How much would you like to be paid?

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123kingjet

Just asking, but how much money a year do you guys like to be paid? How much money would you be willing to take in order to provide your movie to a distributer?

Please be reasonable when responding. Keep it in a sensible range like 3000 a month, for a company does that sound reasonable? Or would you guys rather be paid on commission bases where the more movies you sell, the more you make.

I am interested in hearing feedback.

Also another question for you filmmakers, how long does it take to make a movie and on average, how many movies have you made?
 
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yeah, an online publishing gig would be pretty cool...you could split adsense revenues or something :) Getting the eyeballs on some of our shorts/features would be pretty difficult though. Mine are still pretty rough. And If I were putting that kind of budget into making a feature, The web wouldn't be my preferred distro model. Unless you could prove to me that it'll monetize my product, that kind of investment that I'm responsible for repaying would have me pursuing a much more traditional distro model...even touring my film personally has a stronger history that my imaginary investors would go for rather than an unproven system.

There's the catch 22 of any new business of course is that without customers, you can't build a protfolio, without a portfolio, you can't attract customers. I would think you'd need to spend a year or two at a loss proving it can work for indy filmmakers who act now and take 5% for the first year for anyone willing to sign up within that first two years. That way you can build a client base and a portfolio that you can then use in your prospectus to prove that you can indeed monetize indie films online. After the results of that are in, then you can start raising your price...and if you set that our from the start, that the 2 years is a limited time early bird bonus that will go up after that, it won't be shocking when you do so.

The drawback is that many indy movies are so frequently made available for free, that you'll need to break through that audience expectation.
 
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OK.

I don't know if this will help, but here is my understanding of the issues.

Basically people buy and rent films that they've heard of... or staring someone they've heard of... or made by someone they've heard of.

Most indie films can only hope to reach an audience by playing with the "films people have heard of" part of that equation... because most indies are unknown and use unknown casts.

The big question in film marketing is how you create a buzz for an unknown film.

If you're able to create a buzz for an indie film, then the means of distribution becomes largely irrelevant.

Indie films are usually incredibly hard to create a buzz for... simply because they're often ill conceived as products, or bad films or both.

I'll use my film "No Place" as an example. Shot on HD with a substantial budget it has failed to find distribution despite the fact that every distributor who has seen it liked the film. It's failed to sell, not because it's a bad film... but because distributors can't see a way to put it in front of an audience. The reason... unknown director, unknown cast, not a genre film (some genres sell regardless of cast). There just isn't a way to create a buzz for the movie... and as the writer/director, that's my fault. I made the classic mistake of making a film that can't be sold.

The truth is, there are lots of films out there just like mine... some of them are pretty good films, but the vast majority of them can't find a place in the market.

Now I happen to believe that out there, there are people who would enjoy my film... but as it stands it's next to impossible to create a viable link between potential audiences and indie films.

If there is any potential gap in the market... it is in that area... but trust me, I've been looking at this for twelve years now and I've still to find anyone with a credible solution to this problem.
 
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I've had exactly the same experience as clive with my movie,
"dark crimes". It's an award winning movie that several
distributors have really liked - LGF sent people to three different
festival screenings to judge the audience reaction. But they
can't see a way to create the all important "buzz".

How do they get people to see a movie made by an unknown
writer/director with a no name cast without that all important
genre "hook"? Something my movie doesn't have. However,
my giant, marauding cockroach movie, made for $8,700 sold
just under 4,000 units.

Go figure....

I've brought this up several times, so please forgive me regulars:
You need to look at your own movie watching habits.

In the last 12 months how many feature length indie movies
have you watched on line?
In the last 12 months how many feature length indie movies
have members of your family watched on line?

How many have you rented in a store of from NetFlix?

If you don't do it and don't know anyone who does, do you still
think there is a good business model there? Even us filmmakers
of indie movies don't rent, watch on line or buy movies made
by filmmaker we don't know, starring actors we've never hear of.

I love your idea kingjet and I'd love to see it work.
 
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I don't think it's possible to change people's buying habits. However, people will buy/rent/download movies by unknown directors with unknown casts if they think the film is interesting enough. The real question is what it'll take to get that interest.

My personal opinion is that only person who can effect the marketing outcome of a movie is the actual film maker. If they get the concept right, the movie will sell... if not it won't.

