Even on the Web, director David Lynch has an avant-garde approach. Rather than build his site with high-end servers and enterprise software, he's staking the project's success on Mac workstations and products from 4D. And, so far, it's working.

July 02, 2002
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/inside-davidlynchcom/184411677

If you were confused by Twin Peaks, the surreal television drama that ran for two seasons in the early 1990s, you're likely to be just as puzzled by DavidLynch.com. Featuring, among other things, animated shorts of flatulent rednecks, live video of hummingbird feeders, and a section simply titled Experiments, the seven-month-old site is an absurd collection of sound, image, and video that only a mother—or a devoted fan—could love. And that's exactly how director David Lynch wants it.

Lynch, who is known for demanding the final cut on his Hollywood films, decided to take his work to the Web in part because ABC rejected one of his television pilots. The cancelled pilot later provided material for the first half of Mulholland Drive, a feature film that earned Lynch an Oscar nomination for Best Director. But that didn't change Lynch's vow to never again work for network television.

Strategy

With visions of publishing his work in an unedited and unrestricted environment, Lynch began talking with designer Eric Bassett about using the Web. "Our dream was to do a Twin Peaks on the Internet," says Bassett, who has been creating logos and other treatments for Lynch's films for over eight years. "Our ultimate goal was to have an original series with the value-adds that the Internet can provide," he explains.

Starting out wasn't easy, given Lynch's busy schedule and lofty goals for the project. After a year of planning, Lynch and Bassett took another two years to create the initial content and implement technologies to get the site up and running. "David worked on it full time, although we lost about four months due to Mulholland Drive," notes Bassett. True to the original vision, the director maintained complete artistic control over the site. "This isn't an Eric Bassett design. This is a David Lynch design," Bassett says. "Nothing goes up on that site without him seeing it."

The duo knew that to maintain Lynch's site without any outside pressures, they would have to charge for access. (See a screenshot). To explain this to fans who might not otherwise sign up, the site has a page titled Why Pay? The page reads: "DavidLynch.com has not accepted sponsorship or advertising to avoid censorship or influence of its content. The result of that decision is a destination that requires payment to fund both the website and the content that it delivers."

The fee for the member portion of the site is $9.97 per month—competitively priced when compared to the cost of a movie ticket in major U.S. cities these days. Customers are billed every thirty days. Through the site they gain access to several of Lynch's creative works, including the aforementioned animated series (see image) and hummingbird video feeds as well as cartoons, electronic postcards, music videos, screen savers, a Weblog, and even a radio show by the director's daughter, Jennifer Lynch. The subscription form bears a scrawled note from Lynch: "I hate forms too—D.L." It's the sort of personal touch that pervades the site.

Interface

Lynch and Bassett, who works for Lynch on behalf of his design firm Bassett & Associates, originally began building the site with HTML. They soon decided that HTML didn't allow them full creative expression. They found it hard to add interactivity that had a consistent appearance across different platforms. So they turned to Flash. "We just wanted to keep it consistent," says Bassett. "Even pages that don't need Flash now use it," he says, referring to how the site is organized.

The duo decided to use QuickTime as its streaming media format, by way of a deal with Apple. Knowing that many companies would be interested in associating themselves with a David Lynch project based on the director's reputation, Bassett and Lynch approached Apple to see if they could swap free publicity for free software. According to Bassett, Apple wasn't interested at the time. The pair then went to RealNetworks to discuss a trade for the company's RealAudio and RealVideo products. They were about to close a "really good deal" when a sudden drop in RealNetworks's stock price put a hold on the plans.

Next, the two went to Microsoft to discuss its Windows Media products. Again, they came close to formulating a deal. "They wanted to bring over a bunch of PCs," says Bassett of Microsoft. "David got sick to his stomach. He didn't want to lose his Mac." A day before they had to sign for the Microsoft deal, Bassett and Lynch went back to Apple and negotiated an agreement based on their exclusive use of QuickTime on the Web site.

