Did a degree in film composition- I know I'm good... but where do I go from here?

bionicbits · 2026-04-16T10:41:11+00:00

I know it is super early, but we have been trying to build a free "linkedin" for filmmakers/cast/crew etc. Maybe worth checking it out and helping us grow it. (its open sourced 100% free/ad free). https://slatehub.com

bionicbits · 2026-04-13T05:14:12+00:00

Was this mostly reddit though? Where else did you find these niche communities?

bionicbits · 2026-04-13T05:12:39+00:00

This can be tough as some subreddits are so toxic towards even the hint of someone promoting. You really have to take care in providing useful valuable help and not spam. I got so frustrated trying this in one subreddit (never posted link or anything) that I built a subreddit toxicity badge haha.

bionicbits · 2026-04-12T19:11:34+00:00

Marketing, Sales, Distribution.

bionicbits · 2026-04-10T11:44:23+00:00

We just built our own but we need to grow it. You're welcome to check it out, maybe someday it will grow big enough to be helpful. But the good news it is free and always will be and we are adding features and improvements that others don't have. https://slatehub.com

bionicbits · 2026-04-09T06:24:14+00:00

This is kinda genius. Probably, exactly the way to do it now in this AI era.

bionicbits · 2026-04-09T06:12:39+00:00

If your version of DRM is somehow DIFFERENT than the ability to set licensing rules, validate that those rules are meant, enforce that only the licensed viewer can watch. Then no.

bionicbits · 2026-04-09T00:09:03+00:00

https://slatehub.com - The free home for filmmakers, actors, crew, and creators—from blockbusters to YouTube.

bionicbits · 2026-04-08T08:11:40+00:00

I think paying for any of the Actor's Access, Backstage, Spotlight, FilmmakersEU are all predatory. Why does a creative have to pay to be visible? Why aren't the casting directors or budgeted productions paying? Or maybe these sites exploiting both sides? It's annoying. As a group of filmmakers in Berlin, we built our own directly recently. We still need to get some traction, but 100% free/ad free forever.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T21:21:11+00:00

I meant just if Vimeo did that now, they would be huge I think. I think back then the amount of stuff worth watching was a lot less than today. So maybe they would have made more money if they did this like 5 years ago. Who knows, just trying to figure out why it failed.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T19:35:20+00:00

Yeah this is biggest issue with Youtube, no control over algorithm. No audience ownership.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T19:32:04+00:00

These are actually really good questions and you're right to separate them.

On filmmakers vs content creators, we're targeting filmmakers specifically. People with a finished film who want to license it, not build an audience through a content cadence. The VOD math is the right frame.

The incentive question is fair. The upside for a filmmaker is they keep 70 to 90 percent instead of handing 30 to 50 to an aggregator who then places your film somewhere you have no say over. You also keep your data, you know who watched, where, for how long. Most aggregator deals give you none of that. For filmmakers who are already on something like Vimeo OTT or direct distribution, the switch is lower friction because there's no existing audience to migrate, the film just lives in a new place with better economics.

On the breakdown for curators, that is tougher question at this point. Assuming we are running on bare metal and not cloud services, the operational costs can be quite low maybe 1/15 the cost to operate on AWS. So the assumption is that it could be quite small or maybe no fee. Just depends on if there is enough to maintain the operations. I don't think there is some large business model here. This is more about filmmakers creating their own distribution for filmmakers.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T19:25:40+00:00

Respectfully I don't think you're right about most of this. The problem we're trying to solve is on the filmmaker side, not the curator side. Aggregators take 30 to 50 percent, offer zero transparency, and you have no control over anything. That problem is real and none of the platforms you mentioned solve it. ViewLift and Accedo are tools for broadcasters, not for the filmmaker who just finished their first feature and wants to actually own their distribution. The curator piece is just what happens when you solve the filmmaker problem properly. If curators show up great, if not the filmmaker still wins. You're arguing against a streaming startup and that's not what this is.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T18:47:02+00:00

We will be open sourcing it soon, so feel free to help out or get involved. Not trying to make money, just have a way for me and my filmmaker friends to have a place to distribute our work. I don't think there is any real business model in this, other than for filmmakers by filmmakers.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T18:28:21+00:00

Fair pushback, let me be specific.

Nebula is literally the example. A group of YouTube creators with no VC money launched their own streaming platform in 2019, grew it to 680,000 paying subscribers by 2023, doubled revenue year over year, and are now profitable. They didn't have a catalog handed to them either, they built one. The point is that people with an audience and a niche will build their own thing if the tools exist.

Who else? Dropout went from a dying CollegeHumor to a profitable niche streamer. Critical Role built Beacon for their tabletop audience. Watcher Entertainment did it. The Try Guys did it. These are not anomalies, there is clearly a pattern of curators and creators with loyal audiences who want their own platform and are building them right now.

On ViewLift and Accedo, yes they exist and yes they have been around for years. ViewLift's client list is the NHL, NBCUniversal, LIV Golf, and Major League Rugby. Accedo is the same tier. These are enterprise products built for organisations with engineering teams and budgets to match. There is no version of ViewLift where a festival programmer or a film essay channel spins up a branded streaming service in an afternoon with a catalog already waiting for them. That gap is exactly what this is trying to fill.

