Eyetronics Mines the Past to Create New Entertainment

Media entrepreneur Dominique Bigle made headlines recently when he announced Encino-based Eyetronics Media & Studios (eyetronics.com) would create what has been called a “landmark” $50-million deal to provide programming to KCET-TV, the nation’s No. 1 independent public television station.

The deal will enable Bigle to cull from his extensive collection of newsreel footage, film clips and old movies—more than 50,000 hours in all, stored in film vaults in New Jersey, Montreal and Paris—to create historical documentaries, background features on classic movies and other offerings. The productions would be launched on KCET and be distributed globally.  

The arrangement could even include Eyetronics' advanced, 3-D technology. The company’s unique motion-and facial-capture technology can track movement from filmed images to create brand-new, 3-D images of historical figures, such as Adolf Hitler and now-deceased actors. Typically, motion and facial capture require tracking of actual persons.

Bigle, who obviously delights in this mix of history and technology, calls it “translating the 20th century with 21st-century tools.” In a recent interview, Bigle sat as his office desk enthusiastically clicking on teaser after teaser for his new programming.

“I’m not the UCLA film archives, I’m not the Getty, I’m just a little boutique,” Bigle said, “but ask me about JFK or FDR, and I have the footage and I can do photo stills.”

Bigle’s current post as Eyetronics’ CEO and president seems perfectly suited for the French-born media executive who got his start in 1973 with the Walt Disney Co. in Paris. Bigle’s father, Armand, spent 44 years with Disney and was named a “Disney Legend” by the company. So, it was almost inevitable that his son, Dominique, would also work for Disney.

Dominique Bigle went on to become a top-level Disney executive, creating shows for Disney in Europe and distributing them throughout the continent. But as his father neared retirement in 1991, Bigle realized he didn’t want to follow his father’s example and spend his life with one company.

“I wanted to fly with my own wings,” Bigle said. “If I stayed forever, like my father, I would have had Mickey Mouse ears growing from my head.”

He became an independent media consultant, arranging financing, media deals with major studios and helping to produce TV shows and documentaries in the United States and Europe. He finally moved his family to Los Angeles in 1999 because so much of his work was here.

Along the way, he had become a major collector of silent movies, old films, documentaries, newsreels and film clips in various languages. These became part of the resources for Eyetronics, which he has headed for the past two years. 

The 15-year-old company, owned in part by Bigle, other investors and the University of Leuven in Belgium, was previously what Bigle calls a “service company,” providing visual effects for the gaming industry, advertising and movies. With his trove of footage, Bigle has also moved the 10-person company into production of its own features.

They include the Classic Cool series (classiccool.tv), which includes genre movie collections such as horror, westerns, film noir and others. Also in the works are Retrostory, a documentary series, and Lost Generation, a fictional drama set in 1930s Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai and Paris.

For KCET, Eyetronics will help create an undersea series, Ocean’s Alive with Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. The series will be interactive, involve celebrities and will be based partly on Catalina Island, where Cousteau established one of five global family camps under the nonprofit Ocean Futures Society.

Meanwhile, Bigle is working with other media companies and the estates of former actors to discuss how to further use Eyetronics technology to create new entertainment offerings.

“They’re very prestigious stars that we could bring alive again,” he said.