 |
Drew Cummings Drew Cummings is an award winning video and multimedia writer, producer, and director who has produced reality, dramatic, comedy, and documentary programming for virtually every major broadcast and cable network, and is a pioneer in the development of streaming video technology and the production of original video content for the internet with partners such as Billboard Magazine, Hollywood Reporter, GamePro Magazine, and Publishers Weekly Magazine. Their award winning television series "The Making Of:" created by its founder Drew Cummings, pioneered and defined the form known as docu-tainment, taking viewers for the first time behind-the-scenes of major motion pictures such as Terminator, Robocop, and over 60 other major feature films (IMDB) as part of the weekly series (1984-1990). |
Award-winning Writer, Producer, & Director Q: You have quite an impressive background, could you briefly introduce yourself, your work and achievements? Through a series of ventures in my early career in the early to mid 70's, I was a concert promoter and responsible for the rock "n" roll revival that culminated with the resurgence of the music and groups of the 50's and 60's. That led to a concert I promoted at Madison Square Garden in 1974, where I also produced and directed that live concert as the first entertainment concert on HBO. During the late 70's and early 80's I was an artist's manager representing such stars as Don Rickles, Captain & Tenille, Andy Gibb, and other comedic and music artists, till that led me to becoming one of the original producers/directors of the hit television series Entertainment Tonight. During the 80's I created and produced/directed a weekly half-hour TV series for television titled: The Making Of:.... that for the first time took viewers behind-the-scenes of major motion pictures such as Terminator, Robocop, Nightmare On Elm Street, and over 60 other films. Then in the 90's I fell in love with technology and the evolving internet. Q: Tell us a bit about your website - Our 20th Century. What is it about, and what do you wish to achieve with this website? The website when completed will be one of the largest streaming video archive news sources offering the top video archive news stories of the 20th century in Sports, Entertainment, World News, Politics, Fashion, and Technology. Hosted by the avatar and voice of the late Leonard Nimoy. We hope that this will become the chosen destination for news of the past. There will also be an online game for each of the years. 
Q: Inside we see that you employed CrazyTalk for your virtual host - Leonard Nimoy. How and when did you learn about CrazyTalk? Was there a reason why you chose this software for your host? When we decided to build and launch the website based on the extensive archive news video library that we own, we hired Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) to host each one of the years. For three days we filmed Leonard on our sound stages and decided that turning his on-camera performances would be more youthful and exciting if we animated his character. Additionally, all of the archive news library is in DV as opposed to HD, and we also wanted to give the illusion of an HD presentation. The only way to accomplish this was to combine Leonard's avatar and the video clips into an HD sized format.Our lead animator Brandon Cummings did the research on the choice of the animation software for transforming Leonard's on-camera video/audio into a dynamic avatar. He chose CrazyTalk for its ability to generate a high quality avatar that could add emotions and other subtle characteristics that other software just didn't have. As a side note, Brandon Cummings who created all of the avatars from Leonard's on-camera performance is only 16 years of age. I am proud to say that he is my son, and he loved your software. Also, not bad for a first animator credit for 16 years of age! Q: We create these feature stories as there are thousands of people from around the world eager to hear, and learn what others are doing with our CrazyTalk software. Do you have any comments or suggestions to them? CrazyTalk is a powerful animation program that keeps evolving. For our project, the key was to have a cartoonist/illustrator create the caricature of Leonard Nimoy we used. Once that was accomplished, the rest was left up to the creativity of Brando, and the post production and video editing of the avatar. Q: We also see that you have a sister website called "Red Carpet Chronicles". Could you elaborate on this website and its difference between "Our 20th Century"? Cummings Entertainment is also the owner of a large archive documentary library that traces the evolution and anecdotal stories behind the first 50 years of the Academy Awards. There will not be an avatar used when this website launches just before next year's Oscars (2015). 
================================================================ |
Subscribe to YouTube
Be a fan on Facebook
RSS Feed