Film Festivals: iFilm Network
“If the consumer thinks ‘films’, we want them to come to iFilm as their first point of entry,” says iFilm founder Rodger Raderman. “We see ourselves as the portal, the first stop on the web for all things film-related.”
With that goal in mind, Raderman is taking the industry by storm. This summer he poached two key staffers from Variety–film editor Andrew Hindes and sales and marketing head Coco Jones. iFilm now has offices in three cities (New York, LA, and San Francisco) and employs more than 40 people.
iFilm offers filmmakers a “nonexclusive, performance-based, revenue-sharing deal,” says Raderman. (Through a new on-line revenue tracking system, filmmakers can find out how many people are downloading their movie and see how much money they’re making.) The site had over 450 movies on-line by the end of the summer, with 1,000 expected by the time this article is published. iFilm rejects home movies and pornography, but everything else is fair game. It’s “very democratic, but it is also a meritocracy; [we] let everybody have their chance and let the good stuff bubble to the top.” Raderman adds, “We don’t want to become a filter. That’s not what the Internet is about.”
Filmmakers attracted to the Internet, Raderman proclaims, “are young, enthusiastic, fundamentally empowered. They know that if they make a film, they can get it seen these days. That’s a shift; you can almost call it a revolution.”
Launched: February 1999
Plug-ins required: RealPlayer
Audience: [figures not available]
Contact: 832 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA 94111; (415) 773-2080; fax: 773-1506; contact@ifilm.net
Regions: California