Tag: KinoNation

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup: Post # 20: Video-on-Demand Sales Tips

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Searching for Green Card

It’s now exactly 6 months since we started building KinoNation. We’re very close — a month or so — from opening the platform to the world. We now have deals with all the major US video-on-demand outlets, plus several non-US outlets. And doing more deals every week. There are never less than 2 films being uploaded to us at any time, and we have well over 100 movies in the Private Beta. We’ll have a representative at Berlinale and the European Film Market next week, and I’ll be in London in the spring to cement a series of deals with VoD outlets and content owners there. We have big — but also realistic — plans for 2013.

So I now feel moderately qualified to give advice on how to make a film stand out from the crowd — and it’s VERY crowded — in the world of video-on-demand. It’s all too common for filmmakers to pour time and money and passion into making a film, and then fall short on some basic sales elements. Video-on-demand platforms are remarkably similar to video stores. Both are segmented by film genres, and both have lots of titles arranged in some sort of grid — whether online or on-demand TV or on store shelves — that encourage consumers to scan dozens or even hundreds of titles quite rapidly. And then move on. So you have to grab audience attention within a couple of seconds. That’s not much time.

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Diary of a Film Startup Post 19: Searching for Green Card

By Roger Jackson

Previously: New Year Update

Less of a diary post this time, more of a rumination on Hollywood, video-on-demand, and long-tail movies. Klaus and I decided to build KinoNation because we want to make it super-easy for indie filmmakers to distribute their films to the medium that is rapidly replacing DVD. Along the way we’ve come to realise there are also many well known films that remain almost impossible to watch “on demand” — fuelling consumer frustration that can often only be solved by breaking the law.

Last week was a big day for Klaus‘s wife — Malona had her final interview with the Feds for her Green Card. It all worked out, green card approved, and she wanted to celebrate that evening with a family viewing of the classic movie Green Card.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Post 18: New Year Update

By Roger Jackson

Previously: How KinoNation Works

What a difference a year makes. This time in 2012 I was working for an humanitarian assistance NGO, just back from a village solar power project in Tajikistan, and about to fly to West Africa to set up a veterinary aid project in Mauritania. That contract ended in July, and by August I was fully committed to online film distribution and KinoNation. Quite a contrast.

We’ve been on a “coding sprint” throughout the holidays to hit our planned “soft-launch” later this month. Klaus and our software team have been doing what developers in start-ups do — writing code into the early hours. I usually work past midnight, but there’s always a twinge of guilt when I get up and see the emails that have flown back and forth at 4 in the morning.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Part 17: How KinoNation Works

By Roger Jackson
Previously: Top Ten Lessons, So Far

We’re far enough along with development to have a clear work-flow for content owners. I’ve had lots of requests for this. So now’s a good time to explain the step-by-step flow for a film submitted to KinoNation. Right now we’re still in “beta-testing” mode, but expect to launch this more complete service in January 2013.

1. Human Readable: We’ve never liked those sign-up processes where you’re expected to read 10 pages of impenetrable legalese. So we’ve taken our cue from the folks at Creative Commons who believe there are humans — and then there are lawyers! i.e. that terms of use should be “human readable” with a link to the underlying “lawyer readable” text for those that want it. Here’s the human-readable stuff:

You grant KinoNation the right:

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup Part 16: Top Ten Lessons, So Far

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Film Marketing Tools

Train to Stockholm
We get amazing indie films submitted to KinoNation almost every day to our Private Beta launch. Here’s one that’s beautifully shot, with a theme of cross-border connectivity that will, I think, appeal to many video-on-demand platforms. Keep submitting movies!

10 Lessons
As we close in on year’s end — and 4 months work on KinoNation — I thought I’d share some lessons we’ve learned that really apply, I think, both to startup ventures AND to indie filmmaking. They seem obvious to me with hindsight, but they weren’t obvious when we started just a few months ago.

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Diary of a Film Startup Part 15: Film Marketing Tools

By Roger Jackson
Previously: Early Results

50 Ways to Sell Your Movie
KinoNation now has a library of almost 100 feature films and documentaries in our Private Beta. As I spend time showing some of these films to various US and international video-on-demand outlets, I am more and more convinced of the need for a step-by-step template that helps filmmakers with the the business of selling & marketing their films. So last week I spent some time creating a “back of an envelope” plan for a section of KinoNation where filmmakers can be guided through a series of fifty steps to give their film a better chance at finding an audience. The idea is to have one page on KinoNation.com for each of these fifty steps, along with an overall Progress Bar — so a filmmaker can review what percentage of this marketing checklist has been completed. This is deliberately rough — I just want to get the discussion started.

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Diary of a Film Startup Part 14: Early Results

By Roger Jackson

Previously: Indie Film Inspiration

Quarter Million Views
I thought I’d share some results — as in numbers — for a feature that is having a nice run on YouTube Movies. The film is called Time Expired, and won a silver award for Comedy Feature at WorldFest Houston. It was submitted to KinoNation last week. And in fact the master ProRes file (71GB) is currently being uploaded by the filmmakers to our cloud storage servers. What immediately caught my attention is that Time Expired has almost a quarter million views on YouTube Movies since it was placed there by director Nick Lawrence 12 months ago. That’s the full length (93 mins) movie, not the trailer — an average of 20,000 per month, and accelerating. Nick has kindly agreed to share the extensive stats that YouTube provide. It’s interesting and quite instructive, I think, as YouTube Movies becomes an increasingly significant — and profitable — option for indie filmmakers.

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