I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about all the new revenue models for independent film distribution and how to communicate them effectively to potential investors.
I mean, in the past when you would do a film business plan it was quite simple – project revenue from traditional distribution platforms like Broadcast, Theatrical, DVD, and Foreign Sales. But what about all the NEW revenue streams we must account for like VOD (internet & cable), direct-to-consumer DVD sales, merchandise, games, and other transmedia platforms? How do you account for that and communicate that effectively in your business plan?
Incidentally I’m going to be speaking on this very topic as part of a half day workshop I’m giving at the Berlin Film Festival in a couple of weeks called DAWN OF THE MICRO MAJOR FILM PRODUCER. I’m also thinking of teaching a virtual boot camp on this subject because it’s so crucial right now and no one else is talking about it….
So I’d love to hear your thoughts. What are your concerns with writing your film business plan in a 2.0 world? And what questions do you have?
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I have been reading about the future of the film industry (and medias in general) for a while now. I have seen a lot of creative ideas (Kickstarter, crowdfunding, Artemis project, CwF+RtB, etc.).
I am a filmmaker and I used to earn a decent living selling my films worldwide. In the last few years, the bottom fell out and the prices are dropping so low that making the films become unsustainable. Everybody is scrambling for the exit and looking for a new business model or looking for ways to go back to the status quo. While I agree that it is impossible to stop piracy and pointless to sue for that, I however wonder about the viability of a CwF+RtB model and other propositions, like crowd funding (which is a legal grey area and I believe it is only a matter of time before that plug is filled).
So as far as I can tell, the reasoning goes a little like this: spend years building an audience for your film, in order to convince them to finance you and your film, keep them posted on the progress, shoot the film, give it for free along with some reasonably priced schwag they can’t download, and keep promoting the shit out of it until you eventually (or more realistically hopefully) break even then start again… Fun perhaps, but at this point, it’s not a business it is a hobby! You cannot sustain an industry like this!
If you factor in all the time and effort to make the film, plus all the time you spend “connecting with fans” and providing them with (free) added value, you end up making less than a quarter of a penny an hour for your time! I love my job but I also need to pay my bills! Under the CwF+RtB model, I not only do I need to raise the money to make the film, a difficult proposition even under the “old” model, now I also need to find cash to finance the schwag ( and the warehoouse to store it – you can always go “print on demand” style, but the costs are higher, diminishing your chances of selling it unless you want to make pennies of profit – and let’s face it, only the hard core fans will buy the schwag!) and spend even more time connecting with the audience than ever before, plus add all the support time of maintaining what is now also becoming a retail business!!! I fail to see how it is sustainable for indie filmmakers with limited resources to begin with. It does not appear to make economical sense to me. Maybe I am not understanding it right but feel free to enlighten me. I’d like to understand what I am missing.
In think it remains to be seen if these things can be called business models at all, for the reasons the poster above says. So far, there is no reasonable revenue from any of these new streams.
Two things I’ve been really noodling on though a: combining businesses. Which is nothing new. Many production houses do client work to pay for their own work. But with the real merging of platforms, I’m now seeing the opportunity to do the same with my software business. So nothing new, but it never really occurred to me until this year. Maybe people should open their eyes to newer applications of old principals like this.
Secondly, to the poster above, what you’re faced with now is exactly what every small business in the world is faced with. Endless hours building your business for not enough money. Figuring out how not only to make your product, but get people to come see it. Because no one is going to do that for you. And I think that’s what this new model amounts to, viewing your film as a small business. And if it’s not viable as a business, then you have some choices to make.
Which brings me back to #1. I also think there is value in art, value not defined by $$$. So I have no problem letting the software half of my business help support the film half, if that’s what it comes down to. I don’t have this imaginary balance sheet in my head that says: “Well, if that film isn’t toeing its own weight, cut it loose!” Because I like making this stuff.
Hi Stacey,
Very good points & I think the essence of the 2.0 business plan’s problems lie in predicting revenues. Your site has great (and frequently-updated) breakdowns of the kind of sales you can expect to make for distribution in different territories on different formats if you get picked up, but the 2.0 model has much more self-distribution etc involved and predicting potential income is nigh-on impossible as far as I can see.
