ZODIAC MEDIA founder/president H. Paul Gill died suddenly of heart failure while playig basketball on June 25, 2003 at the age of 28 in Toronto, Canada.
Hong-Kong-based animation production house Stvdio Media has established an office in Los Angeles to handle sales and marketing for the North American Market. Founder/ceo Larry Feign, an American animator and cartoonist, has appointed Susan Goldstein to head the U.S. office. Goldstein worked for the Screen Actors Guild, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and was evp of VIDEO INSIDER.
21st Century Media will supply the video encoding services for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), held June 23-27, 2003 in San Francisco, relying on Discreet cleaner 6 software to encode the 180 conference sessions. The WWDC sessions will be streamed in QuickTime MPEG-4 format from the Apple Developer Connection Television site, and will also be made available in a DVD-ROM box set.
AGORA is the annual Mediterranean summit on Media for Children. For the first time AGORA will take place June 20 -23, 2003 in Bologna, Italy.Four full days of meetings, seminars and workshops on the latest market trends on Media for Children in the European and Mediterranean landscape with a worlwide view.
Korean and Los Angeles-based 3D-animation house FX Digital/DiFarm and French-American production firm Media Concepts have partnered up to create the 3D-animated musical feature BREMEN. The two companies will share financing and ownership equally and hope to start production in late June of this year.
THE DIGITAL STUDIO, an iHollywood Forum Inc. summit exploring the impact of digital technologies on film and TV, will be held June 19-20, 2003, from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm at the Wyndham Belage Hotel in West Hollywood. Keynote speakers will include Chuck Comiskey, visual effects supervisor for James Cameron's Earthship Prods.; Steve Wright, technical director Cinesite; and Volker Engel, Oscar award-winner for Best Special Effects for INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Despite increasingly vocal opposition, the FCC approved changes in media ownership regulations on June 2, 2003 that are expected to lead to a new series of mergers as media companies seek to expand and enter into new combinations in local markets across the U.S. Changes the FCC made included raising the percentage of the nation's TV households one company can reach from 35% to 45%. It lifted a 28-year band on allowing newspaper and broadcast combinations in larger markets and is also allowing one company to own more radio stations locally. The vote split along party lines 3-2, with three Republication commissioners voting for the change and two Democrats objecting. The FCC did not touch the ban on mergers among the four major TV networks, but they do stand the most to gain from the vote. The FCC received more than 750,000 pieces of mail -- the most related to any one issue in the history of the FCC. Many critics claim that further consolidation will drown out minority viewpoints and destroy competition. Some say it will lead to more unemployment in the entertainment industry.
Ascent Media Creative Services Group, a technical and creative services provider for the entertainment industry, has promoted Robert T. Wenrich to the position of cfo. In his new role, Wenrich will handle the strategic and financial management of the company's the entertainment television, commercial television and creative sound services operations. He originally joined the firm in 2002 as cfo for the Creative Sound Services unit.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the annual TV Meets the Web Seminar, one of the leading events which examines the latest broadcasting and digital media trends and developments in Europe. This year, the seminar will be held in The Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.
The event will provide delegates with the opportunity to hear from representatives of major broadcasters and media and entertainment companies about the lessons they've learned during the economic downturn as well as their future strategies for establishing themselves as profitable digital media businesses.
Expression Center for New Media has named one of its state-of-the-art digital media labs in honor of late animation legend Chuck Jones. The Chuck Jones Lab in Emeryville, California will be used by Expression Digital Visual Media students to create 3D animation and modeling using Maya, After Effects, Flash, Vicon Workstation and Kaydara FiLMBOX software, plus Dell precision workstations with 2.2GHz processors and Trinitron monitors.
Winners of the 2003 Editors' Choice Awards, an extension of the annual NAB Awards for Innovation in Media (AIM) program, are Laird Telemedia's capdiv in the Content Creation category, Leitch Inc.'s CCS Navigator in the Content Management category and Triveni Digital's Skyscraper within the Content Delivery category. The winners were selected April 17, 2003 by a judging panel composed of editors from 18 industry trade publications.
The NAB spring convention delivers the most comprehensive showcase of electronic media in the world.
Create TV & Film Ltd., the newly-established independent production company formed earlier this year out of LEGO Media Internationals TV and film division, has defined its new management team and structure. Vanessa Chapman has become managing director of Create, as well as global controller, TV, film & strategy. Michael Carrington is now head of television and new media, responsible for providing creative, editorial and managerial leadership across the company's television and new media activities.
