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.
