Sales Agents - rates for TV, Pay TV and VoD

Moloko said:

Ideallly I would like to sell the rights worldwide and this for a period of 2 to 5 years. I would like to know if someone can give me some average rates on the following:
TV and PayTV - how much should we charge per minute?

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There is no market for short film on TV and PayTV.

VoD - I have no idea of the rates that sales agents offer for VoD deals. What would be an acceptable deal?

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Since there is no market for shot films there isn't any range for VOD deals. There
are dozens of websites where you can upload your movie and charge whatever
you want and the website takes a percentage. But sales agents aren't looking for
short films.

How many short film do you watch on TV or PayTV?
How many short film do you pay to see on VOD?

directorik said:

There is no market for short film on TV and PayTV.

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Maybe not in the US, but here in Europe there seems to be a market for sure.

directorik said:

How many short film do you watch on TV or PayTV?

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Plenty. In Belgium there's a whole channel devoted to this: Shorts TV, which is actually a French/British broadcaster and quite popular in France. ARTE (covering Germany, France, Belgium and some Scandinavian countries have regular short film slots. Canal +, one of the biggest PayTV film channels, also programs shorts in between their feature films.

I thank you for responding to the thread, but I was really asking for specific information and rates. I don't need to be convinced that there is no market. I have a 70 page catalogue here on the desk with international broadcasters who do short film acquisitions all year round and I just want to have an idea of acceptable rates before I leap into the deal making process.

Then you know considerably more about the market for
short films than I do. My suggestion is to contact the
international broadcasters in the catalogue and ask what
they typically pay for films.

When you do it would be of great help to me and others here
in the states. Would you mind telling us what you find? Is
this a catalogue I could get?

With a short, you are typically looking at a deal between £500 and £50,000.

To get to the latter price, it's either going to be of truly exceptional quality or has a huge name or both.

That's for a DVD deal by the way. These days you want to be looking at "hybrid" deals, where you sell off different rights to different companies. You may get more selling to individual territories than with an all in one deal because the distributor may well be underrepresented in specific countries.

Look at keeping some rights to self-distribute as well. Some companies are a bit funny about this, as they see it as a threat, but statistically it works out better for them as well. If you are selling it and pushing it hard (because of your vested interest) it helps to create a demand for the product across the board and their sales will rise as well. Also, if you are looking to establish a career, you'll find that people who see a later work will be more inclined to watch your earlier stuff. Keep rights to your films and you could start picking up royalties on films you made years ago. It may take 20 years, but your older stuff can start raking in a small profit.

People always jump in with the shout of "You can't sell shorts!", but it's completely untrue. The market for shorts is developing and companies are looking to use them wherever people wait eg hospitals, train stations, doctors, taxi's cruise ships etc. The credit crunch has hit distributors hard (no more "free" money around), but it's not going to last forever.

Shorts can be IMMENSELY profitable.

Jochen Alexander Freydank’s Toyland has brought in over £300,000 in award money alone, that's before we even get into any specific deals. It's not hard to see that it will bring in a heap of money, especially now it's won the Oscar.

The Anglo-American world has developed a low opinion of shorts for some reason, but in the rest of Europe they are held in very high esteem, as both Art and Product.

As for the specifics of what you are asking, it's really impossible to say. "Foreign" language tends to get less as a general rule, but as you know there are no hard and fast rules in the film industry. Winning awards and building hype and heat around the work make it more sellable and therefore worth more as a product. That's really all there is to the whole industry. Films have zero intrinsic value, the whole industry is a marketing bubble that convinces people to pay for something they don't need. As long as you understand that, then really the world is your oyster.

Get a sales agent on board (get a sales agent on board in Pre-Production in future). A good sales agent is worth their weight in gold. They have instant access to everybody that counts. They'll take their cut, but it's definitely worth it. They understand the whole lay out of the industry and have all the contacts to hand. Aim to find one that has a track record in moving similar films.

Beware that 90% of the time "sales agents" never recoup their expenses for foreign sales.

thanks for the info, ScarTissue and Blade! much appreciated. now to find a sales agent...

Moloko,

You mentioned there is a 70 page catalogue with international
broadcasters who do short film acquisitions all year round.
Would you mind telling us what this catalogue is? Is this a
catalogue I could get?

I've never even heard of that catalouge before now.

Which isn't necessarily saying much, but I stop in here so much I guess I'm just surprised I haven't read about it before now.