IDT Media's Digital Production Solutions (DPS, based in Newark, New Jersey) will boldly go where it's never gone before, as well as take works by Gene Roddenberry where they've never been before by acquiring the rights to unseen kids projects by the Startrek creator to turn them into 3D features. STARPOINT ACADEMY and CHAR, the first and only Gene Roddenberry projects that are specifically aimed at children, were optioned and bought by Morris Berger, VP of business development for DPS from a to-be-named production company recently launched by Camarillo, California-based Panacea Entertainment chairman Eric Gardner and former Tribune Entertainment SVP of programming and development Karen Corbin. They will produce the projects in association with DPS, along with Majel Roddenberry, Gene Roddenberry's widow, who helped develop the properties. "We're planning on taking Gene Roddenberry fans on a new trek through space with STARPOINT ACADEMY and CHAR," said Jim Courter, IDT's CEO. "Using superior texturing, lighting and visual effects, IDT Media's Global Animation Studio will create high-quality 3D animated productions that would even amaze Gene Roddenberry. The realistic scenery, landscape and special effects that can be created through 3D animation will make viewers feel like they are truly part of the story." He said the production costs should be significantly lower than other full 3D features, using its Global Animation Studio which utilizes IDT technologies affording efficiencies and cost savings to create the world's largest asset management-based production system. STARPOINT ACADEMY takes place on Starpoint Pharos, an artificial planet that houses emissaries of peace from every galaxy. In this cosmic United Nations, the problems of the universe are peacefully debated and resolved. Against this backdrop, the best and brightest galactic teens are recruited and trained. CHAR is the saga of an intergalactic princess, robbed of her birthright and raised as a normal all-American girl on 24th century Earth with no knowledge of her true identity. "Gene and I had often discussed the wonderful possibilities available in storytelling for these younger audiences," said Majel Roddenberry. "These projects will bring alive his positive vision of science, exploration and adventure to a new generation." IDT Media will keep Gene Roddenberry fans in the loop on production concepts and schedules through their Website www.starpointacademy.net to be launched shortly. In addition, IDT Media acquired the rights to all audio and video content relating to the projects, including but not limited to licensing, game development and merchandising. DPS is working on a co-production with Jim Jinkins and David Campbell of Cartoon Pizza, the creators of DOUG, STANLEY and PB&J OTTER. In addition, the DPS studio has produced episodes of MONSTER BY MISTAKE for CCI Entertainment, Ltd. DPS recently made a series of 3D animations for the educational market, for Pearson Education's "Sing, Spell, Read & Write," program. DPS was formed by IDT Media in late 2002. IDT Media is the subsidiary of IDT Corp. (www.idt.net) responsible for its initiatives in media, new video technologies and print media. IDT Corp., through its IDT Telecom subsidiary, is a multinational carrier, technology and telecommunications company.
A U.S. investment group led by media entrepreneur Dean Valentine and Europlay Capital Advisors, LLC terminated its official bid to buy 49.9% of The Jim Henson Company, Inc. from EM.TV & Merchandising. The terms of the non-binding letter of intent agreed upon in late December 2002 have been terminated. Former UPN chief Valentine, who also ran Walt Disney Co.'s Touchstone TV and the animation unit, was keen on buying a majority interest in JHC to expand the Henson brand into all areas of family entertainment.
Haim Saban, billionaire entrepreneur who ran Saban Entertainment and Fox Family Worldwide before selling off those assets, reportedly will make a binding offer for bankrupt Kirch Media in Germany according to DAILY VARIETY. He is meeting with creditor banks with his chief strategy officer Adam Chesnoff and examining Kirch Media's books. Media conglomerate Kirch owns one of Germany's largest broadcasting groups, ProSiebenSat 1, as well as a vast film library. German publisher Heinrich Bauer is also interested in buying the group.
Vintage comic strip hero Dick Tracy is being adapted as a new animated series by Film Roman, which signed a development deal with Classic Media. This announcement follows on the heels of former AOL Time Warner exec Robert Friedman's appointment as president of Classic Media (AF February 18, 2003). Friedman said his mandate was to take his company's comic characters into the television and film mediums.
AIM, the University of Southern California School of Fine Arts' international festival of time-based media, in partnership with the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, would like to present AIM IV: Interference Patterns. AIM IV calls for entries that broach both the actual operations of media and communications technologies in contemporary society and explore the ways in which the hybrid networks developing between human and non-human may introduce an alterity or 'otherness' of which we have yet to conceive. AIM IV will take place Feb. 15- Apr.
IDT Media is expanding its animation business, offering its services to toy companies to create low-cost 3D series for television or home video. IDT's production subsidiary Digital Production Solutions (DPS) and its Global Animation Studio plan to provide high-quality 3D animation solutions at a lower cost for toy manufacturers.
Andrea DAmico has been appointed vice president of visual effects sales for Ascent Media, and will act as a liaison between the Ascent Media Creative Services companies, including Encore and R!OT, that provide visual effects services for feature films and television. DAmico will also continue in her role as executive producer of visual effects with R!OT, Santa Monica.
ILM animation director Tom Bertino and senior VP Patty Blau head a roster of presenters at Expression Center for New Media's "Insider Day," January 10, 2003. Ex'pression hosts ten Insider Days a year and each includes workshops and seminars featuring technology movers and shakers, famous producers and engineers, musical and digital artists, and other resources to keep students on the new media front lines. The Insider Day experience provides a valuable networking arsenal for students after graduation.
On December 19, 2002 the National Institute on Media and the Family released their Seventh Annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card and gave the gaming industry a failing grade for the first time in the seven-year history of the report. The report provides a snapshot of the interactive gaming industry with a focus on issues related to child welfare. Areas of special concern include growing levels of video game addiction; inaccuracy of ratings; parental lack of awareness regarding content; and the failure of many retailers to restrict children from "M" for mature-rated games.
The U.K. MEDIA Desk is now offering U.K. industry professionals the opportunity to apply for development funding for long fiction, documentary, animation and multimedia projects. The MEDIA Plus program, based in Brussels, is calling U.K. production companies to apply for development funding for their projects throughout the first six months of 2003. The funding covers single projects and slate funding. The final date for submissions is June 16, 2003. In 2002, £1.6 million was awarded to U.K.
Detroit, Michigan's College for Creative Studies (CCS) Animation and Digital Media department will welcome a group of industry experts in 2002. Lanfranco Aceti, Thom Gillespie and Bill Tomlinson will be guest speakers at a series of presentations hosted by the college. Lanfranco Aceti is a digital artist and a Ph.D. researcher in fine art at Central Saint Martins in London. He has been focusing on the cross-platform media as expression of the contemporary avant-garde. Aceti will be giving an open presentation on November 25, 2002 from 5:00 7:00 pm.
DICON 2002 & BCWW 2002 is the prestigious annual B2B marketplace for broadcasting & digital contents, created by Ministry of Culture & Tourism to boost digital and media contents trade in Asia, which is the fastest growing market in the world.
