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January 3rd, 2007 by External link opens in new tab or windowCarolyn Schuk

For all the talk about IPTV and Video on the Net, Web video has really been just another place to watch what you could watch on TV - just as the Web was initially just another place to put your print advertising. I can hear you saying, "But what about YouTube?" You mean the place where I can watch my 16 year-old's friends making the same faces we used to make at that age in coin-operated four-for-a-dollar photo booths? Thanks, but no thanks. The fact is, aside from watching a clip of the NY Times' Maureen Dowd on the Daily Show and Eminem's Michael Jackson take-off video, I haven't come across much of anything I would chose to watch instead of, say, reading last week's New Yorker. Until now...


In a nutshell: Carma is a full-length horror movie created entirely by a pair of Silicon Valley software engineers. It was written on a Palm Pilot, filmed on a Panasonic 24p (high-definition, film-quality) digital camcorder, edited on a Macintosh laptop, and distributed by FastMovie.TV (an Internet pay-per-view system with DVD quality) as streaming video - no download wait. No Hollywood studios in sight. And that's the point.

But as interesting as all this is, the question remains: Is Carma entertainment? Despite its unorthodox birth, the quality of this film is in fact every bit as good as a Hollywood product.


The story is about an abandoned car haunted by a psychopath's dead mother and the inevitability of fate (Get it? Car-Ma). Imagine Quentin

Tarantino meets Steven King, with a good helping of Alfred Hitchcock and No Exit thrown into the mix with an appropriately creepy soundtrack. Karen Black, who starred in Five Easy Pieces and Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, Family Plot, provides the voice of the demonic mom.


To watch the movie, go to External link opens in new tab or windowcarmamovie.com, where you can also see free previews and buy a DVD. You'll need to download DivX, but the site provides a link and I was able to download it to my Mac and run the movie with no problem (the gold standard).

The movie is $4.99 - a dollar more than Comcast's pay-per-view. You have to go through an e-commerce checkout, which seems a little odd. After all, you don't have to provide your name, address and phone number when you buy a movie ticket. Now hand me the popcorn, I'm going to go watch Carma again.



Affiliate Advertising

Carma streams into film history as the first feature film to launch exclusively on the Internet via streaming DVD-quality pay per view. The edgy, award-winning supernatural thriller about how our actions can come back to haunt us has been compared favorably to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, and David Lynch. Carma features the voice of Academy Award(tm)-nominated actress Karen Black ("Five Easy Pieces", "Easy Rider", "The Great Gatsby") and a cast of "real people" including a San Quentin ex-convict and the film's up-and-coming San Francisco-area director Ray Arthur Wang. Breaking the shackles of traditional film distribution rules.

2010 Update


Note: Fastmovie no longer distributes Carma the movie. However the trailer is here for illustration purposes. The trailer above automatically linked sales through a unique affiliate code in the flash movie above with 1ShoppingCart.com - a complete affiliate program was implemented to sell the film. 


The idea was that movies could be distributed online through affiliate advertising on a pay-per-view basis for a low cost.   Now, the film is only available for purchase on DVD from the External link opens in new tab or windowCarmaMovie website.  Instead, we now see video on the internet as 'mostly' free and independent film makers do not have an outlet for their films, except through their own means.


It seems that the winner of the video format race is mpeg4 or the mp4 format for video.  Its now even being built into HTML5 as a standard. While players such as DivX play this format, so does the Flash player. 


The challenge for film makers we have said always has been in the realm of 'transcoding' - or converting the film for online playback.   While it was our original intention to build a do-it-yourself tool for this purpose, we have discontinued development on this tool. That does not mean that given the right partnerships a tool like this would not be needed or useful.


Instead we realized that film makers have a challenge ahead of themselves to distribute their movies online? Just try doing it yourself.   You'll find you have to 'slice' your video into 10 minute segments and post them on a free video service, or hire someone to do the work for you.   Still, how will you get traffic to your film?


Affiliate Marketing for Feature Films is still a great idea, and we were probably the first to ever pull it off in 2007.


Do you have a feature film you'd like to distribute? Contact us.


In the past 3 years we've seen a lot of changes in the streaming video space. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated. Please feel free to comment on this. Thank you.


21 Jump Street

May 17, 1976

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