Steamboat Cinema is a free platform to stream all your favorite movies when you are connected to the University of Wyoming’s wifi. Steamboat Cinema offers a wide variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies to high-action movies. This streaming platform is offered to help first-year residents get accustomed to their new environment and to relieve stress.
“My elevator pitch is that it’s a curated Netflix for the campus,” Ryan Schamp, director of Residence Life and Associate Dean of Students said.
Steamboat Cinema is able to be offered because the University of Wyoming entered into a partnership with Swank Media. Swank Media has licenses to many studios. The university looks through the catalog of films that Swank Media offers and chooses the ones they wish to show. There are an estimated 1,400 new movies shown on Steamboat Cinema a year. Students can also recommend movies they would like to see featured, and Schamp will personally look through the recommendations.
“If it’s not in the Swank server we can do it but so far that is the only way I can cut it. I will make no decisions about the quality of something. If somebody comes to me and they want something on there, if it’s available, it will be put up,” Schamp said. Any movie recommended that is in Swamp Media’s catalog will be added to the streaming service.
Steamboat Cinema also offers written study guides on many of the movies offered. Schamp said, “They have study guides written by college professors. If you want to watch Wonder Woman 1984 there is a legitimate academic guide… to help you take something more from the movie than just it being Wonder Woman 1984.”
Steamboat Cinema has been extremely successful on the University of Wyoming campus. Within the first year, it had 174,955 individual views. “In order to get one view, the viewer has to have something playing for at least 30 minutes,” Schamp said. Steamboat Cinema was logged onto from 10,947 different devices. Schamp said he is striving for 225,000 views this year.
Steamboat Cinema also offers students a chance to broadcast their own films. Schamp has expressed his desire to have a category committed to students’ short films.
“I’ve worked at places where they did dance ensembles every year, so they would record that and that would get put up… one school I worked at had a film festival and every year the student films that won the film festival would then be placed on that service,” said Schamp. This gives people an opportunity to attend film festivals from the comfort of their beds while giving a voice to aspiring movie producers.
