Los Ángeles, December 1st, 2020

Michael Anthony Modena moved to Los Angeles when he was just 20 years old to experience life in the big city. He got to work for several agencies and met Nick Mountford and Andy Thelander, respectively Managing Director and Creative Director of Active Theory.

In 2012, after dreaming about it for some time, the three of them decided to join forces and start Active Theory, a digital production studio.

In an interview with TIA, Modena described his early professional path that led him to start Active Theory with Mountford and Thelander.

He explained his current role as Interactive Director and listed the agency’s development processes, mentioning some of the recent work he’s most proud of and looking ahead at upcoming immersive experiences.

To kick things off please can you describe us a little bit about your city and why is a great place to work?

Everyone knows LA. I grew up listening to music that sang about escaping the small hometown and going to the big city and for some reason I always wanted to move here, so I did when I was 20. Venice was an amazing place to set up a creative office because it had the right blend of new and old, fancy and sketch, tech and beach.

Back in 2012, you founded Active Theory with Nick Mountford and Andy Thelander, tell us about the day the idea was born.

It was right at the end of Flash and the beginning of “HTML5”. I was posting my tech experiments on Twitter which led to some opportunities, and it was always my goal to move to LA and start a studio. I was working at a studio with Andy and Nick at the time; Andy and I had been chatting about what new web-tech projects we would want to do and then I ran into Nick at a grocery store. We began chatting and it all sort of came together. From there, we all decided to make it a reality together.

Could you explain to us briefly what’s your role as Interactive Director?

I develop a lot of the new technology we deploy, from the 3D engine to our multiplayer network. I also incubate the process to allow others to contribute to the tech pipeline. Additionally I work with Andy’s lead on creative ideas, pitches, and direction across production.

How would you describe the creative culture of Active Theory?

Its tech driven. Our team is always exploring new techniques with Houdini or C4D, and often they’ll come up with something cool that we will then try and find the right brief to pitch it on. We don’t spend ages designing, we try and get into the build as quickly as possible so everyone is seeing the real thing early and often.

Of all the recent projects your agency has produced, which one are you most proud of?

My legitimate answer is “the next one”, but I know that’s no fun so I’ll say Huluween (https://huluween.com) because we got to build on a lot of the existing technology we had in a totally new way, and included some new tricks to make an experience that pushes the limits of rendering while still working across new and old devices.

Do you handle all development work in-house?

All of the development work is in house, with our own tools and framework that have been developed over more than 8 years. We’re currently changing our development process a bit as we’ve grown a lot in this past year. I will have to let you know once we find out if it works 🙂

How does your team check and measure response time before launching a project for a big brand?

We have a performance checklist we work against for every project ensuring that it loads fast and renders smoothly across all devices. On Huluween, we load only the first scene required for the intro, and while the user is starting the experience we load the rest of the scenes as it plays.

Accessibility can be difficult to acknowledge, how do you ensure that your clients understand what you are recommending?

As with most things, we build it into the systems and make it as easy as possible for our developers to work with. Much of our accessibility comes built into the framework, so all developers have to do is provide some alt-text and all of the markup is automatically generated. You can go to our website with a screenreader and keyboard control through the entire WebGL experience.

What new ideas in immersive experiences are you excited about?

I’m really excited about AR and VR, as I have been for a few years. AR apps you have to download are usually a difficult sell for our clients because they lack the accessibility of the web. However, VR is reaching a place with the new Oculus 2 that I think (and hope!) our clients might have more appetite because WebVR is now in the hands of many people.

As a developer, do you find that you notice little elements that others don’t?

Sure, things like load time, rendering workload, shaders, and animations.

Is it better to be good and on time or perfect and late with your work?

Perfect and on time, even if it means having to work some extra hours.

If you could travel back in time and give yourself one piece of career advice, what would it be?

Spend less energy worrying about whatever I was worrying about at the time. It always passes and has worked itself out in the end.

Can you name a fun-fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

When I was 7 years old in 1996 I was a top 20 Monopoly online player. It’s ruined the game for me, I just can’t play it anymore.

Thanks Michael!

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