Regent Graduate Creates New Streaming Platform to Promote Consumer Choices, Producer Empowerment
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (July 17, 2020) – Nathan Todd Sims (SCA, ’99) has produced hundreds of film and television projects over the years, including an award-winning indie feature, 10 television series, and numerous documentary projects which have reached millions of fans worldwide. Most recently, he’s focused on Twinkle, a video-on-demand (VOD) streaming platform he founded to empower independent film and television artists to take back control of their project ownership and provide direct access to their audiences around the world. Twinkle will officially launch on July 20, 2020 – National Space Exploration Day – with a popular, worldwide series called “Space Mistakes.” The show provides a behind-the-scenes look at NASA’s learning curve and how their failures further exploration.
“The ever-changing film and television landscape has created unprecedented global audience potential,” Sims said. However, he sees a trend in larger subscription streaming “hoarding ownership” of funded content, which can marginalize the work of independent producers and remove them from sharing in the financial benefits of their projects.
“This is making it more and more difficult for producers to fund their fresh ideas, resulting in a homogenization of content,” Sims said. “Twinkle opens a pathway for indie producers to keep control of their own content with higher profitability.”
Sims produced “Space Mistakes” through his independent Texas-based production company, FusionFlix Entertainment. The show was picked up by broadcasters around the world including Discovery Channel International (Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France), PBS America (UK), AMC (Spain), and Red Apollo (China), and several other countries as well as U.S. based streaming services including Amazon Prime.
Now, Twinkle will become the exclusive VOD home for this fascinating show. Consumers may opt to purchase the six-episode series or individual episodes, with no monthly subscription required. Sims said this model was constructed to release viewers from another monthly subscription and provide independent producers both financial and creative benefits.
Twinkle is also providing numerous vintage NASA historical films as free bonus content along with the full series.
According to Sims, “These public domain films which are very difficult to access are amazing! We contracted or sub-contracted with NASA for years and used the films for various projects. We are now making them available to viewers of the series.” For example, viewers can watch the original film NASA produced about the Apollo 13 crisis or a film about the colonization of space produced in 1975 that predicted we would be living in space by the year 2000 along with numerous others.
Sims is already in discussions with producers for more indie content for Twinkle.
A graduate of Regent University’s film-television program, he has received more than 50 domestic and international film awards, including multiple Silver Telly Awards and the CINE Golden Eagle. Sims is the former president of the Dallas Producers Association, the legislative architect behind the highly successful Texas Moving Image Incentive Program (state film incentives), and founder and charter board member of the Texas Motion Picture Alliance.
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The School of Communication & the Arts is ranked among the Top 5 Most Prestigious Communication Programs in Virginia (Plexuss, 2020). Equipped with a $35 million Communication & Performing Arts Center, this state-of-the-art school produces over 100 student films per year and has won over 500 national and international student film awards. The school offers on campus and online degree programs in highly competitive fields, including Master of Arts in Communication, Film-Television (Producing, Production, Script Writing), Journalism, and Theatre; Master of Fine Arts in Acting and Film-Television (Directing, Producing, and Script & Screenwriting); Doctor of Strategic Communication and Ph.D. in Communication.