So I guess the big questions are: 1) What’s the indie model for self-distribution? and 2) Is there a typical/expected price for VOD sales as there is for DVD/Theatrical if you get picked up?
Mark, the problem is not so long ago, not long enough even to call it history, there was money to sustain the business. It almost dried up overnight. That is not a normal situation. Usually you see an exponential decline, sometimes fairly sudden but never so quick that you barely have time to prepare for it. On year, a film of a certain genre was selling for XX thousands of dollars, now there are people offering $500 for 10 years licenses! It’s like the bottom totally fell out overnight. And all I hear is comparisons between VHS vs DVDs, horse carriages vs cars, etc. The problem with these is that we know the answers: a horse carriage WILL be replaced by a car, for convenience alone. What is replacing movies? YouTube? The sooner we figure out what the products are being replaced with, the easier it will be to adapt and hopefully monetize. The problem is nobody seems to know what is really going on, even the economists that bandy around the “economics of free concepts” and the horse carriage vs cars analogies…
I’m looking at this whole time as a time to learn along with everyone else. And we are doing a lot of stuff right now to make our movie agile enough to react to quickly changing conditions. I actually stopped production last October in order to re-imagine the film specifically for this purpose. Because I saw the way things were in flux.
But, we know from the DIY movement, there are already some trends emerging. Extremely niche movies seem to be possibly viable through self-dist. And the web gives you direct access to the audience. Like, if you are into knitting, you have a very distinct target audience who may just buy your movie because it has knitting in it. That kind of thing. But it seems that more documentaries do well in this space than narrative films. Though I think it would be interesting to start seeing a lot of narrative films re-set in niche markets. Like I have a film noire, but now it’s a KNITTING film noire!!!!
Actually, prob not a good idea. I think when you are this close to the audience, they can sniff out sincerity.
I think @GoKustom does all right setting his films in this sort of retro, baby-boll, roller-derby culture, because that’s his people. He’s not some poser coming in with some movie in their world.
Finally though, I feel like employing audience-building techniques on the web can NEVER be a bad thing. Even if the traditional ways come back, how much more leverage will you have in sales if you can say you’ve got an audience hungry for this film when you sell it?
Sorry, one more thing. I met Michael Lynch at a Sundance Party a couple weeks ago. And he showed us his DVD for Burden. I was ready to buy on the spot, based on the DVD package alone. He only had one on him which he needed to show around. Because he’s seeking distribution.
Will I remember that film when it’s available on DVD…a year from now? Or did he just lose a sale?
Mark, perhaps we met at that party with Michael? Are you MegaMarkHarris? I think he will be alright with BURDEN, if he finds the money to produce it! That short set him back quite a bit. But he gets around, building his fans all the time.
You are so right, the mentality of the small business owner is going to have to be the mindset and there will be those not willing or able to do it, and they will fall away. Sorry to be harsh, but that is reality now.
You aren’t expected to do it all by yourself, in fact, do seek out the help and expertise of others and but all of the fundraising and marketing is in your court now, not a distributors. That is a fact. Monetizing is going to be work and it will be slow. No one is handing you a check anymore in one lump sum. If that is still your dream, wake up.
More content will be needed to engage the audience and keep them engaged. Consider this a marketing expense, a controllable expense by you instead of vague spending on the part of a distrib. I think most filmmakers didn’t realize that they were actually always funding these expenses, just not upfront. It came out of your backend and you had no say over what was spent and where. Now you do, but you have to pay upfront.
I would like to know some tools one can use to determine the anticipated return on a particular type of film. Studios do this all the time and they aren’t happy unless they get over 150% return, which in normal investment terms is fantasy return, but they have huge overheads to pay and need to recoup that much. The indie filmmaker needs to use these formulas to take a hard look at what each story can be expected to recoup and adjust budget accordingly. I am not in finance, but the first person to develop this kind of relatively accurate and easy tool and make it reasonable in cost, will clean UP! Then we won’t be stumbling around in the dark with a film that cost way more than it could ever recoup.
