While some broadcasters and production companies have leapt headfirst into the convergence fray, Rhombus Media has until now adopted a more staid approach. But the Toronto-based producer best known for its performing arts programming is now taking iTV baby steps in collaboration with local interactive content provider marblemedia.

Rhombus and marblemedia are working together on Toothpaste, a five-minute operatic short starring Kids in the Hall’s Mark McKinney and vocalist Barbara Hannigan that will have a life on both TV and the Internet. It may seem a strange type of content for interactivity, but it’s not entirely surprising given Rhombus’s esoteric track record. The majority of funding for the TV end comes from Bravo!FACT, which provides grants for the production of Canadian shorts covering the arts. The plan is for Bravo! to air the short in the fall.

That Rhombus would approach marblemedia is not surprising either since Matthew Hornburg, one of the latter company’s three partners, worked for Rhombus in various capacities for three years. Hornburg left Rhombus six months ago on good terms, and has since freelanced for the prodco as codirector/coproducer/editor on Crossing Bridges, a documentary in which the crew followed violinist/conductor Pinchas Zukerman with a DVC-PRO PAL camcorder during a recent tour of the volatile Middle East. The program, produced and directed by Rhombus’ Niv Fichman, aired on CBC’s Opening Night series March 22.

Hornburg is assuming the role of TV content producer at marblemedia, while partners Mark Bishop and Mark Lysakowski are new media producer and line producer, respectively. Marblemedia’s Geordie Telfer functioned as new media creative lead on the Toothpaste project. Hornburg believes his own production experience will keep marblemedia and traditional TV producers/broadcasters on the same page.

‘It helps us talk their language, rather than [we] being an Internet company per se,’ he says. ‘We’re not coming to TV producers and saying, ‘Here’s the potential of the Internet.’ It’s more like, ‘We understand the way your world works, and a lot of the steps we take over the next few years will enhance your product.’ We’re not even introducing interactive TV at this stage. It’s having a website that really complements the show, and treating the site as its own channel.’

Toothpaste, directed by Rhombus partner Larry Weinstein, is set in the bedroom and bathroom of a house in Toronto’s Rosedale neighborhood and involves a man and woman quarreling over a tube of toothpaste. Their dialogue is sung in opera style, with McKinney lip-synching to a recorded track. The sequence involves 360-degree shots of the two rooms, and allows Web surfers to click on various background objects to trigger text info about the history of those objects, their symbolic meaning, or observations about opera itself. It’s like a viewer-generated pop-up video for opera.

‘Just like a DVD, you can click and hear commentary from Alexina Louie, the composer, and Dan Redican, the writer, talking about Toothpaste as you’re watching it,’ Hornburg adds.

Rhombus and marblemedia shot the project in the 16:9 format, leaving space for video content at both the top and bottom of the screen. Marblemedia will use the south end for the opera’s lyrics and the north for the visualization of the musical notes. There is also an alternate, behind-the-scenes video version where visitors can hear the score and see Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra playing it, as well as crosscutting between McKinney and Doug McNaughten, who supplies the actor’s vocal.

The producers had planned to shoot Toothpaste on a high-definition camcorder, but according to Hornburg the model they had malfunctioned. They procured a second HD camera from equipment provider Sim Video Productions, and that one also malfunctioned, so they had to switch to a DigiBeta camera at the last minute. Hornburg said he and Rob Sim, president and cofounder of Sim Video, conducted a post mortem and Sim was good about waiving equipment fees.

When launched, the Toothpaste website (domain name undecided) will also include the requisite chat room and message board. To make this viable, marblemedia is mulling over forms of refreshed content to keep audiences coming back. Hornburg is also trying to co-ordinate with Bravo! to have the network promote the site during the TV airing of the short to drive viewers online.

Rhombus and marblemedia are trying to maximize the project’s experimental potential before Weinstein and Bishop present it at Future Watch: Reaching the Next Generation at the Banff Television Festival on June 14. They have teamed with TorontoStarTv.com to develop an XML content server through which Toothpaste will be streamed to various media devices.

‘[The XML server] lets you build all of this content,’ Hornburg explains. ‘It’s ‘smart,’ so it knows you house [the content] on your website, and it will figure out ‘If this is a cell phone, I’m only going to give it this type of content,’ and ‘If this is a [personal digital assistant], I’m going to give it just this content.’ It’s a hybrid filter.’

Surfers can use their PDAs, pocket PCs and cell phones to play in a game show accessed at the website. They launch the game by clicking on a fishbowl in the background of the opera scene and are greeted by the show’s hosts – two goldfish.

With revenue models for interactive content still a mystery, Toothpaste is essentially an R&D enterprise, albeit one in which all parties, including TorStar’s broadband department, are eager to take part.

‘[TorStar] has so much of the infrastructure that they’re dying to do this type of content,’ Hornburg says. ‘They’re excited because they have all the technology in place, but they don’t have enough content to experiment with. So we’re working with their graphics team and programmers and will be producing all the interactive stuff with them.’

The Interactive Broadcast Development Group at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnic University is also on board, contributing $25,000 to finance the interactive components. The IBDG’s research team is also helping to build the XML server.

Hornburg says marblemedia is seeking to avoid the pitfalls that have taken down several ambitious young companies venturing into the interactive arena, explaining, ‘We’re doing the opposite by starting small, working out of our houses, [and hiring] everyone on a freelance basis.’

Likewise, Rhombus is entertaining thoughts of convergence with caution.

‘They don’t really need the hype of technology,’ Hornburg says. ‘They’ve already got their catalogue, and they don’t need a catch. But there were a few ideas I thought might be interesting to explore, and Toothpaste seemed like a small, manageable, safe experiment.’

Marblemediamedia’s home Web page is due to launch in early May. *

-www.marblemedia.com

-www.bravofact.com

-www.ibo.on.ca/ (Interactive Broadcast Ontario, IBDG)