Vibrant film resource takes Wales worldwide

A pioneering Welsh digital media company has generated a ground-breaking series of online movies to create the largest ever audiovisual presentation of Wales via the Internet.
New Media Magic, sister company to leading Japanese and specialist video/DVD duplication firm Artsmagic, based in Ebbw Vale, South Wales, has produced WorldWideWales.tv as an online guide to the Principality, and approval has been received from the Welsh Assembly Government for the site as an information resource.
Bringing together 407 movies in English and Welsh-language format shot using professional DV Cam and edited in Avid to produce short broadcast-quality videos suitable for broadband transmission, the present narrowband portal (broadband is ready) features images from the videos frame grabbed and edited together using Flash 5 Macromedia.
The result is a captivating web experience of Welsh towns, scenic locations, places of historical interest, narrow gauge railways (for which Wales is famous) and even golf courses.
The series places Wales at the forefront of the new media revolution – it is expected the site will blaze the trail for other countries in terms of how they present themselves to the world.
Assembled by New Media Magic’s 15 specially trained staff, WorldWideWales has been partly funded by the Wales European Funding Office under the Objective One measure of the European Regional Development Fund.
Further backing has come from the Welsh Development Agency’s Wales Information Society, the Wales Tourist Board and from Artsmagic.
“The WorldWideWales project is now steaming ahead at great speed, New Media Magic’s managing director Gerry Malir said. "This has been a natural progression for the Magic Group, as our activities have up to now been concerned with video and DVD, and we are more than delighted with the results of this ongoing venture.
"The Internet has led to a revolution in communications technology, and we are pleased to be leading the way in film presentation via the World Wide Web. We are being used regularly in Wales and the rest of the world now, and receive requests to download at least 1000 films per day, with 150,000 or so hits on the site monthly.
"The work done by our specially trained staff is of the highest quality, and the initiative has brought work and training in filmmaking to an area with one of the highest levels of social exclusion in Britain as a whole.”
Funding for the project has been provided in part by Artsmagic, with cash also secured from the Welsh European Funding Office under the Objective One measure of the European Regional Development Fund and from other public bodies.
The result is the largest ever online presentation of any culture via a single Web portal, and one of the most ambitious ongoing film series ever attempted.
(GB)