Our short film, The Oblique Sector, premiered a year ago at The Nantucket Film Festival.
The Albion Park Productions team spent a glorious and eventful several days on that quaint little island taking part in the festival scene and the old-time whaling seaport atmosphere: Meeting, greeting, taking part in Q&A's, catching other interesting films and enjoying the parties, workshops and readings for which the NFFest is justly famous. Then it was over. Back to work (and on to the next festival).
Fast-forward nearly a year: We received an email from the Nantucket Film Festival inviting us to participate in a "streaming partnership" with Film Armada, as an extension of the Nantucket Film Festival 2012. Film Armada describes itself as an "Online Theatron." For the duration of the NFFestival, our short would be available streaming online and all revenue associated with ad sales and "tickets" sold to view our film would go entirely to us. After the festival, our short would be withdrawn or we could choose one of two options to leave it up as part of Film Armada or the NFFest archives.
What's to lose, right? Licensing agreements were signed, digital files were delivered, and The Oblique Sector is currently available (for the rest of today) online here: http://www.filmarmada.com/film/682441/oblique-sector
How this will play out financially remains to be seen. I haven't purchased that yacht for the visit to Cannes next year, but who knows. It's a new world out there when it comes to distribution and revenue streams and to an extent, it's about trying out new concepts and ideas and seeing what sticks.
Film Armada is in beta. And in some ways, it shows. It's not really clear to me how much it costs to view our film, but it's reportedly $3. However, signing up and logging in to the site, it appears there is a $10 minimum purchase of credits, so that raises the "random casual viewer" bar fairly high, right off the bat.
And our film is represented by a rather awkward frame grab (automated, I presume?), as you can see below.
As any of you who have seen the film know, The Oblique Sector is not really about Amanda Good Hennessey's chest. Sorry, Amanda! I think we can blame it on the bot.
