A programmer debugs a mainframe from his living room across town, a broker in Seattle studies his NYSE screen for blue-chip trades - now common occurrences thanks to digital telecommunications. In the entertainment industry, San Francisco-based Entertainment Digital Network (EDnet) is rapidly convincing producers, performers, and entertainment executives that traveling the information superhighway can save them from real-time gridlock as well. But how does a musician or actor telecommute?
Using fiber-optic lines to transmit digital signals, EDnet has established, in two years, a global network of nearly 80 sound studios and editing houses. The web allows exchange of high-quality audio, compressed video, and multimedia data transmission. Combining entertainment-industry and technical expertise with digital telecommunications, the fledgling company hopes to "enable creative talent in the industry to be virtually anywhere," says David Gustafson, EDnet's vice president of marketing.
The company's high-tech connections allowed actor Ben Kingsley to re-record spoken parts of last year's Searching For Bobby Fischer from London, and Tom Selleck used EDnet to record his voice-over for the AT&T i-Plan commericals. Duets, Frank Sinatra's latest CD, found the crooner in Los Angeles, singing with Liza Minelli in Brazil and Bono in New York over EDnet's lines. For filmmakers, the company connects Lucas Digital's Skywalker Sound South in Santa Monica with its Northern California counterpart, allowing directors hundreds of miles away to supervise audio mixes and remotely control high-speed dubbing projetors, as Ron Howard did for Backdraft.
EDnet claims that it owes its success to entertainers' growing preference for working and living nearer to their families and away from hubs like Los Angeles and New York. Talent can use local EDnet-affiliated sites to reduce the need for travel or courier systems. Pop star Gloria Estefan will shortly connect her own in-home studio with the network, which requires some US$9,500 for hardware, plus monthly and hourly operating costs and fiber-optic connection charges. Video links run from $15,000 to $20,000.
So has telecommuting come to the entertainment community? Comparing his company's services to the intimacy of a live studio setting, Technical Services Manager John Wheeler explains: "The interaction is still there; the producer has a very intimate relationship with [a performer] behind glass in a darkened room. The only difference now is that the glass happens to be 3,000 miles thick." EDnet: +1 (415) 274 8800.
ELECTRIC WORD
Telegeography The Balance of Global Telecommunications
Network of the Stars
The Interactive Electric Sumo Scream Show
