LoftCity Interview

This morning had a chance to interview Sagi Ruben, creator and CEO of LoftCity. This is a follow up to my previous post about this online film and TV studio.

During the interview Sagi gave me a login. Afterwards I took the tour. Here's some highlights from the video and from my interview:

The goal is to "facilitate production of original creative films by professional filmmakers designed primarily for web and mobile use." It can be used alone or to collaborate, but I think its the community features that will set this apart if they can attract a large percentage of independent filmmakers.

Each user gets a "unique virtual studio" called a Loft, where they can showcase their work in a variety of disciplines, most importantly video. Within your Loft, you will have the ability to communicate (messages), design (your Loft), manage materials (upload raw video), and display favorites (from others in LoftCity).

There will be a set of film production management tools, everything from writing a treatment to distribution. These features don't appear to be built yet or available in the beta site.

Your Loft will appear in The City, which is just the public area where others can find you. Users can search by Type (creator, advertiser, festival), and further refine the search by Professional (Producer, Director, etc.) and Location.

Other major areas to surf include the Bulletin Board, Call For Production, and Screening Room, where you can search for films already created.

Back to the interview, Sagi had this to say: They are a global company, based out of Israel, and opening a U.S. office in either New York or LA. They started a year ago, and include a group of people with a background in film production, web and mobile content including producers, tech people, and a marketing expert.

With regards to internet video, he referenced the estimates of a six to ten billion dollar market by 2010 or 2011.

He called the technology "global collaboration-based filmmaking." As I noted in my last post, I think this is perfect for someone going on location.

I specifically brought up action sports and adventure sports, and he said there's no reason they couldn't use LoftCity just like other creative filmmakers.

I also asked why the larger studios weren't already involved. He said "Down the road, the big studios will get involved, but will have to reorganize -- create own departments for video and web." Of course this leads into another whole discussion about web versus traditional media (see Mark Cuban's bloggers are bloggers post, for example).

Overall, though, I think this definitely fills a niche for independent filmmakers. Right between YouTube and traditional studios. Eventually smaller studios could rally around a service like LoftCity, if it can scale upwards and meet their demands.

I see this evolving like e-Bay, which was originally for individuals to sell their stuff, but has really become a turn-key solution for professional stores, too small to compete with large online retailers like Target or Best Buy.

For snowsports, TGR and Matchstick and the like could use LoftCity to network and find overseas film crews rather than paying to bring their own. And vice-versa.

Or as Sagi put it, "democratizing production."