🎬 Raindance × Hiway: Discover. Be Discovered. Build Your Castle.
Dean Goldberg (Raindance) sits down with David Orman (Hiway) on the human algorithm, the 98% of films the world never sees, and why 40p a day is the wrong way to sell creator sovereignty.
DO: Dean, every time we talk you’re on this mission.
DG: It’s not a mission. It’s a pattern. Same conversation, every week, with every filmmaker. And sponsors. And programmers. And the guy who makes my flat white.
DO: Go on then.
DG: We get over 10,000 submissions a year. The festival can physically screen about 200. That’s 2%. Which means 98% of the work, the sweat, the craft, the heartbreak, goes nowhere. Not because it’s bad. Because we don’t have infinite cinemas.
DO: And people don’t realise Raindance actually watches all of them.
DG: Exactly. Humans. Not algorithms. Humans watch every single film. Across our paid and volunteer screeners, we watch around 2 million minutes of film every year. That’s 33,000 hours of human attention. Nearly four years of continuous watching for one person.
And then what? We throw 98% of that human effort in the bin? What’s the point of curating if the curation has nowhere to go?
The Raindance Origin Story - The Human Algorithm
DO: You weren’t even a “film industry guy” when you arrived.
DG: Not at all. I came in as a sponsor. Then I got invited to be a judge. Every first Tuesday I’d sit with the pre‑selection committee, people who spoke fluent cinema. I didn’t. They were referencing directors, movements, lenses, things I’d never heard of.
But after about three months, something clicked. My picks were pretty close to the “experts”.
And then it dawned on me: you don’t need training to know what’s great. You instinctively know. You might not know why a film is great, but you know that it is.
Why? Because I’m part of the audience. And the audience decides what’s good. Not an algorithm.
That’s when I realised Raindance’s secret weapon: the human algorithm beats the machine every time, and what we should be doing is the opposite of what is happening. Hiway came along and provides the rails so that we no longer need to reject the 98%. We can release them.
Negative Benchmarking: What the Big Platforms Can’t Do
DO: People compare Raindance Releasing + Hiway to Netflix or YouTube.
DG: Which is hilarious. Because we’re not trying to do what they do well. We’re solving the things they do badly or cannot do.
They drown you in choice overload.
They bury independent work under algorithmic sludge.
They treat creators like gig workers.
They keep the master, the data, the money, and the audience.
They give you “content”, not cinema.
If you want decision overload, go to Netflix. If you want infinite scrolling, go to YouTube. If you want actual discovery, come to Raindance Releasing.
Less scrolling. More watching. Discover. Be Discovered.
The Restaurant Analogy - Curated, Not Dumped
DO: So Raindance Releasing is curation?
DG: Exactly. Think of a top restaurant. You’re not confronted with hundreds of dishes. You get a curated menu, crafted by people with taste.
Raindance Releasing is the curated menu. You decide by watching, not scrolling. You vote with your eyes. And filmmakers get the data and the relationship with their audience.
YouTube is great for reach. But for audience building, career building, community building, that’s where Creator Sovereignty comes in.
Predictive‑Processing Anomaly: Humans, Not Algorithms
DO: People expect machine learning.
DG: And that’s the surprise. We don’t use one.
The best algorithm in the world for deciding what’s good is still a human being. And Raindance has 35 years of humans doing exactly that.
We’re not building a streaming platform. We’re building a human‑curated discovery engine powered by the people who actually watch the films.
That’s the anomaly. People expect machine learning. We give them human taste.
The Living Room Problem → The Castle Solution
DO: You’ve got that living room metaphor.
DG: Because it’s true. Filmmakers spend years building a film, their house. Then they hand it to a platform and suddenly they have to knock on the door to visit their own living room.
Raindance Releasing flips it.
Don’t beg to be let back into your own living room. Build your castle. Sit on your own throne. We just help people find the front gate.
Hiway is the plumbing so the castle doesn’t flood.
Why Hiway Actually Matters
DO: So where does Hiway fit into this?
DG: Hiway is the infrastructure that finally makes creator sovereignty practical.
For £12 a month, which is 40p a day, filmmakers get:
Global or territorial streaming
Instant payouts
Audience analytics
Screener rooms
Share‑to‑earn links
Live reports for financiers
Total control of their IP
40p a day. That’s less than a carrier bag at Tesco, less than a bag of crisps, or a single Nespresso coffee pod.
DO: Are you saying we should put our prices up?
DG: Maybe. From a human behavioural perspective, 40p a day - cheaper than a single Nespresso pod - for total creative sovereignty feels like we’re under‑selling the whole idea.
Interestingly, if you tell a filmmaker it’s £12 a month, they immediately think “subscription” and become resistant. If you tell them it’s one coffee pod a day to own their audience, their data, their revenue, and their future, they think “it’s a steal”.
Where else can you get the keys to your castle for less than your morning caffeine hit? Where else can 40p a day get you a turn‑key career builder?
Creator Sovereignty (the real point)
DO: So what’s the philosophy?
DG: Creator Sovereignty.
Creator Sovereignty means creators own their work, their audience, their data, their revenue, and their career pathway. But importantly, they own it without dependency on platforms that treat them as replaceable.
The principle of Raindance is they are free to go. They are not tied in. They are free to choose to remain and build.
Raindance has always been about discovery, development, teaching, and recognition. Releasing + Hiway is simply the missing piece: the distribution layer that allows us to build creator sovereignty instead of dependency.
We’re not trying to be Netflix. We’re not trying to be YouTube. We’re building an independent creative ecosystem that sits outside both, but recognises they are part of the world.
The Maths That Changes Careers
DO: You’ve got that YouTube example.
DG: Yeah. Half a million views on YouTube gets you about £1,500 to £3,000 in ad revenue. Zero data. Zero emails. Zero career.
Now make a simple tweak to the model:
Promote your film on YouTube / Instagram. (Other platforms are available.)
Stream it on Raindance Releasing for a four‑week window.
Charge £3.99.
Convert 1% of your 500k views into your top 5,000 fan base.
That’s nearly £20,000. Paid instantly. Into your account. Plus 5,000 real fans now in your own CRM.
Same film. Same audience. Different maths. And you still get 500k views on YouTube and £1,500 to £3,000 in ad revenue on top. Probably more.
Do it again on your next film and suddenly you have a database. That database gets your next film financed. That’s a career.
Final Word to Filmmakers - The Call to Action
DO: Anything you’d say to a filmmaker reading this?
DG: Yes. Try it. With one film. Look at doing a 3 month trial. Watch the analytics. Send them to your financier. Share them with your cast and crew and your audience. Give your cast, friends and fans a share‑to‑earn link. Watch what happens when the first rental lands in your bank (and theirs) before you’ve even bought your £4.50 flat white.
For 40p a day, you get the keys to your castle.
If it’s not for you, cancel after 3 months. You have creator sovereignty. You can leave and take your master and your audience with you.
If it is for you and you stay, you’ve just quietly built the operating system for the rest of your career.
Raindance Releasing is live at raindancereleasing.com.
Powered by Hiway. From £12 a month. Non‑exclusive by design.