I know. I know. Weird title. But it’s Thanksgiving and there’s been a lot of bad news this week. So when I saw these kids teaching their “Gratitude Dance" I laughed so hard and thought more people need to do this. Have fun and have a Happy Thanksgiving.
Check out the Gratitude Dance!
Some good news this week: I learned about a new website from a New Mexico company. I was excited to see The Filmmakers Channel and I’m eager to learn more about it.
The Filmmakers Channel seems to offer the filmmaker some control of his/her destiny. The site gives dreary figures from Sundance, one of the premier festivals for distribution deals in the U.S.: Over 3,600 entries and 121 films screened. Four of those sold domestic rights for more than $1 million.
The Filmmakers Channel offers options to create your own channel and gives you tools to grow your audience. It’s nice looking and easy to use, too. That’s always good. One guy is starting a Chanting Channel and hosting films that teach people how to chant. You could start your own channel with ALL of your films and put it on your own website. New Mexico Business Weekly article.
The Albuquerque company was started by filmmaker Anthony Dellaflora, also Co-Founder of the Duke City Shootout Film Festival. He teamed with entrepreneur Dan Latrimurti who linked with Maxcast technology and his own networking know-how to empower filmmakers. They say, “The Filmmakers Channel Network combines Pay-Per-View capable, DVD quality streaming, live broadcasting and social networks to create audience specific distribution and business opportunities for filmmakers and media entrepreneurs.”
I’d like to hear from some of you Independent Filmmakers about the idea of having a good quality PPV download site that’s simple to use whether you host the download or send your viewers elsewhere to get it. Have you used this? Something like it? Will you try it? Let me know!
When I was working on Rumi Returning, we looked for a download host that would have great quality for the HD film with wonderful footage from Turkey. A lot of sites were working on getting up to speed with HD. It’s better now than even a few months ago. The most amazing quality was through a company called Vividas, who were responsible for sending the gorgeous full screen $4.95 downloads of The Secret streaming around the world. Lots of streams. Beautiful quality. Expensive; unless you know you’re going to have thousands of customers, it would be a risk.
IndieFlix has focused on hosting Independent Films via download or DVDs. There are new features this year, including their introduction of “My Festival,” a crowdsourcing idea that was introduced through the Seattle International Film Festival in late May. Users could screen for free 10 films and 10 shorts then vote for their favorites. SIFF awarded the winners prized time slots at the festival.
As for the IndieFlix downloads, as long as the deal is non-exclusive – you can put your film(s) elsewhere, too -- it seems like a cool site. We didn’t use it for Rumi, so let me know what sort of experience you had.
Santa Fe Film Festival Deputy Director Stephen Rubin says the festival has several partners to promote their films. I know IndieFlix hosts the festival films, as it does most of the film festivals in the country. It’s a good way for the festivals to get a little more income and a good way for the films to get more visibility. SFFF is also partnering with B-side to create some community buzz on their website. If you sign in you can rate films and add them to your festival schedule.
Seems like it would be cool to have a link right on a festival site where people could download the films. Okay, maybe they want to wait until AFTER the festival, but I’m sure that’s doable.
Next week I’ll show some links to my filmmaker pals' films and videos. Stay TUNED. You know you can subscribe >>> You can make comments, too. Live a little!
