A new startup dubbed Prescreen launched this week as a marketing platform for independent films.
Since indies typically find it challenging to gain exposure, Prescreen provides an alternative for filmmakers and distributors to generate buzz and potentially find an audience for their projects.
“Basically, Prescreen offers users the ability to subscribe to a daily email alert, which will inform them of one indie film per day,” reports TechCrunch. “The user can then visit Prescreen to view trailers for free and if interested, can rent movies to stream on demand for up to 60 days. Users can also earn rewards and discounts for sharing movie information on their social networks.”
Additionally, the service provides filmmakers and distributors with audience demographic data.
In response to the trend regarding more mainstream services such as Netflix and Hulu starting to feature independent movies, Prescreen founder Shawn Bercuson explains that the discovery mechanism for finding and marketing these titles remains weak. He hopes that Prescreen’s email model and social features will help address this issue.
Adobe announced at IBC in Amsterdam that it has acquired certain assets of IRIDAS, “a leader in high-performance tools for digital color grading and enhancement of professional film and video content, including stereoscopic technology.”
The deal is part of Adobe’s efforts to invest in its own video software solutions, Premiere Pro and After Effects, at a time when videography is democratizing (especially with the arrival of video SLRs) and some consumers are frustrated by changes to Final Cut Pro.
“The IRIDAS Speedgrade software offers the ability to refine video in a number of ways, notably what’s called color grading, which can shift a video’s color tones to give a particular look,” reports CNET.
According to Adobe’s press release: “With the addition of IRIDAS technology, Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection, the world’s leading video tools for professionals, are expected to gain a comprehensive set of tools so video editors can manipulate color and light for any type of content, including professional film and television. The addition of premier color grading tools exemplifies Adobe’s commitment and leadership in the digital film and video space.”
Adobe also explained that the deal will help the company move forward in regards to the growing trend in 3D video.
FilmFunds, a new venture launching this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, will use a crowdsourcing approach to help determine whether a film or TV show would draw an audience.
FilmFunds’ test group of some 60 million moviegoers will review synopses, trailers, artwork and other marketing materials and vote whether to “Like” a project. The results can help put a project into production and get it completed, distributed and marketed.
According to Variety: “Site divides projects into three categories — materials of projects members can help put into production, completed projects member votes can help get finished or distributed, and a marketing portal where studio pics can gain support and members can recruit friends and pre-sell tickets through websites like Fandango.”
A FilmFunds mobile app provides more information after a user takes a snapshot of a poster, trailer or film title.
The article also references Emotional ID, which “translates real-time facial reactions and emotions during test previews into measurable results.”
The FilmFunds site allows users to enter as a Filmmaker (“Get your projects seen and potentially produced”) or a Fan (“Promote projects and interact with filmmakers”).
According to the site: “FilmFunds enables you to choose what you want to see and then we get it made. Our connections in the industry finalize deals but your vote is the catalyst. The more you participate the bigger the rewards. A few ‘suits’ used to call all the shots. FilmFunds puts YOU in charge. We’re just here to help!”
Dish is expected to introduce a streaming movie service under its Blockbuster brand next month. The move will introduce a competitor to Netflix and coincide with that company’s recently announced price increase.
When Dish acquired Blockbuster’s assets in April for $320 million, it received content rights that it has sought to beef up through discussions with the studios.
“This ought to begin changing the way investors think about Dish,” said Ryan Vineyard, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “It goes from being an old-school pay-TV company to launching what could be a really high-growth business.”
Dish currently ranks as the second largest U.S. satellite-TV provider behind DirecTV.
Former COO of Funny or Die Mitch Galbraith launched the beta version of social streaming movie service flickme this week with deals in place from Sony and Warner Bros. The venture was founded by Galbraith and Mark Smallcombe, who received funding from Sequoia Capital.
The new service lets users rent or purchase movies and watch instantly, via their Facebook accounts. Users can also socially connect with friends to share deals and recommendations. According to the website: “About one third of the movies on flickme feature pass-along perks: the first person to rent or buy can share special offers with friends, including discounts and access to rentals before they are normally available.”
