Category Archives: Monetize Video

Can the music industry give the film industry any pointers?

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Can the music industry give the film industry any pointers when it comes to living in a digital age? For years, it’s needed to deal with piracy on one hand and new methods of dissemination on the other.

Andrew Powell-Morse of SeatSmart asks the question, “Where is the money supposed to come from to keep the lights on?” in its blog post Does The Death Of Album Revenue Spell The End For Rock Stars As We Know Them? (Link doesn’t work in Safari.)

Using colourful line and bubble charts, he graphs:

  • Top Tour Revenue vs. Top Album Revenue
  • Tours vs. Album Revenue by Decade
  • Total Tour Ticket Sales vs. Total Album Sales
  • Tickets vs. Albums Sold by Decade
  • Top Album Revenue & Sales Over Time
  • Top Tours: Revenue & Attendance over Time
  • Sum Revenue of Top Album Artists
  • Sum Revenue of Top Touring Artisits

Looking at revenue only:

“Album revenue is plummeting while tours are steadily bringing more. However, those rising tour revenues don’t even come close to compensating for what’s been lost in album sales.”

One thing the stats reveal is that:

“…both album and ticket sales are down — concert ticket prices are on the rise while the average price of an album has decreased from almost $19 in the 1980s to just over $13 today. This does a lot to explain the divergence here — each concert ticket sold is bringing a greater return over time while each album sold is bringing a declining return.”

Andrew concludes:

“While album sales are comparatively evenly distributed, tour revenue gets sucked up by a smaller number of huge acts. This points to serious concerns over an industry becoming more and more reliant on tours to fund itself. Concert ticket sales are not going to save the music industry. They may provide some artists with good revenue streams to balance lower album sales, but they don’t work equally well for everyone.”

What are the parallels with the film industry? Perhaps DVDs equate with albums and theatrical releases equate to tours. Take a look a this PWC infographic of media revenue trends. Although it shows most trends up, “Physical Home Video” is trending down.

My take: Maybe independents need to buck the trend. If vinyl is making a comeback, does that mean indie film should embrace DVDs again?

VOD Strategies

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The excellent CMF Trends has released a post on How To Make Money With Video On Demand by Renee Robinson.

In it, we learn the VOD marketplace is projected to more than double in the next five years to over $60 billion.

Three models have emerged:

  • TVOD, or Transactional Video On Demand
  • SVOD, or Subscription Video On Demand
  • AVOD, or Advertising-based Video On Demand

Think iTunes, Netflix and YouTube. Or Vimeo On Demand, showmi and Crackle.

Renee discusses the models in detail, including figures for reference.

She concludes:

“As a rights holder, there is nothing stopping you from utilizing as many VOD models as possible, except for any prior agreements that may withhold specific rights. Inform yourself before agreeing on the method of delivery, device compatibility, window compression and how revenue is defined. The ability to exploit each non-exclusive model can become a small but steadily monetized stream in this new digital licensing ecosystem.”

My take: fascinating reading! The xVOD marketplace is crowded with no clear winners — yet. Interesting that the TVOD model mimics the existing theatrical model, the SVOD model mimics current premium TV and the AVOD model mimics free TV. One day this will all settle out. But until then every filmmaker needs to navigate this marketplace by themselves.

Some hard numbers on film distribution

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Jon Reiss recently published two posts on Filmmaker Magazine entitled, “Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Distribution Numbers” Parts One and Two.

He interviews filmmakers from four projects:

  • Neil Berkeley (Director of Beauty Is ‘Embarrassing & Harmontown’)
  • Judy Chaikin (Director of ‘The Girls in the Band’)
  • Paco de Onís (Executive Director of Skylight Films), and
  • Jon Betz (Producer of ‘Queen of the Sun’)

It turns out that monetizing your film is long and hard work.

The takeaways?

