Picture PipeLine provides production tools for two 20th Century Fox Films features

Los Angeles, August 15, 2001 – Picture PipeLine LLC announcedthat it has signed deals to provide secure broadband networks anddigital production tools to two upcoming 20th Century Fox Filmsfeatures, Behind Enemy Lines and The First $20 Million.Both installations, while vastly different in setup, are expected toreduce unnecessary production costs and turn around time for bothtitles.

For Behind Enemy Lines, starring Gene Hackman and OwenWilson, Picture PipeLine will build a secure high-speed broadbandnetwork that will connect Fox Films’ visual effects Senior VicePresident Rich Thorne with seven Los Angeles-area locations, includingsix special effects houses, and the Fox studio lot. Previously, Thornehad to travel to each location – sometimes several in a day– to participate in the approval process. With PicturePipeLine’s file transfer, synchronized playback and annotationfeatures (voice, graphics and text), he is able to perform the samefunctions all from any one location.

“Up until now most of our customers have been interested inusing our technology to bridge such vast distances as New York to LosAngeles or Los Angeles to Australia,” said Picture PipeLinePresident and COO Tom Gritzmacher. “However, since movieproductions today are far more sophisticated, often requiring theexpertise of many more editors, visual and sound effects engineers,travel can still be an issue for work being done in one city –especially a city like Los Angeles where extensive cross-town commutingis a challenge.”

Thorne is now also able to collaborate with his vendors digitally.For example, with Picture PipeLine’s synchronized playbackfeature, Thorne can work with numerous people who can simultaneouslyview and control MPEG-1 or 2 compressed video from different locationsat connection speeds as low as 56k. Additionally, he will be able toembed voice and/or text annotations into frames.

“Picture PipeLine has been and will continue to be atremendous asset in time savings and inter-facilitycommunication,” said Thorne. “I am currently set up tomonitor the VFX for two separate films. The effects are situated in LosAngeles and Canada with daily downloads from each facility. We havebeen able to increase the speed at which shots are finalized thusputting us in a position to reduce the time it takes to complete theshots. Eventually this will hopefully save the studio money.”

On the other hand, The First $20 Million, written by JonFavreau and starring Jake Busey, will employ Picture PipeLine’ssecure encryption and file transfer technologies to connect productionstaff in Toronto with the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles. This isexpected to not only save the film money on shipping but ontravel-related expenses as well.

“Several of our customers are finding cost savings where theyweren’t initially expecting to see them,” said PicturePipeLine Vice President of Sales and Marketing Charlie Mitchell.“For example, many were only expecting to save money from lesstape reproduction and fewer shipping costs when, in fact, in many casesthey were able to cut down on the number of people that they had to flyto and from production locations.”

For more information, please visit www.picturepipeline.com.