Do not send the file, and do not send an unlisted link. A screener needs three things instead: it expires, each recipient gets their own link, and there is no downloadable copy. On watchmycreation you do that by buying a ticket on your own published film for each person and sending the private link from the receipt — one code each, so the record you keep of which code went where is what puts a name to a leak.
The access window is 12 hours and it starts at the first press of play rather than at purchase, so a jury that opens your link a fortnight later still gets the whole window. A ticket can only exist on a published film, which means the film has to pass review first — this is the wrong tool for a film under a premiere embargo.
A screener is not a copy of your film. It is permission to watch it, given to one named person, that stops working afterwards. Almost everything that gets used as a screener fails at least one of these three tests:
There is a fourth thing you will want and almost nothing gives you: knowing whether it was watched. Without it, silence after sending means nothing and you have no idea whether to follow up. We are honest about that below rather than claiming it.
| What people send | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| The file, by transfer service or shared drive | You have given away a copy. It cannot be expired or traced, and their backup holds your film now too. |
| An unlisted link on a video site | Forwards perfectly and works for whoever receives it, indefinitely. Nothing about it is private except that it is not in search results. |
| A password-protected page | The password travels in the same email as the link and is forwarded with it. It keeps out strangers, not recipients. |
| A review link with an expiry | The right shape. The questions are whether the expiry is per recipient, and whether the clock starts when you send it or when they open it. |
That last row is the standard to aim at, here or anywhere. If your film is already on a service that issues expiring, per-recipient review links, use it. What follows is how the same thing is done here, where a screener and a sale are the same object.
Publishing is not something you do yourself, and this is the step that takes time. You upload the film, complete it — title, description, age rating, content warnings and a price — and submit it for review. Submission is refused outright if any of that is missing or the video has not finished encoding, and approval is ours to give. Publishing, and the listing fee that puts an approved film on sale, both follow it. What you need before you upload is the full list of what submission checks for. Plan around it: a screener cannot be produced in the hour before a deadline.
A published film also appears in the public catalogue. There is no hidden or unlisted mode. Listing starts at ₹99 for a film up to 15 minutes and rises with runtime, and keeps it on sale for 90 days.
If your film is under a premiere embargo, this is the wrong tool. Many festivals’ premiere rules can be broken by any prior public release, paid or not, and the definitions differ from festival to festival — world, international, national and online premieres are separate things, and whether a paid or geo-restricted release counts at all varies. Read the regulations of the festivals you are actually targeting before you publish anywhere; if you are still deciding the order to release in, read where to release your film before you upload anything.
There is no flat minimum. The least you may charge is what your own film costs to show, and that is a function of how long it runs: ₹4.32 for a film of about 10 minutes, ₹114.53 for one running the 600 minutes we accept at the top end. Streaming is billed by the minute and the platform fee does not shrink with a cheaper ticket, so a ticket priced under its own film’s floor would lose money on every sale, and it is refused rather than settled. The ceiling is ₹1000 whatever the runtime.
That floor matters more here than anywhere else on the site, because a screener is a ticket you buy yourself. A shorter film’s floor is a small number, which is what makes buying a separate ticket for every recipient practical; a feature-length film’s floor is higher, so plan a batch of screeners on it as a real expense before you have sold anything. Pick the price you actually want to sell at, though, because it is the public price too. The price is not what a screener costs you — you are paying yourself — and the next section does that arithmetic.
Go to your own film page and buy a ticket as any viewer would. The receipt gives you an access code and a private link with that code inside it. Buy again for the next recipient: separate tickets are the whole of the attribution, because the code is drawn over the picture while the film plays. Each ticket carries its own window and its own code, and every cap below is counted per ticket rather than per person.
Nothing in the dashboard maps a code to a name. A spreadsheet with the festival or the commissioner, the code, the date you sent it and the date you followed up is the entire system, and you will want it much later, when something surfaces.
The listing fee above comes first and comes once. If the film is not otherwise on sale, that is the real cost of a batch of screeners and the per-ticket figures below are rounding.
