Need Distribution? Wan't to watch as good flick? CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW!

[Landon D. Parks]

Most of you know me by now I'm sure, so I'll skip the introduction.

 

However, My team and I are currently in the process of inventing an online short and feature distribution center of sorts, which will be called "Indievid" (working title, name my change).

 

They way it will work is like this:

 

For the Watcher: You will download a very small application, which will crawl our database of short and feature length indie films. You will then be able to download the films to your computer, at a very reasonable cost. OR, you can watch the videos in the software without downloading, which will be available by membership.

 

For the Filmmaker: You pay us a VERY small listing fee, which include your own video page and hosting of the video clip, and we put your film up on the web. Our end user software will allow watchers to search and download your films, or watch them in the software. For every video someone downloads, you will get a certain percent (TBD), and if someone watches it in there browser, You will be paid a small amount by us for every person that watches the video. If you want your film to have more advertisement, we will also offer advertising packages as well. Your videos will be encodes so that no one can make copies while it's on their computer.

 

**** The way this software works might change in the long run. We might eleminate downloading and simply install a membership package, just like the Stars service "Vongo", or we might even get rid of the membership package and just offer downloads. The software is still in Development stage, so no code has been written yet or rules set in place****

 

Think of this kind of as a Indie "Vongo" of sorts.

 

Once the software is developed, we will start a pretty aggressive marketing system for this software to general public, which means your film might be seen by possibly millions of people.

 

I will update in this thread as time goes on, we have more information, prices, etc.

 

Keep an eye on us!

 

PS) We will have a website up and running soon, which will give you a LOT more information. Look for it here!

[Stephen Williams]

Most of you know me by now I'm sure, so I'll skip the introduction.

 

Hi Landon,

 

So you are still a member! Yesterday you weren't 100%! LOL

 

Happy Christmas

 

Stephen

[Daniel Smith]

And we thought we'd lost you for good... :lol:

 

How's it going Landon haven't spoken to you in some time.

 

 

This business plan sounds like it has some good ideas backing it up. But, if you don't mind me asking, what kind of finance do you have backing it up?

 

Streaming short and feature length films in real time, in a competitive nature, would take gigabits upon gigabits of bandwidth to achieve. What sort of bitrate will the videos be streamed at?

 

Only reason I ask is because I do programming and have run servers in the past and *from what I know*... unless you have thousands upon thousands to invest in this project, you *will* have to call on investors. And investors want assurances, not ideas.

 

Not trying to poke holes in it or anything just curious. Hope it goes well for you. Personally I haven't got the balls to do something like that so I've got to admire your confidence.

 

Anyway good to see you around here again and, happy Christmas!

(I'm posting on the cinematography board on Christmas day.. yeh.. I have a life)

Edited December 25, 2006 by Daniel Ashley-Smith

[Landon D. Parks]

Hey Dan!

 

But, if you don't mind me asking, what kind of finance do you have backing it up?

Actually, Just the shirt on our backs. Just kiding, well, kind of!

 

Streaming short and feature length films in real time, in a competitive nature, would take gigabits upon gigabits of bandwidth to achieve. What sort of bit rate will the videos be streamed at?

There will be no streaming involved. No matter which way we decide to go, the end user will DOWNLOAD the film to there computer. Streaming is not a good idea for several reasons... The first being that it would take huge amounts of bandwidth (as you said), since if someone wants to watch the film 2 times, they have to stream it twice, which uses twice the bandwidth as if they just downloaded it. Also because for streaming content to be fluid, you generally would have to stream at VERY low bit rates. We want to bring people as high quality image was we can.

 

Actually Format and rates, etc will be announced once we decide on a delivery format.

 

Only reason I ask is because I do programming and have run servers in the past and *from what I know*... unless you have thousands upon thousands to invest in this project,

You do programming Dan? You ever programmed in C#? That?s what we are using to write the program. We do need help, if you know the language, or want to be taught the language.

 

Anyway, startup cost is actually pretty low. We only have to pay for server space; certain allotted monthly bandwidth on that server and the various software titles we will need to encode the films, etc. We plan on having no advertising for the filmmaking side... Forums like these we think will provide enough films. Advertising on the end user side will de done both with paid advertising and press-releases to the media (to my knowledge, we are the only company offering this ground-breaking service, which should get us some press converge). Still though, it?s not going to be FREE to start, trust me. And just to ease people a little bit, yes, we do have some funding in place already, along with funding coming in clients pre-paying for advertisements on the software. We even have a couple of investors who are willing to put up finishing money if needed to get the service launched!

