It was not going to be shared, but the public demanded it, and Steven wanted to give the people what they wanted. Here’s the video and full transcript:
It should be mandatory watching & reading for all filmmakers.
Month: April 2013
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:
I do my best to answer that, address the power of film, and share my favorite film experiences. Give it a listen here:
If filmmakers selected the “KeyWords” for their films (and did it without overhyping their films in the process), they could be embedded in the film’s metadata from the earliest online post.
Keywords are important when
I did an interview for SF Weekly recently (Read it here). I have a lot to say so it then spilled out onto their blog. There, we got more into the changing paradigm of film culture and spoke about the bifurcation of Tentpoles vs “Amatuers”, and the crisis it creates.
It’s absolutely that bifurcation into mass-market, tent pole mega-budgets relying on explosions and CGI on the one hand, and then the hordes of passionate amateurs — and I use that word in the French definition of those who work from their hearts, out of love. With that, you see this incredible surplus — far more good movies are being made than ever before, and we’re having a harder time finding the time to watch them. And with that kind of supply-and-demand economics, some of our most talented artists are struggling to survive. And they find themselves asking, do they need to abandon what they love in order to appease the market gods? You see the fallacy of that approach when you look at something like The Beasts of the Southern Wild or Fruitvale. We need to find ways we can help artists be true to their hearts. I think what that paradigm shift often becomes, is how you help artists and audiences and industry transition to this world of plenty, and the best practices that that requires. It’s the shift from making or consuming one movie at a time to one of a creative model focused on a relationship, an ongoing conversation. Not just making something for an audience, but making something that a community can use. And that changes the definition of what we all do. We’re not just feature filmmakers. We’re creative individuals looking to be generative in our output.
Read the whole article here:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2013/04/ted_hope_san_francisco_film_society.php
This is how we build a better mousetrap: by supporting the culture we love with our dollars. Consider it a vote for a better world.
You can now get “I AM NOT A HIPSTER” directly from the filmmakers! So you should do it. I mean, what else are you doing this weekend anyway?
Imagine this: one of our greatest artists, foremost innovators, top storytellers of all time, incredible businessmen, and rare facilitators of change decides to join the ranks of Bill Gates and leap deep into philanthropy. Let’s just say that for one of his initial steps he decides to provide a public museum, one that will focus on particular aspects of popular forms that have been neglected everywhere else but are profoundly popular and inspiring. For good measure, he decides to gift it on a region that he has historically served despite extreme pressures to follow the herd and abandon his flock for a place to the south. You’d think his town would rejoice, right? Done deal, for sure, right? Front page news? Not so. Go figure. George Lucas needs our help.
He’s given to us, let’s give to him. I mean, he has
