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Guys...Give me your thoughts on my VOD idea

N

nynamyna

Hello all,

I am an independent filmmaker who is looking to find ways to distribute my short films. I am already running a website in which I add short films and I categorize them by language and genre. I am planning to add a page to my website called 'Premium Short films' which means that the filmmakers can charge money from the people watching their short films. The key difference between the other VOD and this system are the following

Each filmmaker can give me their paypal button link by incorporating all the changes they need. Like price, custom text etc. You can also create a re-directing link when the transaction is cancelled and a re-directing link when the transaction goes through. If someone pays to watch your film, you can redirect them to the place where they can watch your film. It can be a private link in youtube, it can be a vimeo link or your own website link, or even you can get their email ids and send them a link with password to watch.

I don't want any money out of this because, I am just trying to collaborate with all filmmakers and form our own distribution platform instead of depending on a percentage based distribution. What do you guys think? Will this work? See the link below to get an idea of how I categorize movies based on different genres.

http://short-filmz.com/english-short-films/

Waiting for your comments so we can start this and see how it goes.

Thanks,
VJ
 
I admire your effort.

You first posted about this 10 months ago and you are building your site
and your films. How many total to you have on your site now?

My concern as a filmmaker is how do you (the website owner) draw paying
clients to the site. So few people will pay to watch a short film that the traffic
needs to be astoundingly high in order to get even a few paying viewers. I
love the idea of making a little money on my short films.
 
Probably yes and no.

From what you described, there is no way to secure the final product. If no one cares about this fact, then you're golden.

It's an interesting idea though. It has merit.
 
directorik said:
I admire your effort.

You first posted about this 10 months ago and you are building your site
and your films. How many total to you have on your site now?

My concern as a filmmaker is how do you (the website owner) draw paying
clients to the site. So few people will pay to watch a short film that the traffic
needs to be astoundingly high in order to get even a few paying viewers. I
love the idea of making a little money on my short films.
Click to expand...

Thanks man. I have lot of other language films than English films because those are the people who are submitting their links. But I am adding films whenever I get time. I think I have 300 to 400 short films collected from youtube. There is no huge traffic but its decent enough as of now. You are absolutely right about the traffic part and the money part. No one is ready to pay even a dollar to watch a short film. But, if we all collaborate and put all our films in one place, we might attract more people and they should watch the trailers and consider paying. They should think that there is something special about these movies. They can check the production quality, acting etc in the trailer. We cannot put all movies under paid category, I should pick a decent quality ones so it should be worth for the people to pay and watch it.

We have to be very reasonable in pricing it. Since we have no hosting fees, no submission fee and nothing, We have nothing to lose.

The only concern I see is that, any one can create a paypal and link it to a youtube video. What if the video is not theirs? So we need to find a way to authenticate ownership of their film and paypal just to make sure both are theirs.
 
Sweetie said:
Probably yes and no.

From what you described, there is no way to secure the final product. If no one cares about this fact, then you're golden.

It's an interesting idea though. It has merit.
Click to expand...

Thanks Sweetie. Once someone buys your movie, you will get their email address. You can then go ahead and send them a password potected link for your movie. You can change the password later. So the control will be in our hands.
 
Hello all,

I looked at many options to start a small level VOD but I couldn't find a good solution to protect the links after someone watches it. So I have decided to help indie filmmakers by collecting their movies and putting them under a new page called 'Premium Films' in my website www.short-filmz.com

You can use any video hosting service it may be distrify or vimeo or anything else. Just send the embed link to me and I will create a page for your film and add your movie. I just got a Vimeo pro account for myself.
Thanks,
VJ
 
Last edited:
This is a new and inventive idea you have. I would suggest coming up with a way to preview the films beforehand, since it'll be difficult enough for people to buy a short film, especially if they've never heard of the filmmaker.
 
mussonman said:
This is a new and inventive idea you have. I would suggest coming up with a way to preview the films beforehand, since it'll be difficult enough for people to buy a short film, especially if they've never heard of the filmmaker.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your compliments. I am trying my best to help indie filmmakers so I can also get benefitted from it. I just joined Vimeo VOD which is great. It has a way to show the trailer for preview. Check out my film in my website below to see how the trailer preview looks.

http://short-filmz.com/premium-independent-films/

Thanks

VJ
 
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