In
this age of digital communications where it seems as
if everyone within reach of a computer has their own
Web page, it seems hard to believe that less than a
dozen years ago, Boston’s own PBS broadcasting
powerhouse, WGBH, had yet to establish a presence on
the Internet. Harder to believe still, when one
realizes that the PBS.org portal is now the most
visited dot org in the world with over four million
visitors a month. Times have certainly changed.
Senior
producer Louise Weber was there in the early 1990’s
when WGBH developed its first Web site and has since
played an important role in developing WGBH’s
ongoing presence on the Internet. With a background in
traditional production techniques as well as extensive
experience in the early stages of what we now call
Interactive Media, Weber was in a perfect position to
use all that she had learned and apply it to the
burgeoning field of Web production. “At the time,
not a lot of people knew what I knew,” she says.
“I was in the right place at the right time when it
came to my skills and experience.”
Among
other projects, Weber and her creative team at the
WGBH Interactive Group are responsible for developing
and producing the Masterpiece Theatre/ Mystery sites,
two of the most important and widely visited sites
within the Public Broadcasting System. The Interactive
Group works within the WGBH Educational Foundation and
produces work for both the foundation as well as
outside clients. This allows for a wide-range of
projects and opportunities for the staff of forty.
“We all have our niches within the department,”
says Weber. “There are people here who have an
interest in working on kids’ programs, or
educational and training projects. I like to work on
arts-related projects. We really encourage people to
take on projects where their natural interests lie. We
have a true cooperative work environment. It’s
great.”
One
must possess a variety of skills to be a successful
producer in any media, and interactive media is no
exception. As Weber describes it, producing the Web
sites is a collaborative process: “I can play
different roles depending on the site. I can be a
producer, project manager, and an editor in the
magazine sense. I also coordinate schedules and
budgets—my group actually starts a project by
saying, ‘this is how much money we have, and this is
the timeline – and then we ask ourselves, ‘What
experience do we want to give people when they visit
the site? What do we want them to learn from it? What
do we want them to take away from it?’ And we move
forward from there.
 |
| WGBH Masterpiece/Mystery homepage that Louise Weber's team create and maintain is one of the most important and widely visited sites within the Public Broadcasting System.
Image courtesy of WGBH. |
“I
spend an incredible amount of time on the computer in
my job,” says Weber. “People always seem surprised
by that. But realize that there is always lots of
e-mail communication going on as well as many hours of
my doing research and then writing.” But every so
often Weber is able to leave her computer for a few
days as she did earlier this fall when she went to New
York to interview actor Rupert Everett for the
Masterpiece Theatre Web site. “It was
a fascinating interview,” she says. “He’s a very
talented guy.” Some of Weber’s research for
Masterpiece Theatre these last few months has involved
immersing herself in the works of British literary
giant Charles Dickens as part of her work developing
site content in conjunction with the show’s upcoming
production of Dickens’ classic, “Bleak House.”
And
while Weber does work with a small production group,
including a technologist and a designer in developing
the Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery sites, as
supervising producer she is the one responsible for
the final content and finished look of each site. One
of the creative challenges Weber faces regularly with
the sites is changing the information on each site as
a new production in each series is developed and
broadcast. But Weber clearly enjoys the challenges
involved with that aspect of the job: “Since
there’s always a new subject, we have new creative
challenges to face every month. There’s always a
need to do academic research, including reading and
writing, which I love, since I enjoy learning new
things. But when sites such as those for Masterpiece
Theatre and Mystery have such a rich literary content
and extensive learning resources, they can be very
labor intensive to produce. But that’s also what
makes it interesting.”
Like
many of her peers in the 1970’s, Weber went to film
school with the aspirations and expectations of making
documentaries addressing socially relevant issues of
the time. But after graduating, the financial
realities of the real world – like paying your rent
and buying groceries – took over, so Weber put aside
her ambition to make films and took a job teaching TV
production and film history courses at Castleton State
College located just west of Rutland, Vermont. “I
enjoyed being back in an academic environment,” she
says, “And I love to ski and the school was not far
from Killington, which was great.” But eventually,
the job opportunities for hands-on production work in
Boston lured her back to the city.
