Katerina Cizek’s biggest challenge has been working in a medium “that hasn’t been invented yet.”

No mere film, Cizek’s new documentary, One Millionth Tower, combines video, photos, and animation in a 3D virtual space to tell the story of an aging Toronto highrise apartment and the people that live there. It’s being billed as “one of the world’s first interactive documentaries to utilize WebGL technology”—which uses the power of a computer’s video graphics card to produce the film’s complex visual effects.

It’s cutting-edge stuff that hasn’t been done before. Part tech-demo, part film, the result is utterly compelling.

One Millionth Tower is the National Film Board’s latest HIGHRISE project—a series of collaborative documentary experiments which aim to explore “vertical living in global suburbs.” In the film, residents suggest ideas for revitalizing their aging community, which are then realized through animation and brought to life on-screen. Viewers can choose to have the experience unfold automatically, or explore the virtual space on their own.

For Cizek’s previous interactive documentary, Out My Window, she thought “it would be really interesting to take these global stories, and put them in one highrise.” But with One Millionth Tower she has taken a slightly different approach, using one tower to represent communities across the globe. Although Toronto viewers might identify with the building as part of their city, this nondescript building could easily be anywhere in the world.

This particular highrise is located in Etobicoke, at 2667 Kipling Ave. For the past two-and-a-half years, Cizek has worked with E.R.A Architects and residents of the building to brainstorm ideas and gather stories for the film. The goal was to examine “how documentary could be a part of the world that it’s documenting, rather than just being about it,” explained Cizek, who directed the film—or put another way, “making documentaries [not] about people, but with people.”

Although it may not be immediately obvious, the technology behind One Millionth Tower is particularly cutting edge. Unlike proprietary plug-ins such as Adobe Flash Player, WebGL and HTML5 are open web standards built directly into the framework of most modern web browsers. WebGL in particular has only surged in popularity this past year.

In fact, Google first demonstrated the technology earlier this year with a film of its own, titled Three Dreams of Black. Like One Millionth Tower, the interactive film was a collaboration between artists, programmers, and musicians, including Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi. But unlike Three Dreams of Black, Cizek says her project’s conception actually predated Google’s reveal. In fact, seeing the search giant demo its project on-stage at the company’s annual I/O conference only validated the efforts of Cizek and her team—specifically Mike Robbins of Helios Design Labs, who first suggested the unique idea. (A testament to the project’s technological complexity, One Millionth Tower premiered at Mozilla’s “Media, Freedom and the Web” festival in London, England last Sunday, and was featured prominently on the Wired homepage earlier this week.)

Cizek, of course, is no stranger to technological experimentation with form and medium. In Out My Window, she filmed the interiors of apartments around the world using a specialized camera that captured the entire scene in 360°, allowing viewers to pan around the video in real-time.

“There’s not an assurance the world is going to be the same four or five years later, so why not have a laboratory project like HIGHRISE?” said producer Gerry Flahive of the decision to experiment with technologies such as WebGL and the 360° camera. Later projects could easily take the form of a game or a mobile project, for example—or in other words, whatever “fits best.”

As with Cizek’s previous film, One Millionth Tower also enlists the help of some popular musicians, like Toronto artists Jim Guthrie and Owen Pallett. “There are so many moving parts in the film, and [Katerina] really wanted each story to have its own voice,” explained Guthrie. Pallett, for example, contributed a six-minute composition that was integrated with Guthrie’s own compositions and arrangements later in the process. “At the end is where it really sings. It has this emotional, ominous vibe that’s really powerful.”

Given the positive reception thus far, One Millionth Tower could also prove powerful enough to win Cizek another award. When she was chosen as a Webby honouree earlier this year for her work on Out My Window, she was allowed just a five-word speech. “The internet as a documentary” seemed especially apt at the time. But with HTML5 and WebGL heralding the next generation of online experiences, she’s beginning to see things differently. “Documentary,” she says, “is becoming the web.”

One Millionth Tower can be viewed online.

The folks at the Hand Eye Society. Photo courtesy of Jim Munroe.

This past May, Cassie Creighton wanted to tell a story. Not any story, mind you, but one of evil lemons, rainbow portals, and unicorn-pony hybrids. And with the help of her father, Cassie’s story began to take shape. It was called Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure, and was released as an online Flash-based game: the musings of a five-year-old girl brought to life with pixels, programming, and, well, ponycorns. “There’s a mystique about making games that makes it seem like it’s this really, really complicated thing that only a handful of people can do,” says Mare Sheppard, president of Metanet Software, and co-founder of The Hand Eye Society. “But it’s something [everyone] can and maybe should be doing.”

