Click on the Video Below and Sample a Session from a previous Digital Hollywood event. For Additional Video Sessions, Click Here Digital Hollywood, May 4-7, 2009 Special Presentation Tuesday, May 5th Digital Hollywood Content Summit 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Special Session Keynote Conversation: Michael Rymer, writer / producer / director, Battlestar Galactica, Queen of The Damned, In Too Deep The Art of re-inventing a TV classic for multi-platform audiences by turning it into a top-notch drama-series set in space: Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica mastered all forms of storytelling on traditional and emerging platforms - both the show and its online incarnation will remain a milestone in our industry for years to come. The search for powerful metaphysical truth on mainstream television has contributed to our collective human experience in ways we can only begin to anticipate. Michael Rymer, shaped BSG from the start: He directed the mini-series and a total of 22 episodes, produced 40 episodes of the SciFi-Channel series that would become a television phenomenon. Michael is also the award-winning writer and director of several successful motion pictures, among them Queen of the Damned, Haunted, Perfume and In To Deep, as well as the upcoming The Witchblade. One on One Conversation with: Seth Shapiro, Principal, New Amsterdam Media LLC Michael Rymer is a film director and writer. He is noted for setting the tone and direction for the entire re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series in terms of how the show looks on film, namely due to his direction of both the Miniseries and various episodes for the series itself. Rymer was born in Melbourne, Australia, but completed his studies in film at the University of Southern California, where his abilities in writing, producing and directing short films earned him the Warner Communications Scholarship for Directing in 1987. Following this, he wrote two plays, Darkness at Noon and Ensenada before he returned to Australia to work on a number of films, initially as a production co-ordinator and as a writer. He made his directorial debut in 1995's "Angel Baby", which premiered at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival, and won a total of seven Australian Film Institute Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Rymer also won the Australian Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, and the Writers' Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1997, he returned to the United States, where he wrote and directed "Allie and Me", following it up with two directorial stints with "In Too Deep" (1999) and the less-than-stellar "Purfume" (2001), described as an improvisational film. In 2002 he helmed "Queen of the Damned", the sequel to 1994's "Interview with the Vampire" before taking the director's chair for the pilot episode of UPN's television series, "Haunted". From here he moved onto the 2003 Battlestar Galactica production. Seth Shapiro, Principal, New Amsterdam Media LLC: Seth Shapiro is a two-time Emmy® winner and a leader in the profitable application of new technology to emerging business models. He has managed digital media initiatives for and with the Walt Disney Company, Comcast, DIRECTV, TiVo, Time Warner Cable, Showtime, HBO, STARZ, Sun Microsystems, Universal, Goldman Sachs and various venture, private equity and startup concerns. Shapiro is Principal of New Amsterdam Media LLC and Partner in both Media Valuation Partners and the Opportunity Management Company. He is also a Founder of ARC: The A&R Channel, a VOD network available in 15,000,000 US cable homes via Comcast. As Head of Production at DIRECTV Advanced Services, Shapiro managed over 20 service launches across four platforms, designed the groundbreaking NFL DVR Highlights On Demand Service and was a key contributor to the 2002 DIRECTV/TiVo Master Agreement. Shapiro is a member of OVP Venture Partners' Technology Advisory Group, the IP Media Conference Advisory Board, the Television Academy's Blue Ribbon Emmy Committee, the AFI Digital Content Lab and the Producer's Guild New Media Council. He is a magna cum laude graduate of New York University and was Adelbert Alumni Scholar at CWRU.