Arena Update
Last Friday I had a great conversation ArenaUSA president David Robison. Word filtered back to his Hollywood office that on Hugh Hewitt’s show early last week I wasn’t up to snuff on ArenaUSA plans. Well, for the record, I told Hugh I wasn’t. I should have said TheArenaUSA is now in “registration” mode. (I did know that. I registered while I was on my Afghan expedition. Go to TheArenaUSA.com and register, or at least check it out.)
David said that “Previews” will start by December 10th or 11th (yes, that close) and TheArenaUSA’s “beta format” will be up and running by mid-January.
David asked me to put up a blog post mentioning some of the programs I’ve worked on for his company. I told him I’ve stayed away from mentioning specifics (with a couple of exceptions) because the work I’ve done for him is proprietary, but he paid for it and if he wants me to discuss them I will. The work appeals to the teacher in me. Late last year TheArenaUSA asked me to write and then deliver on camera a short, historically-framed essay on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. We shot the video in Los Angeles (it’s around four minutes in length). The presentation is very similar to the way I run a seminar in a university classroom. This format will be the basis for the Arena’s issue and event data base. Each major issue will be “framed” in this fashion, which will provide a starting point for a community member to truly explore and understand the major issues of the day.
The demo video worked. A couple of months later I was hired as a consultant to create other program ideas–and I’ve been doing that since early March. I also wrote three scripts for a a specific series TheArenaUSA calls “Consequences.” All of the scripts use a “future history” technique folks who’ve read “A Quick and Dirty Guide to War” will recognize — following a historical background and analysis segment, viewers are presented with a series of potential outcomes (and the assumptions behind those outcomes). TheArenaUSA brought me out to California in June to shoot this video — which is around 25 minutes in length. (That video discussed versions of scenarios I later used in a Creators Syndicate column on the potential consequences of a rapid US withdrawal from Iraq.) At the moment TheArenaUSA intends to run at least part of that video on its beta site. The longer video is not “stuck in the classroom.” It uses several cinematic techniques that enhance the presentation of the information (it’s not info-tainment in the pejorative sense, but entertaining information — an expanded classroom).
David and I have formalized my position with TheArenaUSA and I’ll be doing more concept development as the project expands. I’ll also serve on the company’s advisory board. The programs I’m working on are (to my mind) more like ” entertaining short seminar courses” rather than television programs. TheArenaUSA’s interactive community capability actually permits (and encourages) viewer discussion, which is why I’ve described it as an interactive Discovery Channel.
Oh yes– I shot a lot of video on my trip to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. TheArenaUSA will use at least two interviews filmed during the trip.
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