Which is exactly what Sheppard is trying to encourage. Next Wednesday, TIFF—in collaboration with The Hand Eye Society, amongst others—will officially launch a brand new interactive program, dubbed TIFF Nexus.

The initiative is designed to give those with an interest in games, from full-fledged filmmakers to five-year-olds, the tools and support required to make a game of their own. Frequent conferences and creative jams are scheduled over the next few months, aiming to bring otherwise disparate groups of creative types together with the hopes of prototyping new games and ideas.

“I think [TIFF] recognized that video games are yet another visual medium that can be used to tell a story,” says James Weyman, manager of industry initiatives for the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), which provides funding for the Nexus initiative. “There’s an alignment and a similarity to the film industry” that both communities can benefit from.

Take, for example, 2003′s Enter The Matrix. While the film was largely panned by critics, over two hours of additional cinematics were filmed exclusively for the game—an unheard of degree of involvement and collaboration. The game itself was almost treated as an interactive movie, “written and directed by The Wachowski Brothers.” It’s a phenomenon MIT media scholar Henry Jenkins has termed “convergence culture”: the intersecting of different media to expand franchise possibilities, fan engagement, and of course, bottom-line profits.

Today at 3:30 p.m., a panel of filmmakers and game designers (including Trevor Fencott, CEO of Distillery-based Bedlam Games, and film producer Jay Firestone) will discuss the forthcoming science fiction film Neuromancer, and the crossover game they have planned. “The Nexus project allows us to connect these disparate silos,” says Shane Smith, director of public programmes for TIFF. “It’s designed to equip a new generation of story tellers with the tools they need to succeed in this rapidly evolving digital landscape.”

The first of the initiative’s creative jams are already underway. Organized by Sheppard and fellow Hand Eye Society co-founder Jim Munroe, The Difference Engine Initiative was conceived as a six-week program intended to address issues surrounding underrepresented groups in the gaming community—in this case, women. Workshops such as Difference Engine ”open up the possibilities for different types of people who don’t have programming skills to make a game on their own,” Munroe tells us. And in the future, Sheppard says there’s no reason why issues of race or sexuality, for example, couldn’t be explored as well. (Sessions on child-friendly games and comic art collaborations are planned for later this year.)

Of course, The Hand Eye Society isn’t TIFF’s only collaborative partner. Financial support from the Ontario Media Development Council has been crucial, while peripheral partners, such as Ryerson University and local hackerspace and “colaborator” Site3, have offered their facilities and expertise. (Site3, for example, was crucial in bringing game developers and hardware engineers together to explore peripherals and alternate input interfaces—the sort of diversity that is proving to be the initiative’s real strength.)

“We’re increasingly recognized internationally for the indie game development taking place here,” says the OMDC’s industry initiatives consultant Kim Gibson. “And we’ve seen that community grow exponentially in recent years.” And with programs such as Nexus, where almost anyone can participate, you can bet those numbers will only continue to grow.

The TIFF Nexus initiative officially launches September 14 with a panel discussion in the Filmmakers’ Lounge of the Hyatt Regency hotel.

There was Jonathan Rosenberg, for example. The creator of the much-acclaimed webcomic Goats, active since 1997, is quite easily one of the longest-running comic artists and illustrators online. Or, on the opposite end of that spectrum, Caitlin Cass, a grad student from Buffalo whose work we had never heard of (a mail-only comic series, titled Great Moments in Western Civilization), but which featured just the sort of historical humour and storytelling that Victorian buffs and nerds could appreciate.
If you’re feeling slightly intimidated, however, a confession: though we tend to have our toes dipped in various realms of geekery, we are hardly the biggest of comic book nerds. We can barely tell Green Lantern from Green Arrow, and Edgar Wright was our introduction to the Scott Pilgrim universe. But therein lies the magic of TCAF. These sorts of slights are forgiven; you don’t need to be a hardcore comics nerd to have a good time. In fact, you don’t even have to come for the comics.
Founded by The Beguiling‘s Chris Butcher and Peter Birkemoe in 2003, the feztival is now in its sixth iteration, and the second in a row since going annual in 2010. Appropriately timed to coincide with Free Comic Book Day, Saturday and Sunday hours mean you can probably avoid any Mother’s Day shaming if you’re lucky—but that’s a mighty big if. After all, there are more panels, signings, speakers, and sales spread across both days to keep you occupied, and it’s wishful thinking to try to experience everything in just one day.

