| ISMagazine.com | Internet Today |
September, 1999 |
Now Playing: Movies Off the Internet
James T. Nguyen, President and Founder of Moviehead.com, shares his slogan for the role for both consumers and film makers: "Watch movies, be entertained... Make movies, entertain others." Nguyen also states the Moviehead.com mission, "Moviehead.com strives to be the home for independent film makers worldwide by distributing and broadcasting their individual visions to a worldwide audience."
A large percentage of the movies being made today are from independent film makers. Because traditional distribution via cinema, cable, satellite and home video is highly risky and costly, the majority of produced programs never reach the distribution stage. Thousands of entertainment programs and scores of original music are produced, but only 5% are actually distributed. The other 95% are sitting on shelves.
Moviehead.com will select and distribute previously unreleased and pre-released quality programs and broadcast them worldwide via the Internet. Foreign films, often released in theaters in the United States for a short time only, and seldom released on video, will be offered up to viewers online. Moviehead.com plans to meet viewers' demands by offering worldwide audiences entertainment choices they have never had before.
To deliver the movies and videos on-demand, Moviehead.com uses Microsoft Windows Media Technologies. "Moviehead.com is doing all the right things to deliver videos on-demand via the Web. We are working closely with them to deliver videos on-demand and pay-per-view," said Patrick McKenna, a Product Manager of Microsoft Windows Media Technologies.
Covering the Cannes Film Festival this year, the L.A. Times reported that, "Movie and Internet companies alike have been surprised over the last six months by the advances in software compression technology and access to faster online connections that make movie downloading a more immediate prospect for many consumers. Even the most skeptical movie executives have come to believe that a fundamental economic restructuring of the business is within sight. They say the next big flow of cash to pull the movie business out of the doldrums will come from the Internet through direct distribution of movies."
Moviehead.com is actively seeking quality feature films, television programming, videos and music for distribution and broadcasting on the Internet. Independent producers, film makers and distributors who have the distribution rights to their product for the Internet are encouraged to submit their productions for evaluation. "All pay-per-view revenues will be shared with the producer, distributor or the individual film maker providing our content," says Nguyen. Filmmaker royalties can range between 10-40% of the gross revenue made depending on the artistic quality of the movie.