A Short Run

After running the Project Shoestring experiment for one year, we decided to shut it down. You can read about the details on our blog, but ultimately it was a practical matter.

Shoestring worked to an extent, but it isn't the tool we need right now. And hey, we're pragmatists. We don't get hung up on one way of doing things, even if we invented it ourselves.

Every year, we improve the way we do lighting, sound, planning, and yes, distribution. So if things change, we may rebuild Shoestring again. In the meantime, you can watch everything we make right here.

Project Shoestring (RIP)

The digital revolution gave local musicians the power to deliver music directly to their audience. Shoestring aimed to do the same thing for movies.

Shoestring was a platform for selling digital copies of movies online. When we premiered Salad Daze, we needed an efficient way to distribute copies, and DVDs weren't going to cut it.

We new we wanted to go the digital download route, but we could find a service that met our ridiculously high standards.

So we built our own, specifically tailored to our ridiculously high standards.

  • High Quality Many digital distributors cut corners, and yes, I'm looking at Apple. We used genuine DVD quality -- the same format we use in theaters.
  • Reasonable We agree, digital things should be cheaper than hard copies. Salad Daze sold at $5 per copy.
  • Compatible Watch your movies any way you want. Shoestring is DRM free.

We didn't compromise, and for a while, we were outperforming every comparable service on the market.

I'm new to digital cinema. Tell me how this worked.

Fair enough. You'd buy the film using your Amazon.com account, and then you download the movie. Salad Daze was 2.5GB, and took about 2 hours to download over your average cable Internet connection.

Once it finished, you could watch the movie on your computer using most modern media players. (We like VLC, but QuickTime/iTunes works just fine.) You can put it on your iPod, or burn it to a DVD.

And that was it. It's just like buying music.

I heard Project Shoestring was going to revolutionize the way independent films are distributed?

It almost did, but that's a long story.

Why don't you try...?

Keep in mind, inventing distribution methods isn't really our thing. All this happened long before Ink found a following on Netflix Instant View, and since then a lot more options have popped up.

The truth is, we'd rather spend our time and energy making movies with good stories. We'll leave digital distribution platforms to people who are more qualified to build them.

Speaking of, have you tried watching our features online?

© 2010 Be The Shoe Productions. Feel free to introduce yourself.