 

Not trying to poke holes in it or anything just curious. Hope it goes well for you. Personally I haven't got the balls to do something like that so I've got to admire your confidence.

I'm glad the rest of the people working on this project has balls too, other wise, I'd probably be out in the cold... No way could I do this alone!

 

If anyone here has any more questions, I'll try to answer them! Some things we are keeping secret at the moment... However, if there's some feature that you would like to see implemented on the end-user or filmmaker side of things, go ahead and let these be know to me now*.

 

* = Any ideas you provide may become the full property of New Vision Technology, if applicable by law.

Edited December 25, 2006 by Landon D. Parks

[Daniel Smith]

You do programming Dan? You ever programmed in C#? That?s what we are using to write the program. We do need help, if you know the language, or want to be taught the language.

Funnily enough, been doing it for a little while now lol Not that I could really help out a huge amount though, I'm not that experienced in it. Was doing Delphi for sometime before.

 

Anyway, startup cost is actually pretty low. We only have to pay for server space; certain allotted monthly bandwidth on that server and the various software titles we will need to encode the films, etc. We plan on having no advertising for the filmmaking side... Forums like these we think will provide enough films. Advertising on the end user side will de done both with paid advertising and press-releases to the media (to my knowledge, we are the only company offering this ground-breaking service, which should get us some press converge). Still though, it?s not going to be FREE to start, trust me. And just to ease people a little bit, yes, we do have some funding in place already, along with funding coming in clients pre-paying for advertisements on the software. We even have a couple of investors who are willing to put up finishing money if needed to get the service launched!

I'm glad the rest of the people working on this project has balls too, other wise, I'd probably be out in the cold... No way could I do this alone!

Well it sounds asthough you're starting off sensibily and building up, not trying to create a huge business right from the start.

 

Well, don't take this in a patronising way or anything (you know what you are doing, I know that) but this is personally how I would start off:

 

Find the cheapest hosting service avaiable. Allow people to buy 'credits' via Paypal. To start with, host the files for free to build up a rep. Then once it's started building popularity, start charging, but at a promotional rate. (say it's to celebrate the big launch or something..)

 

Allow people to gain more credits by signing up to various advertisments, which in return pay you say 10 cents. (for instance 25 credits if you sign up to sony.com or something..)

 

Build lots of hype by offering promotional vouchers in local newspapers, write into magazines telling them about this new fantastic online service, get a random e-mail generator and spam everyone. (Not that I approve of that last one... but hey it's what I would do)

 

Offer demos on the web site, and research heavily into different codecs and bitrates to see what the smallest amount of data transfer you can get away with is.

 

 

Just what I'd do... maybe what you're already doing I'm not sure.

[Landon D. Parks]

We have made one decision though: Every film we host will be at DVD quality or better. Depending on the fotmat, if we can get an HD original copy, we might even think about offering some videos in HD.

Edited December 25, 2006 by Landon D. Parks

[John-Erling Holmenes Fredriksen]

One of the "problems" with short films is the lack of audiences for it, so I guess you'll fill a gap of some sort if you succeed. Of course there are festivals, but a broader audience (that might even make short films some revenue) isn't really there, which is too bad considering that a short film at it's best really is an art form that deserves some more credit.

 

Just keep in mind that online video seems to be the new big thing for all the large players, and you might face some tough competition, not only from YouTube, but from newer services with better technical quality and larger audiences. I guess quality (as in quality of content) could be a big selling point for you. Anyway, I wish you good luck with your project. I think there's a demand for these kinds of services, but you have a long way to go ;)

[Daniel Smith]

We have made one decision though: Every film we host will be at DVD quality or better. Depending on the fotmat, if we can get an HD original copy, we might even think about offering some videos in HD.

Well, I think downloading movies at DVD quality would be awesome, and considering I'm on 4 megabit connection, I could have it done in under 3 hours. But it's sort of overkill don't you think? I've seen good quality feature length films at 700mb. You can barely tell the difference between a movie compressed to 1400mb and a DVD movie.

 

And what about the poor sods on 56k modem? :lol:

 

 

*Saying this, presuming you mean exact DVD quality, not a compressed version at which people can't tell the difference between.*

[Josh Bass]

Not trying to be a douche here, but there are actually quite a few other entities offering the same thing you're talking about, some that don't charge the filmmakers anything, unless the filmmaker wants special promotion by the host; the upload itself is still free, though. Good luck.