“Knowing your goals is essential to creating a release strategy.
Know your audience and target your release to where they are; offer your audience products (event, digital or merchandise) that are interesting to them.
Split rights have a greater advantage of control and profit for filmmakers over all rights deals.
Work with distribution partners to get films on major platforms.
Engaging in distribution and marketing is very hard work and generally involves a staff or at least someone full time managing the process.
Email lists are gold – develop them constantly.
Events motivate people to go to theaters.
Events are excellent ways to connect with audience.
Event theatrical is a good/great way to promote ancillary sales.
It is possible to break even or even make a little money from an event theatrical release.
If you can, carve out direct-to-fan sales since this will give you the following advantages:
* Higher profit margin per purchase.
* Audience data for future projects
* Ability to package the film with merchandise and extra content for higher price points or to make purchasing direct to fan more attractive.
Most importantly, focus on long-term audience development since it is possible to transition audiences from one project to another if you reward them for their continued interest and keep them engaged.”

My take: fascinating reading. Hard numbers are hard to find.

Youtube is Ten!

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Youtube is ten years old this week.

It’s first video was posted on April 23, 2005, and since then Me at the zoo has been seen more than 22 million times, even though the clip is a mere 18 seconds long.

Remember that in 2005, most people were still using dial-up connections to access the Internet. Yet to come were Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, broadband access and streaming Netflix.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim registered youtube.com on February 14, 2005. Twenty-one months later Google bought the site for $1.65 billion in stock.

In 2011 Youtube revealed that 99% of views are generated by 30% of the hosted videos. Today, over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

In fact, Variety reported last year that American teens idolize Youtubers even more than Hollywood celebrities.

My take: Internet video has made incredible strides in the last ten years. I wonder how things will change in the next ten years. Any thoughts?

Tips for your Indie Film Release

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The recent SXSW panel Hacking Technology For Your Indie Film Release asked the question:

“As new technologies and distribution approaches continue to disrupt conventional release windows, funding cycles, and acquisition deals, how do indie filmmakers navigate this shifting landscape while balancing audience engagement and revenue?”

The Sundance Institute‘s #ArtistServices presented and has since released 23 Hacks for your Indie Film Release — “what it takes to get your film seen in an overcrowded marketplace by using technology as your secret weapon.”

Here they are:

  1. Schedule pre-order windows
  2. Avoid December and February releases
  3. Purchase a specific E&O policy that fits your film release plans
  4. Don’t limit your theatrical screenings to only Art House Theatres
  5. Upload final DCP-formatted trailers on Dropbox or G Drive
  6. Do NOT purchase KDMs
  7. $250 vs 35% — what you charge exhibitors
  8. Beware the “Virtual Print Fee”
  9. All screenings are “theatrical”
  10. Be frugal when printing one-sheets
  11. Small Size Matters Too: consider the thumbnail
  12. Don’t worry about print ads
  13. Harness internet trends
  14. Email subject lines matter
  15. Tweet at people who just tweeted
  16. Email lists are still the gold
  17. Upload content natively to each social platform
  18. Better Bundle for Bigger Bucks
  19. Private Vimeo Screeners
  20. Growth hack your backer rewards
  21. Carve out rights to do traditional digital and direct-to-fan deals on your own
  22. Ask distributors about their digital economics
  23. Pay for a quality closed caption file

Read the article for full details.

My take: as you fashion your digital distribution strategy, keep these ideas in mind.

Knowing your audience is key to success with your indie project

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Even ten years ago, ‘show business’ was highly organized. See this excellent report by Strategy Analytics.

But that model has been challenged by the addition of millions of screens, many of which you carry around as phones, tablets and laptops; the explosion of content, made possible by plunging production costs; and the rise of the Internet, acting as the conduit between viewer and media.

Very simplistically, the old, analogue, model was:

  1. Make the movie
  2. Sell your movie to a distributor
  3. Hand it over so they can exploit it in every market through each window.

There is no one new model: everyone is coming up with their own strategy. It’s still the Wild West. What might work for one film won’t necessarily work for the next.

I believe the key elements are: the Internet, content want to be free, people will reward (pay for) excellent content, video, mobile, watch whatever whenever, and on and on.

One major difference with the new model is that there is no middle man required any more.

