“We’re talking about how to get to that point where we can catalog everything that has ever been made in Milwaukee.”
Jon Taylor likes movies, specifically movies with a connection to Milwaukee. He likes them so much that he’s spent the better part of this year building a single access point to watch them. All of them.
MKE Video is Taylor’s attempt to collect every single feature, short, and music video with a Milwaukee connection and stick them under one, easily accessible platform. And that means everything. There’s tangential high-profile stuff like Public Enemies, which features a bank robbery inside the Milwaukee County Historical Society, or American Movie‘s chronicling of Milwaukee director Mark Borchardt’s aspirations. MKE Video has plenty of shorts, too like the Bai Ling-starring western Yellow Hill, and that’s on top of its cache of Milwaukee-shot music videos for acts that include Field Report and Awkwardterrible. Bandwidth isn’t a concern for Taylor, but when he can’t stream bigger titles himself (see: Public Enemies), MKE Video will link to outside streaming sources.
In the middle of a summer-long beta phase for the site, Taylor works in graphic design for his day job with family duties to boot. He chatted with me over the phone last week about this ambitious use of his spare time:
What in God’s name made you want to do this?
People see a problem and they set out to solve it. My problem was that I’d go to film festivals and see a film that was made in Milwaukee and have no way to find it afterward. You’d go and see Milwaukee shorts and then they would disappear, and you just have this memory. Since then, I’ve been creating a database of artists. It’s fun because I’m constantly finding new things. You send out 10 emails and maybe one person gets back to you but as more key people get back to you, it creates energy. Now I’m at the point where I can’t keep up. I find this fun. It’s a very long, challenging problem.
How many films do you have available online right now?
If I have a trailer that links to a paywall or streaming service, I count that, so we’re around 100. And there are a couple of catalogs from big producers where, if they gave me their entire collection tomorrow, we would hit that number. 150 or 200 titles would be critical mass for the site, where it finally becomes a viable platform with enough variety for people to spend time and come back to enjoy some more. Those are the numbers we’re looking to hit.
In those cases where you’re unable to stream something directly, is it your intention to point to other streaming services on availability? Like, hey we can’t show you Public Enemies but you can watch it here.
We already do right now. With Public Enemies, there’s a click-through to Amazon, and we’ll have Google Play and others available. For independent films, that’s the challenge. We’ll have a separate forum, a paywall housed within our site for people to see it. Currently, I don’t have the inner knowledge of Ross Bigley or Red Letter Media to see what their deals are with Amazon, Netflix, iTunes or whatever service is out there, but it’s just a matter of the longer negotiation.
How do you envision your subscription model for content?
That’s not been defined yet. My intention is to have all of an artist’s content in one place and pay them almost all revenue. It’s such a small market, so we’re not really in it to make money.
Are there any names you’re still working to get on board with MKE Video?
All the major players have been contacted. We’re talking about how to get to that point where we can catalog everything that has ever been made in Milwaukee. This project is really in its infancy. I don’t think I’ve missed anyone, but I also don’t know what I don’t know.
Right now on the beta site, you have content organized by genre. Are there plans to sort films by additional criteria in the future?
Every film will be connected through actor, director, cinematographer. Any position in a film will be searchable and clickable, so if Bob was a cinematographer in Movie A, you can click on Bob and see everything else Bob the cinematographer has done in his profile.
What’s next for MKE Video once the beta phase is over?
We’re going to do an online film festival where content will be housed on the site for people to watch. There will be considerably more features and shorts, as well as a pay-per-view-type of format for some of the bigger features by local creators.
- You can check out MKE Video at MKEVideo.com