ARTS ALLIANCE MEDIA HIRES INDUSTRY VETERAN
PAUL CHESNEY TO DRIVE GROWTH OF DIGITAL
CINEMA CONTENT MANAGEMENT
AND DELIVERY BUSINESS
LONDON, 19 April 2007 - Arts Alliance Media (AAM) announced today that it has appointed Paul Chesney as Director of Business Development, effective April 23rd. Chesney comes to AAM from Deluxe Media Services, where he was Worldwide SVP, Sales & Marketing. At AAM he will focus on strengthening the company’s film distributor relationships and ability to service and support digital cinema distribution with DCI-compliant digital cinema print packages, including encoding, encryption, mastering, duplication and delivery, as well as security key management.
During his 6 years at Deluxe, Chesney’s achievements included developing successful strategic business and marketing plans to ensure company growth, and negotiating key contracts and alliances throughout Europe with Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal. Prior to Deluxe, Paul spent many years in the music and home entertainment industries, with companies including Technicolor, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Warner Bros.
As well as providing installation, maintenance and financing services for digital cinema, AAM has also achieved several milestones with its digital cinema content processing services. To date, more than 100 titles have been handled by AAM (encoded, encrypted and delivered to cinemas on hard drives, along with security keys), and over 1000 digital prints have been shipped. The company was the first to commercially screen a JPEG2000 film in Europe, and today all encoding is in JPEG2000 format, and is all to current DCI standards. Distributor clients AAM has worked with include Buena Vista, Warner Bros., Optimum, Icon, UIP, Lionsgate, Momentum and Pathé.
Arts Alliance Media CEO, Howard Kiedaisch, said of the appointment: “Having known Paul for many years, I am delighted to welcome him to the AAM team, and excited at the wealth of European industry experience he brings with him. His appointment reinforces our commitment to being the leaders in the European digital cinema market”.
Paul Chesney commented: “AAM are a dynamic company on the cutting edge of digital distribution, both to the home and theatrically, and I am looking forward to working with them in their expansion into Europe and providing content management services to an increasing number of customers”.
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For further information, please contact:
Gemma Richardson: Arts Alliance Media
gemma@artsalliancemedia.com / + 44 (0)207 751 7466
About Arts Alliance Media:
- Arts Alliance Media (AAM), based in London, is Europe's leading provider of digital film distribution services, dedicated to building a European digital network to deliver film to the cinema, to the home and between industry players.
- For digital cinema, AAM provides end-to-end digital cinema solutions encompassing equipment selection, financing and integration, operator training, installation and support, and content management and delivery.
- AAM provides a full range of encoding, print and key management services, including: encoding, encryption and packaging all to current DCI standards, print creation and delivery, key generation and delivery, and repackaging and versioning. All services carried out in our in house facilities – FACT and MPA approved, complete with full digital cinema for quality control.
- In February 2005, Arts Alliance Digital Cinema won the UK Film Council contract to install and operate 240 digital screens, the world’s first 2k digital cinema network. All screens will be installed and operating by the end of May 2007.
- AAM is participating in two digital cinema trials in Europe, one in the UK at the Odeon Surrey Quays multiplex, which began in February 2007, and the other in Norway, in various cinemas across the country, since April 2006.
- For Download-to-Rent and Download-to-Own, AAM provides ISPs, media companies and e-tailers with turn key solutions for acquiring rights and securely distributing digital video content over the internet to their audiences, powered by the Vizumi Network.
- Arts Alliance Media has digital distribution deals with Universal Pictures, Sony, Warner Bros., Momentum, Icon, Fremantle, Tartan, Discovery Networks, and Revolver Entertainment, amongst others.
- AAM owned LOVEFiLM.com, Europe's largest online DVD rental company, until the LOVEFiLM/Video Island merger in April 2006. AAM remains the largest single shareholder of LOVEFiLM International, the merged company, and provides the technology and content for digital distribution.
- For more information, visit: www.artsalliancemedia.com and www.vizumi.com