Among other things, I'm the owner of our home town's very old 2-screen cinema. (Established 1928.) We tend to show a lot of independent movies. We of course already have relationships with all the major and minor studios and many independent productions companies. However, we're always on the lookout for great new titles. We have a fiercely loyal patron community here that loves to watch a wide variety of genres. Finding great movies is sometimes difficult, and I'd like for us to be able to connect with an increasingly wider set of production companies and independent movie makers. Does anyone know of any sort of movie distribution channel for small cinemas that solves this? I know we're not alone as a small cinema in search of titles beyond what the major/minor studios offer. And I'm sure there are plenty of great movies made by smaller production teams that are looking for audiences. It seems to me like there's an opportunity here for a distribution channel to which producers and small cinemas can subscribe. What do you think?
Distribution : Movie distribution channel to small cinemas by Gryphon Shafer
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Dear Gryphon, I would be happy to discuss with you if you like. You can email me at tiffany@ramolaw.com and we can set a time to do a call. Best, Tiff
Hi Gryphon...I would be glad to discuss with you various content opportunities......You can email me at umesh@orasimedia.com, alternatively we can talk on Skype ujoshi007.
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At my cinema, we'd love to find titles from smaller production companies. The problem is that there's a point where the effort to get the rights grows beyond the probable profit we can get earn off any single title. For example, we have good relationships with the major studios. So if there's a title we want from Paramount or Disney, we just pick up the phone, talk to our contact, and we secure the rights within a couple minutes. But of course, the majors produce quite a lengthy set of titles every year. So the overhead to setup the relationship was worth it over the long term. A small, independent production company may only produce a single title a year. For us to find them, contact them, and setup a contract takes more time than a single title is worth. Likewise, as a movie producer myself, I know that getting movies into the hands of exhibitors is difficult because they don't want to spend a lot of time dealing with me since I may only have 1 or 2 titles for them. So I envision a broker entity that sits between the two groups. Small production companies that only have a title or two per year subscribe on one side, and exhibitors subscribe on the other side. Most titles from small production companies don't see much exposure for a while, so the length of time between initial production date and when the title needs to be retired to the general rental market is elongated. So there could even be something like a marketplace of titles that exhibitors can browse through, select what they want, specify the dates of show, and accept contract terms. It'd simplify life for the production companies too, a bit; but more importantly, they'd have a marketplace where they could in one location have many exhibitors browsing at their titles. Once an ecosystem like that matures, I suspect it could easily turn into a content channel for Netflix and other online exhibitors who don't like to buy title-by-title but instead like to buy channels of content.
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Hmmm .... Sounds like a job for something like a Web-based catalog. I assume the producer would be responsible for providing marketing materials (posters, radio commercial scripts or audio files, 30-sec ads for local TV, etc.) and, of course, the content to be shown; the theater operator would be responsible for placing the promotional materials and scheduling showings; and the broker site would provide a limited number of boilerplate contracts/forms. Sound about right? Kinda like an Ebay for film distribution?
Right, exactly. The broker entity in the middle would handle the catalog and would pre-verify both producers and exhibitioners. (Basic "are you a legal entity" and "you agree to not to do fraud or other bad things" legal stuff.) Producers would have the power to establish whatever terms they want. (As in minimums, % gross, etc.) For small producers who don't use Rentrak, the broker entity could provide a means for exhibitioners to report ticket sales, which of course could feed back into producers' profiles so that future titles could get a reputational bump from past ticket sales. My initial thought would be that the relationship is non-exclusive for everybody. So producers are still free to distribute via whatever traditional means they'd like. The caveat there may be that after ecosystem maturity when something like a content channel getting sold to Netflix et al exists, producers may need to agree to some level of title distribution exclusivity for their title to be considered for bundling for a content channel. But I suspect most producers wouldn't consider that to be a problem.
I see the broker entity being both a broker, catalog, registration platform, and reporting/tracking system.
My first thought would be to leave it up to either the producers or the exhibitors to define what they want qualified on the other side. For example, a producer may want to limit the title to exhibitors of theaters of no lesser than a given number of seats, or only for runs of a full week rather than partials.
My assumption would be that this would be something like a marketplace where producers are offering up posters, previews, and other marketing materials, trying to get exhibitors to license their productions. So right off, exhibitors would be able to get a good sense of quality just from what the producers offer up. And with the collection of box office data, subsequent exhibitors could see how titles did at other venues. Additionally, it wouldn't be difficult to solicit ratings/reviews from exhibitors, as long as it was very quick and easy. As an exhibitor myself, I wouldn't mind giving a title 1-to-5 stars or something when I first update my grosses.
This leads me to wonder if there should be a "private view" of the marketplace only for verified producers and exhibitors, and perhaps also a "public view" for everyone else. In the public view, box office numbers and other sensitive information would get hidden. However, the public view could be a place where actual patrons who have seen the production can rate it, maybe. But at first, I think such a public view would be unnecessary. Easier to just keep the whole thing private.
My Friend this is exactly what my company is doing.....We have created a global market place for content owners and buyers. Where in sellers of content can put up their content for buyers from across the world to see and evaluate. The buyer has various features like Category-wise search, advance search for rights type, duration, etc. In addition the entire information related to content is available along with a sample to view online and evaluate. We already have signed 70 customers (mix of buyers & sellers) with limited efforts from international market like Germany, France, UK, Middle East, USA, China, Bulgaria, South Africa, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Nigeria to start with. We have already close to 2500 odd content getting listed on the marketplace. Have buyers who are currently looking out to acquire close to 5000 hours of content in movies, travel, food, cartoon, kids, music and sports category. Let me know if anyone wants to hear more about what we do and how it works? I can be inboxed on umesh@orasimedia.com and alternatively skyped on ujoshi007.
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I want to hear more, and I'll bet a lot of others would, too.
Umesh: What's your company's name and web site? Is it orasimedia.com?
yes Gryphon.....but you will not be able access the marketplace since it is for only the registered buyer & sellers.....
UJ --- Looks good. I've bookmarked so when I have content ready I'll give it a try. Thanks. --- CGM
GS --- Picking up on the public/private issue. There should be both sides. You need to qualify both buyers and sellers to ensure they're legitimate before putting them together on the private side. That's one of the first duties of a broker. But, nobody's going to bother jumping through your hoops to register for the private side until you've sold them on the value of your service through the public side of your site. --- CGM
I agree www.mehernoshkapadia.com