It basically comes down to this: The major film distribution methods are OUT- unless you’ve got yourself an Avatar or Transformers project. Filmmakers have to be nimble, educated on VOD processes and ready to build or bend their project around them. I have an advertising background (which is where I intially started in production) and I couldn’t be more thrilled that I have that knowledge to now incorporate into the full model for my film. My advice is that ANYONE involved in filmmaking learn internet and marketing processes. YOU WILL NEED IT.
Also, I strongly believe that self-distribution will very quickly replace studio distribution. Even the theatres are beginning to consider working with the “little guy” in order to get movies that are more diverse and not targeted to 13 year olds. Right now, the largest demographic on the planet is WOMEN 30+. Obviously, Hollywood is out of touch and has been for some time. How does that saying go…”Live by the sword, die by the sword”. In Hollywood it shoud go,, “Live by only the dollar, die by the dollar”.
Movie theatre owners know that the majority of their cash flow comes from the older crowd through concessions and not from 13 year olds. The movies coming from Hollywood are blockbuster or nothing worth watching and the theatre chains are suffering. Provide a film with appeal to a crowd that will come to watch AND buy concessions. That’s what the theatre owners want.
My thought: Learn the VOD, learn retail etc. and employ it but FOCUS on the theatre exhibition. You have to remember that in the old model distribution companies SPLIT the revenue from ticket sales with the theatre and then took their fees, prints & advertising right off the top plus 30-35% before they even thought about paying the filmmaker. Example: If you did 10 million in ticket sales- the distributor would get 50% or $5mil – THEN they would take their cut (usually around 35%)- THEN subtract the (highly inflated) P&A, and you would be lucky to see ANY revenue. That’s why filmmakers have relied so heavily on the revenue from DVD rental and sales. HOWEVER….
If YOU do the distribution & the P&A- it shakes out like this…
10million in ticket sales – split 50/50 with theatre – 2.5 million P&A targeted at your specific audience – leaves you with a Net of 2.5 million. AND you get the full revenue from other models you employ as well with full and accurate disclosure of where the money was really spent with the correct rates.
Something to think about…
As any actor turned producer knows, we all eventually want to be in front of the camera even though we are thrilled to be working in the film business at all. When my filmmaker buddy proposed we make a film starring myself as a lunatic who thinks he is Beethoven, I can’t help but be overjoyed at the thought of not only making another film, but also myself as the lead. However, script, locations, and penny-pinching aside, we still would like to turn a profit for our labor, even though it seems this idea will have to be done as cheaply as possible. Yet, at some point aren’t we also stabbing ourselves in the back for trying to be a frugal as possible, thinking this film may go nowhere and be an extended demo reel for us all? Or maybe we simply need to be more inventive, such as “The Blair Witch Project”, where we tell the world “this is an amateur project” shot on camcorder and we market the product as best as we can, to as many customers as we can.
Nice article & comments. It makes my head hurt thinking about it.
The money I made from ‘Dead Wood’ covered costs but if I’d made it for real cash I’d be in trouble.
Considering self-distribution for my next film but am I really going to reach the same level of audience as my Lionsgate release?
I don’t think so. I think we’ll see less money put in front of the camera and more spent on marketing and advertising it.
Well, good luck everyone!
same audience release as Lionsgate? probably not. But how much did you ultimately make out of Lionsgate? How much did you pay them to take your film? You did pay them you know.
Absolutely you will have to be very careful about your spend and it will have to include P&A (I will call it marketing costs because you may not need prints if it isn’t theatrical, not all films have to be you know).
Collaboration is going to be the name of the game. Check sites like WreckaMovie for inspiration and Kickstarter for fundraising. You won’t be raising 10 mil like Lisa there (not even a real possibility and you wouldn’t make that kind of money back in hybrid distro anyway), but smaller movies can be made and seen. Online is where you should be concentrating. Know your audience, connect with them early and put your film on as many platforms as you can in addition to looking at generatives, alternative revenue streams.
In fact, go ahead and start building YOUR audience right now. Any filmmaker who does not have a personal brand, a personal audience, will not be successful. It is absolutely imperative that you have a core you can rely on to champion you and your projects. With the internet, there is no brand that cannot be built.
