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- Article: ScreenPlay to Deliver Full-length Movies Online
Trailer Service to Streamline Digital Distribution
By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, July 17, 2009
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6671822.html
ScreenPlay, Inc., which has been delivering movie trailers to sites across the Internet for a decade, is positioning itself to do the same for full-length movies.
ScreenPlay CEO Mark Vrieling said the company plans to streamline digital movie delivery from studios to digital retailers the same way the company streamlined the process for movie trailers.
ScreenPlay has deals with all the major studios for digital movie trailers, which it puts into a standard digital format and distributes online to customers that include IMDb, Best Buy, The New York Times and others. It also handles all Disney trailers in most regions of the world. ScreenPlay has a deal with a smaller supplier it won’t yet name for full-length films, but plans to fully roll out the service with other partners in the fourth quarter.
For full-length movies, the digital distribution process is tedious, requiring studios and other suppliers to create different digital formats for each movie service, because there are so many formats and copyright technologies being used.
“It’s becoming a bit of a headache for all of them,” Vrieling said. “What Netflix wants for a digital file is not the same as what Apple wants, which is different again from what Amazon wants, which is a whole different process from what CinemaNow wants.”
Vrieling said ScreenPlay could make the process more economical for studios, which currently get their digital masters from DVD replicators and then make a different master for each digital retailer.
The company plans to house digital masters from the studios on servers, which could then be transferred in real-time and in the necessary format to the various retailers.
For now, Vrieling is calling the new service Digitally-bonded Warehouse, noting that the company is already bonded by the Motion Picture Association of America.
ScreenPlay also plans to handle metadata information on those files for studios. Metadata—the film summary, cast list and other information about a film—has become another area of frustration for studio and digital retailers because there is no standard. Studios all include different information, each in their own file format. And retailers all require different levels of information for their sites, some including a full cast list and other just key actors, for example.
Vrieling chairs the metadata committee for the Entertainment Merchants Association, which is working to develop a set of uniform standards for metadata. Vrieling said several studios and retailers have been testing proposed guidelines, looking at things like protocol for when a studio has a 35-word synopsis but a retailer’s site only fits 25 words; does the retailer cut the last 10 words or does the studio rewrite it?
Vrieling said ScreenPlay is talking to studios about creating templates, which would use whatever standards EMA establishes to make the process more efficient. And because ScreenPlay plans to transfer the data and digital files in real time, files will be automatically updated for retailers as ScreenPlay updates the film’s information. So, if a film is nominated for a Golden Globe, that would be immediately noted in the movie’s details with the retailer.
Vrieling said ScreenPlay also will be able to update files with the latest specs for retailers and studios immediately rather than resending the file.
Vrieling said it’s all about eliminating redundancy.
“Why does every studio have to have a division that does this when we can make it once?” he asked. “This is an outgrowth of what we’ve already been doing with the trailer business.”
- ScreenPlay Inc. Takes Hollywood Video Promotions International
Content Management System Expands Coverage to 19 Countries and 12 Languages
SEATTLE – June 16, 2009
ScreenPlay Inc., a provider of one of the world’s largest catalogs of promotional video content, today announced the expansion of the ScreenPlay Passport™ Content Management System to include delivery of customized media assets to 19 countries in 12 languages.
ScreenPlay acquires promotional video content, including movie trailers, music videos, and video game trailers, directly from movie studios, music companies, and video game publishers. With ScreenPlay Passport’s™ newly added capabilities, content owners can easily deliver video promotions for Internet properties in each of their targeted geographic regions. For example, a single Spanish trailer can be distributed to all Spanish speaking territories, with customized “Coming Soon” or “Out Now” marketing. ScreenPlay Passport™ ensures that the right marketing message is matched with the right trailer, so films are promoted on the right dates in each territory. Content owners who take advantage of ScreenPlay’s international solution can experience significant cost savings in their promotional video encoding costs.
“ScreenPlay Passport™ makes it very easy for content owners to market their assets internationally,” said Mark Vrieling, CEO of ScreenPlay Inc. “Our full suite of promotional services enables anyone from a small independent to a major Hollywood studio to very quickly customize, distribute, and manage content worldwide.”
The ScreenPlay Passport™ Content Management System helps content owners manage their physical and digital archives of video content. With ScreenPlay Passport™, content owners easily set exclusives, assign release dates, and view reports through a simple Web-based interface. Clients can securely store and access their library, encode it to multiple formats, distribute it to a promotional network, apply business rules (such as release dates, exclusive clips, and restricted sites), and access viewership reports.
Web publishers and mobile phone application developers use ScreenPlay’s “Passport Connect” solution to stream video clips from ScreenPlay’s catalog of more than 36,000 promotional video assets, including trailers, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. Clients receive automated delivery of content via FTP or Web Service, and can access an array of viewership reports in order to enhance their online marketing knowledgebase.
As an expert in the video industry for 20 years, ScreenPlay also provides professional encoding services for content owners. Encoding services include master digital file creation, audio and color normalization, secure lifelong storage of tapes and digital files, and transcoding to any file format.
About ScreenPlay Inc.
Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Seattle, ScreenPlay Inc. is a trusted provider of promotional video content for the world’s leading publishers and retailers. Each month ScreenPlay delivers more than 30 million video streams to an audience of more than 300 million unique viewers. With the ScreenPlay Passport™ Content Management System, studios, labels, retailers and publishers worldwide can easily display video content in any format and on any medium from in-store kiosks to iPhones. For more information, visit www.screenplayinc.com.
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ScreenPlay Passport™ is a trademark of ScreenPlay Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners in the U.S. and other countries.
For more information, press only:
Adrienne Lenhart, ScreenPlay Inc. | (253) 961-7464 | adrienne.lenhart@screenplayinc.com
