Category Archives: Monetize Video

The Truth about Indy Film Distribution in 2020

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Naomi McDougall Jones shares on the excellent Seed&Spark What the Joyful Vampire Tour of America Taught Us About Independent Film Today.

Naomi is the writer and one of the producers of Bite Me, a $500,000 subversive romantic comedy about a real-life vampire and the IRS agent who audits her.

They wanted to do distribution differently:

“Our distribution plan was based on two core hypotheses. The first was that, although Hollywood is constantly complaining that people don’t want to see movies in theaters anymore — thanks to Netflix, streaming, having to put on pants to do so, etc — those complaints didn’t jive with our observations about the people around us. In an age where technology is isolating us all ever-more-aggressively, drawing us further into our phones and farther away from each other, we felt that people are actually desperate for excuses to get out of their homes and into community. It isn’t that people don’t want to leave their homes, we figured. It’s simply that you need to give them a better proposition than “pay upwards of $50 for two people to go to a movie theater, interact with no one you didn’t come with, and have no added positive experience above what you would have gotten for the cost of your monthly Netflix subscription at home without having to put on pants.” Our second hypothesis was that, if we did some crazy marketing stunt like, say, travel around the country with the film in an RV for three months, and also put substantial marketing dollars into social media and YouTube ads, that all of that buzz, news, fun and marketing would translate into a larger number of people renting and/or buying the film online.”

The filmmakers are brutally honest with the number of tickets and merchandise they sold in the real world and the digital revenue online.

They thought they’d rake it in online and their real world tour would not amount to much more than a cute publicity stunt.

Good surprise! They grossed $38,000 in ticket sales across 51 screenings, meaning an average of $745 per screen. They also made an additional $9,000 in merchandise sales, for a total of approximately $47,000.

Now, if their online revenue was ten times as much, they’d recoup their film cost.

Bad surprise! Less than 600 people rented or purchased the film online, generating these numbers: $1,821.45 from iTunes, Amazon, and GooglePlay/YouTube combined and an additional $5,522 from Seed&Spark, for a grand total of $7,343.45 in digital revenue.

That’s actually less than their merch.

Along the way, they heard that TVOD is dead: “TVOD sales for everyone have declined 50% year-over-year for the last two years.” Yikes!

Wait, there’s more!

They also made a fascinating 12-part documentary series that follows them across the States as they promote their film and show it to paying audiences. See Prologue, Part1:

My take: Kudos to the Bite Me Team for this unparalleled access. The glimpse into their truth is humbling. Finding your audience is harder than ever; there’s just so much competition for eyeballs. I would actually like to see the documentary series cut into a feature, something that chronicles the wide-eyed optimism of the filmmakers, their journey around the country and the realizations they stumble on. Of course, then they have to take that on a second tour across the continent.

Macao: it’s all arthouse now

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Rebecca Davis reports for Variety at the recent Macao International Film Festival on the future of indies and theatrical distribution.

She says:

“New viewing habits brought on by the rise of streaming have hastened the demise of the mid-budget American indie, changed the very definition of arthouse cinema, and shaken the indie distribution business. But theatrical is still here to stay, attendees of the Macao International Film Festival’s closed-door industry panels concluded Saturday.”

Some takeaways:

  • “Prestige” films by streamers are more about awards and PR than a threat to theatrical.
  • Mid-budget indie films have all but disappeared and the theatrical box office is blockbuster movies on one hand and local fare on the other (in the massive India and China markets at least.)
  • Audiences are more inclined to search out indie films at home on their streaming services than at the multiplex.

Panel moderator Andy Whittaker, founder of distributor Dogwoof, says:

“Arthouse used to mean a Korean film that was award-winning. Now, an arthouse film is not a comedy, not ‘Star Wars,’ and everything else. Even mid-budget, $10 million movies are all arthouse.”

Dori Begley, executive VP of Magnolia Pictures, concludes:

“Producers are happier and distributors are miserable. There’s more production work for hire and less of an opportunity to nurture talent as there once was.”

My take: as the decade closes, streaming has truly conquered both TV and theatrical to become the undisputed source for the majority of viewing. The technology has matured so that bandwidth and resolution are no longer issues. However, access and discoverability, as well as curation and choice are increasingly becoming problematic for indie filmmakers and their supporters.

Horror Movie Social Media Marketing Case Study

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With Halloween fresh in mind, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at the CMF Trends‘s excellent post Ravenous: Marketing a Horror Movie in the Social Media Era.

Using Ravenous as a case study, we learn the team started with a social media marketing campaign to “develop a community of Quebec horror film fans to generate a significant number of ‘Likes’ as well as followers, tags, shares and retweets on social networks.” They did this by:

  1. A micro-site to collect subscriptions to their newsletter
  2. A contest for 100 zombie extras
  3. Four video demos

Next they watched the reactions of their subscribers and followers to various news items such as casting and distribution announcements.

This helped them understand their best platforms and main influencers.

The article then moves on the review sites. In their case, IMDb and Letterboxd proved to be their most popular.