Infrastructure

Steve Jobs must certainly be happy about the deal, because DavidLynch.com is an Apple success story. All video that appears on the site was cut, edited, and delivered with Apple products. The files are even served off Apple hardware—a rare occurrence when HP, IBM, Intel, and Sun servers power most Internet sites and applications.

The site relies mainly on fourteen G4s. Three are 500MHz dual processor systems, and the rest are 400MHz single processor systems. The servers are load balanced with the help of Men & Mice's QuickDNS software, and are housed in Lynch's 200 square-foot clean room. A Cisco 7200 VXR router handles traffic to a DS3 line. The data center also has two T1 lines as redundant backups. "Originally, we were going to go with Exodus [for hosting], but I'm glad we didn't," says Bassett, referring to Exodus's recent bankruptcy.

An uninterrupted power supply with a three-day capacity safeguards the entire setup. The site also uses the Akamai content delivery network. This ensures that Lynch's media files can be delivered to customers even during peak traffic times.

Development

For the site's development platform, the duo chose software from San Jose"based 4D. 4D's client list includes NASA and United Airlines. Again, Lynch's high-profile status earned the site free rewards when 4D loaned Web Evangelist Sebastian Frey to help with the project. Lynch and Bassett also hired Lee Hinde, president of the consulting firm HD Industries, to integrate the site's Flash front end with 4D Portal and the 4D database.

The group decided to use commercial products instead of open source ones—for instance, 4D's WebStar Web server instead of Apache—because the members wanted to use an integrated package from a single vendor. Using 4D's graphical administration interfaces means that there are no command lines to deal with. This is a bonus for Bassett, who doesn't have a formal development background, but who must often take on the role of IT manager for the site. Another bonus is that WebStar is optimized for G4s, which makes it a top choice for an organization that prefers Apple hardware.

For the site's e-commerce functions, which include the store and member registration, the group chose the 4D Business Kit (4D BK). This package contains an integrated Web server, database, language processor, and a store manager. Unlike the other 4D software in use at DavidLynch.com, 4D BK was installed on an NT box—the group's only Windows server in its data center. "We ran out of time to write the Perl scripts to connect to Verisign," explains Bassett of the unusual installation. Because the NT version of 4D BK comes with an out-of-the-box connection to Verisign, it provided the fastest way to build the commerce portion of the site.

Challenges

DavidLynch.com has not been without its share of problems. After the site launched, a member pointed out that the domain name was registered with Lynch's personal information, which meant that anyone could look up Lynch's home address by searching the Whois registry. The registration information has since been changed to that of Bassett & Associates.

The site has several user-experience idiosyncrasies (some of which might come across as part of Lynch's personal style). For example, using the browser's back button isn't possible on every page, as is often the case with Flash-based sites. To get around this, developers often add custom back buttons to their pages. DavidLynch.com makes use of these on some pages, but not all. The irregularity is confusing and makes it difficult to jump around the site.

Another user interface issue arises from the way many of the links on the main Switchboard menu lead to pages that simply display a single image. Users must click on that image to reveal the full navigation for the feature. This is a poor wayfinding device, especially for novice users who may not know to click on the image, and may instead think the page is under construction.

Even if these design issues amount to style points, there are some technical issues that can't be resolved so simply. When clicking past the cover page, I received an error message that informed me that my browser didn't meet the site's minimum requirements. Because I was using IE6 with the latest versions of the Flash and QuickTime plugins on a 1GHz PC, I opted to continue anyway and accessed the site's content without any serious problems. Clearly, the site needs more testing with different browser versions.

