The Audience Awards
The Audience Awards is an innovative U.S. based platform that connects filmmakers and audiences through engagement and incentives.
Overview
The Audience Awards was founded in June 2013 by Paige Williams and headquartered in Missoula, Montana. As an independent filmmaker, Williams saw a need in the independent filmmaking world for one digital place that takes care of every aspect of a film’s life. The Audience Awards is a one-stop shop for content creators and audience engagement. The Audience Awards features film competitions where the film with the most votes wins, filmmaking challenges, branded user generated content competitions, a social networking service, short film distribution, crowdfunding and entertainment news. Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload films and vote for their favorite films.
History
The Audience Awards’ beta site launched in November 2013. That same month, Williams purchased the nine year running International Documentary Challenge that provided film challenges for Audience Awards filmmakers and a library of 800 original short films to add to The Audience Awards short film library. The Audience Awards launched a new website in June 2014. In July 2014, The Audience Awards launched their online publication audnews featuring entertainment news. In less than one year of operating, The Audience Awards site was in the top 2% of all websites in the world.
Competitions
The traditional film festival model has not kept pace with the curation system to connect the filmmakers, all of the content and the audiences who would watch films if they knew how and where. The Audience Awards online competitions solve this problem with all the tools of commenting and voting that creates a passionate and engaged community. The Audience Awards hosts regularly occurring genre specific film competitions where the audience chooses the winner. The film with the most votes wins. The competitions give away a minimum of $300 and the most a competition on the Audience Awards has given is $45,000. With the launch of the new site on June 16, 2014, The Audience Awards hosted a University of Montana versus Montana State University film competition for attending college students from those universities. Blackstone Launchpad and The Montana Film Office sponsored the $1500 prize. 29 films were submitted to the competition and the competition received 125,000 views. The Audience Awards sponsors competitions for different genres of short films awarding $300.
Branded User Generated Competitions
Businesses use The Audience Awards platform to host proprietary user generated content competitions. In January 2014 The Audience Awards platform will host their first branded user generated competition. The Montana Office of Tourism seeks one-minute videos from Montana residents in one of five categories: Montana artists, food and beverage, wildlife and landscapes, outdoor adventure and events and culture. Each category winner receives $5,000 for the most votes. The five category winners will compete against one another for $15,000 for a total of $45,000 in cash prizes. The Audience Awards expects one million views on the platform during the competition.
Other Information
Audfund Crowdfunding
Geared towards filmmakers and film festivals, The Audience Awards offers two types of crowdfunding opportunities through their subsidiary, audfund. Filmmakers and festivals can use the Show Me Love tab like a PayPal button and raise money for their film career without launching a project with a start and end date. In December 2014, The Audience Awards launches project based crowdfunding opportunities where filmmakers can raise money for a specific project with an end and start date and offer rewards to the people who donate. There are four differentiators that set The Audience Awards apart from competitors like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Crowdfunding is specific to the filmmaking community. The Audience Awards charges a flat fee of 4%. The Audience Awards never charges more than 4% if filmmakers and festivals do not reach their goal. The Audience Awards features a socially interactive community of filmmakers and film enthusiasts utilizing social user profile pages.
audnews
The Audience Awards also operates audnews, an online publication covering the entertainment trending news, independent film industry news, and features filmmakers and festivals. Audnews also features The Robin and Rosie review - original comedic film reviews by Rose Ayers and Robin Rose Rice.
Audfilms Short Film Distribution Platform
The Audience Awards through the subsidiary audfilms provides filmmakers a digital platform to monetize their short films through an advertising revenue split with the platform. Filmmakers can also generate revenue by competing in The Audience Awards short film competitions.
The International Documentary Challenge
The International Documentary Challenge was founded by Doug White in 2005 and owned by KDHX in St. Louis, MO. In November, 2005 The Audience Awards founder Paige Williams acquired The Doc Challenge from KDHX. In August 2014, The Audience Awards and Doc Challenge merged platforms. That same month, The International Doc Challenge expanded the brand to include The International Fusion Documentary Challenge.