portfolio: Cinewav
Details
Role: CEO, UX/Visual Designer, Digital/Marketing Strategist
1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 4 days: this 14-month/1500 hour project began with an invitation to join the festival revolution VoD (video-on-demand) start-up, Cinewav©, during its raw conceptual stage. The invite was a consequence of my jack-of-all-trades skillset (UX, design, strategic thinking, digital strategy, marketing, etc) from web, mobile and software experience AND circa-2000 experience as co-founder of a Wicker Park-based record shop, The Quaker Goes Deaf, voted Chicago's #1 record store in its 3rd of operation.
Hence this project represents UX-specific work, but is presented also as a demonstration of the other skills I'm able to bundle with UX.
We took the project to Angel Investor Phase, with an initial commitment of $200k.
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The key differentiator between Cinewav and the many other competitors in the ~$25B video-on-demand (VoD) market was our pursuit of the position of de facto festival film video-on-demand (VoD) provider: our content was to be drawn exclusively from premier film festivals, our (initial) target audience was film festival audiences, and our passion was to connect these in a worldwide streaming service.
Q: In what way were UX analytical skills applied?
A: At its very core, Cinewav was dedicated to answering the question of how to enhance and extend the customer experience at premier film festivals. One the one hand, film festival enthusiasts were over-saturated with content, trying to attend as many films as possible before they disappeared; on the other they invariably were excluded from sold-out screenings of the most sought-after films.
From the perspective of the filmmaker, frustration and lack of financial compensation were the rule: even at premier festivals like The Berlinale (which filters ~6,000 films down to a final list of 300), less than 5% of the winning films we're being offered a distribution deal—with the rest struggling to find exposure within a broken distribution system...and—in the best case scenario, only seldom recouping production costs.
And from the perspective of the film festival, the months and months of preparatory work came to a close at the end of the festival, with audience size restricted to those able to make it into screenings.
In what way were UX design skills applied?
Symbiotic ecosystem was the design concept I created to address this concern, in short that everyone wins.
- Customers: at the film festival unlimited VoD access to sold-out screenings; then one month of free post-festival access to the full Cinewav library; then unlimited viewing for $5/month afterward.
- Filmmakers: expanded audience size at the festival; afterward 70% of revenue of a worldwide film audience, based on a tracking algorithm that allocates revenue based on total viewing time of their film; non-exclusive contract option; subtitling service.
- Film festivals: expanded audiences for each film by Cinewav streaming during and after the festival; and permanent 1.5% of revenue thereafter.
- Cinewav: film festivals become the means by which audiences are grown organically, and brand exposure is gained via association with the festival and via partnerships forged with national film institutes.
