On Saturday, January 23rd, Flumotion provides the live streaming of the Filmmaker Summit of Slamdance, the international independent film festival in the US. Steven Soderbergh and other leaders of the film community debate about the impact of new technologies on the film industry.
New technologies are changing the way that films are made and are having a powerful impact on creation, production, distribution and promotion. In today’s society the audience is actively involved as Internet communities interact and can determine the worldwide success of a film.
Flumotion joins forces in Slamdance with 2 protagonists of the sector: The Mozilla Foundation and the Open Video Alliance. Flumotion Streaming Platform will be streaming the Film Summit live, this Saturday, January 23rd, from 18:00 – 21:00 (GMT), enabling an intense exchange among the film community. You can view this live streaming at: http://www.slamdance.com/summit
“Independent film artists and open source software programmers share the same philosophy, passion and sacrifice for what they do. Both professions require great creativity and have the desire to share their creation with the world. Making money is not the prime objective, they want to add value to the community”, explains Thomas Vander Stichele, CTO of Flumotion. “Open source software is also regularly improved and updated, since the community not only uses it, but report errors and add improvements”, he adds.
“Open source software is the basis of our technology and the origin of our company. That is why we want to enable everyone to use streaming technology”, says Jean Noel Saunier, CEO of Flumotion. Our multi-format und multi-device platform is also a pioneer in implementing support of the new <video> tag of HTML5, which is the basic standard of the Internet.
A new business model for the seventh art
These innovations lower the barriers to succeed in the film world. Producers and artists are not alone anymore as they can now receive help from Internet users who can become screenwriters, actors and promoters. This interaction on the Internet reduces costs significantly and gives low cost productions the chance to turn into a huge economic success. The growing offering of multimedia content via streaming has helped to significantly reduce illegal downloads that violate the rights of the author. Streaming technology also provides new opportunities to monetise content, for example, with the inclusion of innovative advertising formats.
The audience also has the opportunity to become a film producer. That is happening with “El Cosmonauta”, the first film worldwide financed exclusively via the Internet. This creative initiative from Spain has 1,506 producers that have invested 306,822 euros. Without streaming, the success of films such as “Estigmas”, awarded at the Valladolid film festival and premiered on the Internet before getting to cinemas, could not be explained. The Internet has been instrumental in helping to maximise filmmakers’ visibility and presenting opportunities that may have previously gone unnoticed. The box office hit “Paranormal Activity”, was screened at Slamdance in 2008 and was subsequently purchased by Hollywood studio Dreamworks. The film that originally had a 10,000 dollars budget went on to make a 100 million income and was a viral hit with its trailers screened online. These examples illustrate that the success on the Internet is not only virtual, but very real.
Technology for everyone
Thanks to open source software, the dream of a world where everyone has access to technology becomes reality. This democratisation of technology is little exploited in the film industry and opens possibilities to share ideas and content with anyone anywhere regardless of the budget.
“The streaming services of Flumotion are accessible for everyone, since they adapt to the economic and technological requirements of each client”, says Saunier. “Our multi-format platform ensures to reach a 100% of the audience. The open source technology provides us with multiple competitive advantages and therefore we always offer a free version of our streaming software”, explains Saunier.
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