I was anticipating a lot of vendors building tablets, and there's very little good indie video content out there organized and being built specifically for these tablets and phones. So I got a few public domain films, compressed them really well, found their original posters, descriptions, and recently created an App for it for a recent Tablet.
Here' s a few observations: people are eating it up. I kind of anticipated the demand for content, but wasn't prepared for how much people watch in their devices. I spent over 2 years optimizing, streamlining, and getting rid of bad ideas before I put this out. There are countries where their currency is 50 times the American dollar, and they still purchase the app. To me it's only a dollar, but at 50x, that's real money in some places. As a programmer, I built what I thought I would like, and could push out quickly, with updates on the way. I don't post any ads anywhere. There are ways to support great content without the best minds of our time trying to figure out how to get people to click ads.
I was thinking of adding download for offline use, a few visitors have suggested that, because they have some commute and they don't want everything over wireless all the time. I was thinking of rentals which delete automatically and sales, because a few filmmakers suggested that for their own work. The Facebook social hooks and suggesting to friends is testing well and bringing new viewers. I've tried bump devices to share content, but I still have to work out some bugs, where some filmmakers want sharing and some absolutely don't.
If you had it to do all over again, what would you build? It is the Wild West of delivery for the next maybe 5 years. No competition from Nexflix or Apple because they want pop culture. Youtube drowns amazing creative content in ads and the comments are vicious. Payment, just 1 dollar for public domain, removes a lot of the viciousness in comments. People are coming in, and they want to eat content. Lots of it. But website models aren't working well, because everything is on a different site, with different payments, and download process, and compression styles. The App model so far removes all thinking for consumers. They just pick up their phone or tablet, open the app, then multi touch and watch. And share. And comment. These are things which just didn't even exist a few year ago.
I apologize if this seems salesie. I haven't posted any links or images, and I don't want you to buy anything from me. I'm just a small time 1 person app developer really interested in how to create a great experience for Indie Film. I really am looking for a way to rethink Indie Film afresh. Given a whole blank drawing slate, what would you build, or how would you do it differently?
Here' s a few observations: people are eating it up. I kind of anticipated the demand for content, but wasn't prepared for how much people watch in their devices. I spent over 2 years optimizing, streamlining, and getting rid of bad ideas before I put this out. There are countries where their currency is 50 times the American dollar, and they still purchase the app. To me it's only a dollar, but at 50x, that's real money in some places. As a programmer, I built what I thought I would like, and could push out quickly, with updates on the way. I don't post any ads anywhere. There are ways to support great content without the best minds of our time trying to figure out how to get people to click ads.
I was thinking of adding download for offline use, a few visitors have suggested that, because they have some commute and they don't want everything over wireless all the time. I was thinking of rentals which delete automatically and sales, because a few filmmakers suggested that for their own work. The Facebook social hooks and suggesting to friends is testing well and bringing new viewers. I've tried bump devices to share content, but I still have to work out some bugs, where some filmmakers want sharing and some absolutely don't.
If you had it to do all over again, what would you build? It is the Wild West of delivery for the next maybe 5 years. No competition from Nexflix or Apple because they want pop culture. Youtube drowns amazing creative content in ads and the comments are vicious. Payment, just 1 dollar for public domain, removes a lot of the viciousness in comments. People are coming in, and they want to eat content. Lots of it. But website models aren't working well, because everything is on a different site, with different payments, and download process, and compression styles. The App model so far removes all thinking for consumers. They just pick up their phone or tablet, open the app, then multi touch and watch. And share. And comment. These are things which just didn't even exist a few year ago.
I apologize if this seems salesie. I haven't posted any links or images, and I don't want you to buy anything from me. I'm just a small time 1 person app developer really interested in how to create a great experience for Indie Film. I really am looking for a way to rethink Indie Film afresh. Given a whole blank drawing slate, what would you build, or how would you do it differently?
