About Carolyn
Miller
No
hoe or sunbonnet... can she still be a pioneer?
A Pioneer?
Well, that's what some people say I am, one
of the pioneers in new media... though using the term myself does make me blush
a little. Still, there's some truth to it. Because, like the pioneers of old,
I've ventured into uncharted territory to till unfamiliar soil... the soil in
this case being the cutting edge arena of interactive technologies.
I should point out, though, that as a
writer, I have written for almost every medium that exists... "old
timey" ones like newspapers, magazines and books; relative newcomers like
film and television (where I earned an Emmy nomination for an Afterschool
Special); and the more recently hatched ones like the Web, video games, MMOGs
(massively multiplayer online games), interactive TV and even smart toys. It's
in this last arena, loosely termed "new media," where I am best
known.
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In the Beginning...
Way back in the dawn of new media, back in
the early 1990s, I became fascinated with the idea of writing interactive
scripts, and managed to get hired on one of the first commercial CD-ROMs ever
produced, Virtual Biopark, which actually started out as a laser disc
project. This massive science and ecology venture was backed by the Smithsonian
Institution, the National Zoo, and Simon & Schuster Publishing, and produced
by AND Communications and Computer Curriculum Corp. I was assigned to work on
the prototype and help design and write the section on cheetahs. One of the
most thrilling moments of the project for me was the day we managed to turn a
photo of a rattlesnake into a hot spot, so when you clicked on the picture, you
could hear the snake rattle his tail. It was kind of like this:
Click
on the Snake!
I have been hooked on the possibilities of
interactive media ever since.
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New Media Titles
To date, I've contributed to 40 or 50 (to
be honest, I’ve lost count) new media titles as a writer, writer/designer, or
consultant. These include video games, projects for the Web, CD-ROMs,
interactive kiosks and character-driven intelligent toy systems. I've also
developed my own projects for games and cross-media platforms. My clients
include major media studios (Disney Interactive, Pixar,
and Digital Domain), software
developers (Digital Extremes, Knowledge Adventure, Broderbund, and Sanctuary
Woods) toy companies (Mattel,
Hasbro), Fortune 500 corporations (Ford, Kroger)
and educational institutions (UCLA, The Smithsonian
Institution).
Among the hit CD-ROM titles I've worked on
are:
- The Toy Story Animated Storybook, an interactive version of the hit movie and
one of the best-selling CD-ROMs of all time;
- The Pocahontas Animated StoryBook (also based on the movie);
- the popular Carmen Sandiego series;
- and the top selling JumpStart line.
My Web ventures include:
- Medical CyberWorld, a
MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role- playing game) for medical
education, currently in development
- Revenge of the Claw,
a serialized, twisted tale of Hollywood magic gone seriously awry,
developed by Silicon
Artists for an early version of the Planet Hollywood site;
- Global Window: Japan,
an information-rich site which earned a Gold Medal at the New York Film
Festival;
- and consulting work for a number of corporate and entertainment
sites.
If you have a moment, please check out my full list of credits.
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New Media Speaking, Teaching and Writing
In addition to my work as a writer, I've
also spoken nationally and internationally on new media subjects and screenwriting,
traveling to such far-flung places as Johannesburg, Paris, Rome, and Maui. You
can find more information about this aspect of my work here.
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Little Bits and Pieces
I'm a native of San Francisco, California,
and currently divide my time between two homes -- the "trendy" Silver
Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles and the amazing little city of Santa Fe, New
Mexico. I share these homes with my husband Terry
Borst, also a screenwriter and also a specialist in interactive media, and
our cat, Willie Wonka (the only one of us who doesn’t write). My B.A. is from
Cornell University in English Literature and my M.S. is from the Medill School
of Journalism at Northwestern University. When I'm not writing, my next
favorite thing to do is horseback riding, and sometimes I am fortunate enough
to combine both, and write about my horseback riding adventures, as I did about
my ride through the Province region of France, in an article that first
appeared in the Los Angeles Times and later in a serialized form for the Web.