Go online and chances are one will come across ads for a movie or television show that comes to life when the cursor rolls across it, allowing a viewer to interact with the ad. Called “rich ads” this type of advertising is becoming increasingly important to the major film studios to reach an audience that want more than what can be found in traditional banner ads. “It is the current future of online advertising,” said Rex Cook, of AvatarLabs in Encino. “It is immersive, interactive, and engages the viewer in far greater depth than traditional banner ads.” Rich ads designed by AvatarLabs will reach a lot of eyeballs in coming weeks as they promote upcoming film such as “Miami Vice,” “Ant Bully,” and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.” Rich ads can be many sites unto themselves where the viewer can watch TV spots and trailers and play games within the ads, said Cook, the founder of AvatarLabs and its executive creative director “You don’t leave the page,” Cook added. “You’re interfacing with say, the ‘Miami Vice’ rich ad but you don’t go to the film website. You stay wherever you are already.” Rich advertising is the direction where online advertising is headed. Rich media advertising surpassed $1 billion in revenues in the U.S. in 2005, according to a study by JupiterResearch, a global research and analysis firm, and is expected to hit the $4 billion mark by 2010. The strategy of the studios had been to put together a website and then advertise it via static banner ads. Over the past six to nine months, the studios have transitioned over to using rich ads, Cook said. The campaign five AvatarLabs employees put together for “Miami Vice” took about two weeks. The studio recently wrapped up producing 40 rich ads for the upcoming Warner Bros. animated movie “Ant Bully” containing video and interactive games. Nearly all of the studios’ online advertising for “Ant Bully” uses the rich media ads, whereas it used to be that traditional static ads would have been the bulk of online promotion, Cook said. Councilman Hits Airwaves Starting in August, Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith stars in a series of three television shows airing on cable Channel 35, the city’s government access channel. Each episode highlights a different region of Smith’s district. The first show on Chatsworth airs beginning in early August. One goal for the program is to show there is more to the San Fernando Valley than some people realize. “There is this perception, especially downtown, that the northwest Valley is a bunch of houses,” Smith said. The first episode features visits to local eateries Les Sisters Southern Kitchen ‘n Barbeque, and the Munch Box, a hamburger and hot dog joint that has been in business for 50 years. The episode also features a visit to Capstone Turbine, a manufacturer of low-emission micro-turbine systems. “We wanted to highlight this unique and environmentally sound business,” Smith said. “There is a lot of (research and development) stuff going on out there.” The program is funded and produced by the city’s Information Technology Agency. Future shows will focus on Northridge and surrounding communities, and Granada Hills and surrounding communities. Museum 10 Years Old When Leith Adams was charged with creating the museum at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank back in 1996, he was instructed to come up with a clean, flowing space and not just a roomful of costumes. With the museum reaching its first decade in June, Adams, co-executive director of the corporate archive, and staff have put together exhibits on performers and productions from the studio’s seven decades. “We try to show as much as we can in the space we have,” Adams said, standing among the museum’s display cases. Now on display on the museum’s first floor are costumes, props and documents relating to Warner Bros. live action and animated television shows dating back to the 1950s. The second floor contains a long-running Harry Potter exhibit. Collecting items from films and television shows is not a simple task of taking costumes and props from a set. Adams and a staff member read scripts and view the finished product to get a sense of what should be preserved, and also consult with the prop master and costumer from a production. Often, the archive will save “heavy” on items and then re-evaluate what has been collected from a particular show or film after five years. Accessible only to the public who take the studio tour, the museum was originally intended for special events and for employees to learn the rich history of the film production company founded by the four Warner brothers in 1923. Tour groups were then allowed in as long as they showed respect for the items on display. “The tours have been respectful since the beginning,” said Adams, who will answer questions from guests. Items in the archive are loaned to other museums, used for promoting Warner Home Video products and sometimes traded with private collectors. Exhibits on the first floor are changed every two years. Adams already has an idea what he wants to do next — something on the films of Tim Burton — while the upstairs Harry Potter exhibit will stay until all the movies on the boy wizard are completed. The wisdom of keeping the Potter exhibit open was made evident to Adams recently when he saw a guest who he described as a man in his 60s breaking out in a big grin upon seeing a stone fireplace with an antique oak mantle spilling with envelopes addressed to Harry that was used in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” “He got it,” Adams said. “That is a piece that still makes people smile.” L.A. Erotica A trade show for the adult entertainment industry is no place to show modesty. Not with the women in their skimpy pink and black plaid skirts. Not with the woman in their shortest of short shorts. Not with the racks filled with adult-themed DVDs. Not with the displays of latex, rubber and glass, uh, bedroom aids. Even something as innocent as a cup of tea can take on a new WORD when being sold at Erotica L.A., the trade show that took place June 23 to 26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Not when it’s being sold as a way for both men and women to make themselves more presentable to their partners by exuding a scent of maple during intimate contact. “Drink three cups within a 24-hour period and you are maple-ized for two days,” said Johari Johnson, owner of Intimate Teas, a web-based company out of Studio City. “We call the maple tea our parlor trick. You don’t believe it’s going to work and then it works so well it’s like, ‘Wow.'” Johnson had her table set up on what she described as the “softer” side of the convention center’s south hall, away from the more hardcore element of the DVDs, raunchy talk and porn stars signing their fake names on pictures of themselves. Wicked Pictures and Red Light District Productions — both based in the San Fernando Valley — get the attention from the convention goers but it’s the smaller, ancillary businesses such as Johnson’s or Glamor Girl magazine distributed by Rich Hansen that made up the majority of exhibitors in the convention hall. Based out of Van Nuys, Hansen packs his publication with event schedules, DVD and adult toy reviews, strip club listings and a centerfold “ala Playboy.” He distributes his magazine at the Romantix chain of adult toy shops and at most strip clubs in Southern California. Hansen, with his shock of blonde hair and eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, published a weekly newspaper advertising sex chat lines during the 976 line boom. When that industry fell apart he worked for six years for Vivid Entertainment before embarking on Glamour Girl almost five years ago. While general circulation print publications suffer from loss of readers and advertising, a niche publication serving the adult industry is a different story. “I really believe this is the age of the free publication,” Hansen said. “Everyone’s getting their information for free off the Internet already.”
