You know how it goes: You are out with friends having a drink and at some point someone asks “so, are you guys watching any shows on Netflix or Amazon?”. Lately, my answer has been always the same “I just binge watched six amazing shows. You will have to look somewhere else to find them. But trust me, you will thank me later”. This is because besides waving the flag of a certain blockchain based video platform, I am now also a huge fan and supporter of short digital series.
Back in June, a lot of emotions filled the air when we finally found ourselves in front of the Beta release of Flixxo. After a burst of excitement, joy and –a few– toasts we got serious again and immediately started working on the next big step: content.
Flixxo is open to everyone, but given our belief in the importance of quality content we knew we needed to aim for a specific target in order to build an identity. A type of content that we felt reflected a lot of what Flixxo is all about had already been on our minds for some time. We are of course talking about Webseries — or Short Form Content — a format that is fresh and disruptive as it defies a lot of what has been taken for granted in the industry, such as genres, lengths and audience involvement, only to name a few. It also makes sense for the current times and while it offers high quality in every of its aspects it is yet to meet massive acceptance.
Our webseries romance had already begun with our involvement in the BAWEBFEST in Buenos Aires –back in March– and gotten stronger during Webfest Berlin in June (read all about it here). Pleased with the results we decided to raise the bet, and confirmed our participation in three more festivals before the end of the year: Marseille Webfest, Seriesland in Bilbao and Rio Webfest. We discovered that each Festival had a distinctive personality. While Marseille put the focus on the screenings, talks and workshops, Bilbao also offered a lot of great chances for meetings and networking between creators and producers. Rio was a perfect blend between this two approaches.
But it is the things that they had in common that struck us the most. We were able to be part of discussion panels and presentations about our platform on all three of them, and were amazed to find the same result: people got it, right away. We could tell by their questions that not only our model was understood, it also made sense for them, turning the presentations into conversations.
As this scene has a very strong sense of Community, the acceptance of our model comes as no surprise. Creators get involved with each other at the festivals and the biggest prize is to leave the event with new ideas and connections, Flixxo being one of them. We are excited to confirm that several of the nominated series will be uploaded to our platform!
We have nothing but praise for the quality of the series we had the pleasure to watch. Some shows not only succeeded at more than one festival, but also received special awards in Flixx sponsored by Flixxo. A few of this big winners were Bidune Kaid (Lebanon-Syria), Nemausus (France), The League of Steam(USA) and Dreaming Whilst Black (UK).
At present, we are happy to say that the bond we made with creators, producers and the organizers of the festivals is strong and our communication with them is fluid, discussing everything from adding their series to our platform to new and exciting ways in which we could help promote this type of content. Right now our eye is set on the place where this all started, as the fifth edition of the BAWEBFEST will kick off the festival circuit for 2019 in March. In the meantime, we recommend you to finish any series you might be watching as pretty soon you will need time to enjoy a lot of amazing new content on Flixxo, trust me, you will thank me later ;)
Sergio Sosa
VP of Operations, Flixxo.
