One of the main ambitions of the First Motion project is to build “the ideal platform” – for the filmmakers as well as the film-users of different kinds. For the time being we are working hard to fin out if this ideal tool already exists – or if we will have to develop a new one.

Four user groups:

In my opinion, the platform will have to handle the needs and interests of four quite different users.
- Filmmakers: A wide range of intellectual property rights holders should find the platform easy and useful to use for distribution their works to the users – and to get her or his well deserved money back.
- End users / audience: Individuals and small groups who want to watch films should get in in good quality, without technical problems and stops – and without waisting their time in endless searching for the films they want.
- Volume customers: Like editors in community media, web portals or TV channels, festival planners, art-house cinema directors etc should find films of interest very easy, get in touch with IPR-holders and be confident that a deal made through our platform will be serious.
- Investors: What the expression “new markets” really means is new persons with power to make decisions about moneyspending with a new reason why spending them on film. They will have to be sure that the projects they are investing in will be serious, and they will need to know whether or not they achieve what they want to with their money.
In the first phase of our research we have asked persons in each of those four groups what they believe they will need. In very short – those are their questions:

Filmmakers:
• IPR security
• IPR / territorial control
• Pay-per-view possibility
• Pay by third-person possibility
• Stockshot-trade
• Co-producing
• Easy access to new orders / markets
• Community

Volume customers:
• Legality concerning IPR
• Rich supply of content
• Effective contracting / payment
• Embedding with IPR-control.
• Possibilities for live transmissions
• Competition between filmmakers

End users:
• Legality concerning IPR
• Userfriendly
• Good quality on different bands.
• Access to free content
• Simple payment systems
• Multilingual metadata
• Multilingual subtitling
• Communityfunction

Investors:
• Legality concerning IPR
• Effective target group hits
• High volumes
• Inernationalizing
• Measurable results
• Effective contracting
• Competition

23-02-Bjørn Enes

“Sorry, content not screenable in your territory”

Who hasn´t seen that message or similar ones on your computers in the past? You want to watch a clip or a movie online, and then there is quite too often some kind of technical err that prevents you from actually doing so. Annoying. Seemingly a small problem to solve, it has become comprehensively challenging to come up with GREAT ways of handling digital content on the internet legally. The music industry knows this a little too well and are counting casualties in the thousands. The film industry is starting to get aquainted with the problem, but no solution has yet been presented.

With regards to online film, what people want is a thingy that is easy to use and allows them to access content wherever they are on whatever device they wish. I also believe that people WANT to pay for quality productions, just as we are used to with commercial broadcasters and the DVD. In these cases people have understood that quality comes at a price, and we are willing to pay, either in sense of exposing ourselves to adverticement or by actually paying for a DVD. But in the somewhat less hierarchical internet, pirating has become almost legitimate.

If pirated content will to a large extent take over for traditional screening (where the money flows are still somewhat working), it is highly likely that both quality and diversity in film productions will diminish,and we as consumers of content will have less to choose from.

But people are not sure what they get on the internet, and are therefor not ready to pay for it. I have personally bought the screening of a film online, payed 5 Euros for it and never had the chance to watch it (apparently due to some problems with my own internet provider). But that raised my threshold in regards to purchasing content like that again. Seriously, if I had not paid for the film I wouldn´t be disappointed when the film never came through. But I paid, and then I want my service!!!!

So how does the perfect platform works – a platform that with ease can deliver quality images, ensure the rights of the content owners, stimulate to more quality productions and give any production a larger audience?  In the coming months we will try to answer  these questions mentioned here and more.

So please give us your input and comments, and as we move along we will share our findings with you!