Computer generated movie launches futuristic drama on the Web

Monday, April 22, 1996

Internet becomes developmental platform for sci-fi filmBy Jason
Packman

Daily Bruin Contributor

In today’s marketplace, movies regularly cost well over $50
million. Filled with big-time stars and even more big-time special
effects, it looks like the sky is the limit for movie budgets.

However, there are some people out there trying to cut budgets
through their own form of special effects.

"I was reading an interview with George Lucas in Forbes
magazine," says Phil Flora, writer, director and producer of the
new CD-ROM movie and graphic novel on the web, "Generation War."
"He said that he thought that around the turn of the century people
will be able to make a really good film for a few thousand
dollars.

I wanted to prove that you could do it today."

With "Generation War," Flora is attempting to do just that. It
is a science-fiction movie which was produced entirely on a
personal computer, just like what most people own today. Using a
combination of Pentium and 486 PC s, Flora and his staff of a
half-dozen digital artists created the world where "Generation War"
is set.

"When we did the CD-ROM, no one had actually made a feature
length film entirely on a personal computer. Every set was
generated in a personal computer," he says. "We didn’t even use
tape, it went directly onto the hard disk."

One of the reasons Flora did this film was to make people aware
that it could be done by anyone.

"This thing was made completely in the same computer that people
would be watching it on," he says. "I wanted people to sit back in
the middle of this at some point and say, ‘Hey, I can do
this.’"

Flora, though, wanted to say something with his movie besides
the "gee-whiz, it’s a movie made in a computer."

The story told in "Generation War" is just as important to him
as the computers that allowed him to tell it.

"I’m really concerned about this huge debt that is getting
passed down to the next generation. Thomas Jefferson said that
passing debt on to the next generation was generational tyranny,
and I would tend to agree with that," he says. "I’m really
concerned about that and I think something should be done about it.
We’ve talked about it for years but nothing actually seems to
happen."

Flora has set his story in the year 2025, postulating what would
happen if the debt acquired by the government has not been paid
off.

"The problem of the government spending more than it takes in
and passing it on to the next generation, that problem never gets
solved, and eventually the government just goes bust. Eventually,
everything falls apart and society becomes repressive," he says.
"So, a generation war is breaking out."

While devising his future tale of generational conflict, a new
technology emerged on the scene ­ World Wide Web.

At the moment, it is not practice to put an entire feature
length movie on the Web to be watched. Flora decided to put his
story on the Web as a WebMovie, which amounts to a graphic novel.
Pictures from the movie are placed side-by-side with text narrating
the story.

"The Web series is an outgrowth of doing the movie," he says.
"We wanted to put something up on the Web because lots of people
all over the world would be able to see it."

"Generation War" is currently scheduled to go to 20 episodes.
With over 4,000 hits at the site per week, Flora is optimistic
about its continuing run.

"We are using material from the CD-ROM right now, and when that
runs out we will start producing new material, assuming that it
stays popular," he says.

Flora also plans to put up new material on his website soon.

"We have some other sci-fi series that we are working on that we
will initially put on the web," he says. "I think the way we are
going to work things now is that we are going to use the web as a
development platform. We’ll do story boards and write stuff, and
put it up on the web, and if people like it, we’ll make a movie out
of it."

He hopes that soon several different series will be on his
WebMovie site, soon.

"We would like it to be a television network on the web, really,
with lots of different shows and lots of different areas." he
says.

Flora is currently in the early stages of a new science fiction
story to be set in the asteroid belt.

"The UN space agency administers the place, but, because of some
things that happen, they pull out. It becomes this incredibly
anarchistic situation, so we have a story about the people that are
traders and that try to survive and get along in this totally crazy
environment," he says.

Flora, too, is trying to survive in a new frontier, the
Internet, that is just as open as the final frontier.

"Yahoo went public for 8 hundred million dollars and that
started last year as a graduate research project. The Web is the
biggest gold rush since the last century and their are lots of
possibilities. We are open to pretty much anything."

INTERNET: To see "Generation War" log on to
http://www.webmovie.com.

"Generation War" currently runs on the Internet.