Startup aids DIY film sales | Stuff.co.nz
Prime Minister John Key's faith in the Hollywood elite may be misplaced if a new Kiwi startup company's fix for the film-distribution model gets traction.
Hamilton-based web developer David White's website IndieReign.com is designed to allow independent film-makers to promote and distribute their films themselves.
The one-year-old startup has had about $500,000 in funding from Kiwi investor Phil McCaw (one of the original investors in Trade Me) and his investment company Movac.
IndieReign will list independent films for online streaming ?rental? or download purchase, and allows film-makers to set their own minimum prices and customers to pay as much as they like.
The website already has about 70 films available and is constantly uploading more from a recently-secured 1000- film back catalogue from international film distribution companies Vanguard Cinema and Cinify.
The website hopes to benefit from low-cost film-making technology as well as the increased viewing of online content on tablets, laptops and home flatscreens, rather than at movie theatres.
White said he was supportive of Key's recent trip to Hollywood to visit executives from the major film studios, but there were huge changes coming in the film industry.
The likes of Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop had broken ground for New Zealand companies and made it much easier for companies like his to get noticed, White said.
But he believed Silicon Valley's open, sharing attitude would eventually win out over Hollywood's ?locked-down? industry structure.
?The big dream [for film-makers] is to be up in a theatre, but it's just not going to happen,? said White, quoting the statistic that only 1 per cent of films made around the world will get theatrical distribution deals.
?Technology enables anyone to make a film with a $3000 camera and a computer, and now crowd-funding enables them to get the budget to make a fairly decent film, and hopefully IndieReign fulfils that last piece of the puzzle, which is selling the film,? he said.
For example, IndieReign uses Facebook to enable its film-makers to link their social media promotional activity to an all-in-one e-commerce site for their finished movie product.
An IndieReign film trailer posted to Facebook has a transactional link embedded in it which means anyone who watches can immediately and easily purchase the full version.
McCaw, who is chairman of the startup, said he would be providing another half a million dollars in the next funding round and was looking for another investor to match it.
- ? Fairfax NZ News
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/7794236/Startup-aids-DIY-film-sales
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