If you have a dream to make a film, the first thing you have to keep in mind is the budget. When you write a film, you have to stop and think. What do you already have? What do you need? How can you get your resources? You need proper finance to get where you’re going, and that’s hard to get in this industry, unless you have someone to help you. Whether it be crowdfunding, a friend who is a producer, or even whatever money you have in your pocket. But probably the most helpful is the great people of Allrites, a world-wide business that spawns all over and connects people all around the world, helping indie producers get money from other sources in other countries. Recently Allrites has launched a new service called Ritestream for both creators and buyers to work together and provide movies on streaming services and get their ideas further out there. At the head of these great services is Riaz Mehta, who has had experience working as a producer, and now he’s working to help producers, all around the world. I spoke to him about his services, and how they are helping Indie producers in Canada. If you haven’t already gotten motivated to check out Allrites or Ritestream, then read on for all the cool things about these services and how they could possibly help YOU in your work.
HNMAG: I understand you feel the independent TV and film industry of Canada needs to expand. What steps do you think we need to take in order to do so?
Riaz Mehta: The trends I’ve seen is that content is going quite global these days, and I think that’s much wider universe that the industry could be targeting. I’ve in different countries over the years and feel that Canadian content doesn’t get enough exposure. I think there’s a lot more possibilities for them.
HNMAG: What kind of possibilities?
Riaz Mehta: Exploiting even Asian territories for example where the markets are growing at a rapid rate, and there’s a massive opportunity with mainstream platforms that are emerging within these territories. There’s opportunity even across Europe, and it’s really about tapping into different cultures and tapping into a lot of the new streamers that are popping up. Of course, it’s continuing the focus on North America but also looking up on the horizon.
HNMAG: So, continuing to look mainly into streaming services as they’re the most popular currently.
Riaz Mehta: Yeah. A lot of people think that Netflix, Amazon, Disney + is the world of streaming. But in our business, we have come across numerous new players that are emerging through different territories, targeting different nations, and different audience segments. We believe that is where the opportunity lies and facing real fragmentation within space, similar to what happened with cable TV in the early days and how things are traditionally broadcast and then you have hundreds of cable channels in one territory. That’s what we’re seeing in streaming now and that’s where a massive opportunity is for producers and content creators as well.
HNMAG: With the big five taking over most of the market, how does this affect independent production companies?
Riaz Mehta: It makes it challenging, of course for independent production companies because there’s only so much space for those big five’s. Often the independents don’t get a voice from the big five’s. This is where I think we play an important part in creating an ecosystem service. Content can be funded by the community, we’re creating a blockchain which is basically a launch pad for film and television content. Creators can come to our launchpad, put their creative ideas up for funding, and then the community can participate in these ideas. We believe this will be revolutionary for how content is produced and providing more power in the hands of independent creators. We take away the limitations and dependency that they have from the big five’s basically.
HNMAG: How do you and foreign investors help out producers through funding?
Riaz Mehta: Here’s how it works: As a producer, I could come to this platform and say, I’ve got this amazing script for a movie. When someone comes to the platform and put up their script, the crew will have written an NFT for the producer. It also helps them with their rights ownership and it kind of states their claim on the idea they’ve come up with. Once they do that, we open it up to the community to participate in that script by purchasing NFT’s of that particular movie that’s going to be produced. For example, if a film costs a million dollars, then we would generate a million of $1 NFT’s, and and the community can participate by purchasing ownership of these $1 NFT’s they could buy ten thousands of these, and then have different rights attached to them. With this mechanism, we help the producer raise the funding, and we also give the producer creative control. They can determine how many of these NFT’s they want to sell to the public.
Riaz told me, Ritestream is a distribution platform that reaches global audiences and through it producers can monetize their content across the geographic locations around the world. Ritestream will extend their reach beyond what could be done with distribution methods with a big company. It’s creating an ecosystem that is a win-win for the people creating content and the people who will watch it.
HNMAG: So it seems that film and TV should expand more in NFT? Why do you think so?
Riaz Mehta: I think there’s a massive opportunity for film and television within NFT’s, within meta verses as well. When I talk about meta verse, historically we have only monetized rights through lenient television cables, theatres and so forth. Now with the emergence of NFT’s and meta verse platforms, there are new rights that can be tapped into, and the producers can increase the revenue potential for them. To this end, we’re working with a couple meta verse products at the moment to create places where content can be streamed and this transcends geographical bounds, it allows people to congregate no matter where they are. This is the new frontier and people that embrace it will really benefit from this space as it grows over the next few years.
HNMAG: Allrites has worked with producers from Canada, just how many indie productions have you helped out with?
Riaz Mehta: There’s quite a few actually on our platform today. Our chief officer Natalie, she works very close with Canadian producers and we encourage them to put our content on the platform and we help market that content as well.
HNMAG: Is there a way for independent producers and filmmakers can sign up for?
Riaz Mehta: There’s a couple of ways to do it, they can come to our website, allrites.com and it’s a tech platform so it’s fairly self-service. They can upload their content onto the platform, and from that point on, it’s discoverable by networks and streamers across the globe. It can get monetized, but also they can reach out to us directly as well. They can get in touch with content teams, we’ve got teams across North America, and all across the globe, and if they have a large amount of content, that team will work with them to really smoothen the process and do all the heavy lifting. We will also work with them to really understand what kind of film that they have and how we can help them monetize that content in different geographies.
