Always Interactive
By Tita Theodora Beal

Dana Atchley on the set of Next Exit

Our story about the storyteller begins in 1995 when the president of the Coca-Cola Company, now its CEO, Douglas Ivester, was making many public presentations and challenged his head of Corporate Communications, Paul Pendergrass to help him develop ways to break through the wall of corporate impersonality. Ivester wanted to interact in a more human, personal way with his audiences. At the time, Atchley, founder of the "Digital Storytelling Festival" (www.dstory.com) held each autumn in Crested Butte, Colorado, was touring key US cities as part of the "Creative Expo", sponsored by Apple Computer, Radius and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Pendergrass invited Atchley to tell his digital stories to the Coca-Cola Company's president and some senior executives. The group kept their reactions close to the corporate vest, making it a tough audience to draw into the informal conversation that Atchley likes to create around his digital campfire as he tells personal stories about his family, friends and neighbors.

At the end of Atchley's demonstration, the president asked "What does Coca-Cola mean to you?" Unaware that this question was key to the essence of the Coca-Cola Company, Atchley quickly scanned his memory cells and came up with two personal stories from his childhood. The president commented, "You know that story you told about the little girl in second grade falling in love? I have one of those stories, too. And I married her." He then walked out, leaving his reaction to digital, but very personal and non-corporate storytelling so unreadable that Atchley was surprised when asked to give a second presentation. This time Atchley wove his digital stories for Deborah MacCarthy, Director of Attractions, in charge of the first "World of Coca-Cola" in downtown Atlanta and in the throes of planning a second "World" in Las Vegas. Her response was more direct; people had been telling her for years to use new interactive technology, but Atchley's digital storytelling theater was the first time she could see why the Coca-Cola Company would benefit by using new media. MacCarthy and Atchley began discussing ways to customize his digital presentation techniques to tell brand stories.

Exterior of The World of Coca-Cola, Las Vegas

The Coca-Cola Company had been reviewing proposals for entertainment one of the theaters in its new "World of Coca-Cola" attraction, scheduled to open in Las Vegas in July of 1997. The overall design had already been planned and can be seen today: The first two floors house the retail "Everything Coca-Cola" store, selling literally everything with a Coca-Cola logo from bottle openers and toys to cars. Visitors can also walk inside the 100 foot Coca-Cola bottle and ride in its elevator to the fourth floor where they get out of the bottle and enter a living history of Coca-Cola from 1896 when "Doc" Pemberton invented the syrup's secret formula (6 ingredients are known, but the 7th is still a mystery) and his partner Frank Robinson. Visitors through a town, passing a bank, a drugstore, and even a Coca-Cola bottling plant. There's an art gallery with the original paintings and photos of old print ads, radio spots, as well as artwork related to Coke by famous (and not-so-famous) artists. This living museum, designed by Staples & Charles of Alexandria, Virginia, tells through art and artifact the story of Coca-Cola through the years to the 1960s. Supporting the story on this floor, a theater runs Coca-Cola commercials. If you haven't yet entered this "World" or counted the thousands of web sites related to Coca-Cola, you may wonder why tourists flock to see old ads and memorabilia for a soda pop–but the ads that tell the story of Coca-Cola become the story of America throughout the last one hundred yearsÐ or at least many Americans' visions of the warm, joyful, energetic people we have wanted to be, decade by decade.

As they take an escalator down to the third floor, visitors are greeted by a 60 foot long tiered fountain, courtesy of Wet Design of Los Angeles. Arcs of what seems to be Coca-Cola flow in pure bubble-free streams (using Wet Design's "laminar" technique), creating the illusion that the arcs are filling visitors' glasses with cooling soda. Beneath the arcs, perfect spheres of water drop bubbles shoot up, creating a rippling wave form, its movements synchronized to the music of a nearby 25 foot video wall, designed by Donna Lawrence Productions of Louisville, Kentucky and showing the best Coca-Cola commercials since television began. Also nearby is a wall of tastes where visitors sample every product created by the Coca-Cola Company around the world, including some Americans have never tasted. Beyond the fountain, Coca-Cola wanted another theater. Coca-Cola's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Sergio Zyman was challenging himself and his staff to find a unique form of entertainment for this second theater.

