February 12, 2012

Notes from Movieland: Do-It-Yourself Distribution—Part III

NewFilmmakers Online

by Anne Norda | Published November 28, 2008

I’m going to end this short series on self-distribution with some info on yet another outlet for distribution. Many others exist or are about to be birthed—with a little research, I trust you’ll stumble on at least a dozen. For now, I humbly present NewFilmmakers Online.

I met Barney Oldfield in New York when his NewFilmmakers screening series featured my film, Red Is the Color of, at the Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue and Second Street. (There’s also a Los Angeles arm of NewFilmmakers, which holds screenings at the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood.) Barney’s been faithfully screening and promoting independent films, short and feature length, for over a decade. He’s relentless in his support of the indies. Hail Barney!

He is working with Bill Elberg’s new company, VLADIcast, Inc.. They provide digital distribution technology for various organizations. The service that they offer to moviemakers, NewFilmmakers Online, has been live and in public beta since the first week of September.

Here’s how it works: Moviemakers pay $49.95 for an initial encoding and deployment package, then set up a PayPal account for themselves into which all payments are made. No waiting for checks or moviemakers to hit minimums. The moviemaker sets the price and can change it at any time.

Once the movie is online, it’s available for one price for customers to stream, download, sync to their iPod and burn directly to a DVD. Viewers may watch the first 10 minutes for free to decide whether they wish to purchase the entire movie.

All enrolled moviemakers receive a widget for their movie that can be shared on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. And, like visitors to NewFilmmakers Online, viewers on social networking sites are able to watch the first 10 minutes as a preview and click through to purchase the entire movie. Moviemakers receive real-time stats for their movie’s page traffic via Google Analytics.

The initial payment allows moviemakers get their work encoded into three formats: Streaming flash, iPod/iPhone compatible download or one-click burn-to-DVD (playable on any DVD player). With this package, moviemakers can sell up to 10 digital copies at any price they wish. Additional copies may be purchased for various amounts, the cheapest of which is 10 digital copies for $30.00.

You can check out their first participating movies online at www.newfilmmakersonline.com/catalog.aspx.

The company also has a series of blog articles with additional information on ways that moviemakers can promote their movies online. Read them at http://newfilmmakers.blogspot.com/.

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I’m culling ideas for the next blog. Anybody have a suggestion? Anybody want to share their unique and astonishing cinematic journey with our readers? E-mail me and I’ll try to include you. As long as you have a sense of humor about whatever calamity you’ve faced, struggle you’ve struggled, obstacle you’ve overcome, miseries and/or triumphs you’ve hurdled, I’ll gladly help you spew your story to the world.

Good luck with your own personal Do-It-Yourself distribution journey! Power on!

Optimistically yours,

Anne