FilmFreeway Integration

Sparq complements an existing investment in FilmFreeway. Use FilmFreeway to accept and screen submissions and pick your Official Selections then easily export that data to Sparq.

• Import submissions and selections from FilmFreeway into Sparq
• Pulls all data, including screener links and passwords
• Stores responses to custom questions
• Sets up projects for all official selections in Sparq with traceability to original FilmFreeway submission
• Can add submissions and selections from other sources

Asset Gathering

Sparq gathers all screening and marketing assets you need to support online and in-person screenings, as well information that will make it easier for your to market your official selections and build your festival program. Even after COVID-19 when festivals return to theaters, this online form makes it much easier to get all assets from filmmakers (with the obvious exception of DCP drives).

• User-friendly form for direct upload and ingest of media assets
• Supports any size of file (yes even a 2 hour, 4k ProRes file)
• Assets stored in the cloud for fast access by technical staff
• For online screenings, automatic ingest into our streaming system that supports high quality, 4K viewing on big screens
• Define different poster and logo requirements and enforce dimensions
• Captures social media information and core meta-data
• Supports open captions and closed captions in all languages

Judging

Sparq supports a variety of judging processes for evaluating Official Selections for awards. The initial screening of submissions and selecting Official Selections is done in FilmFreeway. If FilmFreeway does not meet your judging and award needs, Sparq can help you better identify nominees and judge winners.

• Invite in external judges or make festival staff members judges using their Google or Apple IDs
• Each category can have one or more judges assigned to it
• You can allow judges in one category to recommend nominees for other categories
• Judging rules: majority, plurality, unanimous, plus a tie-breaker judge to mediate deadlocks
• Separate “accountant” roles so only festival staff members or auditors have access to the results
• Define when nominations and awards are public
• Laurel gallery for all selection, nomination, and awards laurels
• Automatically publish nominations and awards into the festival site to keep site fresh and updated

Online Screenings

Sparq provides the best possible viewing experience for your festival audience whether they are on a tiny handheld device or streaming to a theater screen. We ingest media assets into a variety of streamable formats with support for high bitrate, 4k streaming and deliver based on the device and network capabilities of the individual viewers.

• Group films/series by screening block or genre or other criteria
• Geo-fencing on a per-film or site-wide basis by country, continent, or super-block (e.g. EU)
• Schedule availability for screening on a case-by-cases or all at once with a defined start and end time
• Search functionality
• Film pages not only allow screening, but also can include links to film social media and IMDB presence
• Optionally leave the film page up minus the streaming as a marketing tool for the filmmaker (improves SEO)
• Automatically pull in screening information into your core website
• Integrate with Google Analytics to track audience activity
• Email integration including Mailchimp to subscribe audience members to your mailing lists
• Future: Integration with tools like Eventbrite to import attendee information for online access

Access and Ticketing

• Flexible ticketing for both online and in-person events
• Allow access to all visitors, logged-in visitors, or purchased passes
• Sell all-access passes, screening block passes or PPV access
• Request donations of any size

Audience Choice Voting

Audience Choice voting is always weird and tedious. Sparq makes that process efficient and a little more reflective of the true audience experience.

• Allow audience members to vote among shows they have watched on a global or per-block basis
• Automated tallying of audience choice winner(s)
• Supports both online screenings and in-person screenings—no more paper ballots.
• Future: mobile app for voting at in-person screenings only during block screening times

Live Streaming

Host panels and keynotes and live stream them to multiple locations like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch.

• Requires you to have a streaming set up on location

Branded and Customized

• Configure which content you wish to highlight
• Customize branding (logos, colors) to reflect the festival brand
• Inexpensive deeper customization (layout, support for additional content)

Sponsor Features

• Add optional sponsor promotion including rotations
• Ability to run sponsor pre-rolls during online screenings