NFB launches digital transformation with 700 online movies

After 15 months of behind-the-scenes work, the National Film Board (NFB) finally unveiled a massive $1.3-million online screening room this week as part of a strategic plan featuring a sweeping digital transformation at the public film producer and distributor. NFB.ca hosts over 700 films, ranging from trailers to short clips from the NFB's world-famous collection. Though the idea was conceived more than a year ago, online chat rooms and bloggers got wind of it despite the NFB's plans to keep a lid on the site. Tom Perlmutter, government film commissioner and chair of the NFB, tells Canadian Communications Reports that the site is part of a plan to expand the NFB's vast archive of films available to all Canadians through the use of digital technologies. "I have to tell you I am very excited. It's the fulfillment of a kind of dream to connect to Canadians everywhere and say ‘this is yours'...We are going to keep adding films in the course of months and years to come." In doing that, Perlmutter says enabling the visual and hearing impaired to access the site's content is of paramount importance. Currently, a limited amount of films allow some level of closed captioning and video description. Plans are underway to improve the quality of CC and VD and also to increase the number of films for the disabled community, Perlmutter says. The $1.3 million used for building the site, including labour costs, came from internal savings within the NFB. The first version of NFB.ca was released in the summer, but it was still undergoing maintenance work. Joël Pomerleau, head, interactive services and relational marketing, says it still caught the attention of Internet buffs who kept on writing about it and discussing it in chat rooms. Perlmutter says while it was being tested, the site was released in beta form, and the NFB tried hard to keep word from leaking out. "But even with the lid on it, we were getting more hits from beyond our regular site, on the beta version that we didn't advertise and we were being blogged about. It's been generating enormous excitement," he says. Asked how the site will differ from other Internet video sites such as YouTube, Perlmutter says NCB.ca will offer high quality artistic and professional videos. Part of the development process involved clearing minor copyright issues with producers of the music played on the films. The NFB owns most of the copyright to the films currently on the site. The site will be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, whether dial-up or broadband. "There's low level that should work over a phone modem. Then there's the middle level format, with the same encoding speed as major video sites like YouTube. And there's also the high quality version which is encoded one megabyte for high speed Internet users," says Pormerleau. The site is available 24/7 for free and includes historical films dating back to 1928 to current releases, including award-winning movies, documentaries, animation, and children's films. There are 650 documentaries, 167 animation films, 52 fiction films and 7 experimental films.

NFB launches digital transformation with 700 online movies

Broadcast | January 22, 2009

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