That's when synchronicity brought Atchley and Pendergrass together in Atlanta. The selection of Atchley to produce multimedia shows for a major company attraction was a creative choice, without your typical corporate safety net: Atchley is as much artist/shaman as corporate digital video producer and head of the Dana Atchley Productions in San Francisco; he told Coca-Cola executives personal family stories instead of giving a typical dog-and-pony show with sales pitch; and he had launched his storytelling career by traveling through America in a motor home with a port-a-pack camera to capture on video the people and places that interested him. But the Coca-Cola Company is itself part of the story of America and Zyman knew that storytelling is one of the company's keys to great marketing communications.

Ace Space in the #3 Van, 1976

To respond to Coca-Cola's need for a completely new form of entertainment in the Las Vegas version of the "World of Coca-Cola", Atchley proposed three main enhancements: live actors dramatizing the story of Coca-Cola throughout the museum exhibit areas; an interactive media theater with a storyteller showing digital videos about Coca-Cola in our lives; and a bank of computers outside the theater where the audience members could themselves become part of the storytelling theater by adding personal stories of Coca-Cola in their own lives.

Entrance to the Storytelling Theater and Mural by Man One

Entering the World of Coca-Cola:
To bring the museum exhibits to life, Staples & Charles dressed actors in period costume so they look as if they just stepped out of the old ads on the walls. In front of one vintage ad showing a painter painting a mannequin, visitors see a painter (who was a mannequin) painting what looked like the mannequin, but is actually a mime who tells a story about the early Coca-Cola ads and paintings. When visitors stroll through the full scale mock-up of the town's Main Street, they see old black and white commercials in the windows. They go into an old-fashioned drugstore to see a soda jerk mix a "soda fountain" Coca-Cola from syrup and seltzer water. They watch an employee at work in a simulated bottling plant as he prepares to deliver bottles to Nick's garage–And they drop in on young "mechanics" working in that garage on a hot rod, help themselves to a soda from an old working Coke machine nearby and join games the kids in the garage are playing with old Coke bottles.

The Fourth Floor Main Street View from the Coca-Cola Bottle.

Gathering 'Round The Multimedia Hearth:
As audience members enter the centerpiece of Atchley's proposal, the 64 seat multimedia storytelling theater, a full screen "Lyric Logo" appears. Visual elements of future stories kaleidoscope across the screen. Then Coca-Cola bottles float through space and settle onto the screen, each one representing the first story in one of the seven 12 minute shows and forming a simple interface that's easy to use. A live storyteller welcomes the audience and chats informally, adapting a brief introductory script to his or her individual style. The conversation seems spontaneous but sets up the first story of one of the day's seven shows that comes on next. The storyteller clicks on the bottle representing this particular show as if selecting it specially for this particular group and the audience watches the first digital story unfold on a 10ft x 12ft screen.

Storyteller Michael Harris

Unlike his original Digital Storytelling Theater where Atchley had the time to tell all the stories live, using digital media to illustrate them, this project requires exact timing if the informal conversation with the audience, three video stories (2-3 minutes each), a "Pop Quiz" and two animated "Fun Facts" were to fit into a 12 minute show, including time for the audience to enter and leave. Because of this tight schedule (and the fact that most of the storytellers were college students not professional actors or presenters), the storyteller briefly introduces the segments, but the digital videos tell the stories.

Fun Fact #7 Pop Quiz

Theater Elevation: Story in Frame: One Thin Dime

Each story appears in an active video window surrounded by an illustrated border which reflects the particular story. Some of the stories are about actual artifacts that can be seen outside the theater. The first story in each show is usually fast-paced and fun. The storyteller might set up the story with a picture of Coca-Cola collectibles that seem everyday objects and ask the audience to guess how much they are worth–their $150,000 value sets up a digital story about ardent collectors who live in homes packed with objects related to Coca-Cola from appliances to shower stalls and bathtubs, sometimes worth $2,000 - $4,000. Or, as in the story "For Love or Money?" , a brief discussion of "Why do people collect" sets up a story of two collectors who met over their Coca-Cola memorabilia and later married at Atlanta's "World of Coca-Cola" and merged their collections: the wedding was an unexpected bonus that Atchley was able to capture on video just when he started work on the project.

