There are several ways to get your film out there. This is but one. Sounds like a good one.
A friend of mine works for a little company called Quiver. While I’ve yet to use their services myself, every time my buddy talks about it, I make a mental note for when the day comes that I have a film of my own to share with the masses. Let’s face it, distribution is not the sexiest part of filmmaking, but unless you’re an auteur who doesn’t give a crap about the life of your work after it’s done (’cause it’s about the PROCESS, man!), distribution may very well be one of the most important parts. Not knowing a whole lot about shopping distribution rights, theatrical releases or how to get anything up for sale on Amazon, services like Quiver are a godsend.
So naturally, I was excited and intrigued when Mashable broke the news about a new partnership between Quiver (which has been around since 2011 as en extension of Premiere Digital Services) and the Sundance Institute, announced right before the Sundance Film Festival. Enter Quiver Digital.
First, a word from Quiver – about Quiver:
Quiver is a digital services and distribution company. We provide technical services for your feature and short films, episodic content, music and music videos. We also provide aggregation and distribution capabilities for content to popular digital retail platforms like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and more. Unlike much of our competition, we provide services for one-time service fees, so you keep all revenue from your specified retail platforms.
Quiver is a tool in the filmmaker and rights holder’s arsenal. We give control to the people who deserve it most.
You.
And here’s an excerpt from the Mashable story:
Quiver Digital is a distribution dashboard through which participants can very quickly and easily push their movies to iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Google Play, Vudu and Sony Entertainment Network, all at once and all in one place. No more need to deal with different distributors and their Byzantine conversion protocols, which can still be a headache-y and time-consuming process.
Sundance Institute’s deal with Quiver’s parent company Premiere Digital Services, announced Wednesday on the eve of the Sundance Film Festival, gives artists streamlined access to the major retailers through Quiver. The software is available only through the institute’s Artist Services initiative, which has been providing filmmakers with creative self-distribution, funding and marketing tactics since its launch in 2011.
“In today’s market, creative funding, marketing and distribution strategies are required to ensure that that independent content creators retain their rights and earn fair, sustainable revenue, and audiences find distinctive, authentic narrative and documentary stories,” Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute, told Mashable. “Artist Services through Quiver Digital offers efficient and easy-to-use tools that allow filmmakers to more effectively connect with their audience.”
Premiere Digital put the software suite together via direct distribution deals with major digital platforms. Quiver offers encoding, licensing and digital delivery services, giving filmmakers exclusive access to a diverse menu of distribution models. It can be used alone, or to complement deals for certain territories, categories or time frames.
The Artist Services initiative has already launched over 100 new and encore Sundance Institute films into the digital marketplace, with more than 200 alumni artists — including Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Detropia), Shane Carruth (Primer and Upstream Color) and Tiffany Shlain (Connected) — taking advantage of the services in its four years of existence.
Easy access to all the platforms? For a one-time fee? I’m on board.
Thanks for kind write up Mads! We just launched our online platform so look out to hearing more about us in a big way very soon.
Quiver. Used them, suck badly, technology and even site and dashboard locks up and creeps as slowly as the staff and ‘customer support’ which you can’t even call it that. Emails just get tossed into a bucket for ‘someone’ to answer which is always days and you get different answers from different people and the bigger joke is it doesn’t match what they say on their site. They do make huge profits off your hard work and dreams of digital revenue, like charging $900 for captioning that you can get for $73 by other vendors that caption for Technicolor, and national network shows.
They try to rip you for everything and plain don’t give a crap about you and are too scared to get on the phone or answer detailed questions not just about tech but sales and marketing and info and processes of their – I hesitate to say ‘partners’ – iTunes, Amazon, Netflix etc. Suspect they just don’t want to expose that they really don’t know so many things that would be extremely helpful and often necessary for the filmmaker/producer customers.
They are owned by Premiere Digital which is an expensive post house in LA that logically bought or merged with them so they can get all the encoding money to prep your project for digital delivery to iTunes etc., and get your money they do. For work that does include India according to employees and google corporate info.
No surprise to see this quote from an employee on GlassdoorDotcom “Told by management in LA that Independent accounts were a priority but when pressing a team leader he was told to ignore our titles” (yes that means your film you’re paying them so much to handle) and that they have a “horrible client service ideology” hah so true, and that’s from an employee, not even a pissed off customer. Could only laugh when I read that in all the employee complaints about the company and “inexperienced execs.”
I’ve been a client at many small and major post and encoding houses for years and also dealt directly, not via Quiver or other aggregator, with iTunes, Netflix etc delivering indie and studio titles and can with no hesitation say Quiver sucks badly, doesn’t care, pays no attention to detail (which ends up costing you more precious time and money) so if you want to waste time and money, give ‘em a call!
I wholeheartedly believe all the rest of the bad experiences strewn around the internet. Good luck to all trying to find what you deserve for what we pay.