Nu meeja and hoors
While browsing the interwubs the other day I came across something that piqued my interest. I am, although often quietly so, rather interested in the joy of media distribution, DRM and the like, and when I find something that seems to be trying to do things differently (especially if it’s ‘right’ in my head) then I am rather pleased. It is one of those things that I found, even if I am 6 months late to the table.
Sanctuary is a ‘made-for-web’ program that claims to be the first one of its kind to be distributed in HD (up to 720p, although there are rumours of 1080p trailers and a potential for full HD distribution in the future some time). It’s produced by some of the Stargate team and stars Amanda Tapping of being $increasingRank Carter in that show fame. Filmed mainly in front of green screen, the show is not as cheap looking as it might be and apart from occasionally ropey bits of script and acting (from my viewing of the first 17 minute ep) it rolls along quite nicely. From what I’ve read and have got so far from the ep I’ve seen it’s a supernatural/sci-fi crossover, with a secret group of monster hunters, a time travelling bad guy and a doctor that looks a little bit like Jeffrey Combs (there’s even some nice glowing green goo to give Re-animator flashbacks). Amanda Tapping’s english accent is rather off-putting, although imdb informs me she is an Essex girl who moved to Cancadia when she was 3, but sounds half decent if not slightly weird after so many seasons of Stargate.
The big thing for me is that the shows, once you have bought them, are available in a variety of formats, linked in one specific way – they are unencumbered by any form of copy protection. Downloadable as MOV or WMV, or viewable streamed online, they come with a PDF of show credits and also an ‘extras’ bundle containing some unprocessed scenes ready for fan remixing – an activity that is encouraged, along with reposting of those remixes. Once purchased (in either SD or HD form) they are redownloadable whenever you want, which helps with storage if you are someone who fills up their laptop with random crap every now and again…like me. For extra geek-ease points they use paypal as their payment processor, so I didn’t even have to get my wallet out to make the purchase, and at $2.49 an ep for the HD versions, and $1.99 for the SD (along with deals for bundles of 4 eps) it’s not that pricey. And if you’re not interested in the downloading then they are available to stream from a variety of places for free, and are linked from the official fan site.
This is a business model that I thoroughly approve of and shows a good awareness of their potential geeky audience. It’s based on a more “honour system” style of payment that pops up rather a lot when talking to advocates of new distribution and payment models – the busking style payment option, with a virtual hat sitting around ready to be filled if people like what they see. Offering extras for paying customers is a nice draw, but the easy distribution of those extras pushes the concept back to the virtual hat payment again, as everything can be obtained for free if people really want. Allowing remixes and fan subs, which are linked from their main site, opens it up to a new market and a big pile of free advertising via the net – the same people who clamour for such things are the same people who shout about it once they do appear, and often they shout in the right places. I’ve thrown them a couple of dollars and suspect I might throw them a couple more just for the HD goodness that it will get me.
It seems that the Sci-Fi channel agree, and two days ago the Sanctuary team announced that they’ve been picked up for 13 episodes to appear on the telly-box. There was some handwaving in the blog post that announced this, so I don’t know how much it will remain as an online distributed show, but I can but hope they can (and want to) convince Sci-Fi to let us have more than just a few crumbs from TV’s table.
It’s not the only program doing this kind of thing, but it’s the only one I’ve heard of recently and it has some well-known names attached (pretty much everyone involved is something to do with Stargate SG1 or Atlantis), so hopefully it’ll make some more people in the industry aware. Coincidentally I also ran across an attempt to push Firefly season 2 out in a similar format . It seems wholly unofficial, but with the fanbase that Firefly has it seems like it could well be a goer, if they could get the rights and the cast all signed up again, and then find either Joss Whedon or someone else that might be able to write a half decent script…
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Posted: February 2nd, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments
Comment from bazzalisk
Time 3rd February 2008 at 4:05 pm
I may have to take a look at that.
On a related note, I’m not sure that Firefly Season 2 is a good idea. The more I look at Serenity the more I realise that the TV series was perfectly good in of itself, and just about any direction Joss Whedon takes it in would likely make it less good.
Pingback from cowfish » Ebooks…again
Time 10th November 2008 at 6:13 pm
[...] as “free”. But that’s a rant for another time, although I’ve started on it before) and they’ve obviously spent some time and effort in generating the [...]
Comment from se71
Time 3rd February 2008 at 8:40 am
Looks really interesting, though before I pay, I’ll need to do a bit more research both on the format (I’d want my PS3 to play it, preferably streamed from my computer) and on whether it’s actually any good. It looks nice though.