Getting notes on early versions of your film or video project can be a laborious process. Sure, you can send password-protected screeners to your collaborators and trusted friends to ask for notes, but getting precise feedback on exact moments can be burdensome as viewers have to toggle between apps to jot notes and record timecodes. Even worse, your team members may give up on providing any specificity, simply offering general comments without drilling down into the timeline where the problems arise.

If you already subscribe to a premium video service as a professional, you may have access to tools to solicit feedback from partners that allows them to create notes right in your film's timeline. But what if you can't afford this level of subscription for your current projects and you want to give your friends and collaborators a way to provide shot-specific notes in an easy-to-use interface? Then you need to check out ScreeningRoom.

ScreeningScreeningRoom allows collaborators to write time-coded feedback while watching a film in an easy-to-use interface.Credit: ScreeningRoom

ScreeningRoom is a video platform specifically designed to allow users to upload their video content, send links of private screeners to an unlimited number of team members, and gather comments directly in the timeline without the need to switch to another app to write notes. And the best part, ScreeningRoom offers a free subscription for up to 2GB of uploads a month (with a 2GB storage limit).

Need to upload more than 2GB a month? ScreeningRoom offers three levels of subscriptions: the Basic plan at $5/month for 5GB of monthly uploads (25GB of storage), the Premium plan at $10/month for 10GB of monthly uploads (50GB of storage), and the Pro plan at $20/month for 20GB of monthly uploads (unlimited storage). ScreeningRoom also offers a 20% discount to educational institutions that wish to use their platform for classroom feedback on video projects, and the company offers discounts to non-profit organizations, too.

The filmmakers behind the award-winning documentary Olancho, now touring the festival circuit, used ScreeningRoom during production and post-production when physical distance between the directors and the editor was a major issue. The documentary's co-director Ted Griswold's explains, "ScreeningRoom is a director's best friend when working remotely with an editor or when crowdsourcing feedback on a film—both of which seem inevitable these days. ScreeningRoom made it feel like I was sitting right next to my editor when we were actually working on separate continents shooting and cutting simultaneously for our documentary, Olancho."

Olancho_still'Olancho', directed by Ted Griswold & Chris ValdesCredit: Courtesy of the filmmakers

"One of our big driving issues is sustainability for independent filmmakers." — Marie-Helene Carleton, co-founder, ScreeningRoom

ScreeningRoom also works with festivals and filmmaking grant providers that need a platform to screen works from filmmakers and provide comments on those works for their selection process. Marie-Helene Carleton, co-founder of ScreeningRoom, explained the impetus for this expansion in an email to NFS: "We started by offering collaborative feedback tools for filmmakers working at all stages of production and post-production and it’s been growing quickly with increasing membership and new tools that we are rolling out. One of our big driving issues is sustainability for independent filmmakers and we also have a social mission of supporting independent filmmakers."

With this social mission in mind, ScreeningRoom recently announced a partnership with Tribeca Film Institute and its If/Then short documentary program to provide the platform to mentor program participants, screen submissions, and distribute the program's short docs. In addition, ScreeningRoom will provide a $5,000 grant to Southeast Asian documentary filmmakers through TFI's If/Then program in the summer of 2018. 

To check out the video feedback platform for yourself, head over to the website ScreeningRoom.org and sign up for an account to see all of its features. If you like what you see, use code nofilmschool to get 20% off any ScreeningRoom plan.

Featured image: 'Olancho'

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Editing & Post-Production