Kinograph Update

[carllooper]

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Hello Kinograph supporters!

First and most importantly, I've created a very short survey about 8mm digitization. If you have 8mm films that need to be digitized, please fill out the survey (5 min max!). Also, if you can post this to forums or email groups or Facebook, etc. that would be very helpful.

Here is the survey link: http://goo.gl/forms/t63rh0MbSD

The past few weeks have been very educational, and also very frustrating. I've met a lot of smart people who have experience in hardware startups and are very enthusiastic about Kinograph. Every conversation, however, comes with a very different recommendation for what I should do with Kinograph. Some of the suggestions sound like this:

- The consumer 8mm machine has the best story
- The industrial solution is where you started, you should focus on that
- Kickstart a kit version
- Don't Kickstart anything, it isn't the way to start a business
- You need a revenue model
- Find the lowest barrier of entry into your market and start there
- and on and on and on and on....

There is only one thing that everyone has said: "You have to decide what you want Kinograph to be." In my mind, that doesn't include words like "revenue model," or "market." Instead, it is about words like "easy," "affordable," "open," "community," and "storytelling." The story of Kinograph has to be about the stories it captures. If it can do that successfully, the business will appear. But if I set out to make a business first, I will lose sight of what makes it important.

With this in mind, I've decided to continue down the path of developing an 8mm machine. In my discussions with my mentors, I have found the following points to be extremely helpful in considering how to proceed:

1. What will people do with the machine after they're done digitizing it?

This is a big problem. It doesn't make sense for someone to spend money on something they will not use after a short period of time. They could give it away, or share it, but most likely it will sit in their home and eventually get thrown away.

2. People are afraid of losing their films in the mail.

This is the number one barrier for people to digitizing their film. Even if it was cheaper, the risk of losing the only copy of a film in the mail is too scary for most people. This implies that there needs to be a solution that does not involve sending films somewhere.

3. The people who have the films may not be the ones who will actually digitize them.

In many of my conversations, people don't say "I have films I need to digitize." Instead, they say "My father has some old films I'd like to digitize for him." There is an important difference in those statement. It implies that the person who would pay for a Kinograph is a different person than the person who owns the film. In many cases, the Kinograph buyer will first have to locate his/her films, then be willing to operate a machine and its software to do the digitizing. This implies that this person is willing to invest time and effort into learning how the Kinograph works. The system should therefore be very easy to use.

4. Where will the films go after they've been digitized?

If we are going to build an archive of collective memories, then there needs to be a central place to collect them. Kinograph should incorporate a way to make sharing these films online easy. But there are already many platforms for this: YouTube, Vimeo, etc. What are they missing that Kinograph users want? While this is largely unanswered so far, I think there may be a need for a more personalized platform that allows users to build timelines, add biographical information to their films, geotag their original location, etc. This is hard to build but there are some solutions out there. It would be a shame, in other words, if Kinograph digitized a bunch of films and they all remained on hard drives, which can be lost or damaged.

Right now I'm stuck between two ideas. I'm hoping you will help me choose one.

Solution 1: A cheap kit version

This version would be under $250 USD and rely on existing open source hardware like the Raspberry Pi. It would be slow, and the image quality would be "good enough." The system would work very much like the existing Kinograph, which digitizes the film frame-by-frame and compiles those images into a movie file. When the user is done with the kit, they will have to figure out what to do with it. This is only economically viable if the user has 8+ films to digitize (more or less).

Solution 2: An industrial version that can be rented

This version involves a more sophisticated machine that can run in real-time, has better image quality, and can be rented for short amounts of time. For example, if the user only needs it for 2 days, they pay for two-days and I ship them the machine. When they're done, they return it. I check the machine for any damage, and then send it to the next person. This would keep the cost down for the user. If the machine is successful, it could also be sold to local businesses or institutions like libraries or historical societies which could act as a "drop-off" service. This would mean that if someone wants to digitize their films but doesn't want to invest the time to do it themselves, they could let someone else do it. Of course, there are many business already who offer this service - maybe one in your city already. But they still are too expensive. If the online platform for Kinograph (see below) can offset this cost, it could make it affordable. But that's a gamble, and could be a dangerous assumption.

The Online Component

In both cases, the dream is that the footage is centralized to an online platform where it can be shared. Much like Vimeo, the site would rely on a tiered subscription model. Basic features would be free, but you could pay a small fee to get more from the website - like hosting more films, transcoding in the cloud, automated GIF generation, DVD burning services. In the future, it could even offer licensing services so that TV producers or filmmakers can buy the rights to a home movie (with the user's permission) and the user will get money for the license. It would be like a Getty Images or Shutterstock for 8mm home movies. In the future this could include other formats of home movies. Just a thought...

So - what do you think? Where should Kinograph go? What do you want???

Thanks for your continued support and please fill out the survey!

Matthew Epler