How the math works
Methodology
The allocation is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same payouts, and every split sums to the cent. Fraud rules are published in advance — legitimacy, not damage control.
Allocation, in plain English
- Every subscriber pays the same monthly fee. Add them up → gross pool.
- Take out payment-processing fees and platform operations. What remains is the filmmaker pool (80% in this demo — Channel 5 sets the real number).
- For the month, count each film's qualified watch-minutes. A film's share = its watch-minutes ÷ all films' watch-minutes.
- A film's allocation = its share × the filmmaker pool. Allocations sum exactly to the pool (leftover pennies go to the largest remainders — no money is lost or invented).
- Each film's allocation is split among its cast by pre-agreed percentages (summing to 100%). Those payouts sum exactly to the film's allocation.
Worked example — Finding Orson, July 2026 (illustrative)
| Gross pool | 40,000 subs × $5.55 | $222,000.00 |
| − Payment processing (5%) | −$11,100.00 | |
| − Platform operations (15%) | −$33,300.00 | |
| Filmmaker pool (80%) | $177,600.00 | |
| Finding Orson watch share | 2,430,000 / 9,000,000 min | 27.00% |
| Finding Orson allocation | $177,600 × 0.2700 | $47,952.00 |
| Director — Andrew Callaghan | 55% | $26,373.60 |
| Producer (demo) | 20% | $9,590.40 |
| Editor (demo) | 15% | $7,192.80 |
| Composer (demo) | 10% | $4,795.20 |
| Cast total | 100% | $47,952.00 |
These exact figures are re-derived by the engine and asserted to the cent by checks.mjs.
Fraud & counting rules (published in advance)
- Minimum qualifying view — 5 minutes. A play shorter than 5 minutes contributes zero watch-minutes.
- Per-account daily cap — 240 minutes per film. One account cannot inflate a film past 4 hours/day of counted time.
- Completion weighting (option). Watch-minutes can be weighted by fraction completed, so finished films count more than abandoned ones.
- Replay decay. Repeat views by the same account within a period decay toward zero, so re-watching cannot farm the pool.
- Deterministic reconciliation. Allocations and splits use largest-remainder rounding: totals always reconcile to the cent, auditable by anyone.
Settlement & payouts
A period closes at month end. Funds then age 60 days before they are payable (chargeback/refund window). State moves AGING → AGED → PAID. Payouts run through Stripe Connect Express, which handles KYC, W-9/W-8 tax forms, 1099 generation, and foreign-filmmaker withholding — so Channel 5 never touches per-payee tax handling. See the Payee view for the Connect object shape.
What's real vs illustrative
- Real: film titles, directors, runtimes (public c5.now catalog); the $5.55 price; the arithmetic (runs live in your browser).
- Illustrative / fake: subscriber counts, watch-minutes, revenue, fee rates, cast splits, and all crew names except directors.
- Absent (by design): watch-time ingestion. In a real integration it is a webhook or nightly CSV feeding the counting rules above.