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.

The crowdfunding platform with best campaign success rate in the world

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Emily Best and her team at Seed&Spark are smiling.

After six years in business, they can claim a crowd funding success rate of 79% in 2018 and an average raising of nearly $15,000 per project.

(By comparison, Kickstarter’s rate was 37% and Indiegogo’s rate was 12%.)

But wait, there’s more!

In addition to being a purpose-built crowd funding platform for film and TV, Seed&Spark is also a distributor and streamer (web, Roku and AppleTV):

“We focus on bringing you wild and wonderful movies and shows from diverse independent filmmakers as well as programming playlists (collections of movies and shows) that you can’t find anywhere else. From festival film favorites to award-winning documentaries to blocks of short films, watching on Seed&Spark means you have many, many, many lens from which to see the world.”

By the way, here’s their origin story:

“In 2011, film producer Emily Best was working with an all-female team to make ‘Like the Water,’ a film they hoped would be at least a drop in the bucket toward more holistic representation of women on the big screen. Unsurprisingly, they hit every imaginable road block in putting the project together, and with just 60 days left before they were scheduled to start shooting, she needed to find $20,000 to finishing financing production. Taking inspiration from the wedding registry model, she and her team created a simple website that listed the items they needed to finish the film – camera, car rentals, grip and electric, coffee – and included a PayPal to accept donations. Over the next month they raised $23,000 in cash – and more than $200,000 in loans and gifts of locations, goods, and services. ‘Like the Water’ would go on to play more than 20 festivals around the world, and the lessons Best learned while crowdfunding – and then trying to get distribution for her film – became the foundation of Seed&Spark.”

My take: Impressive! And Canada friendly too. Worth checking out for your next project.

Summarizing Coverage on 12,000 Screenplays

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Stephen Follows has just released a report that all writers should download immediately.

“Judging Screenplays by their Coverage” co-authored by Josh Cockcroft with Liora Michlin, is a free 67 page PDF analysis of over 12,000 feature film screenplays and their scores by professional readers.

There are three sections: How to Impress Script Readers, The Average Screenplay and Screenwriters and The Act of Screenwriting.

You owe it to yourself to download it and read it fully (no email address required!) but here’s an executive summary from Stephen:

  1. Know thy genre. Your priorities should rest on the particular nature of your chosen genre. For example, Family films place the highest premium on catharsis, while for Action films it’s plot.
  2. Some stories work better than others. The vast majority of scripts can be summarized using just six basic emotional plot arcs – and some perform better than others.
  3. If you’re happy and you know it, redraft your script. Film is about conflict and drama and for almost all genres, the happier the scripts were, the worse they performed. The one notable exception was comedy, where the reverse is true.
  4. Swearing is big and it is clever. There is a positive correlation between the level of swearing in a script and how well it scored, for all but the sweariest screenplays.
  5. It’s not about length, it’s what you do with it. The exact length doesn’t matter too much, so long as your script is between 90 and 130 pages. Outside of those approximate boundaries scores drop precipitously.
  6. Don’t rush your script for a competition. The closer to the deadline a script was finished, the worse it performed.
  7. Use flashbacks responsibly. Scripts with more than fifteen flashbacks perform worse than those with few to no flashbacks.
  8. VO is A-OK. Some in the industry believe that frequent use of voiceover is an indicator of a bad movie, however we found no such correlation. We suggest that any complaints on the topic should be sent to editors, rather than writers.
  9. Don’t worry if you’re underrepresented within your genre – it’s your superpower. Female writers outperform male writers in male-dominated genres (such as Action) and the reverse is true in female-dominated genres (such as Family).

My take: I love everything Stephen does! The correlations he reveals here are fascinating. For instance, films (except comedies) with negative sentiments score better.

Canadians treated to Super Bowl ads for last time

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The best thing about Sunday’s low-scoring NFL Super Bowl football game was the ads, hands down.

The CRTC has outlawed the simultaneous substitution of American ads with Canadian ads for the last three Super Bowls.

However, the “New NAFTA” trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States will again allow the practise, once it’s ratified.

That means this was the last Super Bowl that Canadians could watch the big budget U.S. ads.

It’s all about money. Bell Media can’t sell its ad space for as much when almost half of Canadians switch to the American network instead.

In case you missed them, here are the Super Bowl 2019 commercials.

My take: these were my favourites in no particular order:

  • Stella Artois with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeff Bridges
  • Mint Mobile chunky milk
  • Devour Meals food porn
  • Bubly and Buble
  • Michelob Ultra ASM
  • Amazon Echo fails

Distribution lessons learned the hard way

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Avril Speaks, writing on Dear Producer, shares her recent experience with the distribution of Jinn by Orion.

“I recently had a conversation with a friend who used to work in distribution and she said, ‘Distributors make money off of your ignorance.’ Truer words have never been spoken.”

