Avid Editors Shine at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival

Burlington, MA, 2013/05/15

Award-winning editors Jason Ballantine and Matt Villa used Avid Media Composer to cut festival opener “The Great Gatsby,” in 3D

Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID) today celebrates The Great Gatsby, the 2013 Cannes Film Festivalopener, which was cut on the industry's preeminent nonlinear editing solution, Avid Media Composer®.

The 2013 Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 15 – 26th, will open with the latest adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The 3D film was cut by award-winning editors Jason Ballantine ASE and Matt Villa ASE on Media Composer. With careers spanning over 20 years, Ballantine and Villa are long-time Media Composer users and have worked on major projects including, Moulin Rouge, Australia, Wolf Creek, Happy Feet Two and Daybreakers. Ballantine is currently using Media Composer on his next project, Mad Max: Fury Road; and Villa is using it to cut Predestination.

"Every film throws a new set of creative and technical challenges for post-production that must be overcome," said Ballantine. "With so many variations in workflows to navigate, it's incredibly reassuring that there is no decision to be made with the offline cutting system – it's always Media Composer, that's a given. The reliability and functionality of the entire Avid product range is second to none."

Media Composer empowers the industry's top professionals to edit movies with 64-bit performance and provides easy-to-use video editing tools, and streamlined HD, file-based, and stereo 3D workflows.

"During the shoot we had an editing station permanently on location and during post we had two fully operational cutting rooms running concurrently and in perfect sync; one in Sydney and one in LA," explained Matt Villa, co-editor of The Great Gatsby. "We called upon many tools from the Avid family to deal with the 3D material and they never faltered. Productions of this scale can be unrestrained and unpredictable, but Avid never fails in being stable yet flexible enough to get these jobs done."

"Jason and Matt have done outstanding work on The Great Gatsby," said W. Sean Ford, vice president of worldwide marketing for Avid. "Their achievement is a great example of why we are so committed to providing editors with the technology that lets them push the limits of what is technically possible—from syncing workflows across many locations, to working with 3D material. The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of what can result when professionals have the tools they need to turn their creative visions into reality."