Page 37 - 24_Bafta ACADEMY_Anthony Minghella_ok

BAFTA is
extremely grateful
to all its corporate members who have generously supported the Academy and its work of promoting the best in Film, Television and Interactive Entertainment in 2003.
• American Airlines
• AVID Technology
Europe Limited
• Baker Tilly
• BARCO Limited
• Barcud Derwin
• BBC Cymru
• BBC Scotland
• Bermans Solicitors
• Border Television
• British Broadcasting Corporation
• BSkyB
• BT
• Buena Vista International UK
• Helkon SK
• HTV Group Plc
• Icon Film Distribution Ltd
• Invicta Capital
• KPMG
• Kodak
Entertainment Imaging Ltd
• Macromedia Europe • Orange Plc
• Pathé Entertainment • Radio Times
• Royal Mail Group
• S4C
• Scottish Media Group
• Scottish Screen
• Silicon Media
• Twentieth Century Fox
• United International Pictures UK
• University of Salford
• UBS Limited
• Warner Bros Distributors Ltd
• Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television
• California Office of Tourism
• Carlton Broadcasting
• Carlton Screen Advertising
• Carlton Television
• Channel Four
• Columbia TriStar Films (UK)
• Deloitte & Touche
• Dolby Laboratories Inc
• Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
• Film Council
• Granada Media Group
The Academy will be launching a new Corporate Partnership scheme in 2004.
For more information please contact:
Simon Farley
Head of Development and Corporate Relations BAFTA
195 Piccadilly
London W1J 9LN
tel: 0207 292 5809 email: simonf@bafta.org
want to get into Xbox live or do PlayStation games online. So gaming is also a very important part of the experience.”
Jo Baxter at BT Yahoo agrees. “Something like 30 per cent more people who play games online do it on broadband rather than on narrowband. Twice as many network gamers [gamers who play directly against other online players] use broadband. The rea- sons and the benefits are obvi- ous. It’s about speed, it’s about reaction time.”
But Baxter is also quick to point out that while players might sign up to broadband for a better chance to kick digital ass playing the likes of Halo on the Xbox, they then find themselves sticking around to use the service for other things.
highlights the fact that certain short filmmakers would find it almost impossible to get their work seen without the access allowed by broadband.
“Take short film promoters Atom Films for example. Or the BMW sponsored site where they actually hosted a lot of very short films by independent directors and companies. Broadband enabled those films to actually get an audience and be seen.”
There is a certain vicious circle feel about the state of broad- band at the moment. The fact is that the one thing that will make broadband take up grow faster than anything else is a range of killer sites and services that can only be enjoyed by those with the fastest of connections.
Of course, one of the things that they could be using the broadband connections greater speed and power for is the illegal transfer of copyrighted sound and music files. But are fears about such digital piracy really overstated?
“The bandwidth that is avail- able with a broadband connec- tion does make it very, very sim- ple to transfer large files,” admits John Hurry of Telewest, “but in essence these large files that are being shifted around the internet aren’t always going to be pirat- ed material.
“Piracy tends to be highlight- ed because it is a sensitive issue but not every single broadband user is doing peer to peer and downloading illegal files. In fact the vast majority of broadband users are actually accessing the archive material on legitimate sites like the BBC which we host on Blueyonder and enjoying per- fectly legit and legal material.”
Hurry is quick to point to the Trailer Park section on Blueyonder, which hosts promos for movies like Master And Commander and The Singing Detective that can be downloaded at up to 2MB a second, described by Blueyonder as “near DVD quality”. He also
However, the bulk of develop- ers and designers will only create sites and services that exploit the capacity and speed it offers when they can be sure there are enough users out there to offer them a decent audience.
“We need things which you can only do with a broadband connection,” says Ross Cook. “The more of those that come along, the more that people feel they’re being left out of certain things, the more incentive there is for them to sign up.
“We’re blue in the face calling for more content providers to provide broadband specific con- tent, but in the past they’ve been blue in the face calling for us to speed up rollout. I think the indus- try is now developing that kind of critical mass, though, and that they will come in and offer broadband specific services.
“It’s taken a long time to get to, but I think that the ball is now finally rolling.”
35
The British Academy Award is based on a design by Mitzi Cunliffe