SnagFilms: An Interesting New Model for Documentaries

Kevin Maney writes: Sometimes, a set of seemingly unrelated experiences come together to allow someone to do something new and really interesting. That's the case with Ted Leonsis -- former AOL vice chairman, seriel entrepreneur and owner of the Washington Capitals hockey team -- and his latest venture, called SnagFilms.

SnagFilms strikes me as a way to breathe new life into documentary films. You go to the SnagFilms Web site, and find a doc that speaks to you. You can watch it, of course. But more interestingly, you can "snag" it and place a widget on your Facebook or MySpace page, personal Web site, blog, whatever. The widget becomes a live movie theater. So if someone comes to your Facebook profile and sees the SnagFilms widget with a doc on it, they can click and watch the doc right there in your profile. The key, as Leonsis says, is that it's a form of self-expression. You put up a doc because it means something to you, and you want others to know it.

But in the meantime, this becomes a new distribution outlet for docs. As Leonsis tells me, only 400 to 500 theaters in the country will show non-fiction films. Sundance gets 9,000 entries in the documentary category and chooses 128 to show, and out of those a half-dozen get bought for distribution. Basically, docs don't get seen unless they're rented on Netflix. SnagFilms might change that.

Leonsis knows this because he's made a couple docs -- last year's Nanking, and this year's Kicking It. He knows the potential frustration. He's also a major investor in a widget company called Clearspring, so he knows the potential of video widgets. And from his time at AOL -- well, the SnagFilms docs play in AOL's near-HD video player.

"This is a mashup of a unique set of experiences," Leonsis says. Oh, and also from AOL -- he got former AOL CEO Steve Case to invest in SnagFilms.

"I want to spin on its ear the idea of user-generated content," Leonsis says. "I want to make it into user-distributed content. Instead of bad YouTube videos on your MySpace page, I want it to be beautifully-shot movies that are relevant to that person."

Amen to that!