I don't think a site showing trailers is the answer... simply because I don't see the motivation for people to watch the trailers. I don't think people are trawling the internet looking for indie films.

What usually happens is a film comes to the mass media's attention for some reason... then the same thing that hooked the media also hooks in punters... if they get excited enough they then tell their friends.

The best model I can think of at the moment is a e-mail listings service called B3ta ... they email out a weekly sheet of cool stuff they've found on the internet. As a result they've become massively influential in the European media business, because they find the stuff people like.

The real problem is there aren't enough really cool, undiscovered indie films out there to justify a magazine or listings service.
 
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I found a site that might be of interest to you guys. Actually, this was almost exactly what I was thinking of, seems someone has already thought of it. Jaman.com is a business model made directly for independent films and world films. Check it out. And as always feedback would be nice.

They offer high quality movies that people pay to download to own or to rent. Heck, I supporting my newfound rival but what the heck. When you click on a movie, it plays a trailer of that movie and if you register, the fist 4 movies are free.

Is this model good? What are your guys idea on this. My idea is to make a similar site, but slightly lower prices and a option of subscription. Any ideas, questions, comments are welcomed.

ps: my idea contains more I am just not going to explain in detail yet
 
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123kingjet said:
Actually, this was almost exactly what I was thinking of, seems someone has already thought of it. Jaman.com is a business model made directly for independent films and world films. Check it out. And as always feedback would be nice.

They offer high quality movies that people pay to download to own or to rent. Heck, I supporting my newfound rival but what the heck. When you click on a movie, it plays a trailer of that movie and if you register, the fist 4 movies are free.
Click to expand...

A couple of crucial differences between the two models. They have over a thousand movies to rent. You will offer less than twenty. And they almost certainly have a revenue sharing plan with the distributors/filmmakers rather than a large recurring payment in the tens of thousands of dollars.
 
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So you have an excellent business model to emulate. Some heavy
hitters in the business are involved in that site - Jeff Berg, Bill Bradley,
Ed Pressman and Riyad Shahjahan - big money, major industry
clout. They offer their product through TiVo and AppleTV. And, as
Beeble noted, they started with 1,000 movies from major international
distributors and filmmakers.

Any idea how much Gaurav Dhillon invested to start it?
The site went live 12 months ago. Do you know if they are making a
profit yet? Do you know what their traffic is like, what their revenue
share to the filmmakers is or how many movies a month they rent
and sell?

I notice that their demographic are the "the 56 million people who live
in the United States but were born elsewhere or speak a language
other than English with deserving but little-known foreign films that
probably won't make it to U.S. megaplexes." And they offer big budget,
big name Indian films. That's a HUGE market.

kingjet - when you are ready to build content, I'm very interested in
providing it. Keep us informed.
 
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I notice that their demographic are the "the 56 million people who live
in the United States but were born elsewhere or speak a language
other than English with deserving but little-known foreign films that
probably won't make it to U.S. megaplexes." And they offer big budget,
big name Indian films. That's a HUGE market.
Click to expand...

and me... like I pointed out in a different thread, I really like World Cinema... it's hard to get and also to keep track of.

But the key point is they went specific and then went after the BIG players in that market... what impressed me with this site was the first thing i saw was a banner ad for "Dogville" ... so that immediately makes me take the other offerings more seriously.

This is probably a service I'll use... more so now I live in Italy.
 
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clive said:
This is probably a service I'll use... more so now I live in Italy.
Click to expand...

OMG, where in Italy? I have relatives near Savona... haven't seen the in a while (year and years)... I should write to them, geez... anyway, they have a nice 3-level property with close (a block) access to a beach/boardwalk and everything... big backyard and gardens- the place was a paradise for me when I went during my early teens. Anyway, I'll have to get in contact with them again (been meaning to anyway), but if you needed a location for a film, it's something to think about. You in the North or South of it now?
 
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I think we're about a generation away from the internet being a really big distro channel (it's already making moves toward it). My daughter watches 30min shows on the web all the time (I'm sure someone posted them illegally), she doesn't seem to mind all the technical stuff that prevents me from watching and enjoying 'net based content. Perhaps we're just too close to it as content creators when it comes to quality of broadcast. The end judge of it is really the audience at large, which we are not as we come from a different, more analytical perspective than most.
 
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