Another problem is that many of the site's Flash files are within the 300-400KB range. Thus, even on a DSL connection, some screens took a noticeably long time to load. The store, for example, took more than ten seconds. Although Lynch and Bassett point out that the site was designed for broadband users, entertainment sites need to account for home users who rarely have connections faster than what is available through DSL or a cable modem. Coupled with the many splash pages on DavidLynch.com, this means that it isn't easy for fans to return to their favorite features on the site during subsequent visits. Most of the features have their own URLs—something that Flash-only sites don't always offer—but bookmarking a specific page doesn't help with navigation during subsequent visits, because users are intercepted by a login page, the completion of which sends them back to the Switchboard.

Chat Rooms

Perhaps the most bothersome part of the site is the chat room, which is also written in Flash. Devoid of standard chat features like presence tracking and the ability to refresh every time a new message is posted, it's an extremely rudimentary client. Even Macromedia has admitted that Flash isn't the best technology for text-heavy applications. When I asked members in the X Room (as opposed to the Y Room) what they thought of the chat client, they were quick to respond. In between hellos to new members and discussions about which of Lynch's coworkers had logged on to the chat room recently, a member who refers to herself as JennyGoLightly noted, "Chat needs better software...definitely."

One frustrated fan actually wrote his own chat client in C. Because the site uses a standard HTTP connection to transfer chat text between the Flash client and the server, anyone can intercept these messages on their own system and determine the protocol. "It made us rethink that part of the software," says Hinde. "We spent a week trying to fool him." Rather than trying to block foreign clients completely, the team finally conceded, and simply asked that the member not hit its server more than once every ten seconds so as not to slow down the site for other users. The member agreed.

But what's to stop other members from doing the same thing? "Basically nothing," says Hinde. "David would have to look at a different technology." Hinde refers to the site's original goal, which was to create a lightweight client that didn't exclude anyone. He also sees a positive side to having an open protocol, especially with all of the recent focus on building Web services. "I think it would be an interesting thing if a lot of third-party tools grew around the Web site," he says. Of course, the group would need to scale its servers to handle the load in such a situation.

Success Signs

Bassett knows that Flash isn't the best technology for every need. DavidLynch.com is built on Flash 5, a version that the group will gladly leave behind soon. "It's barely doable as far as e-commerce goes," says Bassett. He points to the strange behavior of text fields that make it difficult to place the cursor or highlight specific letters. Developers who want finer control must download and implement special SmartClips. The group plans to redo the site using Flash MX, the latest version from Macromedia that comes with better and easier-to-use text tools.

As of this writing, the group is in Cannes producing the DavidLynch.com Cannes Diary, a daily video essay of the international film festival. The essays appear as an original series on the member site. Non-members can purchase access on a pay-per-view basis. The group plans to offer more pay-per-view series later in the year.

Bassett and Lynch are pleased with the way the site has turned out. "We're satisfied," says Bassett. "It's paying the bills." Because the site was built in Flash, the group measures its traffic in hits rather than page views. Although it launched only last December, the site currently receives nearly ten million hits per month. As for paying members, Bassett won't reveal the exact number, but says it's "in the thousands."

As for whether the Web is the right medium for other artists, the jury is still out. Content creators have considered the Web a cheap and easy way to regain control over their own work and connect more closely with their audiences. But when Stephen King attempted to publish an exclusive e-book nearly two years ago, he cancelled the project after only six installments due to low reader interest.

Hinde doesn't see the King project as a relevant example of the trouble with online distribution. He considers buggy e-book reader software and proprietary e-book protocols to be the points of failure in that case. "With Stephen King there were some technical issues," he says. "I think the model's evolving. And it's just one model." For Lynch, at least, this model has proven successful in allowing him the freedom from sponsorships and influence that he has been seeking.

Lynch's fans also think the site is a success. Regardless of the user experience idiosyncrasies, members keep returning. In addition to gaining inexpensive access to the world of David Lynch, they gain the opportunity to speak with the man himself. Lynch logs on to the chat rooms every couple of days and sometimes twice a day to talk with fans. And that's a feature that no other site offers.

Amit is New Architect's editorial director.

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