But a lot has changed since those days and now indie production is the backbone of movie making. We are no longer the radical new kids on the block trying to make a name for ourselves, but probably one of the oldest deeply embedded indie institutions in the industry, with a long line of political and functional successes under our belt. Not because we made it big in production, but because we “facilitated it”.
 
   From 1994, until about mid-way through 2004, if it was shot in San Diego County, our people were probably part of it, and in fact, we did a lot of work supporting and assisting the former San Diego Film Commission, when it existed. We brought productions down from Hollywood, provided everything in the way of locations and other resources, and were the go between facilitators from permits to support facilities. It was a “one stop shopping” experience for everyone shooting, and we are proud to say, during that time, we changed San Diego’s image (in Hollywood) from being what was once called “the ugly stepchild of the film industry”, into “Hollywood South”, once again, as it was hailed for being in the fifties and sixties.
  
   But in 2004, at the request of both major producers and foreign governments, ARIA closed our facilities in San Diego in a relocation effort to take on a mission to facilitate production in the Caribbean, and worked on setting up facilities in the Eastern Caribbean islands for the Organization of Caribbean States (OECS), initially requested to setup production facilities on the island of The Commonwealth of Dominica, which ended up being the location for Pirate’s of The Caribbean, films two and three. We were also asked to provide production training content and techniques for Dominica's College of Arts & Sciences. Then the request came in to setup production on the island of Grenada, by former Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, and even another request for film training.

In 1992, before ARIA became a film production company, we were a company named CompuHost. At that time, The Internet had just started up for consumer use, and there were a few companies “getting people Online” in San Diego at that time: CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online (AOL),  and, yes US, as: CompuHost.

Back then, you, or your computer (once modems became peripheral devices installed in computers, getting online became automated), used a dialup modem and logged into one of our systems with a phone connection, that originally ran at 2400 baud, through a device called a Phone Modem (If you aren’t old enough to remember).

Prior to CompuServe (the first company, started as a corporate inter-tie in 1969) and Prodigy (another interlink before we were all Internet Service Providers), a company named “The World” actually started an Internet service provider originally headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was indeed, the first commercial ISP in the world that provided a direct connection to the internet, with its first customer logging on in November 1989. So, by 1991, I got the hair-brained idea to start one in San Diego!

With only the ability to “negotiate” deals and get cooperative agreements going, we did just that, and CompuHost started to form. By the end of 1991, we had computer servers and had worked out a deal with old “Ma Bell” to give us a chunk of lines we could rotate through an automated switchboard. CompuHost became the smallest ISP in the world that could handle the needs of the entire East County of San Diego.

However, the Internet, once advertising hit the TV’s by CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL, grew faster than “the little guys” could keep up with. So, by 1994, CompuHost sold out completely to CompuServe, and ARIA Motion Pictures was born from those proceeds of the sale (after paying off all of the agreements that started CompuHost).

In 1993, we had teamed up with a company named “Network Solutions” to off-load web storage, using their servers tied to our connections (but demand still outgrew US), so, in 1994, when we turned the keys over to CompuServe, that one link remained, and we kept our Website Creation Services running to support ARIA’s growth.

In January 1994, a group of guys calling themselves Yahoo came online (yes those guys), and to promote cross-marketing and improve website design (their goal was earning cash through online marketing) they started RATING the early websites. They had a list of the 100 best sites (acording to them) called the:

The website you see to the left of this column made it into the Top 30 of the VERY FIRST LIST by Yahoo (see the graphic under the film strip), and stayed there six months. It is currently THE ONLY REMAINING WEBSITE ever rated by Yahoo in the first list. We were also later awarded the same thing in February of 1997 from PC Magazine, listed as: "THE 100 TOP WEB SITES".