Top: the booth of cartoonist Chris Hastings, author of the online comic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Bottom: Local artist Michael Cho leafs through his table of super hero pin-ups and Toronto back alley drawings up for sale.

Indeed, it’s fascinating is to see how TCAF has grown in recent years. From its humble beginnings in Trinity-St. Paul’s to the old digs in the University of Toronto’s Victoria College building, it seems that even the Reference Library may soon be too small for the weekend’s festivities—but for good reason.
The library’s main atrium featured a range of artists, both big and small—just a fraction of the over-300 artists promised ahead of the event. Vicki Nerino, featured in the festival’s beautiful promotional video “Pencil It In,” sold us one of her raunchy, animal-themed stories, while Dustin Harbin of Koyama Press travelled from North Carolina with some of his autobiographical comics and black-and-white prints in tow. Having foolishly passed on Michael Cho‘s Toronto Back Alley drawings at last month’s Artists Help Japan fundraiser, we made sure not to make the same mistake again.
Torontoist contributor and The Princess Planet cartoonist Brian McLachlan was also on hand, doing another round of ugly caricatures, with a number of prints available for purchase as well. He was just one of many exhibitors featuring kid-friendly fare, including a big showing by Owl magazine in the second-floor Salon (to which McLachlan is also a contributor).
Upstairs in the Salon, it was a similar situation—but this time, as if the entire internet webcomics community had been packed into one room. Goats, Questionable Content, Dinosaur Comics, Wondermark, Octopus Pie, Nedroid, Hark! A Vagrant—there were simply too many to name from memory. And quite frankly, it was easy to be overwhelmed; many of the attendees and friends we spoke to on Saturday seemed to agree, as we struggled to squeeze through the packed and far-flung crowd of festivalgoers. But if you approached all that creative excess with the right frame of mind, it could also mean meeting new artists you might not have otherwise encountered.
Caitlin Cass, for example, the aforementioned graduate student from Buffalo, told us she can only afford to go to one festival per year, and though the annual Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art festival in New York was tempting, TCAF won out. “A lot of the other festivals aren’t free,” Cass explained, “so you tend to get more foot traffic here.”
That seemed to benefit the Hand Eye Society, taking up prime real estate at the Salon’s second floor entrance. The group of Toronto game developers had their latest indie arcade cabinet, The High Roller, on display, in addition to Spooky Squid Games‘ “They Bleed Pixels,” available for attendees to play.

Anthony Del Col (co-creator), Conor McCreery (co-creator) and Andy B (artist), three of the men behind local comic Kill Shakespeare.

At the opposite end of the table, Mathew Kumar, a Toronto-based freelance writer (and former Torontoist contributor), had his experimental video game ‘zine Exp. available for purchase—and by Sunday afternoon, had managed to sell out of his latest Legend of Zelda–themed limited-edition issue, “Minus Two.”
Impressive, considering that in Kumar’s own words, he sells a product that “doesn’t have a comic in it.” However, he says it shouldn’t be surprising that the festival’s scope has expanded beyond its comics-themed name.
“People rely on genre-fication to understand things,” explained Kumar. “It can’t just be the ‘Toronto Stuff Festival.’ That doesn’t make any sense.” Instead, he feels the event should be viewed as more of an umbrella under which the city’s diverse creative communities can help one another out—of which comics are just one aspect.
However, exhibitors were only part of the TCAF weekend draw, and a great deal of fun came from the the panels, speakers, and talks that were scheduled throughout. Some—including Saturday’s Machine of Death: Draw and Guess panel, featuring Toronto-local Ryan North amongst others, and special guest Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time panel earlier in the day—were standing-room only, and attracted long, snaking lines an hour before their scheduled start times.
And that is perhaps one of TCAF’s greatest qualities—accessibility. Mere steps from Bloor Station, the festival is in an ideal location to attract; there were kids, families, and a good selection of seniors. A few attendees came dressed up as their favourite fictional characters. Others seemed to walk in off the street, not entirely sure what to expect. But if their smiles were any indication, all seemed pleased with the results.
Photos by Matthew Braga.
[UPDATE, May 9, 12:25 PM: When originally published, we failed to include artist Brian McLachlan in our recap. The omission has now been remedied.]