Thanks to a city surplus auction, Mr. Reel Report finally has his own Pentium PC. Not brand new, but functional and cheap. He could have brought more, but they came up for bidding as he wandered in a waste-treatment plant looking for a safe place to dump his rancid government coffee. So, Mr. Reel Report's friends will get the usual Christmas presents after all - Free Times back issues, the gift that never goes offline or crashes.

The point is, Mr. Reel Report (or anyone with a Windows-95-equipped multimedia PC) can now view a technological service made available to filmmakers by Cleveland-based Media Design Imaging and Medina's Paratus, Inc.

It's Hyperdisc, a computer CD slightly larger than the average business card. It holds up to 80 mgs of sound, animation, stills, documents, even short film clips. Many ventures can use Hyperdisc, but MDI co-founders Johnny Wu and Greg Petusky, filmmakers themselves, see a special application of the new technology: trailer-in-your-pocket.

Instead of handing a VHS tape or photo-copied business plan to potential investors, impress them with full-motion video, on the same card as your production-company logo, name and address. Over the weekend Petusky, Wu and crew were in full motion themselves, staging an assassination and streetfight near the Cleveland State University campus for their 16mm feature Twisted, about an Asian diplomat's prodigal son (James Auyeung) caught up in dangerous liaisons in and out of the world of politics.

On the side, MDI, besides marking their first year in business, is contributing to The Coin, an ambitious Internet film project in which 32 filmmakers (so far) deliver original five-minute segments, linked by the motif of a reappearing coin. After it's edited as a feature, The Coin will be posted online. To learn more about Hyperdisc, check out www.paratus.com or www.mdifilm.com For "Twisted" updates, see www.mdifilm.com/Twisted/index.html. For "The Coin", look on the message board at www.indieclub.com. For back issues of this newspaper, www.freetimes.com.