Eight-Tatami Multimedia Entrepreneurs

Computing Japan: Kevin, tell us about Rainbow Japan.

Meyerson: Kabushiki Kaisha Rainbow Japan was started in January 1991. We began by doing computer graphics (CG) and have grown the business into publishing and consulting. Currently we have a staff of seven, run by my Japanese partner and me. When we fi rst got into the CG field, we didn't really know much, but I have a cousin in Phoenix, who runs a multimedia company called Rainbow America. He's been doing multimedia solutions for over 10 years -- since before it was called multimedia. He helped us with a demo reel and provided a lot of CG know-how. In those first six months, we visited 300 different production houses to advertise our presence. I lost about 8 kilos (18 pounds) in weight. It was a really challenging time.

Our first commercial was for Sharp, for a washing machine. We used really high-end animation to simulate a bubble picking up dirt off a piece of cloth. We've done five projects for them since then. The thing that is really cool about this industry is t hat once you get a good relationship with someone, you can become their "official CG people."

CJ: So, is producing CG your main business?

Meyerson: CG is about 45% of our business. Our original plan was to do CG only in the first year, then CG and one multimedia project in the second year, and about half and half in the third. So far we're right on target. Our first multimedia project wa s also for Sharp. They built a new building out at Makuhari, and they had us put in the largest multimedia system of its kind in the world in their corporate show room.

We created a bilingual (English and Japanese) production called the Hyper Navigator, which was based on Sir Francis Bacon's story of the new Atlantis. It's a fascinating story. It is about this island state that collects all the advanced technology on the earth: giant vegetables, machines that move like animals, machines to send your voice into a distant building -- I mean, this guy was writing about telephones, robots, and biotechnology 400 years ago!

The Sharp installation is a true multimedia effort, with graphics, video, sound, animation, photographs... It's an enormous system and it would take you, going though all the branches rapid fire, about two-and-a-half hours to go through each language. It all runs off a DOS/V machine.

CJ: Using a DOS/V machine -- that must have been technically challenging.

Meyerson: Rainbow America did the authoring and some of the graphics production. From the start, they have been a DOS multimedia house and know the platform really well. Performance-wise, the DOS machines are still far and away the fastest.

CJ: What project are you working on now?

Meyerson: Currently, we are doing localization for a CD-ROM company -- whom, I can't disclose lust yet. We are also doing some 3DO development for the Giants [baseball team] at the Tokyo Dome. The player introduction is all 3DO, based on their AuroraVi sion system for the giant screen at the stadium. The program lets you click on the player line-up for the day.

CJ: When did you start releasing your own titles?

Meyerson: We did this Japanese style. Until last year we were doing a lot of OEM work. Then, in September, I went drinking with a producer of a company called TYO, which is the fourth largest television commercial production house in Japan. He was tell ing me that his company is interested in multimedia. So I told him, "OK, let's make a CD-ROM." He said, "What kind of CD-ROM you wanna make?" We were getting kind of drunk by then, so I said that I thought the guys who have CD-ROMs in Japan right now are young Japanese with their own home computers. They want to see girls and they want to have action games and stuff. The industry we both knew was television, and there you have to audition the talent. Everyone not in the industry thinks it must be exciting to be able to meet all these young, beautiful girls. Anyway, the idea that formed was to make a "virtual audition."

We took the idea one step further, though. Instead of having a typical CD-ROM application where you just play the material, we let the users vote as well. We contracted with Nifty Serve to create a sub-forum where these guys can log in and vote. We the n tally up the votes and select a winning girl.

CJ: What's the prize? A date with the winner

Meyerson: Oh no. From the first two discs (there are four a year), the top ten girls will appear in a special edition CD-ROM, so that the voters can spend more time talking with them. The top girl of the whole thing will become the star of an interacti ve CD movie we're planning for next year.

CJ: How do you recruit the girls>

Meyerson: Because we're in the television commercial industry, we have contacts with the model agencies and talent agencies. When making the first disc, we had 300 girls audition, and we chose 50. For the second disc, we had close to a 1,000 apply. We didn't do any advertising. One magazine wrote an article on how to apply for an audition with us, and all of a sudden we got this huge box of photos, resumes, cassette tapes -- you'd be amazed just how bad some of these girls are. They can't sing.... Most of the responses were from individuals, but a surprising amount was from agencies sending in their entire portfolio of girls. Because the first edition was not adult-oriented -- none of our CDs will be "adult" material the agencies felt very confid ent with our media.

CJ: Having a solid backer like TYO must have also given you credibility.

Meyerson: In doing the first CDROM, the backer's reputation didn't really make much difference. What we had to do was put out one CD and show everyone what it was going to be like. The first time we did it, people said, "CD-ROMs? Those are adult materi al. There's lots of X-rated nudity and you're going to use these photographs in a weird way." We assured them that it was safe, and the most risque thing would be a bathing suit shot. The models could even pick their own bathing suit!

CJ: So you are differentiating yourself from and competing against the adult CDs. What kind of response are you getting from the target audience?

Meyerson: What we've created is a TV game show that isn't on TV. It's the same as a Miss Universe pageant. And the response has been really good. We give people a choice: they can either use Nifty Serve or they can use a postcard. Most use the postcard s because they don't have modems. Probably 1,000 people, about half of the audience, has responded. They are actually very diligent about this.

CJ: How does your sales volume compare with "skin" CD-ROMs?

Meyerson: We've sold about 2,500 discs in the first three months. "Skin" CD-ROMs are all over the landscape. According to the distributors, they sell anywhere from 100 to 10,000. For example, I heard that "Yellows," the big-selling adult CD, sold about 8,000 to 9,000 copies so far. [According to Digitalog, the publisher of "Yellows, " sales have reached almost 20,000.-Ed.] Actually, they could probably sell more, but they got cut off because they show pubic hair in the nude shots. The rules here in Jap an about nudity are pretty silly.

