Hello everyone,

There's going to be a lot of changes in the works for Studentfilms.com but one of them I want to do now and that is NO MORE RENEWAL FEES!

Effective today, there will be just a one time encoding and hosting fee of $1/minute with a $10 minimum for films submitted to the site.

If you have a film that was submitted to the site before and was removed from the site it may be able to added back to the site without a fee - provided that that the QuickTime is still online. If it was on the site a long time ago it may have been removed.

Thanks to everyone for their continued support of the site as it moves forward!

I was wondering why I hadn't reveived a renewal request or why my film wasn't removed... Been on for more than a year.

Concerning the changes, what do you have in mind?

Yes I've been unofficially not charging renewals for a while - just made it official.

As far as new changes - can't really go too far into them... but we're working on a way to have filmmakers be able upload films and edit their own info.

So how about those online uploads?

Yes. How bout them?

Well, they'd be offly nice...In fact, I have a few films that I'd probably put up if it weren't for the fact that I'm to lazy to actually mail anything.

Well yes - the "old school" way of submitting films on Studentfilms.com is certainly not cutting it anymore... that's for sure.

One thing I reccomend be implemented on this site, if technology allows, is review "credits." It's something that Triggerstreet.com does. That means, you are assigned film to review, and for every review you write, someone will write one about your film. That way, there's an incentive to review, and an almost guarentee of reviews for your film. The more you contribute, the more will be contributed to you. A definite win-win.

Also, if you can upload your own stuff, is there going to be an approval process so it doesn't become YouTube? Speaking of YouTube, I'd nix the fees altogether, afterall I can name at least 10 sites that allow you to upload films for no charge. Isn't advertising enough to keep the site going? If 5 films are added a month, that's really only $50 right? So is it even worth it?

We're considering all options for sure.

Re reviews... that is a good suggestion.. we'll look into it.

Yeah not paying would defiantly make the site grow very large, but then what’ll pay for all the hosting fees? The ad’s can’t just do that alone I’m sure.

The review system would be great!

Also you should consider not using QuickTime anymore… It doesn’t work on many browsers. You should consider a flash method.

We're considering using Flash for the next version.

How about this for a system....

1. In order to submit a review for a film you must be logged in. This way reviews will be instantly added - no approval process.

2. I'm thinking of a certain character minimum for reviews - so people can't just submit a review that says "cool"

3. There will be a "Report inappropriate review" link that would notify me of an inappropriate review.

4. Each time a user submits a review for a film he earns a "review point" or something like that.

5. Perhaps in order to upload a film to the site one must earn a certain number of "review points". Perhaps this will finally boost the reviewing of films. Say perhaps 3 "review points" needed for each film uploaded?

What does everyone think?

That sounds fair.

One Question: If all the new videos are probably going to be flash then will the old vids stay quicktime?

Not sure yet. But from what we have so far... I think you're going to like it.

Hey sounds good Chris! I like the idea about having to review a few movies before you submit your own. I think it'll help boost the number of reviews a lot.

Also is there anyway you could have a page for the filmmakers with all his movies on it? Maybe they could upload a bio and such? That way when someone gets a review they can quickly get info about the reviewer and see his work.

There might be a profile still. Also, you can click on a filmmaker and see all of the films for that person on the current site too.