OpenIndie
Author: Rupert | Filed under: Future of the film industry, NaBloPoMo | 5 Comments »–
Update: Kieran has responded with answers to my questions in the Comments
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Even though OpenIndie has been getting a lot of attention recently, it’s taken me a while to sit down and properly look at what they’re planning to do. Partly because of all the other things on my radar at the moment, partly because I knew they’re focussed on independent feature films.
But it’s an inspired idea – proved by the fact that they’ve just raised over $12,000 from 226 interested filmmakers. Just as IndieScreenings opened up distribution of The Age of Stupid (of which more here soon), so OpenIndie is being set up to help the hundreds of filmmakers who are crowdfunding its creation via Kickstarter.com.
It’s being put together by Arin Crumley (of Four Eyed Monsters) and Kieran Masterton from the UK – seems they’ve been planning it for a long time (5 years and 1 year respectively), and now it’s funded, it’s due to be launched on March 1st.
It will allow filmmakers to:
- Import emails/zipcodes of their fans so those people can be messaged about nearby screenings* Have a URL for their film to spread around, allowing people to “request” a screening.
- See information about which cities have the most requests for a given film.
- Members of OpenIndie will be able to create screenings of any each film complete with RSVP functionality for each film
- The host of a screening can collect donations at the screening and then transfer online to the filmmaker.
That’s Phase 1 of the Project. They’re now raising money for Phase 2: an additional tool called OpenLicence, which will control and clarify how films may be distributed. The details listed on their Kickstarter.com Phase 2 funding page say that this will mean:
- Filmmakers can adjust the maximum percentage that hosts are able to withhold as their cut.
- Filmmakers will be able to enable certain regions or provide access for screenings to be booked in any region.
- Filmmaker gains ability to auto approve each screening or chose to manually approve.
- A calculation built into the license that describes what an academic or institutional environment must pay the filmmaker based on an assessment of what that institution is charging.
- Filmmaker will be able to list public speakers available to be booked and adjust the fee each person must be paid by the host as well as provide a percentage split of donations collected at the screening that go to the guest speakers.
- Filmmaker will be able to assign percentages that must be shared by the Host on the selling of digitally reproducible physical goods at screenings. For example the host being able to print posters to sell, burn DVDs to sell, screen print the films logo at screenings or sell a USB drive that contains the film.
It’s exciting to see these kind of things being crowdfunded and built by independents. Every so often a new startup emerges with a marketplace or a tool for film funding that looks promising but fails to take off because it can’t get enough momentum behind it. Similarly, there are lots of filmmakers out there inventing their own funding and distribution ideas – much duplication of effort. A community-based hub for all this seems a great solution.
One thing I’m unsure about is what the use of the word Open in the name means. It implies an open source approach – and their blog declares “We want open values for filmmakers” – but I don’t see anything about Open Source written there, or on their Kickstarter pages.
Actually, it seems like it’s probably a private business owned by Arin and Kieran – which is fine, but it means they carry more responsibility for sustaining it. The money raised for Phase 1 is to pay for Kieran’s time to develop those tools, and for overheads like hosting. Their FAQs suggest that this will keep it going until the end of 2010. That’s not a huge amount of money for a year building & running an online tool which helps to distribute over 100 feature films around the world. Never mind all the screening requests, think of all the support requests…
When that money runs out, I wonder how they’re going to keep getting the funds to maintain, support, develop and improve it:
More crowdfunding; a cut of the filmmakers’ proceeds; member subscriptions?
To be clear, this is not a criticism – just my ongoing interest in how people turn great ideas into sustainable independent online businesses.
Great post! And thanks for your kind words… I think you raise some really interesting questions which I want to answer. In order to give them the time and attention they deserve, I’m going to write a blog post over at OpenIndie’s blog in response to your questions. I’ll post the link here once I’m done.
Thanks again,
Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder
I haven’t forgotten you, honest! Just stupidly busy atm
watch this space!
thanks, Kieran – i feel bad adding to your list of things to do!
Right, I have a spare moment between building Google forms for Kickstarter reward fulfillment and working on stitching OpenIndie’s film upload mechanism into Amazon S3 to give some attention to answering your questions. I was originally going to make this a blog post on our site, but for now, I’ll just reply and then flesh out what I say here into a post for the blog.
First up, what does “open” mean in OpenIndie. Well, you’d be right in thinking about open source software. We believe a lot of our values towards the site match those of open source software. Especially in terms of how our users will be contributing to the site. Crowdsourcing is fundamental to what we’re doing. Filmmakers are crowdsourcing audiences and screenings. We are crowdsourcing our startup funding and will be asking users and filmmakers on the site to shape the future of site.
As for open source in the software sense. We very much admire the approach that Automattic have taken with Wordpress and I would certainly like to make our entire code base open source. This isn’t something that’s going to happen over night, or any time in the near future for that matter. We have some very definite goals for phase one and two and if/when we do open source openindie’s code, it will need to be prepared and planned carefully.
Still on the “open”, topic, we also plan to make as much data as possible open via our API, so that anyone, on any platform, anywhere in the world can tap into our geo-specific data and build apps based on our our data and functionality. You can imagine the possibilities for iPhone apps etc.
Anyway, on to your next question, yes OpenIndie is a private business owned by Arin and I and yes, in turn, that does carry more responsibility for sustaining the site. And no, as fantastic as it is, $12k isn’t going to sustain the site for long. We’re not ready to unveil any plans beyond phases one and two right now, but phase two’s funding campaign (also on Kickstarter) is just as important to the future of OpenIndie as phase one’s campaign. And yes, think of all those support requests – haha – I will be handling those requests myself to start with and it will be a hard juggling act. However, we are purposely maintaining our private beta until we’re confident we can scale gracefully.
When the money runs out… yes, we have considered some of the options you list and some we don’t believe in at all. However, there are plans which consist of various options none of which are firmly decided upon, and as I said, we’re not ready to unveil anything yet. Right now, we need support to fund phase two (link below) and we need more filmmakers who want to crowdsource screenings and folks who want to put on screenings to get involved. It is the filmmaker and those people willing to screen their films that will make OpenIndie something fantastic, so if you want to help, please check out our campaign below.
Shameless plug:
http://bit.ly/3jvU0
Finally, thanks for blogging about OpenIndie and I hope I answered at least some of your questions
Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder
kieran [AT] openindie [DOT] com
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond in such detail. Everything you say makes sense. And yes, would make a great blog post on your own blog, framed differently, for anyone else who has the same kind of questions.
I’ll keep watching – good luck!