Executive Producer

Stephen Pedroff owns Pedroff Productions, a media consulting and production company in Santa Barbara, CA. Currently, Stephen is on location in Telluride, Colorado, as the Executive Producer of Avalanche, an episodic web site hosted on the Web and America Online. He has fifteen years of film and video production experience as a Writer, Producer, Director, and Actor.

"Almost fifteen years ago I played an expecting father in a 'how to' childbirth video. I had about a dozen scenes - lots of breathing and panting followed by a tour through the birthing room at the local hospital with Mrs. Perfect. I wish I could remember the name of my pretend wife - I'm not surprised I can't, I was pretty lightheaded most of time from all that heavy breathing."

Stephen founded Pedroff Productions in 1987. The previous three years he worked as a Producer/Director for the Santa Barbara ABC television affiliate, KEYT. In 1986 Stephen received a Santa Barbara Advertising Club award for his direction of a thirty-second spot titled, "Boudoir Photography."

"I remember being really happy about getting the assignment. It was a plum in the midst of a non-stop daily grind of 'ONLY $99.95 A MONTH for this brand new FORD!' I must have made at least 100 car commercials in two years!"

For ten years, Stephen has provided his clients' projects with exceptional creative management and thoroughly professional execution. Dozens of sponsors, including MCI, General Motors, Saturn, Kraft Foods, and Taco Bell, benefited from the leveraged media exposure generated by the innovative marketing and promotional programs created and expertly managed by Pedroff Productions. Stephen successfully created a broadcast television advertising co-sponsorship model for hundreds of civilian and military air shows in the United States and Canada, and created over 100 television spots for participating broadcast television stations and marketing partners.

"I got my first real taste of what technology could mean to me personally and professionally when I got my first computer, and my first cellular phone. I'll never forget the first time I scheduled a contract driving from one meeting to another. I thought the new order had arrived. I still imagine - particularly on days I know that I'll be sitting at my desk all day - totally portable, ultimately powerful, personal computing and communications devices. I'm talking one thousand megahertz speed PC's the size of wrist watches with high speed digital network connections. OK, so I don't know what it will mean to mankind. But, it'll be pretty cool."

Stephen is also familiar with the needs of non-profit and governmental agencies. Stephen was appointed to the Santa Barbara Cable Television Advisory Committee in the early 80's. He witnessed first hand the explosive growth of cable television and the accompanying attempts by local government to see that the public trust was upheld. He later supervised the rebuilding of the City of Santa Barbara's Municipal Cable Television channel and participated in the City's Cable Re-Franchising negotiations.

"Some of the current public discourse about the Internet sounds familiar to me. Before 1980 not many people, with a few notable exceptions like Ted Turner and Bob Pittman, had figured out what the growth would be like, what the commercial future would be for the new distribution model, and what the public issues would be. I know broadcast television was looking over its collective shoulder. I think everyone working in media should be looking over their shoulder, now."

Stephen has been interested in the online world since the mid '80's when he first logged on to The Source and OAG's airline reservation system. For the past three years Stephen has been an "early adopter" of the Internet.

"A couple of years ago I put in a Hughes Satellite Internet downlink at my house in Santa Barbara. 400 Kbps seemed pretty fast at the time. With the right bandwidth, I see the Internet as a valid distribution channel for ANY currently existing intellectual property. And, I think the technology will necessarily create new media forms, as long as there is an audience."

Stephen enjoys the challenge of creating new media. The Internet ultimately made the Avalanche project possible because production resources in Telluride, Santa Barbara, and Reston, Virginia could be brought together quickly and efficiently. Ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter that Telluride is 65 miles distant from the nearest stoplight.

"The night we launched AVALANCHE we threw a party so we could shoot scenes for the New Year's Eve episode. We had about 75 people at a house in Telluride called 'The Paragon' and we used a nifty video projector to let everyone at the party check out the site by displaying the image about ten feet wide. People lined up to 'drive'! As many as twenty people were crowded around the screen, all with good views of big graphics and readable text, all yelling at once, 'Click there, no there!' The level of audience participation paralleled a multi-user video game environment much more than the more passive nature of a group of people watching TV. I was struck that night at how fundamentally different a "media" experience might be in the near future."