If you think this is too much work, you should try for full time employment doing something else. This is ass breaking work and a long tail to revenue. No use complaining, the old way isn’t coming back.
The exec in the story is fooling himself if he thinks the studios are only going to support massive extravaganza movies. There is a large audience that wants movies for grown-ups. Grown-up movies are not going to make $1.6 billion at the box office, but if there aren’t any coming from the studios, people will find them other ways because the demand is there. And when the studios see someone else making the money from grown-up movies, they will want a piece of the action and they will buy or produce the content people are demanding.
That doesn’t mean we’ll go back to the way things were. There is still the glut of content to deal with. It will continue to be bleak for producers because there is an insane amount of competition, and that’s not going to change.
The biggest change is in the independent producer’s role. Producers have to do a lot more real marketing work, and that doesn’t mean advertising, it means creating a product based on the market needs and taking that product through all the steps to get it to market. It means producers cannot start with “this is how much it costs to make a movie” and then go about trying to figure out ways to come up with it. We have to start with “this is how much I can make from hybrid distribution” and create our budgets based around reality.
My prediction: The real sufferers will be actors because the “middle class” is going to disappear for a while. There will be A-list talent making grundles of money, but the B-list talent will not be able to ask for even B-list pay because the low budget $5-$10 million movie is not going to make financial sense until we figure out a better way to monetize the new model.
I’m responding here to offer a Case-Study-in-the-Making.
I’ve been shopping my business plan since June, 2009. It’s a $500K comedy/drama project ($350K for negative cost, $150K for delivery and marketing), which will feature two recognizable actors (not “A” listers) in the lead roles. I’ve secured some funding so far.
I’ve researched, estimated, and vetted revenue projections from 7 streams: festival DVD sales, box office (exclusive 20-city “event” screenings tour), VOD premiere (moderate acquisition fee = $5,000 according to Matt Dentler), retail DVD sales, North American broadcast, foreign territories sales (FilmSpecific), and direct sales (streaming, downloading and DVDs) from our website.
For us to reach our medium projections and be able to pay our investors their equity back and pay returns (lowest projections = nobody gets paid back and producers make zero), the biggest piece of the revenue pie is our direct sales. I’ve figured we need to sell 22,500 units @ $20/apiece from our website (DVDs, merchandise, other TBD) to meet this goal.
Is that ambitious? Yes. Has it been done on an indie narrative, yet? I’m aware of some comparable low-budget, DIY titles, but I don’t think there’s a narrative (non-genre), yet, that has sold over 20K units…?
But, I’ve done the math, and there it is. If we can define it, we can prepare to execute it.
Individual investors are as wary as ever – whether you’re talking “old fashioned” movie-making or 2.0 DIY movie-making. And, larger film financing entities don’t see opportunity for big enough returns on projects as small as ours. Current crowd-funding sources don’t look promising for raising more than five figures for any project. Plus, we haven’t built up thousands of fans, yet.
But, late last week, we finally launched our website for our project — http://www.lostinsunshine.com — doing what we’ve all been talking about, reaching our to our target audience NOW. Our motto is “It’s not just a movie: it’s a show.” If you visit it and have comments, feel free to post there at our Filmmakers Blog, or email me at lorie at lostinsunshine dot com.
I’m hoping that now that our site is “live,” some of the equity investors with whom we’ve been in contact will now be able to better “get it.” Explaining the essential function of our website in our business plan just didn’t read that “sexy,” I guess.
So, here’s a question, is there cross-over investing appeal for “2.0″ indie film projects among hi-tech-oriented investors? Or, are American indie producers better served by focusing their approaches of equity investors based on the project’s theme(s)/subject matter?
Finally, here’s a fun link to an article about entrepreneurs who engineered a formula for predicting success for movies at the script stage: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/16/061016fa_fact6.
A lot of valid points are being made but seriously:
In the past, if you had distribution, you usually could count on some sort of advance. Even if nothing else, you could make the film for that amount and break even or for a little less and make a profit, at least, even if you were being screwed otherwise… Now we are talking FULL RISK, no advances. Plus extra cash for all the “incentives”.
