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Mireille Kermoyan, Quebec's desktop publishing pioneer |
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Mireille Kermoyan, Quebec's desktop publishing pioneer |
by Marie-Pierre Tremblay
December 2001
www.explore-nf.com If you're on the Internet, visit this site - it's rated among Quebec's top 100 for the year 2000 by the province's Guide Internet, and is listed in France's Guide Belin. Designed and produced by Mireille Karmoyan, the site is associated with her latest CD-ROM: La Nouvelle-France - Sur la route des explorateurs, which was released simultaneously in Cannes, Paris and Montreal a short time ago.
Mireille's venture began in 1994. The publishing industry was in a flutter because "electronic books," just around the corner, were expected to provide stiff competition. But Mireille was among those who were all for the apportunity to "present broad-ranging, highly creative and significant cultural content on advanced technological support." A firm believer in the need for works that were "highly coloured, brilliant, animated, and could speak," she established the first consortium in Canada that specialized in desktop publishing, and founded Edirom. When the challenges of producinq and distributing high-end interactive CD-ROMs in the culture, education and entertainment sectors became apparent, Mireille's partners faded away and she took full control of the business, which she heads alone today. Edirom is a subsidiary of one of Quebec's first art book publishing houses, Art Global, owned by Mireille's husband of many years, Ara Kermoyan.
"If I had known the difficulties I would encounter," says Mireille, "I would certainly have thought twice before taking the plunge. The market did not take off the way we expected, and a CD-ROM is very expansive to make - it takes at least $100,000! You need a lot of money, and you have to take risks. If I were producing games, I'd certainly be doing well. But the cultural niche is tougher to crack. Sales are good, though oddly enough, they're very good. We're at the third printing of my last CD-ROM, but we'd have to sell three times what we sell now to make a profit!"
A slight figure behind her enormous desk of solid pine, surrounded by documents and papers, Mireille the businesswoman quickly gives way to Mireille the creative artist we all knew. With a sparkle in her eyes and a broad smile, she describes her achievements with increasing passion and pride.
"My first CD-ROM - called Inuit: People Under the Great Bear - was developed jointly with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. It's an interactive encyclopedia, a discovery of the way of life, traditions and culture of Inuit people. There is a French version and an English version. The CD-ROM includes 220 encyclopedia entries, 450 photographs and illustrations, 12 games, drawings by Fr�d�ric Back, maps, videos, works of art in 3D, audio clips, original music, Inuktituk entries, and so on. The script is by writer Louis Caron, and the encyclopedia entries are by scientist David Morrison. First, there's some historical background: in 1845, Sir John Franklin left England with 129 men and two ships, determined to find a route to the Orient through the Arctic Ocean. Captain Franklin's expedition disappeared without a trace, yet his deputy, Captain Francis Crozier, apparently survived. How did he survive? Why? Then we're off, led by a shaman who traces the links between human beings and the spirit world. In 1998, Inuit won Silver at the 9th Annual MUSE Awards in Los Angeles in June, and won Gold in the Multimedi'Art category at the Festival audiovisuel international Mus�es et Patrimoine.
My next project was to develop a Web site for the Canadian Museum of Civilization's Virtual Museum of New France. It's called An Adventure in New France: Pierre Boucher, Interpreter and Explorer.
Then we did the Nouvelle-France CD-ROM and Web site - a journey of exploration and discovery to the New World through the descriptions and writings of great explorers before the Conquest. They include descriptions of the St. Lawrence River and of the towns and villages along its shores. They link past and present; we can visit areas and places in modern Quebec and discover their history and culture, in our own time and at our own pace. The CD-ROM contains about 300 pages written by historians H�l�ne-Andr�e Bizier and Jacques Lacoursi�re, along with an equal number of photographs and illustrations, maps, videos, audio clips and a voice-over. It is recommended by Lien Multim�dia's guide to the best CD-ROM (Guide d'achat : les meilleurs CD-ROMs d'ici et d'ailleurs) and in March 2001, it received a Special Mention at the M�rites du fran�ais dans les technologies de l'information, a competition organized by the Office de la langue fran�aise.
But that was just Phase I of the project. Phase II is much more ambitions and will be a combined TV/internet experience. I am still setting up the financing, but the storyboards are ready and I am contacting groups with budgets for exploring media convergence. T�l�-Qu�bec has bought 65 two-and-a-half-minute documentary stories to be telecast by the summer of 2003. Their theme will be French America, and they will be telecast before feature films during the summer. While a story is on the screen, viewers with a digital terminal will also see a pop-up Internet window so they can download on demand information about the places involved, the story's narrator, and other things. The stories will be cheerful, and lively... just like the directors and artists I have already approached and recruited. The main Web site is much larger: it has 65 places to visit, 14 explorers to follow, theme routes along forts, parks, Amerindian reserves and places notable for their cuisine, an educational guide, virtual postcards, etc.
It's exciting, but it's also tremendously demanding. The teams are enormous... everything has to be perfectly planned and carried out. It all takes an incredible amount of energy. I really think this will be my last project.
Are you sure, Mireille? Somehow, I don't think so...
Inuit: People Under the Great Bear ($50) and La Nouvelle-France - Sur la route des explorateurs ($35) are on sale in bookstores and speciaity stores, in Mac/PC hybrid format.
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*Mireille Kermoyan worked at the NFB for 25 years. The positions she held include Chief of Information, Promotion and Publicity; Director of Communications; Director of International Development; and Secretary to the Board of Trustees. She retired from the NFB in 1994.