Very simplistically, the new, digital, model is:

  1. Make the movie
  2. Exploit the movie.

The key for me is ‘Audience’ — you want to be as close to your audience as possible. You need to involve them in the project’s journey. The thinking here is the more involved they are, the more invested they are and the greater the chance they will support the project. Support is one or all of: talk about it, invest in it, share about it, rent/buy it.

Who is your audience?

Once you know that you can implement this plan:

MK’s Marketing Plan: use Crowd Funding and Web Presence to connect Audience with Release Platforms.

Use Crowd Funding to build awareness: it’s not about the money, it’s about making pre-sales to your audience: make the $10 reward a film viewing. So you might have a ridiculously low goal and then some stretch goals. The real goal is to sign up fans; any money you make is pure bonus. (You should not count on crowd funding to raise your production budget — make it low-to-no-budget so lack money can’t stop you.)

Create a Web Presence: your project needs an online identity. Website, Facebook page, Youtube/Vimeo space, Twitter feed. Again to attract fans. To disseminate news. To show your crowd funding video, behind the scenes videos, etc.

Choose your Release Platforms: the goal is to make enough more to make your next film so you need both SVOD (think Netflix) and VOD (think iTunes) platforms.

Indie filmmaker Douglas Horn has researched this and chose IndieFlix for the curated browsing space and ReelHouse for a rental/sales platform.

Two last thoughts: theatrical and festivals.

The only thing you could consider with Theatrical is to “four wall” the project if you have a niche audience. If you have a distinct, built-in audience, you could rent a theatre and market directly to them. 100 people at $10 each = $1000, less cost of theatre. See TUGG for a crowd sourced pull theatrical strategy.

Festivals — I have to admit I’m not a big fan. You can spend a lot of time and money submitting. For what? Unless you get into the big ones, maybe a hundred people show up on a Friday afternoon and you win an award. That’s the promise. I think in the beginning your time is better spent working your Marketing Plan. Once you get the ball rolling, festivals will take more notice and then you can get into bigger ones. But thinking festivals will get the ball rolling for you is dreaming, IMHO.

My take: Mark Duplass begs to differ. At SXSW he says submit to every festival under the sun. I think festivals should only be a part of your marketing strategy.

The best summary of the mediascape to date

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The excellent CMF Trends has released another excellent white paper: Content Everywhere 2: Securing Canada’s Place in the Digital Future by the Canadian Media Production Association.

The 33-page report focusses on developments in the ‘linear, original digital content space’ in Canada, the US and the UK.

With facts and figures, it outlines the ‘videofication’ of the Internet:

“CISCO predicts that video traffic will be 79% of all consumer Internet traffic in 2018, up from 66% in 2013. Internet video is growing at a rapid pace, increasing fourfold by 2018 and consumer VOD traffic will double by 2018. For example, the amount of VOD traffic by 2018 will be equivalent to six billion DVDs per month.”

The report next analyzes the SVOD trend, OTT original content, nimble Internet successes and old media forays.

Case studies from all three countries follow.

One conclusion:

“The biggest obstacle is discoverability in a crowded marketplace –- and the only way to address this challenge is to produce a show that you know has an audience.”

The report closes with this summary of common characteristics of digital-first content across all markets:

  • Global, universal stories
  • Pre-existing and demonstrable digital audience
  • Underserved audiences (in traditional media)
  • Unique creative, perhaps unsuited to traditional media
  • Creative appealing to younger digital audiences
  • Premium talent or ‘event’ programming
  • ‘Digital native’ skills (social media, community building experience)
  • Transmedia competency to market and support content

My take: worth the time to read! Excellent insights and case studies. The takeaway is that you no longer make something for a comissioner/distributor, you make it for your audience. BONUS: email addresses of Digital-First Buyers in Canada, the UK and the US!

Product placement for the rest of us

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You need some sunglasses, shoes or scotch whisky for your up-coming film.

You could go out and buy it, or you could jump into the world of product placement and get it for free.

Once only the purview of Hollywood or network TV and large advertising agencies, product placement is now within every production’s reach through Brandplacer.com.

