PROFILE • MAY 21 , 2001
Multimedia Production on the Mac
Star Wars Chronicled
Five questions with Orphmedia President and TFN Digital Producer Peter Orphanos

by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

By now, many of you have heard about or seen TFN Digital, a twice-monthly Web broadcast that covers news about the Star Wars universe and carries features about those who make things happen in said universe. For Star Wars fans, it's a must-see. For video professionals, it stands out as an example of how to use streaming media (QuickTime and Windows Media) not just to deliver entertainment, but to showcase the services your production company offers.

TFN Digital is the work of Orphmedia, a Macintosh-based multimedia production house located in New York. I had a chance to talk with the company's founder, Peter Orphanos, about his company, the the TFN Digital series and his views on streaming media. First, a little background.

Orphmedia was founded a little more than a year ago by Peter Orphanos, who says he wanted to start a multimedia production company, but not one focused solely on the Web, since the revenues aren't really there yet.

"Taking the corporate production company model, meshing it in with a typical Hollywood production company model and then combining development, prep, shoot, post and compress, my idea started to take shape," Orphanos says. He launched the self-financed company in April 2000.

Orphanos says that, for him, Star Wars is a passion. The show appears on theforce.net, an incredibly content-deep site dedicated to all things Star Wars. The site already carries a broad range of QuickTime content—mostly short films, parodies and examples of effects, as well as tutorials on creating effects. Why not a streaming news magazine?

Peter Orphanos (right) with Peter Mayhew ("Chewbacca")
following an interview for TFN Digital.

"TFN Digital is a passion of ours", Orphanos says, "and it may be a side project, but we want to push the barriers with it."

The series is edited and composited entirely on the Macintosh platform using three desktop G4s and a G3 PowerBook. Graphics are created in Adobe Photoshop and, occasionally, Illustrator. Editing is done in Apple's Final Cut Pro, with compositing handled in Adobe After Effects. For compression for the Web, Orphmedia uses Media 100's Cleaner 5, which often runs on the PowerBook (to keep the desktops free for client work). He says of Cleaner, "This is product that is only getting better. Sorenson is amazing, and their tech support guy has been great."

TFN Digital uses a variety of title sequences
for regular and special editions. Editing is
done in Apple Final Cut Pro. Compositing is
in Adobe After Effects.

So why Macintosh?

"My parents bought me an apple //e in 1984, and I loved it," Orphanos says. "My best friend had an Apple ][+, and we tried to network our favorite game, Dark Forest, so we could play with each other over the phones from our homes.... After that, I was sold on Apple even through the early '90s."

And all I had was an Atari....

Orphmedia uses a JVC GVD 500 and a Sony PD-150. They also have a Sony VX-2000 for pickup. "[The] JVC GVD 500 is our main workhorse, and we couldn't have chosen a better camera," Orphanos says. "The best thing about it is the news lens from Fuji, and the chips really bring out the colors. Our second camera is the Sony PD-150, which is a great deal, and we are planning to incorporate it quite a bit more."

TFN Digital features rotating anchors who
announce news and introduce features.
Pictured: Host Hettienne Park.

Orphanos himself has a fairly traditional background in production, starting off as a production assistant and working his way around the industry. He produced The Deli, a feature that played on Showtime and the Independent Film Channel, and he produced a movie called Sugar: The Fall of the West. Also also worked as a production manager for the WB's on air promos before launching Orphmedia. His clients now range from blue chips like American Express to small Web companies.

Creative Mac: How did the idea for a Star Wars news magazine broadcast come about?

Peter Orphanos: Before I started my company, whenever I thought of video on the Internet, I always envisioned a Star Wars news show. I saw the original Episode IV over 20 times in the theater when I was a kid ... and I always wanted more of Star Wars. It may have been influenced by Bloomberg TV when QuickTime 4 first came out ('99), but it made me realize I had a chance to see what I really felt like seeing. So in July of 2000, I contacted Scott Chittwood, the cofounder and head of theforce.net, and we bounced the ideas back and forth for a few months until both of us were ready to go forward.

