Sundance Institute’s Artist Services Program Partners With Reelhouse

Disruptive open video platform brings innovative self-distribution model to Sundance, offering best way for creators to sell and control their work.

Park City, UT(17 Jan 2013)

 

Reelhouse (http://www.reelhouse.org), the open video community offering the richest tools for self-distributed content, today announced that it has teamed with Sundance Institute’s Artist Services program as a digital partner. The partnership gives artists supported by the Institute the best way for finding audiences online, selling their work, and controlling the rights to that work.

“This is an exciting day both for Reelhouse and Sundance Institute. Sundance is one of the most honored names in all of filmmaking, and is an institution with principles very much in line with those of Reelhouse,” said William Mainguy, CEO of Reelhouse. “We want to do for web video – from shorts to full-length features – what the Institute has done for independent film for over three decades. Their artists are exactly the kind of content creators who would most benefit from the advantages offered by Reelhouse.”

Reelhouse is the open video platform focused on the content creator, offering the necessary tools to not only to self-distribute, but also monetize creative intellectual property, market to an audience, and build an existing fan base. Currently, the growing list of monetization options available are free, pay-to-watch and a support feature unique to Reelhouse that allows fans to support the filmmaker after watching the content in exchange for rewards.

“It seemed bizarre to us that despite the successes of open marketplaces in the music, games, books – and now – funding industries, there lacked such a marketplace for the surging world of quality story-based video,” said Mainguy. “We want to be that open marketplace, as opposed to the kind of platform that involves complicated agreements, costs the creator a significant fee, and provides a limiting experience, while also being very difficult to access and severing the relationship between the creator and viewer.”

In addition, Reelhouse offers a storefront for creators to sell physical or digital products, a news board to engage fans, and specific areas to showcase photos and other complementary media. It’s this kind of platform that helped Urban Outlaw, a documentary hosted by Reelhouse, become a viral sensation with car enthusiasts across the country, including Jay Leno.

The Artist Services program provides Institute artists with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing solutions for their work. Artist Services is made possible by The Bertha Foundation. These deals were brokered via pro bono legal services generously provided by law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which has built the legal framework for the Artist Services program and participating filmmakers since its inception.

To learn more about Reelhouse and the resources it offers both as a Sundance Institute Artist Services partner and as a free marketplace for all online film and video creators, please visit http://www.reelhouse.org/.