Leaders in Emerging Entertainment

Honorees for the 2014 Digital V.I.P. Awards are:

 

VISIONARIES:

Ø  Patricia Wilson, Executive Director of Make-A-Wish Foundation, Edwin Lee, Mayer of San Francisco, and the Citizens of San Francisco for “Batkid”

Breaking the bounds of alternative reality entertainment while creating social good, Make-A-Wish Foundation helped "Batkid" turn all of San Francisco into an elaborate flash mob, livestreamed special venue. After conquering a series of staged crime battles, “Batkid” earned the key to the city and won the hearts of thousands of volunteers and millions of social media followers.

Ø  Netflix Originals: Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netflix

When historians pinpoint exactly when serialized online content went mainstream, they will identify the Feb 1st 2013 debut of “House of Cards,” Netflix $100 million political drama from David Fincher as the moment.

INNOVATORS:

Ø  Wattpad; Alan Lau, CEO and Ivan Yuen, CTO

A mobile social storytelling platform with over 26 million 13-30 year olds sharing and collaborating on stories. Users spent over 40 billion minutes on the site in 2013. It continues to grow at over 70,000 new registrants a day. Millions of YouTube trailers have been created for stories on Wattpad.

Ø  Snapchat: Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, Co-Founders

The disappearing photo messaging app gained a slew of new tools this year while users found a number of secret features. Snapchat incorporated "Stories" into the app, which essentially created timelines of collected snaps from a 24 hour period.

Ø  Vine; Co-Founders Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll

Twitter's video app, Vine, was one of the big breakout hits of the year. The app lets you share six-second videos that continuously loop.

PRODUCERS:

Ø  Brian Robbins, CEO of AwesomenessTV Network

The AwesomenessTV Network is a network for young adults who are building their channels on YouTube and want to learn to make better video. They have enabled over 150,000 channels.

Ø  Alfonso Cuaron and Framestore for GRAVITY

With a modest budget these honorees pushed visual effects to a new dimension. All told eighty percent of the film is substantially a visual-effects creation and the other 20 percent contains a significant amount of effects work.

Ø  Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell, Creators of Veronica Mars

Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell orchestrated having the fans bring back the TV show by paying for it in advance of production.

Ø  Sam Houser, Co-Founder and President of Rockstar Games for Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto grossed more than one billion in three days, signaling the expanded influence of both video games and proven franchises in the new entertainment ecosystem.

“In the past year we have seen exceptional invention and ingenuity in the world of digital media,” said Mark Gordon and Hawk Koch, Presidents of the Producers Guild of America.  “In an intensely competitive environment, these individuals and companies have managed to stand ahead of the pack by creating supreme standards for innovation, creativity, and technology. We look forward to celebrating their contributions to the digital industry at this year’s Digital V.I.P. Awards.”

Last year’s inaugural Digital V.I.P Awards were held at the home of entrepreneur Elon Musk.  The 2013 honorees included, Visionaries: John Raatz (Founder, Board Chairman, CEO of The Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment), Eckhart Tolle (Honorary Founder of GATE) and Jim Carrey (Honorary Founder of GATE) and Bruce Sterling  multi award-winning science fiction author for his influence upon technology as it relates to storytelling and in co-founding the cyberpunk movement; Innovators: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (Co-Founders of Instagram), Bill Westenhofer (LIFE OF PI), and Ed Ulbrich (CEO of Digital Domain), Philip Atwell (Geronimo Productions), Dylan Brown (The Yard Entertainment), Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre for Virtual 2Pac; and Producers: Disney Imagineering team (Disney’s Cars Land), Louis C.K. (“Louie”), and Ben Donovan (President & Co-Founder), Danny Zappin (CEO & Co-Founder) and Lisa Donovan (GM & Co-Founder) of Maker Studios, and Conan O’Brien (Team Coco).

The PGA’s Digital V.I.P. Committee determined the honorees, in conjunction with PGA Presidents Mark Gordon and Hawk Koch, as well as a distinguished group of industry Advisory Board members including: Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Sharon Calahan, Illeana Douglas, Dick Glover, Quincy Jones, Jr., John Rubey and Chris Williams.

Digital V.I.P. Committee members include:  Michael Bellavia, Shawn Gold, Marc Scarpa, Bruce Cohen, Drew Baldwin, Will Keenan, Christina Lee Storm, Laura Allen, Dina Benadon, Valerie Johnson, Margaret Schrader and Megan Mascena Gaspar.

Membership in the PGA was not a requirement for eligibility.

For more information, please visit www.digital-vip.com or email digitalVIP@producersguild.org.

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