CM: How does TFN Digital fit into your company's plans? Is this a side
project or more of a showcase for the medium? And where do you get that
content?

Orphanos: TFN Digital is a passion of ours, and it may be a side project (we'd love to do this with a full blown budget), but we want to push the barriers with it (interactive). If we are going to do a show like this for the Star Wars fans, we want to make it the staple of Web programming. (Besides DMN TV, which I love.)

TFN Digital reporter Alena Kerins interviews
Mitch Cutler, owner of St. Mark's Comics in
New York. The shows usually include one
on the scene report.

CM: What's the future of TFN digital? How would you like to see it
develop?

Orphanos: The future is to try and push it through the barriers of "convergence" programming.... Yes, we will be implementing some type of [inter]activity shortly.

CM: Tell me about your studio: What made you decide to put together your own? And how did you decide on the Mac as your platform?

Orphanos: It's not a studio, but more like a nice size room that we shoot in. It is located in our office area and is nothing short of a miracle. As long as we have between three and four feet from the main camera, we can shoot the green screen anywhere. We've managed to develop our own "homemade" lights, but we still use C-stands, spring clips, stingers, quadbox's and a green screen. For our clients, depending on what it is, we rent a studio space for the duration of the shoot.

There is an in-house staff of about four people with a few freelancers coming in for certain things.

In addition to news and on the scene reports,
TFN Digital includes features on the people
behind the technology of Star Wars.

Choosing the system was the hard part. At first I was actually looking at one of the lower-end Avids and the Media 100s, but then a friend showed me Final Cut Pro at his office and demonstrated its capabilities.

Sold.

So I built up the first system and used the video clips it came with to practice editing. FCP is great for logging, cutting, importing and exporting. Apple's latest DV codec, which I think was included in System 9.1 and QuickTime 5 preview, really showed a nice improvement.

After Effects is our workhorse on the motion graphics, although most of the compositing we have been doing for the first seven episodes of the show had been in FCP. Episode 8 was the first time I used AE and the difference matte filter to pull the key ... whew! That took me about an hour to figure out! I only started using After Effects/FCP/Photoshop about a year ago, but I have been catching on very quickly.

CM: Why streaming media? Certainly an awful lot of would-be Web video efforts have failed. What's your position? And why QuickTime?

Orphanos: It's amazing isn't it? Many Web video efforts failed because of too much money being spent on marketing and inexperience in the development/ production process, as well as a lack of understanding about the Internet entertainment medium. One thing that a lot of companies do not understand is that being media savvy—not necessarily hip/cool—is a very important element in creating something with visuals. The marketing that can be done with video on the Web is almost beyond the limits, but you need to develop the right formula for it. Whether you have high-speed access or not, if the content is worth it, people will wait for the download. The bandwidth excuse is beginning to wear thin, and, if you look at some of the reports over the past year, the consumer high-speed base tripled in the U.S. I can't wait to see what it is like this year.

When I would run into different people from the financial world and told them what I was doing, they would always ask about the kind of technology I was using. I told them it was existing technology that guaranteed to deliver, whatever format was usable for your end user.

QuickTime was the natural choice because it is on nearly every operating system in some way, shape or form. The quality of the QuickTime has always had a better look than the other media players, and the player itself is less obtrusive. One thing I must admit is that Windows Media Player and Real Media Player have improved dramatically. One of my favorite shows on the Web to watch is DMN TV, and that is a great example of Web video being put to good use.

Spoilers reveal clues about
upcoming Star Wars movies.

So how does Orphmedia get the juicy bits they put into their shows? "Our information is basically condensed from theforce.net site, and we also get exclusive spoilers from Joshua Griffin, [who] runs the Episode II section of tf.n. I do the copy for the news section, and of course I have the other people on the show like our Creative Producer Robert McNeil providing some news/interviews."

TFN Digital is produced and directed by Peter Orphanos. For more information on Orphmedia, visit http://www.orphmedia.com. To view TFN Digital, visit http://www.theforce.net/digital. For more information on theforce.net, visit http://www.theforce.net.

GO TO PAGE [ 1, 2, 3, Complete, Home ]

Read More Columns.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]