After that you are paying yourself, and a screener costs you only the part of the ticket that does not come back as earnings on the next payout. That part is neither a flat charge nor a fixed share of the price. Two of the four deductions are percentages of the price — tax, and the payment gateway — and two are fixed rupee amounts that do not shrink with a cheaper ticket: streaming, billed by the minute of runtime, and the platform fee. For a 10-minute film, from its own floor to the ceiling:
| You pay | Comes back as earnings | Net cost of the screener |
|---|---|---|
| ₹4.32 | ₹0.01 | ₹4.31 |
| ₹65.73 | ₹49.87 | ₹15.86 |
| ₹1000 | ₹808.56 | ₹191.44 |
Read the last column. The share that comes back improves as the price rises — 0% of the cheapest ticket against 81% of the dearest — because the two flat costs are the same whatever you charge, so they bite hardest at the bottom of the range. The rupees you lose rise too, and faster, because tax and the gateway take their cut of whatever the ticket is. A screener on a film you have priced high is a real cost rather than a rounding error, and a long film costs more to screen than a short one whatever the price, because delivery is billed by the minute of runtime — the cost breakdown has the components, and you can put your own runtime into the earnings calculator.
| Rule | What it means for a screener |
|---|---|
| Access window | 12 hours, counted from the first press of play — not from when you sent it. |
| Playthroughs | 1 completed playthrough per ticket. An unfinished watch does not spend one, and the same link reopens it close to where it stopped. |
| Delivery | Capped at the runtime multiplied by 5, counted as time actually spent watching — pausing, closing the tab and reopening the link cost nothing. Enough to watch the film through with margin for a patchy connection and a fresh start, not enough to play it over and over. |
| Streams at once | 1, usually. A second device is told the ticket is already playing, and on what — though genuinely simultaneous opens can slip past it. |
| Download | None. There is no file and no saveable rendition; the player is handed a signed address that expires and is renewed while it plays. |
| Seeking | None. The progress bar shows position and takes no input. |
| On screen | The ticket’s code, over the picture, throughout. |
The clock starts at first play. This is the difference between a screener that works and one that quietly expires in a submissions inbox. You can send a link in March and have it open in April with the full window intact. It also means you cannot use the expiry as a deadline — if you need them to have watched by a date, say so in the email, because the link will not say it for you.
Closing the tab does not spend the ticket; finishing the film does. A juror who stops halfway or loses the connection can reopen the same link with the ticket untouched, as long as the access window is still open, and the film picks up close to where they left off. The player reports how far it has got as it plays, and a reopened link starts there, a few seconds back; there is still no seek control, so nobody can skip ahead of it. Coming back costs nothing in itself: the ticket’s allowance — 5 times the runtime, for the whole life of the ticket — counts only time spent watching, so a recipient who pauses for a day or reopens the link on another device has used up nothing by doing so. One who starts the film over and over can still run it out before they reach the end; if that happens, send a second ticket rather than leaving them to keep trying. What does spend a ticket is reaching the end: it carries 1 completed playthrough, and once the film has played through, a second viewing needs a second ticket — which costs you the deductions above.
Most screeners are ignored for reasons that have nothing to do with how they were sent.
If a festival asks for a particular platform, link format or an open window covering the judging period, give them that. A programmer working through hundreds of entries will not write to you about a link that did not behave; they will move on. What is described here suits a producer, a commissioner, a distributor or a jury member you are writing to directly far better than it suits a bulk submissions portal.
Title, director, runtime, language and year, in that order, in the subject line and in the name of anything attached. A poster, a one-page synopsis and a stills folder are worth more than a long email. If the film is not in English, say what subtitles exist before they ask.
A few lines: what the film is, how long it runs, where it has played, and the specific thing you are asking for. A screener with no ask attached gets watched last.
Because the window starts when they press play, you do not need to guess how long to leave it open — you need to give them long enough to get round to opening it. A fortnight is a reasonable silence before a short, polite follow-up that repeats the link. Once. If a ticket has been finished and you want to offer another viewing, say that in the follow-up rather than making them ask.
Get the film through review and onto sale first, then buy a ticket on it for each person you are sending to and send the private link from the receipt. It expires 12 hours after they press play, it carries that ticket’s code on screen, it cannot be downloaded, and it costs you the deductions rather than the ticket price — plus the listing fee, once, if the film was not already on sale. It is the wrong tool for a film that must stay unpublished.
Published by Sajai Digital, which operates watchmycreation. We describe how our own platform works and what Indian law requires of it; this is not legal, tax or financial advice, and rates and rules change. Check anything that matters with a professional. Something wrong on this page? Write to support@watchmycreation.com and we will fix it.