The Académie des César chooses Kinow to create screening room
January 5, 2021
The Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, also known as the Académie des César, is the institution in France that rewards professionals in the film industry.
This year, the Académie des César decided to use the Kinow solution to create its first online viewing platform exclusively for its 4,300 voting members.
Since its creation in 1975, the Academy has been a real reference known and recognised in France. It is at the origin of an unmissable French film event: the César Ceremony. Broadcast live and unencrypted on Canal+, it is almost three hours of show during which all the winners of the year are revealed.
With a catalogue of more than 400 hours of films, and members present all over the world, the Académie des César wished its members a solution to see or watch again the films released in theatres in this year hard hit by the health situation. Conceived as a voting tool for the next César awards of the year, the Academy’s platform will not be opened to the public but exclusively reserved for its voting members.
The Académie des César has chosen our tailor-made solution to respond to several problems: The first essential point for the Academy is to facilitate the film viewing process for all its voting members in France but also abroad. In the past, a part of the eligible films was caught up via a DVD box sent to each voting member. The online video platform now simplifies this process of accessing films for members, regardless of their place of residence.
The second aspect to be taken into account is the security of the content. To best meet the content protection needs of rights holders, Kinow has integrated Hollywood DRMs (Fairplay, Playready & Widevine) into its video player. This system is used to prevent film piracy. For double prevention, a watermark in text form is also used on the video player.
A third aspect concerns the provision of a real voting aid tool. As the platform will be evolving over the coming months, each film sheet will offer the possibility of taking notes but will also be supplemented by enriched content, such as video bonuses, photos from filming, pdfs of film scenarios, etc.
Finally, the Kinow solution will allow the Academy to manage its platform as it wishes. At a time when the mobile is an integral part of our daily lives, the viewing platform will very soon offer content accessible via Android and iOS mobile applications, also enabling broadcasting on TVs connected via wifi. Everything has been designed to facilitate the user experience and offer the best viewing experience thanks to adaptive streaming.