Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival Selects Avid Xpress DV for Extreme Filmmaking Competition; 10 semi-finalists to use award-winning solution to edit short films in five days.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

TEWKSBURY, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 2003

Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival (Chrysler MDFF), a partnership between Chrysler, Universal Pictures, and branded-entertainment company, Hypnotic, has selected the award-winning Avid Xpress(R) DV software as the exclusive editing solution for its Extreme Filmmaking Competition. The competition, to be held from May 1-10 in New York City, will require 10 semi-finalists to produce a short film featuring one of two all-new Chrysler vehicles: the 2004 Chrysler Pacifica sports tourer or the 2004 Chrysler Crossfire sports coupe. Contestants will spend the first five days casting talent and shooting the film, and then have five days to edit their projects using Avid Xpress DV v3.5 software. They will premiere their films at the Director's Guild of America Theatre on May 10, where five finalists will be selected to move on to the last round of the competition.

"The goal of the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival is to discover talented filmmakers, help them gain experience in the world of film and television, and become familiar with the branded entertainment process. This phase requires the filmmakers to become familiar with the tools that most professional filmmakers use, and Avid is certainly the industry standard when it comes to postproduction," said Doug Liman, vice-chairman, Hypnotic and director of "The Bourne Identity," "Swingers," and "Go." "Avid Xpress DV is the perfect solution for this challenging part of the competition because it's a powerful DV editing solution that's easy to use. It also has many of the features of the higher-end Avid products, giving contestants a taste of the solutions used to edit the majority of major films and television shows."

"Avid Xpress DV has really taken hold in the independent film market, so it makes sense that the Chrysler MDFF has chosen this solution for the Extreme Filmmaking Competition," said Steve Chazin, senior manager of product marketing for Avid Technology. "Avid Xpress DV will give them the performance and flexibility they need to get the job done within the 5-day deadline, and give each contestant the freedom to take creative risks. This year, we're pleased to see that all of the contestants are using Macs for the competition, as well as Xpress DV, the best-performing professional nonlinear editing software that costs less than $1,000 for the Mac platform."

Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival

This year's competition began in October 2002 with hundreds of aspiring filmmakers submitting short films in hopes of winning a million-dollar production deal. Twenty-five quarterfinalists were selected and flown to Park City, Utah, in January to showcase their films and learn about the Chrysler brand and vehicle attributes. Ten semi-finalists were chosen to compete in the Extreme Filmmaking Competition in New York City, May 1-10, 2003.

For this phase of the competition, the Extreme Filmmaking Competition, contestants will cast, shoot, edit and premiere a short film according to certain creative and technical parameters. Contestants will use Avid Xpress DV v3.5 software to edit their films and Avid MediaDrive rS36/320 LVD media storage devices. The final projects will be premiered at a red-carpet event, where a panel of industry executives will select five filmmakers to proceed to Toronto in September 2003. At that time, a winner will be selected and awarded a $1,000,000 production deal.

Last Year's Success

All five finalists from the 2002 Chrysler MDFF used Avid Xpress DV v3.5 software during the competition. Many are currently working on major industry projects, from HBO's "Six Feet Under" to a documentary on Lenny Kravitz's 2002 World Tour. Last year's winner, Jeff Wadlow, is currently in pre-production on his feature, "Living The Lie."

About Avid Technology, Inc.

Avid Technology, Inc. delivers the solutions that Make, Manage and Move Media(TM). As a recognized digital standard for professionals who Make the world's media -- from video, audio and film to animation, special effects and streaming media -- Avid's products are used to make more television and news shows, commercials, music videos and CDs, corporate/industrial productions and major motion pictures combined than any other nonlinear editing manufacturer in the world. Building on its award-winning heritage, which includes several Emmy(R) awards as well as an Oscar(R) statuette representing the 1998 Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design and engineering of the Avid Film Composer(R) system for motion picture editing, Avid is extending its reach by redefining how digital media is shared, stored and distributed. To Manage today's increasingly rich collection of dynamic media, Avid provides powerful servers, networks and media tools to help customers search files, share media and collaborate on new productions, both locally and globally. Avid's solutions also empower users to easily Move media, whether on air, over cable or satellite or through the Internet. Like no other media company today, Avid's end-to-end solutions span the continuum of media creation, management and distribution. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Tewksbury, MA. More information about the company is available at www.avid.com.

(C) 2003 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product specifications and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, Avid Xpress, Film Composer and Make, Manage and Move Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Oscar is a trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Emmy is a registered trademark of ATAS/NATAS. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.