The American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab (AFI DCL, for short) is looking for mentors for some high-profile interactive media projects, including Grey’s Anatomy and PBS’s News Hour. Details - as well as a calendar of upcoming events around North America - are copied below from their recent press release (follow the “more” jump if you’re reading this from a main page). This is a chance to become involved with designing what some hope will be the future face of television.
Whether or not it does turn out to be the future face of television is still out for verdict: I lived through the hopeful times of CD-I and other interactive media when a lot of us thought we were going to help raise the overall level of humanity by making coffee-table books available on an expensive, not entirely easy to use medium. This episode of misspent personal enthusiasm has left me a bit more cautious, thinking the computer is for interacting and the television set is for consuming. But the number of people who vote in response to an American Idol episode (or called in to a toll number during the Shall We Boil Larry the Lobster bit on Saturday Night Live, oh so many years ago) does indicate that at least some like to interact with their mass-consumed entertainment. So here’s your chance to try to design some interactivity that works:
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Chris & Trish Meyer are the founders of CyberMotion, an award-winning Los Angeles motion graphic design studio. Their design and animation work has appeared on shows and promos for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, The Learning Channel, HBO, and PBS. CyberMotion was one of the first studios to create major release film opening titles using desktop tools (including major films such as The Taleneted Mr. Ripley), and they have also created promotional and trade show videos for corporate clients from Apple Computer to Xerox. They specialize in unusual format videos, having animated for IMAX, CircleVision, the NBC AstroVision sign in Times Square, and the four-block-long Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas.