Reel to Real

On May 10, 2004, at 11:23 a.m. on a Monday, Nicholas Da Silva, the Multidisciplinary Artist and Musician known professionally as ZOOLOOK, made a domain purchase with a vision in mind, to stream and showcase demo reels on the internet, an idea that was planned and launched one year before YouTube was born (2005). He acquired the domain name ReelTV.com for $ 2,000 USD, which was a steal of a price at the time. In 2004, the highest publicized domain sold for $2,750,000 (Creditcards.com).

ReelTV was born from the same independent spirit that fueled his earlier project, FlashTV. Launched in 2001, FlashTV began with 40 original Flash-animated stories and quickly grew to 3000 videos while reaching a global audience, drawing millions of visits within weeks. It earned recognition from the creative community, including FWA Site of the Day (2001) and Macromedia Site of the Day (2002), proving that the internet could be a launchpad for original storytelling outside the traditional media system.

That success inspired ZOOLOOK to build ReelTV in 2004 as a platform designed to champion today’s filmmakers, animators, and storytellers. Just as FlashTV gave independent Flash Animators a global stage in the early 2000s, ReelTV exists to spotlight creative voices across film, video, and digital media. His mission was to give the creative community a dedicated space to share their work, connect with audiences, and be discovered.

By 2008, ZOOLOOK had managed to grow ReelTV into a major success, securing deals with the now-defunct The Art Institutes (AI) while also establishing ReelTV as the go-to site for ad agencies seeking to showcase their demo reels online.

2008 also became ZOOLOOK’s breakout year as his work began to get picked up by many of the major design publications, including Web Designer Magazine, Computer Arts, and .net.

In July 2008, ZOOLOOK got the first of two Adobe Success Stories. ReelTV’s ‘Reel to real’ secured ZOOLOOK’s career as a futurist in design and vision for the web.

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