Let’s say you are a first time filmmaker wanting to do his first feature in this day and age. You have a great script. How do you go about it?
Most likely ultra low budget and consequently lower production values, which might alienate some of the audience and will definitely get you more bad reviews, hurting the project even more….
But you need to manage your risk! You have no choice! It’s simple business. Then by hook and by crook, you pull off the film, give it away and pray to god enough people like it to buy crap to support you and your film.
With no real marketing budget, even if you spend 20 hours a day twittering, chatting up people in forums, facebooking updates to kingdom come, what are the odds that you manage to get at best a couple of thousand of followers and in the best of optimistic cases perhaps a couple of hundred thousands in funds? For weeks if not years of hard work (not to mention making the film in the first place!). And your work is hard because: you most likely have no stars, can’t afford even just one on that budget, no real production value to speak of, nobody knows who you are and NOBODY cares about your film… except perhaps those 2000 followers it took you years to attract because you had nothing to show in the first place…
That is not a business model.
Again, feel free to enlighten…
I don’t know the SHERWIN is who made a comment previously but not me.
It seems to me that Producers nowadays must educate themselves not only in the new methods of production but also in the new developments in finance – in other words if they don’t already have it they must acquire financial expertise because the financing of movies is becoming more and more difficult using the ‘old’ methods and we must look to ‘re-inventing the wheel’.
I tried to make this point sometime previously to Film Specific when I started putting together my current Business Plan which was as much an investment proposal for HIgh Net Worth Investors as it was a Movie business Plan – however, my observations were not considered. Now, having raised a basic investment for an on-going Investment Platform which produces a considerable monthly profit on-going and consolidated
I will apply the subsequent profits to a) profit for the investor and retaining Working Capital for future similar investment and b) production of a slate of ten movies over as five year period on the low budget areas of $5-10 mil. Without having had an education in high level finance I would still be stuggling to convince reluctant investors to put their well-earned pennies into movie production.
Whilst at the same time of putting this complex plan together I have also studdied the development of digital recording and digital ‘prints’ and what this means with regard to distribution. One of the big sticks the Majors and Distributors used to beat us into submission to their creative accounting methods were the costs of Prints and Advertizing.
From the possible income from exhibition and theatric income (say 50% of the box office take) P&A were next deduction then the 30-35% of distribution fees. Plus the distributor, wehether he be Independent or an adjunct of the Major (who also owns the majority of the Theatres and advertizing companies!) very often as part of his leverage against the poor Producer insisted on being granted the Foreign rights, the DVD rights and so on. Not a lot left for the poor Producer and his financiers! No wonder Independent finance was/is difficult to some by.
So, with this in mind I started to look at methods of making money for the Investor in the first instance. Having a happy Investor made life a lot easier and the method I used to do this also meant that we had sufficient capital for on-going investment of a similar nature plus enough to finance our movie slate.
Now I am considering self distribution with the advent of everything that’s happening with digital production and exhibition plus Network opportunities that seem to be evolving every day!
Goodbye Creative Accounting and bullying domination from accountants and lawyers for the big boys. Hello freedom!
Derrick Sherwin
CEO Big D Prosductions Ltd.
I was having a discussion with a TV producer about the latest trends in the industry, and we concluded that our whole process seems to have been bastardized.
What we have done to the process of film and television distribution has some pluses and negatives. On the one hand, we have empowered producers to become distributors of their own projects, as long as they have the stamina, resourcefulness, and support to reach their niche audiences. This has opened the door to a potential for a higher percentage of streaming income (should the film actually reach its potential audience) because with distributors as middlemen, the financial waterfall is fuller.
However, at the same time, the Internet–that most wonderful and limitless resource of FREE entertainment–is, well, not a great source of revenue. And yet, that’s where all of us independent producers are heading to in search of the pot of gold because, let’s face it, our options are limited.
What has also happened is that we have empowered consumers with such a vast array of choices for their entertainment, that we are experiencing a bit of a collective social syndrome of ADD. Yes, we have Attention Deficit Disorder as a society. We are text messaging and surfing online constantly, rarely focused on a task at hand for longer than five minutes. So, if, indeed, the new model is new media, how are we to grab the attention of an audience that is constantly on the move?
