Platform to promote audiovisual productions in Flanders, with streaming possibilities
Flanders image, a branch of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund responsible for the promotion of Flemish audiovisual productions, was looking for a way to present these productions in an attractive way to an international audience of professionals.
The intention was to give this target group a complete picture of what Flanders has to offer as a producer of quality films, short films, docu, animation and series for international cinema, festivals and streaming platforms.
The end result became the Flanders Image website and the Screener streaming platform, two applications each with its own purpose.
Flandersimage.com is a digital library of productions of all kinds with extensive details per production, including stills, trailers, press information, producer and director contacts, complete casts, etc.. It offers a complete picture of what our region has to offer in terms of audiovisual productions.
Screener provides a second, important part to promote the audiovisual productions and works as a supporting pillar for the Flandersimage website.
It is a streaming platform - only accessible to professionals in the sector - where a trial version of the film, series, documentary can be watched, before deciding whether or not to buy it.
The idea of this platform was born before platforms such as VRT Max, Streamz, Netflix, Prime became popular or even existed. It is safe to say that the Screener platform is a pioneer in that field!
At the start of this project, it soon became clear that the major technical challenge would not so much be the design of the platforms, but rather the complete integration of all existing information flows into one central entity.
Like many companies, the Flemish Audiovisual Fund works with information spread across a diversity of platforms. These range from a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for managing all relationships, a dedicated "MyVAF" platform for managing new and existing files to a digital asset management system for managing all resources linked to productions, from pdf to still to video clips.
Addressing this jumble of information over and over again for any purpose would be a huge task each time and become a time-consuming aspect of each third party within each project.
That is why Kinamo was hired to develop a VAF API, a central point that could be used by the flandersimage website and screener, but also by third parties, to retrieve information about productions.
A REST API was developed (based on the OpenAPI specification) that centralizes the information from the different systems so anyone in possession of the right access can retrieve information based on very understandable requests that come back as json, without having to dig into the different specifications of the suppliers of the other platforms.
Once the VAF API was operational, we designed the Flandersimage website and made sure the database was fed with the information from the API, both content and assets are synchronized on a frequent basis.
Since the Flandersimage website is one big, huge database of audiovisual productions, Elasticsearch was chosen as backend for smooth and accessible full-text searches.
A second platform, fed by the VAF API, is the Screener application which closely matches the goals of the Flandersimage website.
Where Flandersimage focuses on information and press information, Screener is all about the experience itself: watching the productions.
The original Screener website was a simple platform where a title could be viewed "online".
The new platform goes several steps further: it offers full streaming of titles, access rights management and works with an ingenious system of time credits that can be assigned by VAF administrators. Based on rights, a user can watch e.g. only 15 minutes of a certain production, an entire film, or a certain pool of films.
Other technical highlights are the ability to add subtitles in different languages to the productions, offer different quality streams (HD, non-HD etc.), create specific playlists for user profiles (e.g. for festival selections) and for the user: casting to other devices.
Screener has since grown into a full-fledged, professional streaming platform within the sector, to the great satisfaction of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund.
Are you also looking for a technical partner who can guide you in mapping and centralizing your digital information flows?