Fast Paced Story: For Love or Money

After the first story, the presenter challenges the audience to a "Pop Quiz" with soda pop as a prize. Photos of famous actors, sports stars and other celebrities from many eras, all drinking Coca-Cola, whiz by as the audience guesses who's who. The storyteller then shows a "Fun Fact"– an animation showing all the bottles of Coca-Cola ever drunk, laid end to end, making the round-trip from the earth to the moon and back 21 times, or some other fact about Coca-Cola from a large pool of animations.

Then it's time for a deeper, more emotional or thoughtful story. The storyteller again sets this up with a brief exchange: "Does anyone carry a good luck charm? Hold them up". Four-leaf clovers, medals, rabbit's feet, Bicentennial quarters, Kennedy half dollars as well as an unpredictable array of personal "chotchkes" materialize from audience members' pockets, handbags, neck chains and charm bracelets. The storyteller marvels at the array then continues. "Let me tell you about a guy who carried a Coca-Cola bottle as a good luck piece all through World War II". This short conversation feels spontaneous but carefully and quickly introduces a digital video story -- the question about lucky charms sets up a story about a soldier who took six bottles of Coke to war, drank five and saved the sixth as a good luck charm, planning to drink it at the end of the war. But when D-day came, his Coca-Cola bottle had become such a beloved symbol of Home for the soldier that it still rests, unopened, on his mantel at home in Indiana.

Emotional Story: A True Story from W.W.II

In another show, the core story may bring out the value of investing the company through an anecdote about a local Florida banker in 1920 who would talk farmers asking for crop loans into borrowing an extra $500 to buy Coca-Cola stock. He would use the stock as collateral in case the crops were poor and they couldn't repay the loan. Many of the farmers kept the stock–the video reveals that because of growth and splits, one $40 share of stock in 1920 is now worth $5 million!

Brand Story: From Container to Cultural Icon

Another "Fun-Fact", then onto the third and last story of the show, more directly related to the brand stories about Coca-Cola's Secret Formula, or about the Coca-Cola container becoming a cultural icon or a sales attraction for stores like Butch Ford's Pawn & Gun Shop in Gainsville, Florida which still sells Coke in old fashioned bottles out of an old machine for ten cents (as, by the way, does TekServe, the NYC service and repair shop for Apple computers). One story is a montage of video clips from Coca-Cola Archives showing Coke being delivered all over the world, by helicopter, gondola, camel, whatever works, as the only commercial song licensed for this project, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" soars through the theater's Dolby Surround Sound.

We Are the World of Coca-Cola:
As the audience leaves the multimedia theater, the storyteller invites them to stop by a bank of computers just outside the theater to tell their own stories about Coca-Cola's presence in their lives; and to become a part of the living history in this ever-growing digital museum exhibit. After viewing a dry-run of the shows, even Atchley's digital editor for the project, Scott Gibbs, added one of his own stories to the database: It was a dark and stormy night in a Chicago blizzard when he hailed the only taxi in sight. Just as he started to get into the cab, he saw a woman in a skimpy cotton coat who had hailed the cab too late. Gibbs gave her his cab, willing to walk through the storm because his coat was warmer than hers. Overwhelmed and wanting to thank him, but aware that giving him money would be crass, the woman reached into her coat pocket and gave him the only gift she could find that showed her full gratitude, her bottle of Coca-Cola.

The outside walls of the multimedia theater are beautifully designed mural integrating the digital stories, created by Man One, a famous Los Angeles street artist who had painted a mural of the teen winners of an art contest sponsored by Coca-Cola. Man One is also featured in one of two stories on graffiti (he painted the winners of Coca-Cola's Paint the Town Red art contest). If you have not seen the beauty of line and design in the work of street artists in impoverished communities who can't get more socially acceptable studio space or gallery shows for their large visions, you may wonder why the Coca-Cola sponsors art contests for inner city kids–until you see a second digital video story about street art, "Tats Cru", which introduces the winners of another Coca-Cola art contest. These street artists from the South Bronx (whose tags are Bio, Nicer and BG 183), created pieces about the Art of Harmony in their lives. As this crew from the South Bronx got older and became husbands and fathers, they realized they could not continue to do art which society considered criminal. As a result of the contest, they now spray paint their beverage ads on building walls rented for ad space. They also paint "Memorial Walls" for young people killed by drugs and violence in their communities.

