November 2nd, 2000

SAN JOSE, CA -- SOFTBANK Venture Capital opened their fourth annual portfolio members' Forum with a video produced by Tam Communications. The event was held at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco on October 10-12. The six-minute video, called "VCER," was a spoof of the popular television drama with a venture capital twist. Doctors, played by SOFTBANK partners, performed a successful business model transplant operation on an ailing dotcom. The humor of the video was targeted towards the Forum's audience of investors and SOFTBANK-funded companies, satirizing the current nervousness in the Internet investment community. The piece generated enough buzz at the event to gain a write-up in The Wall Street Journal.

The piece opens with music, graphics and special effects, instantly grabbing the audience¹s attention, as the parody of "ER" is immediately apparent. Using a script written by SOFTBANK partner Bill Burnham, Tam Communications filmed the short piece in one day on location in a Palo Alto surgery center. SOFTBANK partners, clad in surgical scrubs, play doctors and nurses trying to rescue a company from collapse by first changing its business model from "B to C" to "B to B." After that effort fails, the team saves the "patient" from the business equivalent of cardiac arrest, Chapter 11, by implanting a "P to P" (peer to peer) business model, a la Napster.

A prosthestic torso, provided by SOFTBANK, added extra realism to the shoot, while Director Tam Fraser emulated the up-close, quick cut, visceral style of "ER" with a Steadicam and hand-held camera. The end result was an entertaining short that especially appealed to the Internet-savvy crowd, and broke the ice at the beginning of the SOFTBANK Forum. It was so popular that it was reshown several times during the event. SOFTBANK has been deluged with requests for copies and will soon be streaming it on their web site.

Tam Communications is a leading digital media company, servicing corporate and entertainment clients by combining technical, creative, and communications expertise in the realms of video, interactive multimedia, and web. The company's expanding spectrum of original entertainment programming—developed for broadcast, cable, syndication, and other venues—airs worldwide. Tam Communications is a privately held company located in Scotts Valley, CA. Please visit our web site at www.tamcom.com.