Alas, it’s not just our industry that is in a bit of a turmoil. The publishing world is suffering from a drop in sales of books. And newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post are quite literally fighting for their survival, hoping against hope that perhaps if they start charging for online content, they will not completely alienate their readership.
So here’s where we’re at: we are producing massive quantities of professional and semi-professional films (both features and shorts), everyone seems to be shooting little movies because they can (technology is relatively cheap these days) and uploading them to YouTube and other similar sites, no one wants to read or watch anything online that seems to take longer than a few minutes, and everyone wants everything at their disposal for free. How many of us in the industry own digital recorders? We TIVO right over those pesky commercials that pay for the production of our favorite shows, not even aware that we’re contributing to their demise and the increase of the much cheaper-to-produce reality programming. Oh, and hey, this cheap TV programming with its cheap production value doesn’t sell well in international markets, which ends up throwing the television industry into a bit of a whirlwind, much like the one that film production is experiencing.
So, what are we to do? Jump aboard the train, I say. Because if today’s audience is an empowered (emboldened) new type of consumer who controls the power of choice more than ever, then we have to figure out how to feed the beast. I’m not running down the audience, mind you. I’m a part of it. Nonetheless, the train has left the station, and as filmmakers, we have to figure out how to quickly monetize our projects off of an audience that is over bloated with choices and feeling particularly self-entitled to continue its feeding frenzy for free.
Thus, I’m sticking with the challenging path of true innovative thinking. The film industry is not dead, by any means, but the means for distribution and exploitation of product is changing fast. So, if it’s all about giving consumers what they want, when they want it, then those are the new rules of the game. I may not always like it, and it does require that I do ten times the amount of work as a producer/distributor than I’ve ever had to do before when I was only a producer (something I’ll clearly never be again). I guess I’ll stay for a few more innings, as this is one game that I’m not yet quite ready to forfeit.
I agree with Movie Seals… trying to build a “following” prior o the movie being made is a ridiculous concept. There is no reason for an audience to care what you’re film is about unless there’s something in it for them. The product comes first. Yes, build your audience, but don’t rely on that as a sales model. Any investor with marketing experience will laugh you out of the room. Building a brand for a movie before it’s made is a money and time-consuming process. “If you build it, they will come”.
I also agree with Derrick and Diana… It is a new form of freedom for the producer. For the savvy producer, it’s a big fantastic new ballgame that he or she has better control of. This isn’t a negative thing, this a GREAT thing! Yes, it’s going to be more work on the business side but if you do a good job on the creative and get your distribution ducks in a row ON YOUR OWN prior to production, you can expect to do well.
As I stated before, theatrical is where to consider a larger chunk of revenue. It IS possible to get a limited distribution deal with a theatre chain. There are 36 theatre chains in the U.S. 2,620 theatres and over 27,000 screens. ONLY 4 of those chains are “biggies” and that leaves 994 theatres that are owned by smaller chains if you can’t get your foot in the door at the large ones. And yes,
Bottom-line is if you don’t want to do the research and the work it takes to get a product to the market, don’t make a movie, make a You Tube video.
One last thought…perhaps a group of filmmakers should get together and sue the government in order to loosen the SEC rules and regulations. Technically, SEC rules step on our constitutional rights and the rights of the “little guy” to make his own monetary decisions in order to grow and prosper. Think about it. Does the average person really have an opportunity to invest in a film? 35 is the maximum number of non-accredited investors you can have on a project. Originally, the rules were set in place to protect people from being taken advantage of. Times have changed and the rules are outdated.
Building an audience would only make sense if they had the opportunity to invest in the project themselves. 5,000 people investing 10K gets you to a 5 million dollar budget. Smaller investment, smaller risk for an investor and you have 5000 sales people ready to go out and recruit an audience. The model has changed, people have changed, technology has changed…it’s time for the SEC rules to change.
