It had been all of two months since I'd moved to LA from Santa Cruz. In late 1998, while working graveyard shift at a newspaper/auto ad shop ( which had been the only work I could muster up at the time) , I got word that a new digital media start-up wanted me to interview. I jumped at the chance, and after word I'd been hired, swiftly quit the lousy ad job I'd been subjected to.
It looked like I was one of the first dozen or so hires at Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), and it was pretty much a big empty warehouse house in Santa Monica by this time. Sean, who'd hired me, told me that's I'd be learning Flash, which I was excited about. I'd been moving into animation and Flash was the future for web animation.
Among the founders of the company was none other than Michael Huffington, who'd explained to the dozen or so of us in a meeting that he'd recently come out of the closet. It was an odd thing to witness, but everything at the company so far seemed a bit surreal. I spent the next 2 months or so, basically learning software (Flash, After Effects, HTML, etc.). It was amazing the level of enthusiasm that was building now that the company had grown to about 150 hires by this time. They had a roster of shows they were to produce in house, and us, the interactive team, were to put them on the web. The execs (who were NBC/ Channel 1 alumni) were convinced we were set to be the next HBO.
We'd screened a bunch of the shows they'd produced thus far and most folks were pretty underwhelmend with what they'd seen. They'd taken the concept of narrowcasting pretty literally, and had a show each for Punk Rockers, Asian Americans, Hispanics and Christians, that seemed at best, condescending, and on track to offend each of the groups respectfully. The upshot was, the group of us were asked to come up with our own ideas for shows. A few of us brainstormed and came up with a slew of ideas that weren't so obviously narrowcasted, and were basically what we'd want to see.
Continued.
Comments