Atchley's World:
With the overall design approved and a mandate to create and produce 24 digital videos plus many interactive "Pop Quizzes" and animated Fun Facts in less than 12 months, Dana Atchley formed his development team. Atchley brought in John Styron, Coca-Cola's recommendation for the main writer. "He creates amusing brand stories with surprise and an impish spirit," comments Atchley, "as well as sensitivity to Coca-Cola's corporate needs and in-depth knowledge of the company."

Atchley's core production team included Denise Aungst, Associate Producer (now Mrs. Atchley–will that be another Coca-Cola story in future versions?) and Scott Gibbs of Quadrant Productions, who served as video producer and cameraman on some of the stories and digitized and edited all the videos. Gibbs had specialized in films and videos which turn facts into human interest stories. He was also an early adopter of digital technologies and had mastered the digital editing techniques which would make it possible to produce the multimedia components in nine months. Describing Atchley as "a true creative genius", Gibbs had kept in touch with him since he first filmed and produced a TV feature, "Ace Space" (Atchley's pseudonym), on his early "Charles Kuralt-on-a-shoe-string motor home" for Westinghouse Broadcasting's Evening Magazine, a precursor to nationally syndicated PM Magazine.

Gibbs and Jeff Daly as well as a Canadian crew, Perspective Pictures, shot the videos. Atchley centered the videos on the screen, then digitally painted a frame-like border around them. The frames reinforce the story and position the video as just one element of a work of art. Working with Atchley as master artists were Harry Marks, creator of the Lyric Logo, who, Atchley notes, "is a major talent recently given the Life Time Achievement Award by the Broadcast Design Association" as well as artist/animator Joe Singer who Atchley says "uses a scanner like a camera."

Another key team member was Mitchell Yawitz, staff Technical Director who created a story-building engine that makes it relatively easy to type in a story, change or rearrange stories, take them out, and even run lights and doors. Yawitz also developed a screen for the storyteller which shows what's playing on the large screen behind the presenter, gives cues, prompts lines and facilitates operation of the multimedia elements. The videos with the animations were put together in Adobe After Effects. Atchley then roughed out the movies in Director 5 and Mitchell put it all together.

Storyteller's Navigational Touch Screen Interface

34,341 Coca-Cola-related Web Sites And Growing:
After hiring researcher Deborah Slater to untangle the web of 34,341 Coca-Cola sites, Atchley began his quest for stories about how Coke has entered our lives by interviewing Phil Mooney, the Master of Archives for Coca-Cola in Atlanta for stories of how Coke fits into people's lives. Mooney searches for the "first" of anything he can find related to Coke–and Gibbs again joined the stories he was helping create by giving Mooney the original film he had made in the 70's of Haddon Sundblom, an illustrator who created classic images in ads, including Aunt Jemima, the Quaker Oats Quaker and (using himself as the model) Santa for Coca-Cola–an image which still defines the true Santa for many Americans. Mooney himself became the centerpiece of a digital story on the "secret formula" for Coca- Cola. Although Mooney knows more about Coca-Cola lore than probably any other human being on earth, he claims he does not know the mysterious ingredient 7X that helps make Coca-Cola–Coca-Cola.

The Sundblom Santa xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPhil Mooney, Company Archivist

Some of the digital stories grew from Moone'ys archives. Some developed through serendipity. Atchley's first search of the web for Coca-Cola brought up a site created by an employee in the Chemistry Department at the University of Calgary which had information about a 1946 center aisle Coca-Cola cooler towed behind a Model A 1928 Roadster so that the driver and passengers would always have cold Cokes on hand. The site led to information that the cooler would be at a car collector's show in Calgary. The timing was right, Atchley flew to Canada to videotape the Roadster and its cooler for one of the stories, hiring Perspective Pictures for the local shoot. While there, an entertainer for the car show was recognized as Bobby Curtola, a 1960's teen idol, who had once sung the Coca-Cola jingle. As Atchley talked with him, Curtola spontaneously sang the jingle again right there, still full of energy and enthusiasm. The video crew caught him on video, then mixed clips of Curtola singing the song thirty-five years ago and today, resulting in a digital story on "Whatever happened to..?"