The article closes with these four recommendations:

  1. Use more visual and video elements (such as gifs, memes, etc.) to feed the social network accounts more systematically and in other than informational contexts (humoristic, based on the news and calendar, etc.)
  2. Develop more promotional content such as the exhibit of storyboards… and format it in such a way as to be able to monetize it with ultra-fans.
  3. Distribute on a larger scale all of the official visual elements and those designed by fan communities throughout the world in accordance with a deployment schedule developed with everyone involved in the film (distributors, sales agents, festivals, influencers) to the greatest extent possible.
  4. Analyze, target and reassess main influencer types and functions at each stage of the film’s operational cycle (festival, local premiere, theatre release, VOD distribution).

My take: fascinating reading! I think almost all of this can be applied to any indie film. Glad I now know about Letterboxd!

Distribber, and other aggregators

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As the news of Distribber‘s bankruptcy spreads, Noam Kroll has a great summary: What All Indie Filmmakers Can Learn From Distribber’s Failure.

What is an aggregator? In simplistic terms, film distributors might get your film into theatres whereas aggregators might put your film online. Aggregators have relationships with all major online outlets and know what they want: both for content and for deliverables.

Noam mentions a couple of aggregators to check out:

Stephen Follows has done some excellent analysis of Distribber’s movies. Its most successful client seems to have been Survivor:

What kinds of movies did Distribber attract?

My take: if I had a feature to distribute, I’d probably go with FilmHub because I don’t have the kind of cash other aggregators demand up front.

Tips for Indie Film Posters

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John Godfrey, writing on Film Independent, says that indie film posters need to work harder.

You’re going up against every other film, most with budgets many times larger than yours. The key, John says, is your concept:

“The key to a successful poster is the concept behind it…. When you bring a designer on board, give them as much to work with as possible, every available image as well as letting them watch a screener of the film. No amount of synopsis or breakdowns can help a designer understand a film better than watching that film. Film is a visual medium — and so are movie posters. There are many parallels between the two, and there are sometimes iconic graphic devices used within a film that as a filmmaker you might not pick up on, but that a designer’s eye will be drawn instantly to as a subject to expand upon.”

John also reminds you that your poster needs to work in many formats:

“Your traditional 27×40” movie poster is excellent for film festivals and your IMDb page, and is the perfect way to commemorate the countless hours poured into production, with a framed print on your wall. However, that’s only a small portion of the usages your poster will be needed for. Once streaming, your poster will have to be in a horizontal format on many services. A horizontal format would also be useful right off the bat as the poster frame of your trailer on Vimeo and YouTube. A square format is very useful for social media.”

For some recent examples of great concepts, Ethan Anderton posting on /film lists his favourite film posters from 2018.

My take: I’ve mentioned before that I sometimes start with a logo that expresses a project’s identity even before writing the script that gives it a voice. It’s also worthwhile exploring the graphic design requirements of some of the streaming services so you know what they don’t allow (things like titles, laurels, URLs, etc.) so you can make sure to get all your visuals during production. For a compilation of movie poster themes, there’s none better than Christophe Courtois.

Amazon Prime Video jettisons some Indies

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Natalie Jarvey notes in the Hollywood Reporter that Indie Filmmakers Puzzled As Amazon Prime Drops Some Poorly Viewed Projects.

“Several emerging filmmakers who relied on Amazon Prime to distribute their work report that their movies have disappeared from the platform without warning. They say they were given no warning about the removal and that Amazon informed them those titles will not be accepted for resubmission, essentially killing any chance that audiences will discover them. Their predicament exemplifies the risk of becoming too reliant on a powerful platform whose benevolence can be fleeting.”

To recap, Amazon Prime is the world’s second largest SVOD streaming service, after leader Netflix.

What’s the little-known backdoor to their viewers? Amazon Prime Direct.

“Amazon has touted the way its video platform supports indie creators, previously reporting that, in its first year, Prime Video Direct paid tens of millions to rights holders…. Being cut off from Amazon Prime… has meant a loss of income for… filmmakers, though it’s pennies compared with even a modest VOD release. Prime Video Direct shares between 4 cents and 10 cents for every hour a title is streamed in the U.S.”

The article goes on to quote Linda Nelson, co-founder of the distributor Indie Rights:

“I would never recommend putting all your eggs in one basket. Indie filmmakers need to take this advice to heart and explore as many opportunities as they can to make sure their films get seen.”

My take: I agree; exclusivity should come at a premium. However, the reality is that it’s very difficult to make your own market. For instance, you could sell your film from your own website but that just begs the question, “How will your viewers find your website?” The unblemished truth is that the last fifteen years have seen all manner of new markets appear, with no clear replacement for the orderly windows and territories model of the last millennium. Just as we’ve witnessed an explosion of digital content, marketing options have multiplied likewise. Luckily, the future has yet to be written; nimble filmmakers can still control their destiny (at the cost of time and effort.)

Netflix’s international competitors

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Scott Roxborough reports in The Hollywood Reporter on Netflix’s international competition.

