You’ve made a great short film (or perhaps a feature) and of course you want the world to see it. The traditional method requires you to take out a bank loan to fund endless dubs of your film, as well as parting with a small fortune in postage and entry fees on the off-chance you might one day be the proud runner-up in the Outer Mongolian Film Festival. The festival route is a hit-and-miss affair – an enormous amount of effort and money that often results in a very small viewing audience (if any). Anyone who has gone down this route might ask themselves who they are meant to be – a filmmaker or a distributor? What if there was a way to reach a whole bunch of people with very little effort? Enter online streaming…
What is it?
Streaming films online is the result of converting a film to a digital file which will be stored on an internet server and made available for viewing (but not necessarily saving or storing) through a browser. The film is compressed at the server end, sent to your browser and then decompressed via the codec in your media player to be displayed on your screen.
Streaming differs from downloading films – to download an entire film you will need the capacity to download and store a file of around 600 megabytes or more. You will also need to download the entire film to watch it.
With streaming, your system only downloads enough of the film to fill a buffer, then as you are watching this downloaded material the buffer is being refilled, as the download continues. This way you can watch as much or as little of the film you like, without the hefty downloads (which will make viewing films simply impossible for some users). However, to stream over the relatively puny bandwidths the internet provides, the films need to be savagely compressed. (The data transfer speed of a 28.8k modem is forty-one times slower than data transfer from a single speed CD-ROM). OK, it might be a bit dramatic to use a virtually obsolete 28.8k modem as a demonstration, but it puts streaming data rates into perspective, doesn’t it?
The benefits of streaming include: the ability to reach far more viewers than traditional theatrical distribution, the fact that your end users (and you) can watch the streamed film over and over again at a time of your choosing, and that people can contact you directly to discuss your film…and offer you a three-picture Hollywood contract as well!
Where can I see it in action?
There are many online streaming film sites, with many flavours ranging from short films, feature films, documentaries and cult classic – some sites you might want to try include:
However, for a much greater selection, try going to Google.com and typing ‘online films’. Get ready for a flood of responses. And remember it’s not just films that are being streamed – fashion shows, conferences and sporting events are also being delivered this way. And porn, of course. Although nobody talks about that.
Not quite as ‘new’ as you might think
The internet can be considered either as one component of the distribution channel, or the sole, direct channel of product distribution. The latter is only possible if the product is an intangible one, eg. software, or in this case, a film. This ‘e-distribution’ has many attractions:
Online streaming does not require traditional intermediaries – the facilitators can be seen to be the rest of the world’s computers and servers. The internet does afford disintermediation — the reduction of distribution reliance on intermediaries. A product delivered entirely via the internet has virtually no reliance on traditional intermediaries — no delivery trucks or logistics or mail services to contend with to deliver the film.
However, it is entirely dependent on another form of intermediaries — the servers that transmit the information (in this case, the film) to the end user. The intermediary facilitators (ie. the many servers and computers the film must travel through before it is reassembled and played) are not within your control or even that of the online film site you might be utilising.
So, it is the same old system in a brand new form; the distribution chain appears to not have changed as dramatically as first thought. It seems as if the situation has deteriorated: we now have a host of unknown intermediaries over which we have no control and yet each of the links in the chain are vital to the delivery of the product. It might also be useful to consider the end of the chain — the user’s computer, or more specifically, the media player on the user’s computer.
It might be easy to think of the online film sites as your distributor, and the media players (Real, Quicktime, Windows Media) as your cinemas. Just as changes to a regular cinema affect films playing there (consider what would happen if your local cinemas decided to change the shape of the screen to a circle, or perhaps a 30cm square), filmmakers need to stay on top of changes to software-based media players – as they will ultimately dictate how your film is seen.
Most online film sites will be affiliated with one or more primary media players, and thus will be set up to best take advantage of the various features offered by their chosen player.