Stories of Digital Production:
The team shot the videos on Sony Betacam SP and Gibbs digitized and edited them on his Scitex Digital Video (formerly ImMix) Stratasphere, a non-linear editor. "We were under such enormous time pressures," explains Gibbs, "that I couldn't have done the project without digital non-linear editing equipment. I use the Stratasphere because of the quality of the picture, the enormous range of effects, fifty layers of video, and its quick, easy interface. Plus it uses QuickTime movie files as its native format. This was critical, since Dana intended to have his storytellers playing back the shows on a Mac using Macromedia Director in the Storytelling Theater. That would necessitate QuickTime. Once in Stratasphere, we never went back to video and never lost image quality."

The entire show was developed on a Mac platform, using Adobe After Effects for animations and importing them directly to the Stratasphere. Titles and graphics are done in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects and Comet CG character generator. Given the duration and size of the project and the several levels of approval necessary for each piece, it became necessary to take video segments frequently off the machine, back up graphics and rendered effects, then put them back on the Stratasphere's hard disks using timecode numbers from the original field tapes and restore the backups from Zip or Jaz disks. Many technical decisions were influenced by Coca Cola's possible uses of the digital stories in the future. The stories were created with full resolution (although not needed for playback at the Las Vegas attraction) to get maximum value on any future kiosks, broadcast commercials or traveling exhibits.

The issue of screen size was related to the seating distance of the audience from the large screen where the digital stories, videos within artist borders, would be projected. The best viewing size was smaller than full screen, but more than half screen. Because of this consideration, all videos are shown digitally on an unusual window size: 360x270 (between a half and full screen) because that looked better when projected on the large screen. Only the Lyric Logo and Fun Facts were full 640x480 screen. At first the problems of stair stepping and tearing on pans made the 360x270 size seem impossible. To everyone's relief, Adobe After Effects' tool for interpreting footage resized perfectly.

Asset coordination was another challenge. Animations, created in Adobe After Effects, were sent to Scott Gibbs for editing. Once Coca-Cola had approved an edited video piece, Gibbs sent it to Atchley on a Jaz disk. Atchley then placed the pieces into Director, added some titles and reduced down the size in Adobe After Effects from its digital 720x486 in Stratasphere to the 360x270 window size. To track and store all digital images for future updates and changes, Atchley is now building a database, using Extensis Portfolio. Given the nature of computers, with seven shows a day, industry pros would consider one freeze or crash per day remarkably good performance. But without a second back up system, that gives little comfort to the storytellers who must deal with the problem quickly. All assets are therefore backed up on AIT tape and CD, archived to Jaz with lay-offs from Earwax Stereo and Dolby Surround Sound.

Gibbs recorded the video segments in stereo in the field, then edited the audio onto Stratasphere's four stereo audio tracks, including: narrator VO (Coca-Cola unexpectedly chose Gibbs as narrator when they heard his voice in some sample dubs he made just to help the company review and approve the videos), music, sound effects (traffic, bottle pops, etc.) and sync sound/interviews. Most music except the one licensed song ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough") was stock. Forrest Patton at Kaleidosound in San Francisco found a full range of music through the KPM Production Music Library in the UK The stock music included a full range from hip street sounds for the video on graffiti to orchestral pieces for emotionally poignant moments, such as a widow showing her husband's war medals saved lovingly with his Coca-Cola bottle.

Going to 5 track Dolby Surround Sound (left, center and right front, and left and right rear) required re-mixing and encoding. Gibbs used an ADAT digital audio recorder, making four passes onto ADAT, two tracks at a time. Then Jim McKee re-mixed and sweetened the tracks at Earwax Sound in San Francisco. Those tracks were sent to Dolby Labs in San Francisco to be encoded into Dolby Surround Sound, then dropped back into Director. The final effect was to surround the theater with sound playing back off the hard drive in Macromedia Director 5.

Whether he's telling personal stories about his own family and friends around a cyberhearth in Crested Butte, Colorado or telling stories which promote a brand–but touch the heart in Las Vegas, Atchley draws from deep roots that are over one hundred years old: his family began building an archive of family photos in 1865, a rich and legacy of visual story, unbroken from earliest tintype to the most recent pixel.