Having owned Xcreative, a web development company that specialized in websites and marketing for the movie industry, the founders of MeDeploy (Christian Taylor, Joelle Musante, and Abe Lettelleir) were very familiar with the film industry. But for every filmmaker they helped, several more were turned away. Why? Cost. So many of the filmmakers simply couldn't afford the services the company provided.
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While at Xcreative, MeDeploy's founders were also constantly asked by everyone from small filmmakers to large movie studios how they could distribute films directly to the millions of customers on social networks. Unfortunately, there wasn't a good solution available. These challenges led to the creation of their new company, MeDeploy. They saw an opportunity to build a platform that would cater to both the indie filmmakers who couldn't afford enterprise-level professional services as well as to the studios who wanted to market and distribute films via social networks. Over the next two years, they built what may very well be the next-gen platform for the distribution of digital media.
Affordable Film Distribution On Any Site, Any Social Network
MeDeploy is a new digital media distribution platform that just launched last week at DEMO. With this solution in place, any filmmaker, whether a big Hollywood studio or small indie artist, can get access to all the tools needed to manage and distribute their content to any web site, social network, or mobile device. The platform offers features like media transcoding, content management, media storage, delivery, anti-piracy tools, and secure credit card processing. Films can be sold as digital rentals, download-to-own videos, or video-on-demand sales.
Instead of offering pre-made templates or store-widgets, MeDeploy offers a white label solution for sales, marketing, and distribution on any web site anywhere on the web. It provides the necessary tools for doing so in the form of widgetized bits of code. These aren't just simple "blog widgets" functioning as ads, either. The site provides cut-and-paste code for several different types of functions from "add to cart" to "watch trailer" to something called a "balloon widget," which pops up additional info about a title when you hover your mouse over an item, like an image for example.
A Balloon Widget In Action:
The code samples can be pasted into any web site, blog, or social network, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Imeem, and other networks on the OpenSocial platform.
Why This Matters
Although some filmmakers may be technical, they shouldn't have to be advanced web developers in order to market their movies on their own sites or social network pages. (Of course, if they are technical, the developer API and documentation are available). By offering a white label solution, customers don't have to leave their current location in order to buy or view the films - the media can come to them instead, no matter which site or social network they're on at the time.
A Social Network Widget for Brain Damage Films
Who knows how many indie films are sitting out there unseen and unknown simply because the filmmakers can't afford to market them. Similar to how blogging CMS platforms leveled the playing field for online publishing, tools like this one from MeDeploy can do the same for filmmakers.
Pricing
Prior to MeDeploy, the only options for distributing paid video content like movie downloads were very expensive enterprise digital solutions that only large studios and TV networks could afford.
MeDeploy's Dashboard
Although MeDeploy was designed to help the indie filmmaker, that's not to say that it can't cater to the large studios, too. The company offers two pricing tiers: MeDeploy Indie ($19.95/mo) and MeDeploy Professional ($199.95/mo). With the Indie account, a filmmaker has everything needed to get started with online distribution. When their catalog and distribution needs change, they can then upgrade to Professional, which is a more customizable and scalable solution ideal for larger distributors, studios, and broadcast networks.
Any filmmakers out there who want to test the waters prior to signing up can get started with a free 30-day trial: just visit www.medeploy.com.
For more information, check out their presentation from DEMO, embedded below:
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