Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Filmmakershelp is here to help filmmakers and it's free? Whats the catch?

Hey all,
We've been cooking up some fun ideas at filmmakershelp, and we have a message to all filmmakers out there that would like to get help, or find ways to help filmmakers find solutions to monetize their content and finance future projects. We've got quite a group of talent already gathered at the filmmakershelp website. Some of our members have been busy creating tutorial videos only found here on the free social site, for free and designed in order to really help filmmakers.
One of the popular interests of our particular group is the contest for helping Netflix with a more effective solution for recommending new films to users. The currently employed offered are nearly all about some program or mathematical algorithms.
My personal viewpoint is that they are missing their most valuable assets; The members.

But first following some of the most obvious trends, let's take a look at what the public wants:

Let's look at the trend of social element being part of all the major online players for content on the web.
We see Youtube growing even now after reaching an average of 52 million visits a month.
Myspace is actually on a trend to outdo the mighty Google for traffic, along with Facebook and more sites, and more social membership programs are popping up daily.
Looking at this topic from a sociologist's standpoint one could surmise that; people are moving farther apart, and want to more than ever belong to something, to fit somewhere, associate with something, be heard and respected by their peers.

Next we look at the content available, Youtube and blip.tv, as well as Google and the others have dominated the user generated content market by getting the audience involved. They put the most popular videos om the front page giving the users that are most effective at getting attention even more popularity and status within the group. Now Youtube is opening profit sharing opportunities with this new breed of social filmmaker, and growing even more because of it.
This is the online viewing audience. and they are looking for content. If accurately tagged and reviewed by the public (an option for the member).
I say give the public a chance and like with wikipedia you could be surprised what becomes of it. Wiki has redefined mans view of fellow man in a way and in general we want to have our line in the page if we know for sure, we're helping.
I think there is a social network solution to the Netflix contest issue give this new social filmmaker a place in the system. Here's a possible scenario:

Netflix Social Solution

The real essence of the system has to be the focus on the social system, bloggers, video bloggers, and podcasters compete to be reviewers or critics and the social network picks the ones they want to listen to.This way bloggers and this new breed of social filmmakers become critics (and of course have their paid Netflix membership) to watch and review the films thus becoming potentially professional movie critics,(and who doesn't want that job?)
the critic after watching the film, leaves a review that covers quality, genre', acting, and or story contents(but not giving away the plot surprises)and recommended list of similar movies with each review.(Herein lies the secret to effective film association.)
The social network then comes in and comments on the reviews, the reviewer getting a large number on positive comments (and rating stars)should be paid by the content provider with a standard to be set by the provider, (rating and popularity, number of completed views, etc.)
In this way the public knows how the system works and the potential of getting paid to blog is integrated, thereby embracing all the current trends of the web.

Honestly, I predict that the solution ultimately derived from this contest will look similar to what I have outlined here.
But I'm also willing to put my money where my mouth is, I can create the website and run the beta test through a service I recently discovered and would call it netflixindy

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