CJ: Is pricing important?

Meyerson: Yes. We were the first here to market a CD-ROM at below 5,000: it retails for 4,800. This price point matters. When you go shopping in Japan, 10,000 is a large denomination bill, then the next one down is 5000 yen. A typical Japanese, if he h as a 5000 bill, will break it pretty easily. A 10,000 yen bill, on the other hand, is something you think about.

Our CD is further discounted in the larger stores, sometimes being sold for under 4,000. Ours was the first nonsampler CD-ROM to be released under that price, and it shocked the market. We got really good PR out of it. Now other companies have followed suit.

CJ: What are your strategies for maximizing profits or minimizing costs?

Meyerson: We do all of our printing and pressing in the US. A number of other companies do the same. Pressing in Japan is about two to three times as much as it is in the States. A quantity of 2,000 pressings is about 250 yen per disk. Including cases with a 4-color wrap-around runs the cost per disk up to 600 yen.

CJ: What is a ballpark price for producing and manufacturing a CDROM title

Meyerson: It runs the full range, from a low end of 500,000 yen for nude stuff consisting of simple photographs and a browser, through to several tens of millions for a sophisticated production.

CJ: There has been a veritable explosion of new magazines targeting the CD-ROM buyers. Do you see a genuine surge of new interest for CD-ROMs amongst the 16- to 30-year old male computer users?

Meyerson: Yes, there is a lot of interest. But it isn't just the 16- to 30-year-olds. We get postcards from 5O-year-old men, or older.

CJ: Tell us about your artists. What are they doing right now?

Meyerson: Our two artists, Kouki Fujimura and Hajime Tsuashima, graduated last year. They produced a piece for Nicograph -- the equivalent to SIGGRAPH in the States. They won the student section of Nicograph and were subsequently introduced to us. They are really cool guys. Did you see these beds here? Right before you came, they were all crashed out. We've had a string of all-nighters for the last 3 weeks.

CJ: What are these guys using as CG tools on the Mac

Meyerson: We use Electric Image, COSA After Effects, and a Radius Video Vision Studio system for capturing and for output. We use six machines, mainly Quadras and one Centris. We also want a PowerPC, but I think we'll wait until the applications are st able. One of the first things we'll purchase for the PowerPC will be a bigger Vision Studio, version 2.0. That'll be interesting since we'll be able to render movies very quickly with Adobe Premier. And we'll use Electric Image for the PowerPC when it bec omes available. The Adobe Premier program is great. I think it will dominate the desktop video editing tools market.

CJ: If you are using English versions, how do you get Japanese into your presentations?

Meyerson: Oh, we produce Japanese titles, no problem. For the CG portions, you can create whatever you want in the graphics. For text files, we handle those through MacroMind Director. It's no problem using US tools. What's more important is that your artist is able to understand the language.

CJ: Can you tell us the processes and file formats you use to produce a clip?

Meyerson: We do our capturing with QuickTime, since that is all that is supported with the Macbased Radius Video Vision Studio system. We end up with QuickTime movies that are full color, 30-frame(60 field) per-second files. We then convert from there to QuickTime Windows and other formats. Conversion is simple, as long as you make the file flat and self-contained -- so that all the data goes into the data fork [no resource forkl. We use a Mac program called converter to get from Mac format to DOS, and it's done.

For the Windows versions of software, we normally do production in the States. However, we are working on a hybrid disk, whereby we have two executable files, one for the Mac and one for DOS/V You can put the disk in either machine and have the program run properly.

CJ: How do you get video into a clip?

Meyerson: We shoot Betacam SP footage. We have a Betacam video deck that is connected directly into a Radius Video Vision Studio card. CJ: Are there any compatibility problems using US version CD-ROMs on a DOS/V machine?

Meyerson: There are some. Using DOS/V in the US mode works OK with US CD-ROMs, but when you use Windows in the Japanese mode there are discrepancies. For example, Fujitsu say that they "make a completely compatible Windows 3.1 system." What they don't tell you is that before you install your software, you have to exit Windows and run a DOS program called INT1ONLP. On a regular PC, if you have a VGA card, it will output a signal to your application software saying that it is there. Since the FM Towns do esn't use standard VGA, it doesn't output this signal so you have to patch the software interrupts with this program. In contrast to the Fujitsu machines, NEC's implementation of Windows seems stable. CJ: What are most of your customers using for computer s

Meyerson: There are a lot of FM Towns, NEC 9800 series, and DOS/V users. It's pretty evenly spread. I find though, that DOS/V users tend to be more computer literate, more likely to experiment. They have cheaper machines, and more options than NEC. The y can also import directly from the States.

CJ: As for the general market, where do you think multimedia is headed?

Meyerson: Multimedia is going to become something no one can imagine right now. It's going to be part of the daily lives of everybody. Online multimedia will be as big as broadcast TV. We are already seeing this on the Internet with Mosaic. The key is, how many creative people can we get to solve old problems in new ways? It is going to be the non-technical people who will determine the success of this market.

CJ: How about your company? Where is Rainbow headed?

Meyerson: For the next two years, we're going to develop our multimedia factory. We'll be doing multiplatform development and networks, especially high-end CG and multimedia production. We plan to get into anything interesting that comes up. We want to max out at about 40 people (over three years); we don't want to become too big. At that size, you get to know everyone and you can maintain stability.

Personally, there's so many things to do in multimedia -- it's really exciting. Sometimes I feel like splitting my body into 5 or 6 me's and spreading them around!