Previously: Film Delivery Automation
Films Are Flowing
The KinoNation tech team has now finished the automated delivery module for our three beta outlets — Hulu, Amazon and Viewster. Which means film packages are flowing — more rapidly every day — to those outlets. And it won’t be long before we add all the other video-on-demand outlets we’ve done distribution deals with. But with that success comes other problems — notably films that get rejected at the Quality Control (QC) stage, either at KinoNation QC, or at the outlet QC. So this post is about how to avoid having your film be a QC casualty. It’s like a theatrical distribution deal — there’s a list of deliverables, and they have to be exactly to the required spec, with zero wiggle room.
Assets
The movie “assets” we require are the master ProRes files for the film and the trailer, four images (2 x portrait & 2 x landscape), a very comprehensive set of metadata, and a subtitles file if the film audio is anything other than English. The tech specs for uploading these assets are simple — but very specific. The last thing you want is to assemble these assets, upload them to KinoNation (or anyone else) and then fail QC. Instead, take a little extra time to get everything right.
Here are some common reasons for QC failure:
Letterboxing
This is the #1 QC issue that we face, despite it being prominently at the top of the NO column of our upload specs. And that’s understandable. Most editors assume that a film looks better when letterboxed, so that’s how they export it. The problem is the VoD outlets have their own letterboxing issues — because they all have proprietary video players, and because films are played on a variety of devices — from PCs to tablets to phones to smart TVs. So they want the video “clean” — no letterboxing. No way around it — you’ll need to re-save that ProRes file without the black bars.
Images
Capturing enough images to serve every outlet’s needs — but without asking the filmmaker for two dozen different images — is a tricky balance. We ask for four images — 2 portrait shaped (traditional movie posters) and 2 landscape shaped. But it gets more complex. Hulu, for example, will fail an image with a press quote on it. Their position is that pull-quotes are tough to verify, so there’s nothing to stop someone fabricating a kick-ass quote from a big publication. So they just say “no quotes.” Understandable position. But — a pithy quote from the NY Times or Variety or JoBlo.com is a big selling point — so we had to figure out a way to avoid quotes for Hulu, while still allowing them for images going to other outlets. You’ll see how we handle it when you submit your film.
Titles and Text
One of the biggest reasons for films to stumble at Kinonation QC is bad grammar or syntax in the synopses. Or just plain poor prose. It’s challenging, because good vs. bad writing is pretty damn subjective. So I urge you to be hyper-critical of your writing. You hired a DP because you wanted a professional behind the camera. You may want to find an equally skilled prose writer for the all-important descriptions, which are definitely buy/not buy inflexion points for your audience.
Sound
Audio is tricky. How loud should a film be? The answer is “loud enough” — but that’s tough to measure. We’ve had to ask for several films to be re-submitted with a little more oomph on the soundtrack. Plus there’s stereo, surround sound, 5.1, etc. All have issues, and the last thing we want is to de-cipher the eight different audio tracks on a film. That’s why we simply say (in our specs) — Stereo PCM, single stream, 16 Bit or 24 Bit, up to 48 kHz. We’ll support surround soon, but not during our beta phase. Stay tuned.
No URL’s in Credits
This causes much knashing of teeth. Pretty much every VoD outlets says “no promotional url’s (website addresses) in end credits, or anywhere else in the film.” And pretty much every filmmaker thinks they have a God-given right to promote their site in their own film. All I can say is we don’t make the rules, but we do check and we will reject movies with urls.
Trailer
Your trailer is, obviously, a critical sales tool. We need it because almost every VoD outlets requires it. Bottom line is that it has to be the same quality file (ProRes) as the main film, and has to adhere to the same criteria. Think of it as a mini version of the main film. For many viewers, it will be the deciding factor in their watch/not watch decision for your film.
Pre-Roll
Most editors are used to delivering tapes with pre-roll stuff — color bars, audio tone, 10, 9, 8 …1 countdowns, etc. ALL will result in QC failure, because VoD outlets don’t want any of this. They want the ultimate cold open — the first second of the VoD video is the first second of the film.
No Burn-In
We get a lot of “foreign” films with audio in a language other than English. Which we love — Klaus and I conceived KinoNation to make it super-easy for non-English films to get US distribution — and vice-versa. But we need these films to be “clean” — no burned-in subtitles. Instead, sub-titles should be included as part of the metadata, so they can be served “on the fly” by VoD outlets according to the location or preference of the viewer.
Finally…
If you’re a filmmaker who uploaded to the KinoNation Private Beta — thanks for your support, hang in there, we’re working on it and we’ll get you out to Amazon Instant Video and other outlets soon! If you haven’t submitted yet, now’s a great time.
Next Up: Post # 27: London Calling
Roger Jackson is a producer and the co-founder of film distribution start-up KinoNation. He was Vice President, Content for digital film pioneer iFilm.com and has produced short films in Los Angeles, documentaries in Darfur, Palestine and Bangladesh, a reality series for VH1 and one rather bad movie for FuelTV. You can reach him at roger@kinonation.com.