Edited December 25, 2006 by Josh Bass

[Landon D. Parks]

Maybe, But my company hopes to offer the end users around 1,000 + feature films and 2,000+ short films to watch, at near DVD quality. We might not ONLY appeal to the indie films.. I have already talked to several very small Indie distribution companies, which expressed interest in making there library of films available on the service.

 

To my knowledge, next to Vongo, out service will be the only one to offer the selection of films, at that quality at a very reasonable price (sub $10/ Month).

 

*Saying this, presuming you mean exact DVD quality, not a compressed version at which people can't tell the difference between.*

When I say DVD quality, I mean NEAR DVD quality. We estimate that the average feature film (1 1/2 hours long) should be around 700MB to around 1GB for very long films. More of course for those films that will be available in HD.

 

The codec we want to use is not yet know... Whichever we use, it will be based on the ability to deliver near DVD quality at semi-manageable file sizes... Both for the sake of the end user and out bandwidth.

 

As to the whole "What about those with Dialup" thing... Sorry. We offer what we can offer, which probably won't appeal to dialup users. But then again, chances are if your into watching movies on the internet, there?s a good chance your not on a Dialup connection anymore... At least there is little since in still being on a dialup connection, unless you only use the computer once in a while, in which case your probably not a candidate for this kind of product anyway.

 

PS) As to the charge to filmmakers... We have not made final decision on that yet. We might implement a free submission system as well, but we still think it would be reasonable to charge the filmmaker for storage of the file on our servers anyway. But, well see how it turns out. Remember, I'm not the only one who makes the decisions.

Edited December 25, 2006 by Landon D. Parks

[Landon D. Parks]

Well it sounds asthough you're starting off sensibily and building up, not trying to create a huge business right from the start.

Exactly... This is one reason I think that a lot of online business's fail. People try to start to big, when they don't have the money to do it. They also generally are so excited about making quick money that they take all the income and run with it... Which in turn they don't relize that has to go toward paying for next months hosting, transfer, advertising, etc... So they actually run out of money to run the business before they ever get any real income from it. We are starting small, and will build up as we make more money, which in turn we will put into more and more advertising, and hopefully, one day we'll be a big company.

 

Find the cheapest hosting service avaiable. Allow people to buy 'credits' via Paypal. To start with, host the files for free to build up a rep. Then once it's started building popularity, start charging, but at a promotional rate. (say it's to celebrate the big launch or something..)

 

Allow people to gain more credits by signing up to various advertisments, which in return pay you say 10 cents. (for instance 25 credits if you sign up to sony.com or something..)

 

Build lots of hype by offering promotional vouchers in local newspapers, write into magazines telling them about this new fantastic online service, get a random e-mail generator and spam everyone. (Not that I approve of that last one... but hey it's what I would do)

 

Offer demos on the web site, and research heavily into different codecs and bitrates to see what the smallest amount of data transfer you can get away with is.

At this point, we are probably are going to open the film submission up for free to filmmakers... However, at the same time we will also ofer an upgrade package as well, which will cost more, but give you more than the basic package. This way we appeal to EVERYONE, in one way or another.

 

The reason we are taking this stance is that they way we see it, the filmmakers are not going to be our primary income source anyway, the end users will. So the less (or free) we charge the filmmakers, the more films we can get, making the end users experiance more enjoyable, and thus making us more money than actually charging every filmmaker.

 

Now this may change as well draw up a huge end user base, but to start with, we probably will offer free listing.

 

Advertising on the end user side will start out very small... Ptimarily with press releases and invitiions for certain "Rating" siteas to rate the software service, hence offering some advertisment. We will also probably pay to host some banners on film reliated sites like IMDB.com, and maybe even some very active filmmaking forums (like this one).

 

And yes, we will be offering a free trial for the end users of the software... Probably a 7-15 day trial, maybe more...

 

PS) UPDATE NEWS:

We now have an approved design for the end user software... We are going to start writing the program within the next couple of weeks and hopefully have it done within 5 weeks, so that we can start work on the web page design, which is also going to be VERY important. Maybe, if everything works out, by early next year we will start accespting submissions from filmmakers.

Edited December 27, 2006 by Landon D. Parks