HNMAG: Besides NFTS, and teams, will there be other measures you will be taking to help indie productions?
Riaz Mehta: Yeah, absolutely, so my vision is to actually help Indie productions connect with broadcast networks across the globe so if they have a new production idea, or a new show that they want to bring to life, and right now the universe might be limited when they’re pitching to broadcasters in Canada. Now by connecting with us, they have relationships with partners across Europe, Asia, North America, and we can pull together funding from different sources for these guys and actually bring their projects to life faster.
HNMAG: And with expanding across the globe, will you be setting up new branches of your company?
Riaz Mehta: We’re already in 10 countries at the moment, so absolutely.
HNMAG: What makes indie productions more unique than the big corporations?
Riaz Mehta: If you look at the major studios, their single goal is ultimately revenue, and they’re accountable to shareholders. Everything they make is targeted towards what generates the most money. Indie producers do it differently. They’re thinking from a creative angle about bringing amazing things to life and the Indie producers are not concerned about how much revenue they’re going to generate, they’re just thinking about the art that they do. The beauty about that is that it’s so heartfelt, it’s going to connect to more audiences if they were given the voice and the tools for bringing that idea to life. Audiences enjoy that creativity, they don’t want the same old formulas, the same old rinse-repeat cycles they’ve been seeing over the years.
Riaz went on to say that if they helped more Indie producers, these producers would reach more audiences locally and globally. From there, everyone would see a whole generation of content, that empowers people and talks to them in ways they understand.
HNMAG: I understand one of your leading films is The Canadian Strain. How did they get involved with you?
Riaz Mehta: They actually came to us through Natalie, she’s got great connections with the industry. That’s how we got to know the folks of that production.
HNMAG: Now, let’s talk about Ritestream. How does that work?
Riaz Mehta: With Ritestream, people will be able to fund their ideas. But the other cool thing that we did about a year ago, when Ritestream first emerged, we realized that the original content licensing model was built for lenient television model, which was usually a 2-year broadcast for film or tv shows with large capital upfront costs. We found that model doesn’t work for content being made today, with live-streaming devices and on demand, and what streamers really want is flexibility and access to a lot more content so we came up with Ritestream which is content as a service. It’s a staff-spaced model whereby a streaming platform can subscribe for a volume of content. You don’t even have to pick 1 single film, you can pay a subscription fee which means your capital costs drop down dramatically. When you plug into our ecosystem we have lots more content on our platform, you select what you want, and we deliver that to you pretty much overnight. You can stream that to your viewers, and then in a month’s time you might look at the analytics and say, “20 of those films were amazing, 200 are okay, and maybe 100 were really crap, they didn’t perform well.”
HNMAG: And if films don’t perform well on a streaming service, how can this be solved to find something more suitable for customers?
Riaz Mehta: You can come to the platform and select some different films. This is incredibly revolutionary because you’re able to adapt to your consumer’s behaviours and what they want to watch on the fly. You’re not locked in a long-term license deal. What it does on the flip side is allow producers to enter into locking more revenue because now they’re tapping into a lot more streaming platforms and not having to negotiate very large complex deals. They sign one deal with us and we take care of the rest. We’re helping the producers and the streamers, everybody is helped with this new business model that we launched.
HNMAG: What kind of streaming content do you offer to Canada?
Riaz Mehta: We offer EVERYTHING. It can range from Hollywood to Bollywood to Canadian, Indie productions, we have Korean content, that’s trending quite a lot these days. We go across different genres.
HNMAG: Are you offering anything else to Canadians?
Riaz Mehta: We offer our entire catalogue without restriction (chuckles)
HNMAG: How do you see Canada’s film industry improved within the future?
Riaz Mehta: I think the Canadian film industry has tremendous potential. So much creativity there, and we’ve seen a lot of American production companies come across the border as well. What I see is that with the business patents that we’re offering gives an opportunity to fund that content so it doesn’t get stifled by the lack of funding. I believe the industry is really going to flourish, working with patents like ourselves.
HNMAG: Through your service. How do you feel you’ll effect our industry?
Riaz Mehta: We’re opening up NEW borders, and new avenues for monetizing content. We do so through multiple broadcasting platforms in the meta verse, with NFT’s, etc. We make content production very viable and provide the funding for the content, so now the creators can tap into all of this and we’re going to unleash creativity which means we’ll see lots more Canadian content crossing borders, going international, and standing toe-to-toe with Hollywood Productions, being recognized as such.
HNMAG: And what about nurturing talent?
Riaz Mehta: Exactly. As this happens, new talent can come into the industry because they will see that there’s an avenue for them so they don’t have to be starving artists anymore. This is a very viable and healthy way for them to follow their passion.
HNMAG: What make’s Canada’s film industry stand out?
Riaz Mehta: What I love about the Canadian film industry is it’s got all the elements that Hollywood has. It’s got great talent, great storytelling, and fantastic infrastructure for content as well. It is a much much more lower cost place to actually make content which makes it really interesting for producers, both international and local. It just needs the right fuel on that fire and it’s going to go through the roof.
Well, he’s certainly right about that. That fuel is none other Allrites and Ritestream. So head to those sites today and fuel the entertainment industry, get your content worldwide without the help of the big 5, and see where your content goes from there. You’ll end up really big, from US, to Japan, maybe even Pakistan! Ritestream and Allrites are alright in my books and are right for anyone in the indie scene. Rite now is a good time to get started.