can skip by it, so it has to be good entertainment. It can’t be an in-your-face ad. You have to provide something interesting and smart.’

He says through the spots found on UnpluggedTV, a company’s website can be directly linked, so surfers can receive more information on whatever product or service is being advertised.

The company is already growing, with a dedicated staff writer and animators who will be continually expanding UnpluggedTV. Knight and his partners are also seeking work from other production companies, agencies and clients to post on the site. *

-www.unpluggedtv.com

-www.unpluggedstudio.com