By Joe Shepter

Type isn't the only thing that's changing at IF. Deep in its Hollywood quarters, the digital dry-walling is moving apace. The project is called the Imaginary Forces Network. Its destination is the Web.

Surprised? You should be. IF is better known as the House that Kyle built, the motion graphics studio that revolutionized the way we look at main title sequences in films. IF's work graces Times Square. It turned you on to Men in Black. It was the first thing you saw in Wild Wild West, Mission Impossible, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.

If you duck down a bit, you can find the office of Cooper himself. It's a cozy den, lined with awards and packed to the gills with design and type books - and even the occasional volume of Shakespeare, whom Cooper quotes at the drop of a hat.

Though the sun is parting the dusty smog outside, Cooper is not here to enjoy it. He's braving the winter in Chicago, where he's directing his first movie, Newport South. Reached by e-mail, he seemed excited about directing, but managed to chat a little about the new Imaginary Direction. "The great thing about interactivity," he says, "is that it creates connections between thoughts, ideas, objects, stories that are related or completely unrelated, creating a sort of surprise of inspiration." He adds that we might see his first Web designs on the site for Newport South.

Cooper and his partners aren't letting us in on what the Network will look like. "We're going to focus first on creating a Web environment with content, commerce, and a new way of looking at interactive experience," says partner Chip Houghton - a description that could include anything from Boo.com to Joe Cartoon.

It could prove to be an uphill battle for Cooper and crew. The company has lived most of its life executing work for others and has precious little Web experience. Frankfurt himself admits that the current IF site is "one step above suck." He's exaggerating, of course, but even so, the best work the firm has done is in main titles, which are only a couple of minutes long and have little to do with interactivity. And needless to say, the Web content business is not starving for a lack of qualified competitors.

They brim with confidence, and perhaps with reason. For one thing, the company is talent-ridden. Since Seven, Cooper has been a magnet for the stuff, and his record as a talent spotter is nearly as impressive as his one as a designer.

IF also has street smarts rare in Hollywood. "Because of main titles, we know how to save money," says Frankfurt. "We'll go in and shoot downstairs in a conference room, or in a bathroom. We don't need the full-on Winnebagos and a location set to get something done." They're even fluent at using stock footage, generally regarded in the industry as cheesy. "We decheese it," says Houghton. "And recheese it," adds Frankfurt.

Imaginary Forces also knows honest content production. In addition to Cooper's new movie, Frankfurt has already produced one hit film, Blade, and will probably do the sequel. At the more day-to-day level, Cooper has made sure that storytelling is the main element in the IF corpus, and that everyone at IF understands it. In more accomplished pieces like Seven, the title sequence is a story in and of itself - a gripping snapshot of a serial killer slicing off his fingerprints and plotting his life's work.

With the Network launch date still unannounced, Imaginary Forces continues on its usual path, not caring to kill a golden-egg-laying goose with that much stamina. It will soon debut a new piece in Times Square and has a whole rack of main titles either out or in the works, including Mission Impossible 2, Shanghai Noon, and Bicentennial Man.

For the last word, if Imaginary Forces is going to take a stab at content production, people should take notice. Everyone talks about becoming revolutionaries these days. These guys already are.

Adobe.com senior editor Joe Shepter would like to thank Brendan Dawes of Subnet New Media for help with this story. Dawes maintains an excellent tribute site to an earlier main title guru, Saul Bass .