For most filmmakers, unless you’re discovered at a film festival, it is very difficult to get your movie out to a potential audience. For one company based in Austin, Texas, B-Side Entertainment, they wanted to change things and make it much easier for great films, regardless of their initial commercial potential, to get a chance to develop and grow an audience.
B-Side Entertainment and Acutrack are helping filmmakers extend their reach, by changing the way film makers distribute their work. Nowadays, it's possible to deliver content via DVDs, cost effectively to target audiences.
We spoke with B-side's product manager Joe Butros who said, "At B-side our main goal is to help undiscovered independent films find the audience that they deserve. We power 110 film festival audiences who go online and rate and review films. This gives us a chance to watch - through those websites - how festival audiences review films. We can watch in real time and see how the films are liked before any one else does."
Film makers are separated into two categories. Those who get a lot of buzz via studio interest, and others where it is their first film festival, and who have few or no resources to get the buzz out. In fact, Joe said that close to 90 percent whose films have little life outside of the festival.
He said that what led them to Acutrack was the fact that they focused on "sure thing films" and they knew these had great commercial appeal and would probably require alot of duplication for sales. But they also knew there were other films that didn’t shout out, so they appeared to be more high risk. B-side knew they might be successful commercially and still represented a revenue opportunity.
But, a DVD investment would put B-side at risk because 5 to 10 thousand DVDs run off and warehoused before people started buying them made it tough. WHereas Acutrack allows them to order DVDs on demand. Acutrack helped B-side to diversify the films by integrating with B-side's web store. As soon as orders come in, the films go out the same day via Acutrack's On Demand model. It helps B-side keep their costs down due to no inventory.
Now they are able to reach out to more filmmakers and essentially the per title costs are one. Acutrack can also provide fulfillment through to shipping worldwide which appeals to an international film audience.
Filmmakers simply send a master DVD, logos, photos, etc. to Acutrack who has their art department do the artwork for the disc and DVD jacket, and duplicaiton DVD, and in a day they send a check disc in the mail. If the client approves it, it’s ready for sale and integrated into the website.
From a business perspective, Acutrack helps take away roadblocks with filmmakers, removes up front risks of up front capitol. Plus today there's more dynamic content for on demand DVDs. Short films are great to watch online, but for 3 minute films Acutrack can offer its customers 5-10 short films. Acutrack will author them, and send them out. Customers and filmmakers want it.
The trend for the future is giving consumers choices for more content on a DVD, and Acutrack has all the latest new DVD formats in place for their on demand system.
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