Letters to Cleo, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, New Kids on the Block and Scout Frontier played MUSICAL CHAIRS this summer.

Scout what?

Scout Frontier is the new media division of Scout, the Boston production company who produced Brad Anderson's, new film currently in release, SESSION 9. MUSICAL CHAIRS, however, is a new visual experience that stars Tod Whipple and musical performers Kay Hanley, Dicky Barrett, Joe MacIntyre, Jen Trynin and Billy Conway.

Tod who?

Tod Whipple the 25-year-old head of Scout Frontier knocked me over when he talked about MUSICAL CHAIRS, the technology behind it and the markets it will feed.

Whipple said of the unscripted performance starring Hanley, Barrett, MacIntyre, Trynin and Conway; "We had the musicians in a roundtable setting with lipstick cameras meticulously placed as part of the design philosophy of the show--the cameras are about twice the size of an actual lipstick--coverage was everywhere, and a 360-degree camera hanging unobtrusively in the middle. We shot through 16 different cameras with nine different simultaneous feeds the possibilities for interactivity are phenomenal," Whipple said.

Interactivity between video content and viewer is one of the symptoms of new media, according to Whipple, and with nine streams of video offering viewers countless options for the experience, MUSICAL CHAIRS is cutting edge. In the online version advertisers may also offer viewers the option of jumping out to sample a Bosstones or Cleo disk, hook up with a music video or hyperlink to a New Kids fan club. The options could be endless.

Future tense. Will be endless. Today's channels for distribution haven't caught up with software and transmission technology, But, full broadband capabilities won't be long in coming.
"The technology is out there and the infrastructure is being built on top of it. I received a notice in the mail that AT&T Broadband will be available at my house in two weeks. That's a megabit connection, almost as fast as a T-1 line," Whipple said.

A megabit Broadband connection sends information over the Internet 28 times faster than a standard 56.6k modem. What's the key technology for transmitting audio-visual? MPEG4.

Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG4) enables the streaming of content in a variety of scalable formats to a diversity of devices, PCs, set-top boxes, game consoles, Internet displays, cell phones and PalmPilots®. The MPEG-4 standard distinguishes between 2D, 3D and live action content and keeps the elements integrated while maintaining scalability in the delivery to multiple devices.

Say what?

Whipple says it other ways too. He said of the MPEG-4 standard, "We're betting that MPEG4 will become the standard for delivery. It's an unbelievable codec because not only does it know the bandwidth you're using but it also knows the specific device your on. And the (content) file remains scalable whether it's going over a T-1 line or to a PalmPilot. It mixes 3D, 2D and live action. That's the sweet spot of MPEG4, it integrates all those objects."

Whipple's own delivery is rapid fire and jargon laden, not only in computerese but also when he wheels and deals in business slang. He said of the parent company, "As an independent film and television production company in New England, Scout has earned the reputation for innovative, provocative and cutting-edge filmmaking. The management team (See Imagine cover story December 2000 archived on line at www.imaginenews.com) intends to translate the experience and reputation of Scout into a new hybrid company that blends a content developer with a service provider, thus capitalizing on additional revenue streams."

If the GenXer with radical glasses sounds like a business major, that's what he was. Whipple graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in business administration and a concentration in finance. He also rose from a boyhood steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit of his father, whose success in the construction industry Whipple appreciates.

"I never liked construction. That's why I moved away to be in film production. I love the feeling of spearheading a project, producing something. But the construction industry wasn't sexy enough. Film, everyone wants to be in it," Whipple said.

He always had that passion for movies, so he left Newport, New Hampshire, a town of 6,000 people, earned a degree in business and came to Boston. Here he learned that construction and filmmaking aren't all that different, business-wise, and he finds himself using the same skills his father and brother use in production management.

"I left the construction industry and found that the two processes are very similar. But only one gets all the glory," he said with a grin.

Whipple came aboard to help in the production of SESSION 9, a horror film released in August and already predicted to be a cult classic. The story follows workers removing asbestos from inside the Danvers State Mental Hospital, regular guys who stumble upon tapes of sessions between a doctor and his patient. As they listen to more and more tapes the atmosphere turns decidedly creepy.

Whipple is no stranger to film production. "I've done commercials, music videos and features. I worked on THE CURVE, starring Dana Delaney and then I jumped aboard SESSION 9," Whipple said.

Very much the technophile yet experienced in movie production, Whipple combines the two areas of expertise necessary to ignite a new media division within a traditional movie production company. But to incubate the new brainchild the parent company had to develop a hybrid structure with three internal divisions.

Scout Productions is now a division of Scout and continues to produce traditional film and television completing their second season of acclaimed director Errol Morris's FIRST PERSON for The Independent Film Channel, Errol Morris, a documentary writer and director with huge status in the industry, also helps fuel the company's reputation for quality in traditional film and television-based products.

Scout Camp is the production facility and editorial rental division, which will support itself through production rental while serving as the post-production springboard for features, docs and commercials. Scout Frontier will also take advantage of Scout Camp by utilizing editorial services to have the ability to create edgy content like MUSICAL CHAIRS.

"We've also made strategic creative alliances with Soup2Nuts -the creators of Dr. Katz- and we've made technological alliances with iVAST," a leading platform that allows Frontier to capitalize on new Internet streaming opportunities being fueled by the growth of broadband, "We're positioning ourselves to be a premiere creator of content for the coming broadband market," Whipple said.

Whipple explains, the process of content creation is still much the same whether its theatre fare or pictures for a PalmPilot. "In that sense it's just like movie production. We'll crew up, shoot the coverage we need and return to Scout HQ with the editors and producers. In the interactive phase we rely on our programmers and designers to be the glue in pulling all the elements together," Whipple said.

The service aspect of Scout Frontier is intended to feed the needs of advertising agencies and Enterprise customers with what Whipple called sponsored content, a market that's destined to grow no matter what the economic outlook.

"A great example is BMW Films. They had a few different A-list directors go in and shoot shorts and then run them on their website. We're looking for extremely high growth in both sponsored content and integrated digital solutions for the Enterprise market. A lot of companies in a soft economy scale back, but that's when you should expand. The upturn is inevitable. You need to be ready for the upturn or you'll be caught just starting your engine," Whipple said.

Scout's three divisions are headquartered at 119 Braintree Street in Allston. Scout's homestead on the first floor has the look of a hip New York loft.

He added, "We've gone through a branding overhaul. The process of defining who we are and what we do."

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