Digital Hollywood Spring, March, 2006 Speaker Marcia Zellers, Director, AFI Digital Content Lab, American Film Institute Marcia Zellers is Director, AFI Digital Content Lab, American Film Institute. Beginning its sixth year, AFI’s Enhanced TV Workshop has produced 40+ enhanced TV prototypes. AFI’s eTV Workshop has become the gathering place for the American eTV creative and technology communities, and is renowned as the premier environment for eTV exploration and development. Zellers has pursued the challenge of a cutting edge, consumer-friendly marriage of television and interactivity since she joined MTV Interactive’s New York headquarters as a founding member in 1994. As a Senior Producer and Director heading up all MTV’s music-related Web strategy, programming and development, creative direction, talent relations, and convergence programming with MTV’s on-air operations, Zellers created and produced some of the earliest enhanced TV programming. Early pioneering examples, which aired on TV, include a split screen production incorporating simultaneous live Web chat with Michael Jackson, Jackson videos, and highlights of Jackson’s career; the Red Hot Chili Peppers live at Madison Square Garden, with simultaneous roaming backstage cameras broadcasting live to the Web; and Janet Jackson on MTV’s Total Request Live interacting on air with viewers on the Web. In 1999 Zellers moved to Los Angeles, where she spearheaded Warner Bros. Online’s Entertaindom project, one of the Web’s then-highest profile entertainment destinations and the first planned broadcast-style distribution model. (Entertaindom was intended to showcase both Time-Warner and non-Time-Warner programming.) As Supervising Producer, she oversaw all aspects of the department and helped develop original programming intended for eventual cross-platform and enhanced development. Zellers has been a new media consultant for entities like New Line Cinema and composer Giorgio Moroder, and previous to AFI was the Vice President of Web Development and Creative Director for Greater Relations Worldwide, a nascent dotcom. Zellers is also a published writer and editor, and has an eclectic background that includes publishing, marketing, advertising, fundraising, and stock brokerage.