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Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

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Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#31

Post by marcamillion »

fapi1974 wrote: post #25
marcamillion wrote: post #22

Sounds like an awesome idea...definitely tech/infrastructure heavy. I can see you easily burning through a ton of cash on this. If done properly, could be an awesome service...but it seems so easy to mess it up and end up flaming out. Don't mean to be a downer, just encouraging you to be cautious and make sure the product is extremely easy/straight-forward to use for the consumer. Done right, and priced right, I woul…

I've thought about the infrastructure issue a lot. The nice thing is that our value add is in the "create." We can hand off the "host" on videos that aren't profitable by just posting them to youtube or elsewhere...where they will still have value for the user, and where we can still generate some ads from them...

I was really talking about the creation side.

For instance, say someone wants to create an hour long video. From the little that I know of rendering video on my desktop machines - to render a small 5 minute video can take a few hours.

So it just seems that a long-form video will churn up CPU cycles that you are paying for.

Although, now that I think about, I guess you could just charge per CPU hour or whatever.

But I was more thinking of the creation - than the distribution/hosting.

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#32

Post by myoung8 »

fapi1974 wrote: post #30
myoung8 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little risk has been taken out until you've found product/market fit. Unfortunately, ideation and fundraising don't eliminate risk, they're the easy parts.

Touche. Hence the equity :-)

You're already ahead of the pack just by realizing that, though. Good luck to you. Feel free to reach out if you want any help.

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#33

Post by fapi1974 »

marcamillion wrote: post #31
fapi1974 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about the infrastructure issue a lot. The nice thing is that our value add is in the "create." We can hand off the "host" on videos that aren't profitable by just posting them to youtube or elsewhere...where they will still have value for the user, and where we can still generate some ads from them...

I was really talking about the creation side. For instance, say someone wants to create an hour long video. From the little that I know of rendering video on my desktop machines - to render a small 5 minute video can take a few hours. So it just seems that a long-form video will churn up CPU cycles that you are paying for. Although, now that I think about, I guess you could just charge per CPU hour or whatever. But I…

Definitely good insight. I am initially limiting the number of contributors and the segment length - so the processing could actually open up another premium feature.

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#34

Post by jcr »

marcamillion wrote: post #31
fapi1974 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about the infrastructure issue a lot. The nice thing is that our value add is in the "create." We can hand off the "host" on videos that aren't profitable by just posting them to youtube or elsewhere...where they will still have value for the user, and where we can still generate some ads from them...

I was really talking about the creation side. For instance, say someone wants to create an hour long video. From the little that I know of rendering video on my desktop machines - to render a small 5 minute video can take a few hours. So it just seems that a long-form video will churn up CPU cycles that you are paying for. Although, now that I think about, I guess you could just charge per CPU hour or whatever. But I…

There are a few outfits working on the resource intensive encoding problem. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is zencoder.com but I'm sure there are others out there if you look.

http://zencoder.com/

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#35

Post by fapi1974 »

myoung8 wrote: post #32
fapi1974 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touche. Hence the equity :-)

You're already ahead of the pack just by realizing that, though. Good luck to you. Feel free to reach out if you want any help.

Thanks for the offer - I will.

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#36

Post by [deleted] »

myoung8 wrote: post #27
fapi1974 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A really good point. Much risk has been taken out, but I feel pretty strongly that a really strong core team is created when there is real equity in play. I've put in plenty of time and money, but they're not worth anything until we win. I like my chances of winning better with a well incentivized team!

Very little risk has been taken out until you've found product/market fit. Unfortunately, ideation and fundraising don't eliminate risk, they're the easy parts.

[deleted]

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#37

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Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#38

Post by anigbrowl »

fapi1974 wrote: post #2

Would love feedback on this post - no mercy expected!

I see that your actual business model is 'templates + talking heads = a nice video,' and that the examples you cite are things like wedding tributes, or little opinion pieces. This is an attractive idea, because it's true that there is a lot of demand for this sort of thing, and most of it is pretty generic. It has potential.

But...'movie studio as a service' is a terrifying prospect, because there are a ton of people out there with scripts and a ton of people out there with cameras, and a tagline like that is guaranteed to attract the very worst of both groups. Same thing with the domain name - 'cine' puts people's brains into art mode, and when people are disappointed they often blame their tools. This is the sort of hump that besets products like MovieStorm and XtraNormal.

I am overstating it a bit to give you the pessimistic angle, but after about a decade of working in indie film and video doing everything from narrative to commercials, it's very hard to work around the inevitable quality problems in the post pipeline - the worse the input material, the less realistic the expectations of the customers about the ability to 'fix it in post' may be. The people who can shoot quality video don't really need a product like this, and the people who really need a product like that may be the trickiest customers to deal with. There's an industry joke to the effect that if the sound is no good, people will say there was something wrong with the lighting; the ability to manage expectations is going to be key to how the public receives it.

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#39

Post by fapi1974 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #38
fapi1974 wrote: post #2

Would love feedback on this post - no mercy expected!

I see that your actual business model is 'templates + talking heads = a nice video,' and that the examples you cite are things like wedding tributes, or little opinion pieces. This is an attractive idea, because it's true that there is a lot of demand for this sort of thing, and most of it is pretty generic. It has potential. But...'movie studio as a service' is a terrifying prospect, because there are a ton of peopl…

This is really good insight. "Movie Studio as a Service" has been used nowhere other than in this job posting because of the likelihood of attracting HN interest. I'm actually really happy with that particular result! As for Cine - that's a tough one...I often use "video" instead of "movie" because of different connotations. Naming took forever though - finally I got to the point where I just had to make a call. I don't think there's a good answer to the sweet-spot customer question until we get out there - my personal hunch is it will be more about sharing opinions and being seen than cinematography. And...the cinematography stuff offers great premium opps!

Re: Movie Studio As a Service (MSAAS) - Tech Co-Founder Wanted

#40

Post by yakto »

My first recommendation as your pro-bono interim CTO: edit the meta description tag on http://cinecandy.com so it doesn't say "Capture email addresses with this coming soon template. Suitable for companies in a beta or pre-launch phase or anyone wanting to build an email list around an upcoming site or product/service," because that's what's showing up in the first result at http://www.google.com/search?q=cinecandy
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