Independent Film Discovers a New Star With JotSpot's Wiki

Independent Film Discovers a New Star With JotSpot's Wiki

'Lucky Number Slevin' Producers Use JotSpot to Simplify Movie Making

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 7 /PRNewswire/ -- JotSpot, the first application wiki company, today announced that wikis have ventured outside the land of the nerds and into the land of the stars with "Lucky Number Slevin", a feature film slated for release this Friday. Ascendant Films, the production house behind "Lucky Number Slevin," used JotSpot's flexible wiki platform to centrally manage production and coordinate financing for the film.

"Lucky Number Slevin" stars Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, and Bruce Willis. The film is set for broad theatrical release on Friday, April 7, 2006.

As an independent film, Lucky Number Slevin's financing was not handled by a big studio, but was instead pulled together from a number of disparate sources around the world, with lawyers and financiers in Berlin, London and Los Angeles, and a production staff in Montreal. A typical independently financed movie produces a collection of contracts and documents close to a foot and half high. Ascendant used JotSpot's wiki platform to track document status and avoid version control problems that can otherwise plague production.

"Film financing and production involves many documents such as schedules, budgets, and contracts which are constantly changing and evolving. Up till now these documents have been transmitted by email or fax causing document overload and major versionitis," said Robert Norton, a film finance specialist for Lucky Number Slevin production house Ascendant Films. "The JotSpot wiki offered the only easy and affordable way to keep us all on track and working off the latest version."

Until now, Hollywood has been slow to adopt new technologies. Even email, which has long been the standard protocol for business communication in most industries, only became the de facto standard in Hollywood several years ago. Since then, email overload has been a major pain point for film financers and producers alike. Ascendant was quick to adopt JotSpot's wiki technology to relieve email overload and improve efficiency in movie making.

"We've only seen the tip of the iceberg with what we can accomplish with JotSpot's wiki platform," continued Norton. "Our experience with the 'Lucky Number Slevin' wiki has truly changed and improved the way we communicate. We plan to expand our use of JotSpot in the production of future films."

"The movie industry is just one in a growing line of businesses that are discovering the power and flexibility of the JotSpot wiki platform," said Joe Kraus, co-founder and CEO, JotSpot. "We see hundreds more catching on to Lucky Number Slevin's secret."

ABOUT JOTSPOT

JotSpot, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., is the first application wiki company. Founded and led by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, the company is pioneering do-it-yourself application publishing to enable anyone to create, publish and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications. Hundreds of companies are currently using applications built on top of the JotSpot wiki platform, including a blogging application, JotSpot Live, and JotSpot Tracker. JotSpot also offers JotBox, an enterprise appliance which includes all of the features of a JotSpot hosted wiki, but resides behind a corporate firewall. For more information, please visit http://www.jot.com/ .

Source: JotSpot

CONTACT: media, Amy Sezak of OutCast Communications, +1-415-345-4753, or
amy@outcastpr.com, for JotSpot

Web site: http://www.jot.com/

-------
Profile: intent