The service will face competition from streamers such as iTunes and Netflix but is hoping the social connection will make it distinct.
“We’ve built a short cut to find movies you’ll love,” says Galbraith. “We’re assembling a library of thousands of top Hollywood titles and enabling highly personalized recommendations from close friends to ensure every movie you watch on flickme is a winner.”
Palo Alto-based Flipboard plans to add film and TV to its social media magazine platform. Flipboard is currently available only on the iPad, but an iPhone version is expected to launch in a few weeks.
Reuters reports that the company “hopes to cut deals with studios to carry movies and episodes of TV shows, getting into territory staked out by Netflix, Hulu and Facebook.”
Mike McCue, chairman and chief executive of Flipboard, explained he will begin the video project at the end of this year and also hopes to sell electronic books.
Flipboard’s service takes a cut of the revenue from advertising. “We’re trying to create the largest company possible,” said Danny Rimer, general partner at Index Ventures, a Flipboard investor. Reuters points out: “Rimer believes display advertising revenue’s migration online is ‘a very big opportunity.'”
Sony is developing special subtitle-enabled glasses that could be in UK movie theaters as early as next year.
According to the BBC, one in six people have some level of deafness and are not being served well by the movie industry. In fact, many film fans with hearing issues wait for films to be released on DVD when subtitles are available.
“What we do is put the closed captions or the subtitles onto the screen of the glasses so it’s super-imposed on the cinema screen, [making it look] like the actual subtitles are on the cinema screen,” explains Tim Potter of Sony.
“The good thing about them is that you’re not refocusing. It doesn’t feel like the words are really near and the screen is far away. It feels like they’re together,” said test subject Charlie Swinbourne, who is hard of hearing.
“It was a great experience,” he added. “I think it’s a massive opportunity to improve deaf people’s lives and I think there’s great hope that this would give us a cinema-going future.”
If the glasses prove popular in the UK, we should expect to see them in wider availability in the near future.
Hollywood continues its frustration with the Chinese government’s limits on how many imported movies can play in its theaters in addition to how box office receipts are shared. Now, prominent American film producers are seeking change through ambitious deals that provide alternative routes into China’s market.
Success with the Chinese may prove crucial. With traditional distribution models such as DVD sales presently slumping, China could become a much-needed revenue source.
“It’s not about détente, it’s about making money,” suggests the Los Angeles Times. “The partnerships give the American firms better access to the country’s growing movie market.”
According to the LA Times report: “China’s box-office receipts surged 64 percent last year to a record $1.5 billion, and they will likely bring in about $2 billion in ticket sales this year. By the end of the decade, industry experts predict China will grow from the world’s No. 5 movie market to No. 1.”
Although lobbyists and the World Trade Organization have been unsuccessful in getting the Chinese to relax import restrictions, smaller American film companies such as Legendary and Relativity are partnering with Chinese-based companies in co-production and exhibition deals. Through the partnerships, companies are not subject to restrictions and find they can dramatically improve upon percentage of box office receipts.
Major Hollywood studios have not formed long-term partnerships to co-produce with Chinese firms, but have discovered other alternatives, such as making Mandarin-language productions in China and pushing digital product, including 3D: “To boost the rollout of high-tech projectors in the country’s theaters, China in 2007 began allowing several pictures per year into the country on a revenue-share basis if they played only in digital theaters.”
The ultimate goal is to eliminate the restrictions, but for the time being Hollywood is finding ways to work around them.
Amazon has announced a deal with NBCUniversal to offer Universal films online, in a move designed to step up competition with services such as Netflix and Hulu.
Amazon offers subscribers to its “Prime” program discounts on shipping of products, and free access to an online library of films. The service costs $79 a year.
Amazon announced an agreement last week with CBS that expanded its library to more than 8,000 titles. The NBCUniversal deal will grow Amazon’s library to more than 9,000 movies and TV shows (compared to Neflix’s 20,000).
Films such as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Being John Malkovich,” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” are part of the deal.
In an effort to help emerging artists reach wider audiences, the Sundance Institute has partnered with online video outlets including Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, YouTube and SundanceNow.
