For independent filmmakers, seeking digital distribution in 2024 often feels like being thirsty in the middle of the ocean. There are countless avenues to make a movie available to watch online, but the endless sea of options has made it increasingly difficult for a film to stand out.
KINO offers filmmakers an innovative solution. The startup distribution platform helps filmmakers create live viewing events to watch their own films alongside audiences, allowing artists to interact with fans in real time. The innovative format was a hot topic at IndieWire’s inaugural Future of Filmmaking summit, where KINO CEO Daril Fannin, COO Austin Worrell, and chief marketing officer Brit MacRae joined IndieWire editor-in-chief Dana Harris-Bridson to discuss their vision for interactive digital distribution.
“For us, it was like, ‘First of all, how do we break through the noise’ and so we came up with an idea,” Fannin said when asked about the origins of KINO. “What if you could watch the film with the cast and crew? What if you could interact in really fun ways? So if it’s on the smart TV and it’s on your phone and you can ask questions and do live Q&A’s and get giveaways and actually tangibly interact with the cast. So it’s almost like the Sundance experience from the comfort of your own living room.”
With so many digital viewing options already available, KINO’s challenge was to develop an at-home experience that felt equivalent to going to a movie theater. The team sees parallels between a theatrical release and a KINO rollout, as both formats offer an experience that is premium, scarce, and communal.
“If you think about it, the theatrical release used to be premium, scarce, and shared. How do we recreate that digitally? You can’t just drop the video on the internet, right? We have YouTube. So how do we create premium, scarce, and shared?” Worrell said. “And so now, you can do a digital box office, a live video on demand that’s premium because it’s interactive, shared because you have fan community, and scarce because it’s only on KINO for a limited time before it gets to your ultimate downstream windows.”
KINO’s value proposition extends far beyond the live viewings. Filmmakers who take their projects to KINO have a dedicated marketing team at their disposal, and the company prides itself on using AI to make data-driven marketing decisions that put each film in front of the consumer niches most likely to be interested in it.
“We treat every single one of our indie films that come to us as small businesses,” MacRae said. “We have a premier success manager dedicated to each film. We have a full team who it’s their entire full-time job to make your film successful. And so we’ve been able to tap into millions and millions of fan communities online, create really niche and elevated marketing campaigns for each one of these films. We’ve been able to garner a lot of attention and a lot of eyeballs just with a little bit more specificity.”
The topic of data transparency in the entertainment industry has been a hotly contested issue in recent years, with many filmmakers and TV creators lamenting that streaming services don’t share viewership numbers. In addition to making it difficult to negotiate new contracts, the lack of transparency prevents artists from learning where their real fans are. KINO is seeking to rectify that problem by ensuring that every filmmaker who partners with it is kept in the loop about who watches their films. The collaborative approach helps keep creatives and marketing teams on the same page as they work together to connect films with audiences.
“A part of our business model is making sure that you have the data,” Fannin said. “As a filmmaker, I was always very frustrated because I didn’t know who my audience was. Netflix didn’t tell me who was watching the show or who wasn’t. And so what we do is we give you the demographic and geographic data not only of the millions and millions of people that are engaging on the marketing side and through our marketing push, but also who is actually buying tickets and merchandising. Because that tells you who your super fans are.”
Watch the complete panel from IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking summit above.
Special thanks to our Future of Filmmaking Summit partners: Canva, Kino, SAGindie, The American Pavilion, United for Business, and The Walt Disney Studios.
