I’d returned to Australia in December 1999, from a lacklustre outing in Los Angeles, where I struggled as a Director. The next few years, I’d built a production and technology house called KABOOM! Entertainment Technology with IT whiz Graeme Patton, Editor Maurice Todman and digital allrounder Dave Pascoe. All we were left with when the smoke cleared was one Client – which happened to be Australia’s biggest children’s modelling Agency, Polkadotts in Double Bay, and the online software that ran the whole very lucrative show. Using our software and mobile camera kits, Malinda Rutter ( a former Wonder World! reporter and close friend) was signing up 12,000 kids a year at $550 a pop. We formed a new Company called Launchpad and soldiered on. We were turning over a million plus a year when Graeme over-dosed one night – and Rutter pulled the key man clause in our contract, refusing to pay $500,000 in outstanding fees. She ultimately went belly up when News Limited called in her advertising bills. Then the dot com bomb went off. Anybody remotely involved with the web was persona not gratis. My day job was picking up dog shit and cleaning the pool as Rutter prepared to sell her Vaucluse mansion. Then one day I had a bright idea. Why not video the place then stream it over the Internet and I’d never have to pick up the dog again. In those days web videos were postage stamp on dial up. So I borrowed a friend’s Sony cam and got stuck into it. This is the end result of a three day shoot and a one week edit.
