The revolution begins
In the summer of 1998, after discovering successful bands including Nine Inch Nails and The Presidents of the USA, media industry veteran Mika Salmi started AtomFilms - an entertainment company that he hopes will change the face of film distribution as we know it. Broadcasting a range of shorts by independent filmmakers, AtomFilms went live on March 1, 1999, and has been making waves in the entertainment industry ever since. Already, a film distributed by Atom, Holiday Romance, was nominated for an Academy Award. The popularity of the company increases continually with over 400 films submitted daily, and Atom predicts to reach profitability in 2001. With financial backing from Hollywood heavyweights like former Viacom and Universal head Frank Biondi, it looks as if AtomFilms is poised to revolutionize the way the world watches movies.
Entertainment for the People
AtomFilms' site divides its archive of over 800 films into animation and film channels, each of which offers a panoply of shorts. All films - which are handpicked by AtomFilms' screeningstaff - are under 25 minutes in length. Atom has also added a EuroChannel, showing movies from the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, and Belgium. Access to Atom's entire catalogue online is available by signing up for a free membership. Viewers can watch a selection of daily picks and recent short subjects, download movies to e-mail, and buy compilations of Atom's movies on VHS or DVD. Through a partnership with Microsoft, AtomFilms surprised the technology world by annoucing that viewers could now download its Internet shorts to view on handheld devices similar to the PalmPilot. This means even greater distribution for Hollywood and the film world, and more exposure for the company.
The company acquired web design and content shop PixelWave in November 1999, spearheading the creation of Atom Studio, an in-house production facility. Through Atom Studio, producers whose films are shown on the AtomFilms site can expand their production capabilites - enabling them to extend ten-minute short films into weekly online series, and to create all-new content. With the deal, Atom also gained the distribution rights to PixelWave content like StockMarket Psychic and The SuckUp Show. Salmi's company has also struck partnership deals with HBO, the Sundance Channel, Reel.com, and 12 airlines that show Atom's movies in-flight.
Entertainment by the people
With the new program MogulMaker, AtomFilms hopes to continue its revolution of the entertainment industry. IAM.COM and AtomFilms joined forces to produce an original film project expected to air in Fall 2000. The talent for the film will come from IAM.COM, while AtomFilms will choose a director, executive producer, and script from its commmunity of Web participants. Five aspiring movie moguls pitched ideas for new projects online and the viewing community voted to pick their favorite.
AtomFilms has also partnered with the USC School of Cinema-Television to screen the school's archive of over 100 short student films online. The "USC Cinema Yearbook" includes student theses from the likes of George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis.
The people speak
AtomFilms is becoming more and more recognizable as the next-generation entertainment company. U.S. News and World Report named AtomFilms the "Best of the Web" for online entertainment and PC Magazine cited Atom as one of the top five entertainment Web sites in 1999. More impressively, at the prestigious Webby awards in May 2000, AtomFilms beat out the longstanding favorite Internet Database film information site (www.imdb.com) to win the People's Voice for Broadband award.