Read the Fine Print (dear God, read the fine print)
Your film has been accepted by an online film site! Who cares about the fine print – they’re going to play it and everyone (including your weird uncle in Alaska) will finally be able to see it! But how would you like to find out that your film now belongs to either the online streaming site or the player that streamed it? Or that you had been locked into a binding distribution deal that forbade you showing your film elsewhere?
Sound paranoid? Not at all. It’s best to remember the online film sites and media player companies are not in the game because they just love films like yours – it’s a business model which is all about selling personally identifiable information and advertising, and ensuring a constant stream of content, by any means necessary.
Just make sure you have a few questions answered before you give your prize film up for distribution: Do you retain all rights in all territories for your film? Are you entitled to any royalties if the film makes money? Do you retain licensing and merchandising rights for your film if it takes off? Are you able to submit your film to other sites even if the site you are considering accepts it? Are the sites able to use the ideas from your shorts without compensating you?
AtomFilms.com retains this right. ‘Material’, in the following snip from their submission requirements, is referencing the film you supply to them: ‘You understand and agree that AtomShockwave’s use of material similar to or identical with the Material or containing features or elements similar to or identical with those contained in the Material will not obligate AtomShockwave to negotiate with you, nor will it entitle you to any compensation of any kind if AtomShockwave determines that it has an independent legal right to use such other material…’ (AtomFilms.com, 2002)
There are plenty of nightmare stories hiding in the agreements for both the online film sites and the media players that will stream your films. There is no need to be paranoid… just informed.
However, with the above duly stated, the online streaming sites are actually performing an extremely important service, so you can’t be too precious about it.
How do I stream my own films?
Here’s the short answer: you don’t. Unless you have bandwidth to spare or just happen to have a couple of high-powered racks of servers sitting idle, it is just crazy to do it yourself. Websites such as ifilm.com and atomfilms.com exist solely for this purpose – they have the marketing power, the brand name and the server and bandwidth gusto to get your film places you could never dream of. And what are you trying to do: be a filmmaker or a distributor?
You will need access to converting your film to a variety of formats. Some services require Betacam or Mini-DV dubs, others Jaz, Zip or CDs, and some services are quite happy with good old VHS tapes. It’s as simple as finding the site you like the most (and one you think would be most appropriate to the content of your film), filling in the paperwork, sending off the media… and waiting!
How important is streaming right now, really?
A great many online film sites went belly-up in the late ‘90s because they were ahead of their time, or rather, they were ahead of their bandwidth. Attempting to watch a film online, (even a short one) with anything less than a cable connection is a waste of time. If you bravely attempt this with a 56k (or 28k modem… gulp), the picture will likely be choppy, jerky, full of unexplained stops and starts, and probably no larger than a CD on-screen. Hardly inspiring.
Online broadcasts of live events such as the infamous Victoria’s Secret (lingerie) parades did not perform anywhere near expectations – the 1999 event was a huge hit in terms of publicity, but a flop as a webcast. The shared servers were flooded with requests and toppled.
Madonna’s live internet preview of her Drowned World tour was also somewhat disappointing, with complaints of agonisingly slow frame rates, dismal sound and many people being locked out completely.
While the technology has improved considerably since these events (and continues to do so), it’s still all about the speed of the connection. Until we all have broadband internet connections, online streaming is just not a viable mainstream proposition. The studios want more users to move to broadband so that online film delivery can become a viable business, although the delicious irony is that research has shown the main reason people want to move to broadband internet… is to pirate films and music.
A GartnerG2 study has found that: ‘…only 2% of the 156 million domestic internet users had purchased or downloaded a digital movie or video.’ (GartnerG2, 2002)
With one in five users in the United States accessing the internet via cable modems and 43% of broadband users regularly sharing files with others (Gill, 2002), what exactly are all those users doing? If any more proof was required that broadband is a haven for file sharers, it’s useful to note that the illegitimate file sharing service KaZaA.com has struck a hefty advertising deal to serve ads on the KaZaA website and application… with an Italian broadband provider.
As with everything internet, the state of play today could be very different to what occurs tomorrow. Filmmakers should view online streaming of their films as an important addition to their distribution mix, but not as a replacement.