Trey Parker and Matt Stone bring their edgy humor and maybe their cross-dressing to Shockwave.com.

Last month resonated with another huge Hollywood A-List announcement when shockwave reported a deal with Oscar and Emmy award-winning director, producer, screenwriter James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, As Good As It Gets, executive producer of The Simpsons) and his company Gracie Films. Brooks will provide 300 minutes of original animation to air exclusively on shockwave.com, the style of which will be developed as they go along. Talking with Digital Coast Weekly, Brooks said he plans for the new offerings to be "loose" and "experimental" and is very excited by the fact shockwave doesn’t want to constrict their artists with television-type formatting. He’s free to base the length of the programming solely on the needs of the story, whether that’s with one-off pieces, 3 parters or 40 parts, whatever is best for the storytelling. Brooks did mention, though, he plans for everything to be under five minutes, adding "We might have a Birth of a Nation that’s seven minutes long, but that’ll be our epic." During the announcement, Burgess emphasized that shockwave wants all its artistic partnerships to remain passionately free and flexible. "They can make any kind of program they want of any length and they have complete artistic control. They don’t have to hold any meetings before they put something out." With plans to begin airing Brooks’ shows sometime next fall, Burgess feels, "It will be a great day for the Internet when programming from Gracie Films premieres."

Another heavyweight announcement was made at the Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival two weeks ago when shockwave revealed that avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) will develop an exclusive series of animated shorts entitled "Dumbland" for the site. With plans to bow in early summer, Lynch laughingly told Variety that the shows will be intentionally crude, but "sophisticatedly" so. He explained that he began his artistic pursuits as a painter and spent some time experimenting with stop-motion animation. Lynch now intends to learn the fundamentals of Marcromedia’s software, stating, "Flash animation is really something. I’m going to try to do it myself."

Joining the parade of celebrity deals is Joe Shields, who rocketed to Web prominence by way of his Internet hits "Frog in a Blender" and "Micro-Gerbil 2001." Joe Cartoon, as Shields’ is also affectionately known, signed a comprehensive deal last month which will encompass shockwave’s featuring of 13 existing animated properties from his joecartoon.com venue, as well as ten original animated concepts to be created for and debuted exclusively on the shockwave site. It wasn’t too long ago Shields was designing T-shirts for a living and he readily credits Macromedia technology with dramatically shifting his artistic direction. "Flash 4 changed my life by making it possible to create characters that can ‘come to life,’" he stated, adding that he’s excited about the chance to create for an even larger shockwave audience. Burgess is extremely pleased to be adding Shields to their line-up, saying, "Joe’s work is a fantastic example of new art forms taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the Web."

Michael Yanover, VP General Manager of Series and Show Content. Courtesy of Shockwave.com.

Shock Troops
Cutting a wide channel through both traditional and new media worlds, Burgess has deployed a modern day shock troop to search for the best material and cultivate the brightest artist relationships available. Among them is Stefanie Henning, heading up shockwave’s five person LA bureau as VP of Content Acquisition. With a varied background in production and talent representation, including a five year stint with ICM where she co-founded the agency’s new media division, Henning is scouting everywhere for shockwave’s diversified content of music, games and animations. She feels they have a decided edge in today’s competitive Internet space, citing shockwave’s strong technological infrastructure and proven capabilities in driving traffic as the deciding forces that set them ahead. On the creative side, she says, "A lot of what we’re trying to do is create a new paradigm for building entertainment and what that means is giving the creators the autonomy and the creative freedom to basically build what they want to build." Although the celebrity agreements get most of the press, Henning says, "We’re closing twice as many deals with up and coming people who we’re excited about nurturing and building new brands with online."