Step Right Up! iPad’s amazing secret movie distribution tool

Some things seem so obvious that you can’t believe they’re the subject of breathless feature pieces speculating about futuristic technology.

The iPad as an indie movie distribution tool, for instance. It’s all about the apps, right?

There’s an article today in The L Magazine, a NY events & culture mag, about how Behind The Scenes Of Total Hell will be the first indie movie released as an app for the iPad this summer, after selling literally dozens of copies on the iPhone.

Total Hell has used a Silicon Valley app developer called Stonehenge Productions, who specialise in getting indie films into the iTunes store and turning them into Apps.

The article weighs up the pros and cons of distributing via Apple apps and some other proprietary storefronts like Netflix and iTunes.

On the pro side:

No festivals, no distributors, no arcane gross percentage deals, no studio fees. Once a movie starts being treated like software, things get a whole lot simpler – not to mention more profitable for whoever made it. And since you’re shepherding software onto a gadget instead of bodies into a theater, you’re free to be much more selective in finding an audience.

But it warns about Apple’s control of apps for conservative and commercial reasons. Which should give most indie film producers more than a little concern, if they’re depending on distribution via the App Store.

It also mentions YouTube and Vimeo, saying,

nobody’s ever made their budget back that way. Like it or not, the current culture is amateur work on the internet for free and studio work in theaters for $12.50, and it’s not likely to change from the inside.

But, basically, the conclusion is that the app store is your best shot at selling movies via iPad. Suck up the approval/disapproval process. This is what the future of indie movie distribution looks like.

What it (and much of the other iPad hype I’m reading at the moment) doesn’t mention is that the iPad has an amazing secret feature that allows you to make money from selling movies in beautiful full-screen HD, without any content approval or DRM, and without giving away 30% of your revenues to the app store and a further X% to your app developer.

So here’s what Apple doesn’t want you to know. As well as selling apps, the iPad and iPhone have the incredible ability to connect you at the speed of light to a giant network of billions of computers all around the world at no extra cost, using a free pre-installed app – a graphical user interface, which turns specially formatted files stored on those computers into an incredible interactive multimedia experience.

But it’s not just about consuming. You can store your own files – including your independent movie – on any computer connected to this network, and use complex new computer languages to let iPad users find it, pay for it, download it, stream it, play it full screen, and even make it interactive with the iPad’s futuristic touch screen in much more interesting ways that are possible within an Apple app, Netflix or iTunes. And better yet, once your movie is on this network, anybody anywhere in the world (except for scary places) can access it instantly – and if they like what they see, they’ll use interconnected electronic messaging systems to tell their friends.

For more details on how you can take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity, call me now on +44(0)7906 576 071. Step Right Up!