He says:

“Since Netflix took its streaming video service truly global in 2016, the company has pretty much had the market to itself. But things are about to get very crowded, very fast. While Disney and Apple roll out their own services — with WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal hot on their heels — scores of local players, in Spain and Singapore, Britain and Berlin, are pushing into the SVOD market, looking to occupy at least a portion of Netflix-controlled territory.”

Here’s a list of some of the countries and the contenders:

  1. Britain: BritBox
  2. France: Canal+Series
  3. France: Salto
  4. Germany: TV Now
  5. Germany: ProSiebenSat.1
  6. Spain: Rakuten TV
  7. Spain: Moviestar
  8. Scandinavia: Viaplay
  9. India: Hotstar
  10. Malaysia: iFlix
  11. Indonesia: Hooq
  12. China: iQiyi
  13. China: Tencent
  14. China: Youku

My take: Everyone has woken up and realized there’s a battle for the eyeballs to be won — or lost. As TV continues to decline and mobile continues to rise, old media needs to reinvent itself to take on Netflix, which is itself in its second incarnation. The two advantages they have are their localness and their non-Americanism. However, I think there are big improvements waiting to be made in how viewers discover content. Two ideas: the SJ (Streaming Jockey) who is the next version of the VJ (who was the next version of the DJ) and Viewing Clubs that allow you to band to together with like-minded folks to share recommendations and even comment on things you’re all watching at the same time (I think there’s something like this in Asia already.) This would be one strategy for all the smaller platforms to band together and collectively build their audiences.

European Parliament bends digital single market for indie films

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Scott Roxborough relates in The Hollywood Reporter that the Indie Film Business Wins European Territory Rights Battle.

Recall that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had a vision where:

“…we must create a digital single market for consumers and businesses – making use of the great opportunities of digital technologies which know no borders. To do so, we will need to have the courage to break down national silos in telecoms regulation, in copyright and data protection legislation, in the management of radio waves and in competition law. If we do this, we can ensure that European citizens will soon be able to use their mobile phones across Europe without having to pay roaming charges. We can ensure that consumers can access music, movies and sports events on their electronic devices wherever they are in Europe and regardless of borders.”

This threatened the traditional country-by-country pre-sales strategy filmmakers have used to raise money for their budgets in Europe, fearing the digital single market would mean distributors could pay for one territory and get 27 for free. Roxborough first reported on this four years ago; see What’s Behind a Europe Plan That Would “Destroy” Independent Film.

Late last month, in the midst of Brexit, the European Parliament finally got around to approving this legislation, by a vote of 460 to 53. But with a few key compromises:

“The digital single market will apply to online services for news and current affairs — meaning the BBC or Italy’s RAI can offer their online reporting to anyone in Europe. The same applies to productions, including films and TV series, that are fully financed by a single network. But co-productions or films pre-sold in the traditional manner, as well as sports rights, are excluded from the new law. Here the old rules apply: online platforms will have to clear rights in each territory they want to operate in.”

My take: So it’s a blending of old and new. The “fully-financed” stream is interesting because I think it means rich producers (Netflix et al) will be able to treat Europe as one 500-million-viewer territory. Truly indie filmmakers though will still have access to traditional pre-sales, cobbling together an amalgam of territories, soft money and some actual investment in order to raise enough cash to shoot. I know which avenue sounds easier to me.

Filmocracy deserves your support

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There’s an interesting project on Kickstarter I want you to seriously consider funding: Filmocracy.

Paul Jun and his team are developing a streaming platform for independent filmmakers that gamifies watching new movies and rating them.

Ratings won’t be simply thumbs up or thumbs down. Instead, viewers will be able to select 1-5 for:

  • Plot
  • Characters
  • Cinematography
  • Performances
  • Dialogue
  • Sound/Music
  • Overall

Half of revenue will be returned to filmmakers based on time screened with another 10% going to viewers.

Check out their pitch and please contribute.

My take: I think this is an interesting model that might just take off. Gaming is huge so why not gamify indie streaming? I’m a backer!

The (almost) free self-distribution strategy

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Three self-distribution lessons today from L.A. filmmaker Noam Kroll.

Two have no cost, so I’m keenly interested.

Noam shares the distribution strategy for his latest feature Shadows on the Road: TVOD for two months, then SVOD and finally AVOD.

For the Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) window, Noam chose Distribber ($1,500) to place his film on iTunes. He promoted it hard and was in the black within months because the budget was so low ($12,000.) Later he added it to Vimeo On Demand for international audiences.

For the Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) window, Noam used Prime Video Direct ($0) to place the film on Amazon Prime.

For the Ad-based Video on Demand (AVOD) window, Noam used FilmHub ($0) to place the film elsewhere — they have ~75 other platforms. You may or may not have heard of many of these: TubiTV, Fandor, Filmocracy, etc.

His goal with this strategy was to break even and then maximize his exposure.

My take: thank you, Noam, for being so transparent here. The key to this successful strategy is to set the financial bar low enough that you can recoup your budget within a few months and then build as many fans as possible.