Would you buy the DVD if you could watch a movie free online?

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 29 April 2008 12:01

Your IT - Entertainment

The producers of a full length documentary movie charting the Bush administration's path to war in Iraq are offering it as a free download from the Internet in the belief that this will boost online sales of the DVD.

They say their strategy is  "pushing the boundaries of film distribution beyond the new media strategies of even the most forward-thinking Hollywood studios," and claim that "This is a far more powerful distribution system than is possible in theatres, as this release is available on demand, around the world."

They describe their business model as being: "what noted venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson named 'The Freemium Business Model'," namely: "Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base."

In this case the premium offering is the movie on DVD, available for purchase from Amazon.com, which provides a higher viewing experience. The producers expect that DVD sales will be significantly increased by the higher viewership and awareness  resulting from free availability.

The movie, 'Leading to War' runs for 72 minutes and can be either watched in streaming mode or downloaded as a single file (440Mbytes in QuickTime format). In conjunction with the movie, a companion website, www.LeadingToWar.com , "examines the strategies and rhetorical techniques used by Bush officials." The film and website together are claimed to "create the most comprehensive online resource about the build-up to the Iraq War."

Leading to War is available with subtitles in 19 languages and, according to producer, Lewis Wheeler, "Within days of LeadingToWar.com going live, the film was viewed in each of the 19 subtitled languages, and within two weeks the site was visited from 142 different countries... We are amazed at the initial results." (However he does not disclose the number of downloads).

To optimise the online Leading To War the producers are using the Akamai content delivery network which has 20,000 edge servers worldwide. This, they say "improves the quality of the streaming as well as the speed of download in virtually every country."

Leading To War was directed by Barry Hershey and edited by two-time Emmy Award winner Marc Grossman. It has been constructed from selected news footage.