Universal City, Calif., July 7, 2009 –– American Cinema Editors (ACE) today announced that the ACE Board of Directors has recognized Avid® Media Composer® software with the Board’s first-ever “ACE Technical Excellence Award” – recognizing it as the preferred choice of the industry’s most acclaimed editors. This distinguished honor hails Avid’s unparalleled innovation, the company’s commitment to working hand-in-hand with editors, and its role in evolving the art of cinematic storytelling. The honorary award will be presented to Avid at the 60th Annual ACE Eddie Awards in February 2010.

“Editors know that the art of filmmaking is as much about storytelling as it is sharing a mutually-beneficial dialogue with other members in the industry. Avid shares our passion and vision for nurturing the motion picture community and the integral role that editors play in bringing entertainment to life,” said ACE President Randy Roberts, A.C.E. “One of Avid’s unique characteristics is the fact that many of its employees are also experienced artists themselves, and so like us, they are obsessive about solving real challenges that actually make a difference in the editing room.  We appreciate the company’s ongoing commitment to talk with us and to understand how we want to improve the way we tell stories.  The Board is pleased to distinguish Avid – and Media Composer – with this first-ever mark of distinction.”

ACE Board member and Technology Committee Chair, Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E., added, “Avid has improved and adapted its editing software and hardware beyond any competitor to meet the creative and practical needs of busy television and motion picture editors. This includes creating a complete picture workflow with Media Composer to Symphony™ and Avid DS; a post production sound workflow from Media Composer to Pro Tools to the mix stage; FilmScribe™, which translates an edited movie into its finished product;  ScriptSync® which is a unique tool linking a script with film dailies; Avid FX;  AudioSuite™; the best collaborative tools that link multiple editors on a single project; and the continually improving, most user friendly, and adaptable interface in the industry.”

“We’re honored to receive this recognition from ACE, whose members are among the best storytellers in the business, and never cease to amaze audiences with some of the most watched and most loved media in the world,” said Kirk Arnold, EVP Customer Operations at Avid. “One of our long-standing principles is to deliver products and solutions that help our customers achieve their creative vision, however they define it. We are proud of our close relationship with ACE and will continue striving to earn the ongoing trust and support of this important community.”

For more information about ACE, please visit:  WWW.AMERICANCINEMAEDITORS.COM.  For more information about the award-winning Avid Media Composer, please visit:  WWW.AVID.COM/MEDIACOMPOSER.

ABOUT AMERICAN CINEMA EDITORS
AMERICAN CINEMA EDITORS (ACE) is an honorary society of motion picture editors founded in 1950.  Film editors are voted into membership on the basis of their professional achievements, their dedication to the education of others and their commitment to the craft of editing.

The objectives and purposes of the AMERICAN CINEMA EDITORS are to advance the art and science of the editing profession; to increase the entertainment value of motion pictures by attaining artistic pre-eminence and scientific achievement in the creative art of editing; to bring into close alliance those editors who desire to advance the prestige and dignity of the editing profession.

ACE produces several annual events including EditFest (a weekend editing festival in the summer), Invisible Art/Visible Artists (annual panel of Oscar® nominated editors), and the ACE Eddie Awards, now in its 60th year, recognizing outstanding editing in nine categories of film, television and documentaries. The organization publishes a quarterly magazine, CinemaEditor, highlighting the art, craft and business of editing and editors.

ABOUT AVID
Avid creates the digital audio and video technology used to make the most listened to, most watched and most loved media in the world – from the most prestigious and award-winning feature films, music recordings, television shows, live concert tours and news broadcasts, to music and movies made at home.  Some of Avid’s most influential and pioneering solutions include Media Composer®, Pro Tools®, Avid Unity™, Interplay®, Oxygen 8, Sibelius® and Pinnacle Studio™. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visit www.avid.com, del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube; connect with Avid on Facebook; or subscribe to Avid Industry Buzz.

Avid Press Release

LAS VEGAS, April 20, 2009 – As part of its continuing efforts to provide customers with flexible and open solutions, Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that it has qualified Apple Final Cut Pro editing solutions to run on Avid Unity™ MediaNetwork and ISIS® shared storage systems.  Post facilities, broadcasters and other media content creation organizations using Final Cut Pro can now take advantage of the industry-leading shared storage and collaborative workflow capabilities of Avid Unity and ISIS, and benefit from simultaneously running Avid and Final Cut Pro….

