The Crawford Chronicles The Crawford Chronicles Crawford Communications, Inc. opened an office in Washington, DC. The staff will provide a direct link between Crawford's Atlanta facility and it's Washington clients, offering a high level of consulting support, creative services, and original program development. Since Washington has evolved into a hub for original programming, a key growth area for Crawford, it is the logical geographic location for a satellite business development office. Crawford's move into the Washington market follows relationships with Discovery Communications, the Travel Channel, Alexandria Productions, Time-Life Television, JWM Productions, and The Learning Channel. From these relationships, Crawford identified three market opportunities: an emerging need for resolution independent digital and HDTV production and post production services; a greater need for collaborative efforts in developing original programming; and an increasing interest in co-production opportunities. Dana Voorhees was selected to head up business development for the new office. Voorhees, a twelve year Washington marketing, post production, and production veteran, is in charge of new business development in the mid-Atlantic region. Prior to joining Crawford, Voorhees served as head of marketing and development for Speer International.

Other expansion at Crawford includes the enhancement of its 3D and animation capabilities with the acquisition of Taylor McCormick Graphics, Inc. and the hiring of principle owners Robert Taylor and Michael McCormick. The two will head up Crawford Digital's 3D Animation and Digital Effects studio with Taylor serving as Director of Computer Graphics and McCormick taking on the responsibilities of CG Animation Director. Taylor and McCormick have created and produced award winning projects for United States Postal Service, AT&T, and the Coca-Cola Company. For the last two years, they have served as consultants for other design facilities, in addition to maintaining their own client base.

Georgia Department of Natural Resources selected Crawford for post production of "Indians of the Southeast," a high definition film. Post work will include telecine, offline effects and graphics, online effects and graphics, and sound mix. The film will be shown on a large screen projector at the new heritage center and history museum at Reinhardt College in Waleska, GA.

Crawford InterMedia, a service area of Crawford and a NetShow service provider, recently served as a beta test site for Microsoft's NetShow 3.0, a video streaming software. Crawford InterMedia also consulted with Microsoft to develop automation routines for large volume streaming media services and caching routines for synchronized streaming media presentations. CNNfn is the first Crawford InterMedia client to benefit from the collaboration via programming available on its Web site. The network recently extended its agreement with InterMedia to produce over three hours of streaming video per day for its financial news programs. Crawford Communications began to stream programs for CNNfn in April 1997.