It seems so unusual, and yet so unfortunate, that nearly every aspect of creativity in our culture must be balanced with a keen business sense. In order to be successful members of film production must know how to market their work. Even people on the lower end of the ladder must strive to create portfolios that dazzle anyone hiring. Yes, it’s necessary and common sense, but it seems to me that anyone who isn’t a desktop publishing wiz can easily get the short end of the stick. If people don’t know how to market themselves and their resume, how do they survive?
The monolithic corps and traditional ways of doing things are now defunct, we should be embracing the potential of web 2.0 and social media as cheap distribution channels.
Raising awareness about a project has never been easier, the online tools are far less expensive (if not free), if you’ve got quality content and some imagination (which we’d expect, being a film maker and all) then there’s no excuse, engaging your target audience via the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is not rocket science.
However, as @Diana says, the internet is a tough platform to generate a clear revenue model, advertising doesn’t always cut it but is a good start, this is where we need our greatest minds working together, trying to develop a clear business model that considers web 2.0, peer to peer sharing, social media etc.
The web has changed things forever, and for everyone. Now we need to figure out how to best harness its power and apply it so that those who work hard and produce great visual projects can make some money to fund future ideas.
Great read. I believe the possibility to expand within the 2.0 world will be determined by who will be able to figure out the best way to monazite & exploit his/her online following. With all of that said there is a new service that allows filmmakers to showcase their films to fans, allowing fans to watch the director’s film online and on their cell phones. If you were able to establish a following through a company like “Mobile Film Works” – it wold definitely keep you ahead of the game.
I wanted to try and Mobile Film Works vid but could only find the link — vimeo.com/9468818
My first comment I want to make is that one of the problems filmmakers are making is that they see the “film” as the biz and not their company as the biz. Yeah, your investors are putting money into “the film” but they should see that your next film helps promote their film and on and on. The big studios may want a return on each film but they are seeing it as a long term, consecutive films made over many, many years, formula.
If we think of it as a company biz mindset than there are ways to cut cost long term. First, don’t rent but buy. Make it part of your biz plan that if you, as a filmmaker, can make back the money from the film after a certain period of time (after completion) than you (original company) gets a “bonus” in the form of the equipment. This gives you an incentive to sell, sell, sell and also when you’re done you have something tangible. Now the next film should cost you less because you have equipment that won’t be part of the equation. Now you might be able to have the original company make a cut of the backend as part of the trade for making the equpment available on film #2. And so on and on so on. My point is longevity. The first film made make considerably less but the second, third, fourth should start to cost less. Plus you need to study some of Rodriguez’s shooting technique like zooming between characters lines so that you are getting more than one shot per take, cutting down on production time. There are many cost cutting ways to trim the budget. Each film you should be learning your own tricks of the trade to make each one easier.
On marketing one of the things I’ve learned is to find a way to get my audience to fall in love with some of my characters prior to seeing the film. One of the things that made people watch episode after episode of LOST was that people fell in love with certain characters. Since we’re not shooting TV we have to find a way to make our audience fall in love with them prior to watching.
This is very interesting, and I would love to attend your workshop. New distribution platforms are something I’m highly interested in, and this is something me and our studio are actively working on.
I’m interested in using some of your content for my blog. Please let me know if that’s OK and I will link back to this page.
We need to multi-platform. When I met Sheri at Sundance and we had some great conversations she helped me see that we should be selling the film while we are touring festivals with it.
With BURDEN I toured for 6 months then entered Distribution talks, with a new film SWERVE that I produced we signed with a Buyer and Distributor before it’s World Premiere.
Similar to a band, we should be touring with our film, selling it to multiple territories at the same time. We shouldn’t do the waiting game anymore. Hollywood isn’t, if a film flops they quickly put it on DVD to save Marketing money. Way pay twice the marketing for a failure.
We as indi-filmmakers don’t have giant Marketing budgets so we need to do it all at once.
BURDEN and SWERVE will be playing on Italian TV starting Sept 1st 2010, and we are looking forward to continuing to lockdown other territories.
We are living in a crazy new era where the rules just don’t apply like they used to.
Interesting interview with director, Todd Solondz:
http://bit.ly/bNdLlI