Monday, October 1 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM Session III: The All-Digital Production - From Features, TV and Games to the Net From TV primetime, news and sports to feature film production, digital is taking over. While the transition as a whole has had it starts and stops, the TV transition to DTV production is finally taking hold and in the realm of feature films, the transition to digital may well be called explosive in the coming year. Digital production is not only the future of high end animation, it is the way low budget features are being made. It is the enabler for the creative community, it enables the established director to take chances and gives a young film maker the ability to get started. In this session, we bring together TV and film pioneers in the digital transformation. Robert P. Seidel, Vice President, Engineering, CBS, New York Jeff Ruhe, SVP Media & Entertainment, Proxicom (Two Time Emmy Winner - Lake Placid & LA Olympic Games) Steve Schklair, President & CEO, Cobalt Entertainment Technology Randall Paris Dark, founder, President & C.E.O., HD VISION, Inc. Sony Imageworks, speaker to be announced Janette Bradley, Director & Executive Producer, AvidProNet, Moderator Jeffrey Ruhe is Senior Vice President of the Media & Entertainment practice for Proxicom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PXCM), a leading e-business consulting and development company. As such, he is responsible for delivering custom Internet solutions for clients in sports, publishing, broadcast, film, music, and interactive games. He has over 25 years of experience in broadcast network, syndication and cable programming and has worked with many of the leading broadcasting companies including ESPN, Cablevision Systems Corporation, NBC, ABC News and ABC Sports. HBO, A&E Television Network, USA TODAY, Electronic Arts and Primedia are just a few members of the Media & Entertainment client roster. Most recently, Ruhe held the position of Senior Vice President for ESPN, where he created the company’s Event Management department, which developed and managed products including the ESPY Awards and the X Games. As SVP of the company’s international division, Ruhe contributed to ESPN’s brand expansion initiatives around the world. Earlier in his career, he held a variety of positions at ABC, including Director of Olympic Programming, where he served as Coordinating Producer for three Olympic Games and won two Sports Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television and Arts Society for programming the Lake Placid and Los Angeles Games. Ruhe is a frequent speaker at numerous industry events including the New York New Media Association’s Sports and Entertainment group and Sports Summit 2001. He recently authored "Sports in the Post-PC Era" providing insight on the impact of wireless and multi-channel applications in sports media. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Business School’s Management Program, Ruhe brings authoritative insights into the business of sports, media and entertainment. Steve Schklair, CEO of Cobalt, has had a love affair with 3D for most of his eclectic career. He is a USC film school grad who has worked as a cinematographer shooting 3D films, and he is a confirmed techie who has made his mark in the special effects field and interactive media as well. Schklair served as vice president and general manager of new media for Digital Domain, the studio responsible for the effects on such films as Titanic, Apollo 13, The Fifth Element, and True Lies. While at Digital Domain and in partnership with Mattel, he developed the award-winning CD-ROM Barbie Fashion Designer, which ranks among the best-selling software titles ever produced for the children’s market. Among his other accomplishments in the multimedia industry is the acclaimed Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond for IBM, a project honored with numerous awards, including selection by the Library of Congress as their centerpiece multimedia exhibit. His diverse background also includes TV, location-based entertainment, and HDTV. In late 1999, he hooked up with Paradise FX and partners Max Penner and Tim Thomas. Penner and Thomas have founded their company in 1991 specifically to provide special camera services to the large-format, special-venue industry. Penner had spent over 12 years with Ed DiJulio and Cinema Products. Among his accomplishments, Penner had helped engineer the Showscan large-format camera, and had developed the high-speed lenses used by Stanley Kubrick to shoot the amazing candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon. Thomas was an industry veteran with key grip and motion control experience. With over 30 3D film projects under their collective belt, Penner and Thomas are considered top experts in the field. Their 3D projects include Terminator 2:3D for Universal, Pirates and Haunts of the Olde Country for Busch Gardens, Muppet Vision, and Honey I Shrunk the Audience for Disney, and Nightmare on Elm Street IV for New Line Cinema. In 2000, Penner and Thomas agreed to join Steve Schklair and Cobalt Entertainment Technology to pursue their dreams in 3D. Janette Bradley is Director and Executive Producer of AvidProNet, the Avid Technology, Inc. online community and services portal for media creation professionals. As Director, Janette is responsible for developing the tools and technologies necessary to create virtual production environments for the film and video industry. Janette joined Avid in 1998 and became one of the first members of the AvidProNet team in October 1999. Janette began her engineering career at IBM where she served as technical lead on the first interactive multimedia documentation developed for IBM's office products. She furthered her expertise by acting as a design lead on the National Education Computing Conference's Hypermedia Information System (InfoSystem). In 1986 Janette took her work to a new level by founding her own consulting firm and working on numerous interactive multimedia projects for corporations and education. Janette's involvement in Web-development spans nearly a decade. In 1993 she participated in groundbreaking work to introduce the Web into the K-12 classroom and college-level distance learning programs within the state of Texas, the Texas Center for Learning Technology (TCET) and the University of North Texas. Janette led the design of one of the first distance learning projects based on streaming media and designed the TCET learning exchange site for K-12 teachers to share and distribute lesson plans, collaborate on teaching strategies and further their professional development. Janette has authored a number of technical publications, conference proceedings and patents and was named one of the Top 25 Women on the Web by San Francisco Women on the Web in March 2001. Janette holds a BS in Computer Science, an MBA in Marketing and a PhD in Information Science from the University of North Texas. Randall Paris Dark, founder, President & C.E.O., HD VISION, Inc.: An undisputed pioneer in the HDTV industry, Randall Paris Dark is the creative and marketing force behind HD VISION. His 15 years of work exclusively in the High Definition Television medium have distinguished him as both an artistic and technological visionary. As a writer, director, and producer with over 375 HDTV productions to his credit, Dark is able to offer an artist's point of view while demonstrating the technological advantages of High Definition. Recognized globally as an enthusiastic speaker who tells it like it is, Randall has spoken about High Definition Television to audiences at events such as: the Tokyo International Film Festival, the National Association of Broadcaster's Convention, the International Electronic Cinema Festival, NATPE, CES, World Television Forum, Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, to media and telecommunications investors at Bear Sterns and to members of the New York Bar Association. In October of 2000, Randall was inducted into the Consumer Electronic Association's Academy of Digital Pioneers, a select group of the top DTV visionaries from around the world; and at their first annual Digital Pioneers Award Ceremony HD Vision took home the award for Best DTV Original Content. On May 19, 2000, Randall was presented with one of the International Electronic Cinema Festival's top honors: The Pioneer Award. This honor was bestowed upon Randall for his extraordinary contributions to the success of HDTV. Dark was also honored for his efforts by Baylor University, which instated him as an Honorary Alumnus in 1999. Recently Dark was asked to be an International Jury Member for the Electronic Cinema Festival in Japan. Programs directed by Dark have also received awards from CEA, Telly, IECF, Communicator, Aurora, Axiem, Videographer, Summit, and Cinema Chicago. In addition to his experience in High Definition, Randall is a theatrical director/producer and published playwright, with memberships in the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, and the Playwrights Union of Canada.