See David Lynch Stream

If David Lynch were to handcraft a Web site, labor for years to infuse every aspect with his legendary creative intensity, and to ordain it the theater in which his artistic passion will thrive for countless years to come, what would it look like?

The subscription and pay-per-view Web site, davidlynch.com, which has quietly been available with limited functionality for a couple of months, just went gold. "Gold" means that a product is released, ready for scrutiny and consumption by the general public.

Earlier this week, streamingmedia.com spoke with David Lynch about his eponymous site, which uses stark imagery (primarily black, white, and red) powered by Flash to guide visitors through a constellation of animations, streaming video/audio, cartoons, e-postcards, screen savers, photography, and other creations.

"I’m 24/7" said Lynch, explaining his dedication to working on the site and how much he loves it. "It’s the greatest thing. This is the future. I’m pumped up morning, noon, and night. This is everything all rolled into one."

Numerous pictures of Lynch, various handwritten notes from him, and other direct manifestations of his identity pepper the site. More significantly, though, his personality is ubiquitously accessible to visitors because he built the site, literally. He wrote all the scripts, took the pictures, made the movies, did the artwork, did voiceover work himself, animated in Flash, etc. Technical implementation was handed off as needed, but every creation is Lynch’s.

The site has such carefully constructed content in so many areas that when it was suggested that the streaming series was the primary focus, Lynch recoiled, and sounded like a parent who had just been asked to pick only one child as his favorite. "There’s a lot of main parts of the site. It’s a many faceted thing and that’s what the Internet can do." Lynch went on to make sure the point was not missed, "There’s a lot of other things that I’m pumped up about, so we’re just starting. But there are many, many, many things."

Still, it’s clear from the pricing that streaming media is a major component. For $9.97 per month, one gets access to the entire site, or for $7.79 one can subscribe to a single series for six months. A series license includes access to all five-minute episodes of a single series for a six-month period. A given series is posted at a rate of one episode per week.

First Series: Dumbland

The first series to appear is "Dumbland", a nine-episode series that Lynch describes, in a handwritten note on the site, as "a crude, stupid, violent, absurd series." It’s black-and-white Flash animation originally developed for Shockwave.com in a stock option deal, similar to Tim Burton’s Stainboy arrangement, and later given back to Lynch when Shockwave.com refocused during the dot-com bust. Four episodes are on the site currently, and a fifth is arriving shortly.

In "Dumbland," Lynch does both the writing and voice-over work that is electronically modified to suit different characters. The variety of characters combined with sparse animation makes for a surprisingly powerful experience. The series is centered around a vastly dumb father and his wife – who is relentlessly terrified of her husband’s next, and always imminent, mean and angry outburst. It’s painful emotionally, and funny because it’s so absurd. The characteristic intensity of Lynch’s work is not lost at all in this medium.

Lynch doesn’t find Flash animation, or other web deliverable formats such as three-to-five minute films, to be restrictive artistically. Instead, he sees it as a matter of first understanding the parameters of a particular technology, and then writing and creating something that fits within them. "Even though the quality is kind of funky, once the quality is known, the ideas start flowing to marry with that quality," said Lynch. "It’s the weirdest thing. Each kind of thing I’m exposed to yields ideas that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. So, it is a beautiful new world for me."

The next two series, "Rabbits" and "Axxon N.," will be streaming video. "Rabbits" is fully scripted and much of it has been shot and cut, but not all of it. "Axxon N." is mostly scripted and, according to Lynch, "We’ll start location scouting and casting in earnest quite soon."

Eric Bassett, managing consultant for davidlynch.com, sees different audiences for the two series, suggesting, "‘Rabbits’ is very surrealistic. It has mainstream actors but they’re in rabbit suits so you can’t seem them. ‘Axxon N.’ is more what I would call a mainstream series, more Twin Peaks-ish. The members, the hard core guys, will love ‘Rabbits,’ whereas I think ‘Axxon N.’ will cross over to just about everybody," said Bassett.

For the record, Lynch doesn’t feel that the actors’ appearance in rabbit suits detracts from their presence on screen, insisting, "They are there. They are very real."

All series episodes are five minutes in length by design, based on research done by Load TV, RealNetworks, and others, who found that streaming viewers attention wanes at three minutes and drops off sharply at five minutes.

The ‘Rabbits’ series will not begin to post until after the ‘Dumbland’ series has completed, and ‘Axxon N.’ will not appear until ‘Rabbits’ has completed. Each of these is a separate $7.79 cost for six-month pay per view access. Eventually, each series will made into a DVD and available in stores.

