Happy wonderful Monday. It was a wake-up-happy-and-rested kind of day.
I really needed one of these.
This evening for the first time in a month, I stepped away from my computer for more than an hour and didn’t even wonder if I had a support request. What a relief. When I came back I only had one support email — a thank you.
In fact, most of my emails today have been thank yous from the weekend.
The rest of the day has been spent catching up, creating sales reports for theaters and researching streaming systems. And I spoke with a streaming service provider.
I had no idea what all of these words meant a month ago: screencasting, OTT…
I love technology, but I’ve never been an early adopter. I still have an iPhone 5. I fall in love with my computers, cars, and phones and use them up until they die or are too slow to be useful. I learn new technology on an as-needed basis, all-in.
I love learning. With abandon and speed.
And when done, I go back to sloth-mode — sleeping, eating, sunning.
Until the next adventure.
And wow has this been an adventure.
They do not come for free. I *could* code them (poorly). There are many tutorials online for how to make your own apps. But technology changes, they break, they are nuanced, and they need maintenance and support. It’s a wonderful use of time to learn how they are used, but a terrible waste of time to spend hours attempting to build them.
So for now, we will make it clear to our customers that the film will not sceencast to Roku or Samsung unless through an HDMI cable. Alas no TV apps — not for now.
End-to-End Streaming Services
In my research, I found a platform (many platforms) that can create complete white-labeled streaming channels on all platforms. It costs a minimum of $500-$1,000 per application per month (iOS, Android, Samsung, Roku, etc…), or pay $2500 / month and get all apps included with monetization for advertising (AVOD), subscription (SVOD) and transactional (TVOD). That is one of the “cheaper” end-to-end platforms.
Content creators and publishers can get one of these channels up and running in 2–4 weeks, add syndicated content to match a brand, and distribute to all platforms.
Ok. So, that’s not what we are doing right now. But I sure love dreaming about it.
Bandwidth & Desktop Video Player
For now, we stick with what we have and continue making small changes. We only pay for bandwidth each time the video is played, credit card fees per order, and website hosting charges. Ultimately, I’d love to have a fully developer supported platform so that I can focus only on marketing and partnerships. But sometimes, doing the work yourself the first time teaches you who you need on your team the next time.
It looks like we’ll have about six more weeks of Theatrical-At-Home before releasing on all of the digital platforms in June.
Over those six weeks, we will partner with as many organizations we can, aim for some additional national press, and then ramp up our outreach and social media engagement in prepartion for digital sales on all platforms.
In the meantime, maybe keep me away from those search engines…
Before I find some new technology to research.
♡ Annie