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Reinfeld also designed with a multi-departmental corps of Citibank executives in mind. "When you deal with this type
of a [corporate] project," he says, "things always change as you go. We needed to come up with an interface that was flexible
from the start. The position of the buttons alone changed about two dozen times." In addition to Adobe Photoshop, Reinfeld
used Illustrator, the ElectricImage Animation System, and Adobe After Affects on his fleet of 9600 Power Macs with G3 processors.
While Reinfeld designed the interface in his studio in thePark Slope section of Brooklyn, Jerry Kaufman distilled page
upion page of existing CitiGold material, such as information about the Roth IRA and margin loans, into punchy 40-to-60 second
scripts. Back in Putnam Valley, Milt and Eric Scuccimara set up the interactive programming with Macromedia's Authorware.
Working from Kaufman's unapproved scripts, Milt and Brook Jones then shot the entire show (using Sony Betacam SP and digital
VX 1000 cameras) and made placeholders for the 56 segments that would feature actors posing as CitiGold representatives. They
also began to shoot other original footage and, on Milt's 2 Avid Media Composers, to cut in stock footage and lay down a range
of stock jazz, rock, world and classical music. "All we had to do was shoot the real people, and boom, the music and the other
cut-aways were already in place," says Milt.
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| Eric Reinfeld, art director, in his Park Slope, Brooklyn studio |
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Match Game
The video in the center 320 x 240 box within CitiGold Live's main interface is in a constant state of motion: Talking
heads move against simple, monochrome backdrops, cutting away to long shots of colorful virtual sets and a wide range of interlaced
feature-style and promotional footage. The 24 non-union actors selected for the final project reflect a range of ages and
ethnic backgrounds. "That kind of diversity also underscores the fact that as a CitiGold customer, you have access to this
wide range of experts, which is really what the actors represent," says Kim Milt. "But the most important thing was talent.
They had to look and sound like bank professionals. If someone couldn't deliver the dialogue, we wouldn't have been able to
shoot so quickly and so well."
The actors and one bank executive, dressed conservatively in a bank-favored pallette of navy blue, gray and tan, were shot
against a green screen in Betacam SP on a Manhattan sound stage. The total shoot took less than two days. "The video part
of this project, for me, was not a whole lot more complicated than lunch," says Milt, who sees no difference between shooting
for TV and shooting video to be delivered in a highly compressed format on CD-ROM. "TV requires big images -- so does this,"
he says. "We shot all of the actors twice: once in three-quarter and once in a tight head."
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Lighting was another matter. "The most important thing to remember when lighting for video for interactive is to have flat,
solid light on the background so that the actors will key out correctly," he says. "It was actually easier to get our keys
off the Sony VX 1000 than the Beta, so next time, we might consider shooting the whole thing digitally." Other than that,
he says, he simply lit each person the way he or she needed to be lit. "Whether we used side or top lighting, we did whatever
we had to do to make them look good."
Lost in Space
Without CG, Milt's actors would be nothing more than detached, well-lit figures floating on a sea of green. "We waited
to build the virtual sets until about one month into the project, so we had a better sense of what the feel of the project
would be like," he says. "I wanted something that would look like a gallery and be businesslike, but which would convey a
sense of the future, as well. We created these giant monoliths and filled them with stock and Citibank footage" Each set,
different for every actor, was developed at MetCreations' Bryce 3D and Infini-D. "Then we put all the pieces together. It
went together like a piece of cake."
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