Award-winning Producer and Director Philip Shane has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a brand new documentary. Best known for his work on BEING ELMO (Sundance Film Festival), DANCING IN JAFFA (TriBeCa World Premiere), and EINSTEIN (History Channel), Philip has turned his eye to the classic video game MYST and the confluence of technologies in the 1990s that drove games to become one of the most transformative cultural forces of the 21st century. To learn more about the Kickstarter campaign for The MYST Documentary, please click HERE.
Deeply and personally influenced by MYST, Philip was always fascinated by the story of its creators, brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, who despite being outside of the game industry (and living in the middle of nowhere) created the bestselling PC game of the 20th century. After Philip met the Miller brothers in 2016 at a conference near his home in Brooklyn, he struck up an instant kinship with them and proposed the concept of a documentary.
Since then, he has filmed more than 100 hours of preliminary footage and made the 2,500-mile journey to the Cyan campus in Mead, WA half a dozen times. With pre-production underway, Philip is preparing to launch a Kickstarter this summer to raise funding for what will surely be a must-see documentary for every MYST, video game, and computer history fan.
The Myst Documentary Kickstarter will offer rewards for backers such as the film t-shirt, poster, and commemorative book, and high-end reward tiers will give fans the opportunity to attend a private reception with Philip, a 2-day film shoot on location, and event tickets for the film premiere in New York or Los Angeles.
The Kickstarter Campaign for The MYST Documentary begins today and runs through August 13, 2020.
About The MYST Documentary
The MYST Documentary brings to life the unlikely and extraordinary story of two brothers with disparate talents and interests who, in the early ‘90s, changed the computer game industry forever with the release of MYST. In 1993, Rand and Robyn Miller, before the world wide web and with few other gaming pioneers to use for inspiration, broke new ground with gorgeously rendered 3D environments, an original script, and an atmospheric musical score to create a virtual experience unlike anything before.
More than a quarter-century later, director Philip Shane is not only documenting the lives of the famous brothers but celebrating the unsung engineers at the forefront of technology of the ‘80s and ‘90s technology that made Myst possible: Hypercard, Quicktime, CD-ROM, the Macintosh, Strata Pro, Silicon Graphics. This confluence of technology defined an era in which the Millers were able to leave a mark on video games, art, entertainment, and culture.
By following the brothers through intimate interviews, The MYST Documentary shows the journey of Rand and Robyn from their early struggles, epic successes, and personal battles as they continue to pour out their passion and push beyond the limits of technology to create deeply moving experiences for audiences that span generations. To learn more, please visit www.themystdocumentary.com.
About Philip Shane
Philip Shane’s documentaries have intimately captured the lives of some of the most influential and inspirational leaders in art, science, and society. He’s edited alongside Bruce Springsteen, Carly Simon, and Paul McCartney. He co-directed the Sundance award-winning BEING ELMO and produced/directed History Channel’s EINSTEIN.
While at ABC News for over a decade, he edited many award-winning, long-form documentaries for Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel covering wars (TIP OF THE SPEAR, DuPont Columbia Award), civil rights (MARTIN LUTHER KING, Emmy Award), and the impact of music on history (THE BEATLES REVOLUTION and ELVIS PRESLEY: VIVA LAS VEGAS).
His short documentary, WITNESS TO HISTORY, preserved Peter Jenning’s haunting memories of reporting to the nation for seventeen unbroken hours on September 11, 2001, and was acquired by the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Learn more at PhilipShane.com.
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