While some may still consider words like bandwidth and convergence the stuff of twentysomething computer geeks, more and more television producers and broadcasters are trying to make sense of all the buzz about new media and interactive programming.

For the first time this year, the Banff Television Festival is staging CyberPitch, a new media workshop and international competition for aspiring new media producers. Sponsored by Bell’s Broadcast and New Media Fund, the competition offers a $5,000 prize towards development of a new media project. Telefilm is underwriting all the new media programming at the Banff Television Festival.

CyberPitch gets underway on Monday, June 14 with an international panel of experts who will offer their thoughts on the ideal interactive project to bring together television and the Internet. Panelists include Mike Large (Real World, u.k.), Femke Wolting (Exploding Cinema, the Netherlands), Brian Katz (Telefilm Canada) and Americans J.C. Herz (Joystick Nation, New York Times Magazine) and Hal Josephson (New Media invision).

The theme for the competition is post-millennium or the year 2001. ‘We’ve had our year 2000 celebration, now where do go with this century? What’s in store for the new millennium?’ explains Sarah Diamond, executive producer, television and new media/ artistic director, media and visual arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

‘The theme is very open,’ says Diamond. ‘We’re asking people to think towards convergence and creating interactive content for the future.’

The competition is open to all delegates registered at the festival. To qualify, participants must submit a two-page written proposal describing their new media project by noon Wednesday, June 16. ‘It should have a short synopsis, a short design prospectus which includes the project’s platform and marketing strategy,’ says Diamond.

The jury, chaired by Diamond, will then select the three most interesting proposals which will be pitched at a Two in a Room-style session on Friday, June 18. The winning project will be announced that day during the festival’s closing ceremonies.

While not officially part of CyberPitch, Diamond says the Banff Centre for the Arts is interested in coproducing the winning project. ‘We would be eager to become a coproducer,’ she says, ‘if the content and technology match.’

On developing new media productions, Diamond says, ‘There are genres that work better far interactively than others. Anything where there’s mystery, discovery and adventure works well in interactive media.’

Currently, some production companies are building new media projects based on recycled content and research and spinning that content into interactive projects.

But Diamond says repurposing content from traditional to interactive media doesn’t always work. ‘You have to plan for the interactivity when you’re shooting and creating a project and think about the nature of interactive media.’

She recommends people concentrate as much on the physical nature of playing games and feeling immersed in the physicality of new media as on the story or the narrative.

‘Sometimes products with a strong sense of character work very well,’ says Diamond.