Avril shares these lessons:

  1. Know, Show and Prove: Every filmmaker should have an idea of what they want to happen to their film after it’s completed.
  2. “Meaningful Consultation” is Meaningless: Once you turn over your film to the distributor, it is theirs and they have the right to do with it and package it however they please.
  3. Day and Date Releases Aren’t What They Seem: Know that the focus for day-and-date releases is more on VOD than it is on theaters, which means that if you had high hopes for a theatrical presence, you might need to rethink your expectations and your marketing strategy.
  4. Negotiate Delivery: Do not sign a contract without seeing the deliverables list first.
  5. Speaking of Delivery: Your distributor will have lots of demands that are difficult for you to achieve with limited resources (which is why I advise you ask for a portion of your MG upfront).
  6. Minimum Guarantee: Ask for a portion of your MG to be paid upfront so that you can pay for delivery expenses.
  7. “Let’s just finish the film; if we get a distributor, we’ll let them handle everything else.” Your distributor will not pay for your music, they will not pay for your clearances, they will not throw you a party, they will not handle all of your marketing and press needs.
  8. Reach Out: Find yourself a community of producers who can help you walk through the process.

My take: it seems if you have a year or two to invest in your brainchild, self-distribution is an option to seriously consider.

Infographic: Film genre popularity over the last 100 years

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Bo McCready has release a fascinating infographic illustrating the relative popularity of film genres since 1910.

Visit the page and click on the ‘Click to Standardize Axis Range’ button to be truly able to compare genres with each other.

Hover over each graph to reveal the top five IMDB voted or rated movies for each year in each genre.

Some observations:

  • Two in five movies are either comedies or documentaries.
  • Four in ten movies are either thrillers, horror, action or romance.
  • The remaining two in ten movies are either crime, sci fi, fantasy, war, musicals or westerns.
  • Genres declining in popularity over the last two decades: romance and crime.
  • Genres increasing in popularity over the last two decades: documentary and horror.

My take: I love charts because they graphically add meaning to data. See The Numbers for a different take on film genres. The American Film Market has analyzed genre popularity around the world too.

Netflix sued over ‘Bandersnatch’

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Netflix is being sued by Chooseco of Vermont for damages of up to $25M for use of its trademark “Choose Your Own Adventure” in hit “Bandersnatch” reports Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter.

The company claims the dark themes in “Bandersnatch” harm its wholesome brand.

Contradictorily, they also say Netflix was in talks to license the phrase but failed to conclude a deal.

Read the court documents.

My take: I immediately registered the reference when watching the film. Who knew “Choose Your Own Adventure” the phrase was copyrighted? Did Netflix think the nod to CYOA was flattering and would be appreciated? Did they think a possible suit would be good publicity? Most importantly, who signed off on the Errors and Omissions insurance?

Bird Box bests Bright by four

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Netflix has another bona fide hit on its hands.

It tweeted on December 28, 2018, that over 45 million accounts had watched Bird Box, the “best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film!”

With 137 million global subscribers, that means almost one in three watched the “American post-apocalyptic psychological horror-thriller film.”

Actually, given multi-person households and un-monetized account sharing, the number of viewers could be close to 200 million.

In comparison, the Will Smith vehicle, Bright, did 11 million views in three days last year.

Why the success? I think it boils down to:

  1. Sandra Bullock’s star power
  2. its genre: high concept horror
  3. the timing of its release in Christmas Week
  4. social media around the blindfold image and then the #BirdBoxChallenge

In fact, Netflix ended up tweeting asking folks to stop it.

Aja Romano has some great Bird Box insights on Vox.

My take: [I will admit] [I have not seen this yet.] What I think is most interesting is how Netflix trumped their recommendation algorithm and placed an ad for Bird Box front and centre on everyone’s main screens. Every third account took the bait. This is the digital equivalent of Hollywood bulk buying TV ads in mid-December to fill cinemas on Christmas, traditionally one of the busiest days of the year. Another way Netflix has beaten Hollywood at its own game.

Netflix scores with trippy interactive movie ‘Bandersnatch’

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The Black Mirror team have handed Netflix a major win with interactive movie ‘Bandersnatch.’

Netflix has dabbled with interactive titles before, but only for kids. This outing is definitively all-grown-up with drugs, madness and violence.

As summarized on SYFYwire:

“To experience the film, viewers begin watching it like any other program or movie. But as Bandersnatch moves along, a series of choices appear on the screen, roughly every few minutes or so. Using a remote control, console controller, or keyboard, viewers make the decisions for the story’s protagonist, sending the narrative off in any number of new directions.”

Over five hours of completed scenes were shot.

“The branching narratives have been developed through a new Netflix software called Branch Manager, which can also allow viewers to exit and start all over again if they choose. The project is supported on most TVs, game consoles and either Android or iOS devices as long as they’re running the latest version of Netflix.”

How complex is the story map? See this picture or this summary. Warning: contains spoilers.

My take: I love this! The theme of who’s in control is perfect for an interactive movie about a programmer programming an interactive video game. The fact that the movie has been gamified (as the various endings have different point ratings) is hard to miss. Makes my first interactive musings look simple in comparison. I would love to make a Netflix Interactive Movie!

LG announces new Ultra Short Throw 4K projector

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Will you still be on Santa’s Nice List in January?

LG will announce its latest CineBeam Laser 4K projector at CES 2019 in Las Vegas within two weeks.

The HU85L uses Ultra Short Throw (UST) technology that lets it project a 90-inch diagonal image when the unit is a mere 2 inches from the wall.

It can project a 120-inch image when placed 7 inches from the wall.

Here’s a review of last year’s model:

My take: Not cheap at something like $3,000 (3K for 4K?) but would mean you could dispense with a TV in your living room.