So I’ve been doing a lot more with mobile stuff lately, and brainstorming some ideas on apps I can write that might help filmmakers. I think the first thing I would want to create is a framework that can be customized per film. This would allow me to provide it at a price that poor filmmakers might afford.
For me, I thin, an app might be useful as an audience building tool. Absolutely not something for delivering your film. Unless your film is geared toward a mobile app, or maybe a series or something. But a feature film in an app is dead in the water, I think. No, I think the best thing an app can offer would be a centralized place for your audience to get info on the progress of your film, screenings, etc. Of course, all of this can also be done with a mobile version of your site with something like the WordPress Mobile plugin. The main advantage to making an app would be offline viewing of content. Videos, articles, blog posts, etc. could be downloaded more as podcasts, cached locally and viewed even when no Internet connection is available. This is the primary advantage. Of course, there are other advantages when one tries to use features of the device only accessible to apps. Like location-based features, or the device’s camera, microphone, etc.
But for a first iteration of an app, here’s what I’ve been thinking:
- Deliver blog posts related to the film. Production blogs, perhaps other Transmedia blog posts from characters, etc, you might be using to build interest. These can, of course be easily categorized and put into separate tabs.
- Videos: Either YouTube or straight up video hosted on your own server. These can hold video podcasts, short content produced in the same universe as the film, etc.
- Calendar of events related to the film.
- Social interaction: At the basest level, allow users to comment on and share all of the above through the usual suspects: twitter, email, Facebook.
- All of this up-datable by you. My thought is to write a Word-Press plugin that would deliver data from a WordPress install to your mobile app. WordPress is wide-spread and easy to use and free. So you would be able to update the content in your app whenever you wanted.
- In app purchase of your film from iTunes, etc.
- Special feature content only available through your app.
- Tie-ins to things like IndieFlix? Your Kickstarter or Indigogo campaign?
- QR-Code tie-in for playing trailers off of your posters and postcards.
Okay, these are just spit-balling now. Personally, I am not sure how valuable any of these are. I am developing some much more customized features for the stuff I want to do with LOST CHILDREN. However, it’s possible we will also have some variation on the above.
But this is largely an exercise in figuring out if I can provide some product to the independent DIY filmmaker that is a) useful and b) cost-effective.
Does any of this seem useful? What other ideas would you like to see in an app geared at independent filmmakers? Which features would you find useful in such an app?
And what would you be willing to pay for something like that? Do you think it would be beneficial to pay for it at all? Do you see something like this adding value enough to budget for it?
What dream-features would you ask for in a mobile app for your film?
Feel free to leave comments below.