A toronto company hopes its technology will enhance the movie-going experience and whet consumers’ appetites to see more films in the cinema.

Sierra Communications has added interactive and multimedia expertise to its strengths in corporate video production and will be weaving both skill sets together as it prepares for a September launch of a network of 13 interactive kiosks in Metro Toronto Cineplex Odeon theaters.

The kiosks will use cd-roms to give customers access to various types of information, all available just by touching the screen. Sierra’s president, Gary Chaikin, says on the cd-rom kiosks, users can preview clips from as yet unreleased films or can ask the kiosk to print out coupons or maps showing other entertainment venues.

The kiosk will also offer advantages to companies by collecting a variety of data. Marketers wishing to learn more about the tastes of the film-going public could gather a database of info from the kiosk for direct mail purposes and could, Chaikin says, ‘do market research on commercials for clients. We have clients doing this in (kiosks in) pharmacies already.’

Sierra has been responsible for producing some of these videos. When the spot is to be interactive, says Chaikin, there are a few things the production team has to keep in mind while shooting. The cuts have to be a little longer and pans left or right don’t work well on the kiosk screen, although Chaikin says zooms are okay.

Because of the size of the kiosk monitor, it’s a good idea to shoot against light backgrounds, he says, adding that so far most of the interactive commercials have been graphics-based with some video components. Since the format is new to advertisers, and since it’s expensive to produce interactive spots featuring live-action options, advertisers aren’t going the live-action route very often. But, he adds, the cost could be better amortized once the kiosk networks are expanded.

Chaikin says Sierra’s established abilities in corporate video production allow it to take the film previews provided by studios and cut them to a usable length on a non-linear editing system – self-designed by Sierra by combining various hardware bits and pieces. Then the clips are ‘dropped into’ a software application designed in-house and loaded onto a cd-rom (cd-roms are also stamped in-house!) and loaded into the kiosks.

Customers trying out the kiosks will also see a graphic user interface created by staffers at Sierra. For the uninitiated, gui refers to the graphics on-screen.

Chaikin also envisages other applications for cd-i (interactive) in the kiosks, including placing them in the lobbies at tv stations. There, the kiosks could showcase the broadcaster’s programming interactively. ‘They have high-quality video to show,’ says Chaikin, ‘and have no need to collect (marketing) data.’