Check out the entire press release here

AMA is an entirely new protocol for getting media into Avid. It has been described as a “plug-in” type architecture. As of the initial release in Media Composer 3.5 (as well as Symphony) AMA currently supports Panasonic P2 media and Sony XDCAM, including XDCAM EX. To sweeten the pot Avid can now write XDCAM media as well, in a number of different bit rates. To sweeten the pot even more is the promise of what Avid Media Access might offer. RED R3Ds, AVCHD, AVC-Intra, Canon 5D Mark II H.264 files … the possibilities seem endless.

Read the rest of the 2-part series over at Pro Video Coalition.

Frank Capria has been at the forefront of digital content creation technologies since its earliest beginnings. New England based Capria was one of the first adopters of digital editing on the Avid Media Composer upon the systems release in 1989. His credits include work on landmark PBS series including, Eyes on the Prize, Frontline, Nova and American Experience. In 2001 Frank went on to found Kingpin Interactive, a New Media services company, which created award winning programming, websites, and motion graphics for fortune 500 companies, start-ups and non-profits.

Along the way Frank has become a widely known teacher, writer, and evangelist regarding the developments in technology which have revolutionized the way post-production creatives accomplish their work. For nearly a decade he wrote about the rapidly changing landscape of his profession in the pages of DV Magazine and has taught classes at the Maine Media Workshops. So it seemed a natural seque when late last year he accepted an offer from Avid Technology to join their team as a Senior Product Designer.

On a recent trip back east I had an opportunity to sit down with Frank and ask him a few things about the state of digital editing and what’s happening in his new digs at Avid.

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Part V of my interview with Chris Dickens. In this segment I ask Chris if he had any indication that the film was going to be the worldwide phenomenon it has turned out to be. I also ask him what it is like to be in the center of the awards season vortex.

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As editors, who often live with a film for an extended period of time, it becomes like one of your children. In this segment I ask Chris about sequences from Slumdog he is especially proud of, or ones that hold a special place in his heart. We talk about some of the directors he admires who have influenced him, his fondness for stories told in a non-linear way and how his director Danny Boyle encouraged him to take risks and try new ideas while cutting the film.

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In Parts III and IV Chris and I go on to speak about technical issues and the fact that the film was a hybrid; shot on both 35mm film and digital. Chris cuts on the Avid, and the complexity of post production was compounded by the fact that the 35mm elements were shot 3-perf, a technique where the exposed image fills the entire surface area of the frame without any matte area or “wasted space”. 3-perf is an excellent solution when shooting in 1:1.85 aspect ratio because it reduces the cost of film stock and processing by 25%. The digital acquisition was done with Silicon Imaging’ SI-2K MINI, a new camera from a German manufacturer which is gaining popularity for it’s flexibility and size. The entire “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” portion of the film was shot with the SI-2K MINI, in addition to much of the breathtaking material captured in the slums of Mumbai.

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Here is Part II of my interview with Chris Dickens, award winning film editor of this year’s Slumdog Millionaire. In this installment I ask Chris how he connected with Danny Boyle and what were some of the of the more creatively challenging aspects of making the film.

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Avid Technology had released the latest version of it’s flagship Media Composer software. Version 3.5 boasts the ability to harness a 3D Stereoscopic workflow to accommodate the increasing number of films produced and distributed in 3D. Another added feature is native support for Sony’s XDCAM HD and EX formats allowing editors to quickly ingest material captured in these emerging standards. The latest version of the software also delivers a variety of new features designed to help editors work more creatively and efficiently including; streamlined HD audio and video workflows; addional offline editorial effects including keyframable color correction and a new “Fluid Stabilizer”; CPU and GPU acceleration of visual effects and improved interoperability with Digidesign’s Pro Tools. This upgrade also applies to Media Composer Symphony and NewCutter and is shipping now. For more information see Avid’s website.

Today we present Part I of a multi-part series with award winning film editor Chris Dickens. Chris is the recipient of this years “triple crown” of editing awards for his work on “Slumdog Millionaire”, for which he took home the American Cinema Editor’s (A.C.E.) EDDY Award, the British Academy of Film an Television Arts (BAFTA) award and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy Award.

I had a chance to sit down with Chris the Friday before the Academy Awards here in Los Angeles, and although I had a pretty good idea, we didn’t know that two days later he would take home the Oscar. We spoke a bit about his career and went into depth about both the creative and technical aspects of his work on Danny Boyle’s hit film. The project, which was released by Fox Searchlight Pictures received a total of eight Oscar’s at this years ceremonies, an excellent showing for an independent film which was budgeted at around 15 million dollars.

Here in Part I, I ask Chris what drew him to the editing profession and how he got his foot in the door in his native country, the UK.

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