Member Areas

The series are just a small portion of the streaming media available to members of the site, and streaming itself is just one of a multitude of formats used to present the variegated content. Bassett explains, "The member site is for the 250,000 hardcore Lynch fans that want to know everything about David." The site is so richly abundant with diverse and compelling experiences totally unlike anything else, though, that it is bound to cross outside Lynch’s normal fan base, even as a pay site.

The site navigation imagery is gorgeous and accompanied by rock solid sound effects that have an airtight fit with the navigation animations and actions. Not all navigation is menu simple, though. Some of the content in the site is hidden behind a panel of phone booths. One must find clues that give a phone booth number and a phone number and then they can go to that booth, get dial tone, dial the number on a rotary dial telephone, and access the hidden content which may reveal other booth numbers and phone numbers. There’s original streaming content here, built for the site, strange, lovely, and gripping, and the value of the phone booths will definitely grow as more clues and more content are created and revealed.

Most other member areas are easier to understand. "Film" shows trailers for various David Lynch films, many early short films. "Music" has things like industrial soundscapes and even a music video. "Live" has various live cams. "Experiments" has lots of streaming video experiments. And "Radio" has a single show at present, from Lynch’s daughter Jennifer, who will produce more after she’s treated for back troubles. "Gallery" includes photography from Lynch, both nude and non-nude, paintings, and prints. "Chat" has busy chat rooms that David enjoys visiting. "Cards" has e-postcards of Lynch drawings, scribbles, and other items. "Cartoons" has weekly episodes of "The Angriest Dog in the World," a still cartoon.

Lynch would like to keep the site’s current set of content in perspective, "This is just a point of departure. Who knows where it’s going to go."

One immediate area of growth is the expanding member community support. People will soon be able to post their favorite movies, share their dreams, and make book recommendations to David or their friends. "They’ve already made friends like crazy in the chat room," Lynch observes. "And these people are savvy, I got to tell you. I love going into the chat room and talking to them."

Genesis

Many years back, Lynch had toyed with the idea of creating a Web site, but wasn’t fully fired up yet because, in his words, "Making pictures move on the Internet wasn’t really happening." He did register davidlynch.com though, about six years ago, and comments "I remember being surprised that I was able to get it." Over the next few years the technology advanced and Lynch found Bassett.

"When I met Eric, that’s when it really started popping," said Lynch, noting that work on the site began then in January of 1999.

Lynch has always worked on Macintosh computers, saying, "We’re Mac positive." Although Lynch has become rather adept at creating content in Flash, After Effects, and Photoshop, Bassett handles all the technical decisions and site implementation details. When asked about the process of selecting QuickTime as the streaming technology, Lynch simply said "That’s all Eric. I just say ‘Show me the technology and I’ll get used to that one.’"

Visitors to the site need QuickTime 5, Flash 5, and Internet Explorer 5 or higher on a Mac or PC. For the very highest resolution video streams, 640x480, people will need to purchase QuickTime Pro from Apple.

Although the site works fine now, building and debugging have have been challenging. In particular, Bassett says that the OBJECT/EMBED tag recoding required when Microsoft dropped Netscape style plug-in support from IE last year was a time-consuming nightmare. He also found creating a store in Flash to be a particular challenge, though he got through it and, must say, it’s a downright beautiful store.

The store is presently the only part of the site available to non-members, though some trailers and other promotional teasers will be available soon. The store features hats, posters, pins/buttons, photos (from the set of "Eraserhead"), coffee cups ("Dumbland"), fine arts (photos, primarily female nudes), DVDs, and CDs.

The "Eraserhead" DVD can be pre-ordered, but DVD production, being done in DVD Studio Pro, is not yet complete. Lynch has taken his time with it, "I want ‘Eraserhead’ to be kind of like the DVD of all DVDs." Lynch continues, expressing his concern that the digital image quality must set a new standard. "It’s taken about a year to clean all the dirt. It’s not that ‘Eraserhead’ is dirty, it’s just as dirty as any other film, but now it’s maybe the cleanest film in cinema history." Delivery is slated for April 1st.

The site is served from the davidlynch.com offices, from a load-balanced farm of 15 Mac G4 servers running the 4D application server, which manages authentication on a page-by-page basis with a 20-minute timeout on each page. Although Flash animations, such as "Dumbland," are served from the davidlynch.com farm, streams are served through Akamai and progressive download is used instead of true streaming. Bassett noted that he would have loved to use digital rights management for video but couldn’t find a suitable solution for encryption and totally secure delivery via QuickTime.

Evolution

Although Lynch plans to continue making feature films, his number one passion today is the Web site. Any questions about the depth of Lynch’s belief in streaming media were annihilated by his response when asked if he had plans to pitch some of the series as properties for TV.

"This is TV. This the new television. And, you know, it’s sort of absurd. They look as good on the Internet as they would on TV. And why would you go over to TV? TV is dead."