The deals are not exclusive to any one platform, so films can be made available simultaneously on competing sites.
Films will be packaged under the Sundance name as part of its recently launched Artist Services Initiative. Marketing guidance will also be provided to filmmakers through the new Web-based program.
New Video will serve as the aggregation partner for online distribution, taking a small cut of the revenues. However, the online services will not purchase the movies, enabling the filmmakers to retain their copyrights.
Sundance hopes that the online initiative will provide an audience for films that typically do not find conventional distribution. First to be distributed: “Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology” by Tiffany Shlain and “On the Ice” from Andrew Okpeaha MacLean.
Technicolor Inc. and Deluxe Entertainment Services announced a new partnership for film print production and distribution, as the demand for film prints continues to wane.
According to the Los Angeles Times: “Technicolor will subcontract its 35mm film print business in North America to Deluxe,” while “Deluxe will farm out its 35mm print distribution business to Technicolor.”
Technicolor closed its North Hollywood plant earlier this year, and will soon close a plant outside of Montreal.
Technicolor will open a smaller facility in Glendale focused on producing prints for IMAX and other big screen theaters.
Plummeting demand for prints stems from theaters converting to digital projection; the transition has taken place in nearly half of the 42,000 screens in the U.S.
Most media and entertainment company senior execs believe they are not fully leveraging customer data that would make it possible to deliver customized content, suggests a new study by consulting firm Accenture.
The research indicates that 91 percent of these executives are not taking full advantage of the data, and as a result, are not adequately prepared to identify revenue opportunities related to current and future digital technologies. Additionally, 95 percent do not have strong digital customer relationship management capabilities.
If fewer than 10 percent of the companies have a fully integrated view of their digital consumers, a new operating model may be necessary for sustainable digital growth (Accenture recommends a shift from legacy vertical, channel-oriented structures toward a horizontally-layered operating model).
Only 55 percent said their companies had a clearly defined social networking strategy in place, while 80 percent believe the industry is still in a state of flux. And 42 percent anticipate that advertising will serve as their main source of revenue in the next two years.
Accenture’s “Global Media & Entertainment High Performance Study” canvassed 130 executives across Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific from industries including television, gaming, film, music, publishing, portals and advertising.
A collection of Hollywood studios and guilds this week announced the formation of “Creative America,” a non-profit grassroots organization intended to fight piracy that threatens creative jobs.
Creative America intends to provide a unified voice for some 2 million Americans who work in film, television, and other creative fields and believe, “that halting the looting of America’s creative works and protecting jobs must be a national priority.”
Members of the coalition include: AFTRA, CBS, DGA, IATSE International, NBC Universal, SAG, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Disney and Warner Bros.
The coalition supports a new bill before the U.S. Senate, which would allow the Department of Justice to pursue pirates overseas.
The group aims to provide IP protection and related information through its website and social networking entities such as Facebook and Twitter.
Rovio, creator of the game app “Angry Birds,” is planning the next step for its popular IP: a feature-length motion picture.
The expanding franchise has already proven successful with plush toys, iPhone cases, a Mattel board game, a cookbook, and an interesting tie-in with 20th Century Fox’s feature film, “RIO” (Rovio launched mobile game “Angry Birds Rio” to coincide with the film’s release).
In order to facilitate its next steps, Rovio has acquired Finnish animation studio Kombo and has attached former Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel as special advisor.
Based on the global popularity of the app and the “emotional connection” that gamers experience during play, Maisel sees continued success for “Angry Birds” as an entertainment brand.
Last week ETCentric reported that a new service called MoviePass plans to offer unlimited movie viewing in participating theaters for a fee of $50/month. The initial beta was scheduled for the holiday weekend in San Francisco.
The planned beta test hit a roadblock when a number of San Francisco theaters decided not to participate since they did not consent to the admission price of the proposed model.
Interestingly, the theaters would still have been paid full admission.
From the AMC press release: “As MoviePass was created without AMC’s input and testing, we cannot confidently say the guest experience would be positive for our guests and specifically our AMC Stubs members.”