It’s the brainchild of Murray Ashton, who says:

“Brandplacer aims to disrupt the product placement marketplace by simply making it available to everyone anywhere. I launched Brandplacer to change how productions worldwide (big and small) connect with brands, products and services through product placement from Hollywood to the local community.”

As Brandplacer.com continues to build its — brand — the service is free to both brands and filmmakers. Currently there are 28 brands and 12 productions listed. Brands include products ranging from sunglasses, shoes and scotch, to underwear and beer, among others. Productions range from theatre to shorts to features and hail from New Zealand, USA, the UK and India, to name a few countries.

The website has already facilitated successful brand placements.

My take: I had a similar idea six or seven years ago, so I’m happy someone has taken a stab at making it real. In my opinion, Brandplacer.com could be huge, listing thousands of brands and thousands of productions. It truly could be “product placement for everyone.” If you own a brand, consider signing up to get it placed today.

Disclaimer: I have a production listed on Brandplacer.com: my feature U.S. 66.

Feature costs no longer matter

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The Wrap has a fascinating guest blog from Joshua Caldwell about his first feature, ‘Layover.’

The angle is that they made it for $6,000.

Having worked on bigger budget films, Joshua relates how he decided he could make his film for much less.

“…my thinking flipped from ‘I need a lot of money’ to ‘How little can I get away with?’ I had everything I needed to make a film: actors, cameras, locations, editing systems, and so on. I thought back to an idea I had about a young woman stuck in Los Angeles on a layover and thought it might be a concept easily executed for very little money.”

He goes on to reveal his approach:

A. Modular Storytelling. Craft a story that can be scaled up or down depending on your budget.

B. An Appropriate Camera. Sometimes a DSLR makes more sense than a RED.

C. Great Sound. Record clear sound. Get good music. Mix them well.

Joshua concludes:

I believe that we have to think more like YouTubers. We have to:

1) Cultivate an audience by creating and delivering consistent content. Doesn’t have to be every day but say bye-bye to spending four years focused on making and selling only one movie. Your audience won’t remember you.

2) Make that content at a responsible budget level so that a ROI is possible through direct-to-customer distribution on a network you’ve built by building and rewarding your audience.

The current state of indie film is in flux and there are new and every growing opportunities available if you’re willing to move beyond the traditional approach and think differently.”

My take: At this point, the financial cost of movies should not be news. Everyone should know you can make a film for next-to-nothing or for millions. (Count the number of people in the credits to get a good idea of the size of the budget.) Beyond cost, insiders can readily calculate the value of the film. This attaches dollar amounts to all the donated services and equipment, multiplied by the evident quality of the film (what it looks like and, more importantly, what it sounds like.) Nevertheless a film is only worth what it can be sold for. This is the territory this blog covers; who is your audience today? Once upon a time it was a distributor in each of many well-defined windows. Today, who knows? We’re still coming up with a new model, even as the old model clings on. ‘Layover’ is going the direct-to-viewer route, using Vimeo On Demand and Gumroad. Lots of other models exist. What’s working for you?

Your film has many price tags

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Marc Schiller of Bond/360 thinks you should price your independent film differently depending on the platform and the time since release.

He lays out his strategy in ‘How Much Should I Sell My Film For?’ on  Medium.

Keeping your conversion rate between two and three per cent is key, he says.

“Conversion rates are never static. And because of this the price of a film should also never be static.”

Sell on your website to your core audience. But don’t overlook the iTunes and Netflixes out there:

“The benefit of having your film in the marketplace and supported with promotion is that your film can now be discovered by those who may not have known about it. A significant amount of sales of independent films happen specifically because they are found and discovered in New Releases, Top 25, etc. In addition, many of your core want to purchase on iTunes, not your website. The biggest mistake a filmmaker who is selling direct can do is to try to divert sales from iTunes so that the film is purchased on the website. Rather, they should be doing everything in their power to get their film into the Top 20 of its category so it can be discovered by others. This increase in sales is worth every penny of the commission the retailer takes.”

My take: excellent advice, backed up with concrete figures. Thanks for sharing!