MDEA news from today too
<<Wednesday September 22, 10:53 AM Eastern time
Company Press Release
Blockbuster ''Blair Witch Project'' Credits Media 100 Technology With Helping Make Film a Quality, Tight-Budget, Box Office Success
MARLBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 1999--
-Media 100 xr and Media Cleaner Pro Enable Fast Digital Video Editing
and Streaming Media Encoding for Movie Production & Marketing -
Media 100, Inc. (Nasdaq:MDEA) today announced that The Blair Witch Project, the cinema verite phenomenon and one of the 1999 summer movie season's hottest tickets, used Media 100(R) xr extensively in the film's production. The Blair Witch team also used Media Cleaner(R) Pro from Terran Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media 100, to optimize and compress the movie trailer and other film clips into high quality streaming video format for delivery on the Blair Witch Web site.
The Blair Witch production team used Media 100 xr and Media Cleaner Pro to edit, digitize and optimize footage for transfer back to film as well as for creating streaming video for the Internet. Eduardo Sanchez, one of the two Blair Witch writer-directors at Haxan Films, cited the use of the Internet as one of the key drivers of word of mouth interest in The Blair Witch Project film as well as the www.blairwitch.com site. Haxan Films used Media 100 xr and Media Cleaner Pro to craft the film and Web site to be complete standalone entities that created greater buzz-generating synergies because they were designed to work together.
According to the Nielson Net-Ratings, blairwitch.com is the 45th most popular site on the Internet. The only movie site to receive more hits was the Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, which received 340 hits per second when it first posted the Episode 1 trailer that was also formatted for the Web using Media Cleaner Pro. To see trailers and clips from The Blair Witch Project, see www.blairwitch.com or www.media100.com.
"We couldn't have done this film without Media 100. Before Blair Witch, nobody had ever heard of us, so we had to keep a tight eye on our budget," commented Dan Myrick, the film's co-writer, co-director. "Yet, as professional filmmakers, we take personal pride in producing good work -- in making films that people want to see. Balancing these two requirements can be difficult, but Media 100 let us do both," Myrick added.
"It's every independent filmmaker's dream," said Eduardo Sanchez, of Haxan Films. "To have your film seen and loved by so many people -- it's the Holy Grail. Especially for a film that cost about the price of a new car to shoot What really surprised people was that we shot 'Blair Witch' like a home movie. It's badly lit, badly shot, and really shaky -- all by design. To give it a sense of immediacy and suspense, we shot most of it on video," Sanchez added.
How the 'Blair Witch' Team Used Media 100
In Blair Witch, Haxan Films mixed Hi-8 video and 16mm film and edited the entire piece on Media 100 xr. Blair Witch was initially longer than 200 minutes and saddled by two different editorial approaches. Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick worked with the rest of the Haxan production team including Mike Monello, Gregg Hale and Robin Cowie to cut the film down to 82 minutes. They maximized image quality by redigitizing the scenes they needed from the original Hi-8, mastering it to DigiBeta and then transferring it to film.
About Media 100
Media 100 Inc. of Marlboro, Mass., USA (Nasdaq: MDEA) focuses on the digital content creation and delivery marketplace. Since 1993, its award-winning Media 100(R) and Finish(tm) digital video systems for Macintosh and Windows NT have redefined the digital video industry by making content creation easier, more productive, and more affordable for traditional video customers. With over 24,000 systems installed in more than 50 countries worldwide, the Company's digital video systems are used in the creation of programs for broadcast and cable television, education, corporate training, animation, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and streaming media for the Internet. For more information, visit www.media100.com. Terran Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media 100, develops and markets Media Cleaner Pro which is widely recognized as the industry standard application for preparing the highest quality streaming Internet video. Visit www.terran.com for information about Media Cleaner products.>>
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