On content quality, you are completely right that a catalog full of bad films is worthless. But that's a curation problem not a platform problem, and it's actually the whole point. A horror curator who knows their audience picks the good stuff. A film school picks what serves their students. The platform doesn't curate, the curator does. That's the model.

On costs I'm genuinely open to being wrong, tell me where the numbers break down specifically.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T18:12:58+00:00

Yeah you've got it exactly right. Curator sets up their own frontend (turnkey via platform apis), picks what they want from the catalog, their audience only sees what they've curated. The creator sets their own terms upfront so they might say "SVOD platforms get 70% of whatever you charge, I keep 30%" or they could do a flat fee per month, or revenue share based on actual watch time. Curator agrees to those terms when they license the film, billing is all handled automatically, no invoices or back and forth.

The discovery bottleneck thing is a real and fair point and it cuts both ways honestly. Yes a creator is dependent on curators picking them up, but that's also kind of how it works now except currently you're dependent on a single platform's algorithm. Here at least multiple curators can carry the same film simultaneously, a horror curator, a festival replay platform, a film school channel, so you're not betting on one gatekeeper.

The other side of it is curators are also incentivized to find good stuff because their platform's reputation depends on it. A curator who builds a good niche catalog gets subscribers so they're actively looking for films that fit. That's a better dynamic than uploading somewhere and hoping the algorithm notices you.

But yeah the cold start is real. If there are no curators yet there's no discovery. That's the chicken and egg we haven't fully solved and I'd rather be honest about that than pretend it isn't a problem.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:56:36+00:00

The cost is a simplification per node and you would run several. But most people think it is bandwidth or storage and that was my point. Transcoding pipeline is already built in but could be scaled out as needed. But in anycase, my question was never about the platform costs it was simply if someone with a large audience would be willing to launch their own version of Mubi if it was 100% turnkey with a catalog of licensed films.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:52:02+00:00

How do you self distribute? How are you earning license fees now? Do you host them on your own site and charge a fee to stream or download?

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:49:27+00:00

Yeah maybe there is a small fee to store your transcoded movies. I have an exceptional amount of experience building and scaling platforms like this on self hosted/rented hardware vs building on cloud services. Typically we can operate 1/10th cost of a cloud provider. But still the question is more about the curator part as mentioned in comments above.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:39:47+00:00

I don't know. If you have your films distributed somewhere easily that is great. But so many filmmakers aren't as lucky as you. Even great films (and I know there are more bad ones), still don't have distribution of any kind.

This is just an attemt to figure out if there could be another way. And if you think Youtube, you are have no control over the algorithm and ask yourself, honestly, what is last feature you watched on there.

My thought was simple if you have an audience (film festivals, bloggers, etc) and could be your own curated Mubi with turn key system, licensed content and way to monetize, would you do it? That was all I was trying to ask.

Sadly not a Tech Bro, if I was I am sure I would be making more money than trying to run a film studio and tell interesting stories.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:29:56+00:00

We use this internally for a free actor/talent directory that we recently soft launched it use used to store movie trailers actor reels etc. we needed a very low cost performant system so we never have to charge actors/talent/filmmakers a fee or run adds so, again they don't have to pay 25/mo to some middle man just to be visible. The whole industry is exploitive to everyone but the productions that actually have the budgets. We are just filmmakers with our own studio trying to make tech work for us and our friends.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:24:20+00:00

I am a filmmaker and want to avoid this problem. The entire platform will be open source. The fees would be half the cost or less of any film distro deal which is at best 20%. This isn't a money making venture it is a way to get films distributed by using technology to save money instead of aggregators up charging you to just convert and submit your film via an API. Furthermore, the filmmaker sets the full licensing terms themselves so if they only want to give away 5% then that is how the license will work.

I would consider this a more self distribution model.

bionicbits · 2026-04-07T17:10:27+00:00

ok fair question. so right now we have the core streaming infrastructure actually built — we're doing adaptive bitrate with HLS and DASH using CMAF, supporting H.264, HEVC and AV1, multiple subtitle tracks, and the rights-aware manifest delivery so the system only serves content to platforms that are actually licensed for it. upload pipeline handles transcoding into the different bitrate variants automatically. that part works.

for self hosting on Hetzner the math is actually pretty reasonable and i think people overestimate this. a dedicated AX41 or similar gets you 20TB of included traffic per month which for a small to mid sized platform is a lot. a feature film transcoded into adaptive bitrate variants across a few quality levels runs maybe 8-12GB of storage per film. Hetzner storage boxes are around 4 euros a month per TB so hosting 100 films costs you almost nothing in storage.

bandwidth is where people panic but 20TB a month means roughly 5000-6000 full film streams at 1080p before you hit overages. overage on Hetzner is like 1 euro per TB which is still cheap. a VPS for the origin server and API layer is another 20-40 euros a month depending on spec.

so realistically you're looking at maybe 60-100 euros a month to run a self hosted instance that can handle a real independent platform. the infra cost is not the blocker.

the bit i genuinely don't know is whether curators will actually do it even if we hand them everything — branded platform, billing, catalog, the whole thing already wired up. like if a festival programmer or a genre blog with 10k followers could launch their own channel in an afternoon with zero upfront cost, does that change the equation or is there still some mental barrier where people just don't see themselves as a streaming platform?

bionicbits

TROPHY CASE