Creative Digital Group Gives Life to Puppets; Full-Service Interactive Marketer Contributes to Lasting Images and Stories For Kids

Business Wire, Nov 8, 2004

ATLANTA -- Nothing lights up the face of a child like a puppet show and there is no organization that delivers more high quality productions and lively performances than Atlanta's Center for Puppetry Arts. Creative Digital Group, a leading full-service interactive marketing and communications company, brings these magical performances off the stage and into the homes, libraries and schools for millions of children to enjoy. The company has spent the last two years filming 10 of the Center's most spectacular children's shows making them available on DVD beginning in November.

"At Creative Digital Group we know the impact that sight, sound and motion offers for our clients to reach out to their customers. The invaluable entertainment and educational component that the Center for Puppetry Arts brings to children makes it an incredibly worthwhile project to be involved," says Senior Managing Partner Barry Sikes who is also a member of the Center's board and served as executive producer of the 10 performances. "Giving back to our community is important. This project was difficult, but the inevitable results make it all worthwhile. Our creative staff really enjoyed working with the Center's talented team."

Creative Digital Group is one of only a few interactive marketers that have an award-winning staff of video and interactive professionals as well as their own 13,000-square-foot digital production facility and studio, which allows the company to develop rich, interactive media for some of the nation's top advertisers. Drawing from that talent, Creative Digital Group filmed each theatrical production using a three camera setup, capturing multiple angles of each live performance. In addition, extensive color and video level correction was used in order to offset the dramatic changes in lighting used in the theater.

"Theater can be extremely difficult to film. We took great care not to distract the puppeteers or the audience," says Director of Client Services Mary Brown. "Our exceptional post production staff then spent 12-16 hours editing two taped performances of each show into one, adjusting voice and music levels and improving the sound quality using our digital video and audio suites. Our goal was to capture the essence and feel of a live theatrical event providing kids with an entertaining and educational experience."

The Center for Puppetry Arts will release the first three productions this month - American Tall Tales, Beauty & the Beast and Dinosaurs - available for purchase in the Center's museum store and online at www.puppet.org. The Shoemaker & the Elves, The Plant Doctors, The Reluctant Dragon, the Velveteen Rabbit, Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, The Body Detective and Weather Rocks will be released in 2005.

"Creative Digital Group was able to take the spirit of our productions and transfer that into an exceptional DVD series," says Vince Anthony, executive director of the Center. "Each DVD includes the live performance, an eight minute segment that gives a complete overview of the Center, and a 2-4 minute educational and entertaining 'behind the scenes' look at each show which many of our visitors find is the best part of each production."

Creative Digital Group designed opening and closing graphic titles and credit rolls for each production. All DVD menus, encoding and authoring were completed in-house at Creative Digital Group. The project's creative team which included the Center's Artistic Director Jon Ludwig additionally wanted to open each DVD with a behind-the-scenes look prior to the performance. The result was the delightful and frantic stagehand, Paul Bunny, who anxiously works backstage getting the puppets ready for the show.

"We only had four puppeteers to work with on the opening segment and we really wanted to create a frenetic backstage scramble," adds Sikes. "We achieved this through extensive use of matting and digital layering. The final product looks like over 20 puppets are being manipulated at once."

The Center for Puppetry Arts is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization and is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly (the Council is a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts) and contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations. The Center is a participant in the New Generations Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre. For more information, log onto www.puppet.org.

Creative Digital Group, an award-winning interactive marketing and communications company, develops Web-based and interactive solutions that effectively market, brand and advertise businesses and services. The company's combination of using video rich programming and Internet technologies have allowed their clients to develop interactive sales tools and training applications delivered via DVD, CD or Web-based formats directly to targeted decision makers. Key to the company's success is its experienced staff. Creative Digital Group is proud of the organization's ability to create marketing solutions from script to screen. The company has also been recognized for its proprietary distance learning product called DAVID (digital, audio, video, internet, device) which incorporates all of its creative assets into an online training program that offers full screen video, testing and reporting. For more information, visit www.creativedigitalgroup.com or call Mary Brown, Director of Client Services at (404) 267-7615.