Those features include exclusive movie downloads, improved search capabilities, special AIM icons, banners and wallpapers of screenshots, as well as a video diary with behind-the-scenes footage from Blake’s latest productions. There also is an HD video-on-demand cinema.
The BlakeBucks.com affiliate program offers a 50-50 split for signups and renewal revenue.
Blake, who is known for his lush cinematography, has been shooting on 16-mm film for 38 years. His trademark use of high fashion-style models, little dialogue, and elaborate sets and costumes has defined a unique niche.
“So basically my new website is going to be a lot of my archived footage that I have on standard disc, still shot on film,” Blake told XBIZ. “Then everything that’s new, I’ve been mastering onto high-definition for about the last five years, so I’m going to start rolling all of those high-definition features out, edited down into five-and six-minute chunks.”
Blake explained that, after developing the 16-mm film, he use a process called Telecine to transfer the footage onto high-definition tapes that are then digitized for the web.
“It’s technically okay, it’s just getting all of my ducks in a row so that everybody understands what I’m doing,” Blake said. “It’s just in translating it to the web there’s a technical brouhaha that we go through to make it work, but it does work.”
All downloadable content on the site is presented in Flash format and uses Digital Rights Management. Problems with piracy of his DVDs over the last several years have caused Blake to be cautious with distributing his material.
“It’s piracy in the physical object of the DVD as well as just taking my DVDs and using those DVD rippers you can buy at Staples and either making another physical copy of the DVD or putting it up on the Internet somewhere, typically in Northern Europe,” he said.
“From what I’ve heard, the pirates have already cracked the HD DVD and Blu-ray codex for the physical HD DVDs,” Blake said. “So what’s the point of making something and just having it stolen out from under you?”
In the future, Blake hopes to release all new content exclusively on his site, before distribution on DVD. By allowing the consumer access on the Internet, he hopes pirates will loose the incentive to pirate material once the DVD is released.
Concerning the issue of piracy, Blake said that he believes most video content producers are at a loss for what to do to protect their product.
“They don’t know whether to shit or wind their watch, as the saying goes, and you can quote me on that,” he said.