After
returning to Boston, Weber ended up at Masscasting, a
boutique production house where she did just about
everything, from writing scripts to field producing to
doing voice-overs. “It really was a different time
in production and there were lots of opportunities to
try different things and really build up your
skills,” she recalls. “It’s much harder to find
that now.” Weber’s career also included stints at
then WRKO-affiliate Channel 7 and VizWiz Productions,
among other places
After
several years, Weber took a job producing at
Interactive Training Systems, and later Data General,
two companies at the forefront of what would later be
called “new media.” Working at Data General in
particular was a real change from the kind of
production environment Weber had been used to working
in. “Data General was a very traditional corporate
environment,” she says. “It was a serious place to
work. Very quiet. I was used to phones ringing, people
running around, and a real sense of energy. But I
enjoyed working there, because it was a good
introduction to the new technologies.”
At
Data General, Weber had the opportunity to work as a
producer using the company’s new interactive
videodisc technology, a forerunner to what is commonly
referred to now as interactive media. Similar to audio
CD’s, the videodiscs held imagery as well as sound,
but what made them so exciting was that the technology
allowed for instant interactivity and accessibility,
something linear videotape was unable to do. And while
it may seem simplistic and commonplace now, the
videodisc was cutting-edge innovation at the time,
allowing for all kinds of new uses in both the
consumer and business markets.
With
the new skills she had acquired at Interactive
Training Systems and Data General, Weber decided to
set out on her own as an independent producer. She met
with immediate success. The work was steady, the jobs
interesting, and the paycheck good. One of the most
innovative projects Weber was involved with while
working for New England Technology Group was a
large-scale interactive installation project for the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. As
part of the installation, museumgoers would enter a
small room, which simulated an elevator descending
into the lower strata of the earth. By looking out the
small “window” of the elevator they had the
sensation of slowly descending while looking out at
the different layers of rock, etc. as they went deeper
and deeper into the Earth’s core.
Other
large-scale independent projects included an
interactive voting installation at the Women’s
Rights National Historical Park in Seneca, NY and a
major installation that toured the former Soviet Union
educating Russians about American architecture and
design. Weber loved the work, and business was good,
but eventually she grew tired of having to market
herself to prospective clients, so when she got a call
from WGBH in 1994 to come help them develop an
interactive videodisc project for publisher Prentice
Hall, she didn’t hesitate to say “yes!”
Weber’s
tenure at WGBH has included numerous opportunities to
work on fascinating projects, including the current
Michael of Rhodes project, for which Weber is senior
producer. Developed in conjunction with the Dibner
Institute for Research and Technology at MIT, the
Rhodes project will describe and explain the life and
work of Michael of Rhodes, an ancient mariner who
joined the Venetian Navy and documented his
experiences. He kept a journal, which was found after
having been lost for 400 years. Weber is working on
developing an interactive website for the project.
Weber said the project has attracted interest from all
over the world with many scholars analyzing and
sharing the information found in the journal.
Another
new project Weber has been involved is the WGBH
adoptionfilm.com project. As an adoptive parent
herself, Weber is excited to be a part of this unique
interactive approach to describing and telling the
stories of adoptees and their families. “I think a
lot of what I’ve done has required a great deal of
organizational ability. I figure out how to take these
huge projects and make them manageable, but every so
often I have the opportunity to work on something like
the adoptionfilm.com project that has personal
resonance and significance and the work takes on a
whole new meaning.”
Rebecca
Richards is the former executive director of Women in
Film and Video/New England. A co-founder of Belmont
World Film, she is director
of the organization’s Family Film Festival. A
frequent contributor to Imagine, she teaches at Boston
University. She can be reached at recrich@aol.com.
