Cinelan

Did you know that to earn $500.00 from online views of your film, in the 2009 current advertising climate, you would need to generate more than 200,000 views?

The challenge is “Audience fragmentation”, as you compete online with tens of millions of other pieces of published content by professionals and amateurs. And we're not just talking about YouTube. Journalists around the globe are now moving to the video editing room with their own footage, creating documentary style content on a daily basis.

And, as the lines between broadcast and direct digital distribution become increasingly blurred through Internet content coming to the average television, viewers will have tens of thousands of content choices in their living rooms, driven by search engines and marketers.

What can you do to compete and build a future for your craft?

CINELAN provides documentary filmmakers with painless access to digital distribution for their short-form work. Our vision is to build the world’s largest library of short documentary films, and syndicate those films globally through quality partners both online and offline, providing a continuous flow of opportunities and revenues to our filmmakers.

Our strategy is simple. Expand your audience beyond the documentary enthusiast to more mainstream viewers, using an easily watchable, easily shareable, and easily marketable three-minute story format.

CINELAN Three-Minute Stories are currently distributed through premier online video destinations like Hulu.com , Babelgum.com , SnagFilms.com, and others. We are dedicated to continually establishing new relationships – both online and offline, nurturing our current outlets, and keeping pace with the changing world of digital media to ensure we are taking advantage of every worthwhile opportunity – like using social media strategies to drive mainstream viewers to CINELAN films on our paying partner sites (Facebook CINELAN)

We are a small, filmmaker driven organization, founded in part by fellow documentarian Morgan Spurlock, and while we are not the biggest in the short film distribution game, we are the only company focused solely on advancing the interests of documentary filmmakers and their art in the mass-market distribution arena.

CINELAN differentiates itself by the 3-minute format. It's easy to watch, easy to share, inexpensive for our filmmakers to produce, and it fits well within the confines of newspaper and magazine style editorial, a market we think works well for documentary films.

An 18-minute non-fiction film is a “short documentary”. A three-minute non-fiction film, is just a “story”, helping us appeal to a wider audience.

Oh, and according to ComScore, the average viewing time online for video content is approximately 4.0 minutes.

We encourage you to suggest new ideas, revisit ideas from material you’ve already shot, or develop films based on previous or upcoming work (however, we will not accept trailers).

This could be the time to give an “orphan” story a home – it’s been in your head (or in your camera) but never fit existing formats. Or you could repurpose content from another short or feature to work in a three-minute format. Footage that was “left on the cutting-room floor” or didn’t fit in a final film also could make a terrific short feature.

These films could easily be completed while you’re waiting for funding for other projects, pitching for longer films, or simply want to exercise your talent in a new way with fast creative and financial rewards.

And, if your story needs more time to be told, consider create a short series of two, three, or more pieces. Take a look at our collection for some examples.

We need films, to build our library, and support our distribution partners as we work to achieve a critical mass of viewers for your work.

Also, to achieve our collective goals of building a quality short-film brand with long-term growth and revenue potential, CINELAN must maintain quality and format standards for all work submitted. Our standards are simple, but strictly enforced:

In the span of three minutes, tell a compelling and complete story, suitable for all screens and all audiences.

You’ll get 50% of the net revenues achieved by your films, from any and all channels—including theatrical and web. While revenues may be slower at first, hang on. Our goal is not to create instant millionaires, it’s to develop a market for your films, and short documentaries in general, among mainstream viewers, and to provide you with a foundation for ongoing revenues as the market matures. Also, while “net” means net of any formatting expenses and distribution costs, our costs are extremely low and you are free to provide us the film in finished format according to our spec to avoid any such deductions from your revenue share.

You’ll retain the underlying copyright to your film. CINELAN will hold a five-year, exclusive license and perpetual non-exclusive license to distribute and promote your film in all territories and in all media. You must own or have permission to use all content—including music and trademarks—that appears in your film, in all formats and across all media. This means we have the ball for the first five years, and thereafter we have rights, but you can also distribute your work as you see fit. Why the exclusive? Because we need to be able to offer exclusive deals as needed to partners in order to secure you promotion value and feature placements. Are there exceptions? Of course, if you have an individual outlet you would like to see your film in and have a means to get it there, as long as it carries the CINELAN brand we will always consider it.