So how did you monetise your film making and what were your returns? Am looking to do this by 2016 and therefore, dead curious.
How did you do it?
- Thread starter gorillaonabike
- Start date
I don't have a personal response for you, but this popped up today and I thought it might interest you. It's by Charlie Lyne who self-distributed his documentary Beyond Clueless in UK cinemas. Obviously, he has a big following as a writer/critic, but a lot of strategies worth considering that I hadn't given much thought to previously.
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/14998-self-distirbution-beyond-clueless-uk-release.htm
That's interesting. Genuinely interesting. Someone is talking about how they did it in detail. Will have to pay attention to that one.
When it comes to indie film marketing this quote from the article is the final word:
"...if you plan on getting anywhere whatsoever with self-distribution, you will have to ditch your sense of modesty."
Somewhere in this world, there are pictures of me naked trampolining on a beach. I have no sense of modesty.
So, RayW, what did you do and how much did you make?
Proof or it didn't happen!
Wasn't holding a camera at the time. Was too busy holding something else (naked trampolining has its challenges).
Glad digital cameras didn't exist when I was in my teens or 20s.
Youtube. This last year, I made more money on Youtube than my last feature cost, so it's working well for me.
I don't get it, why do so many filmmakers do this? Blatantly misleading statements/outright lies, especially when it comes to budgets/budgeting! I'm not saying there weren't a couple of interesting/useful points but really:
Point 1 is just ridiculous for 3 reasons:
1. If any idiot can do it for £80, what kind of idiot must he be to have needed £12,000?
2. His second point details how there was no choice but to spend £867.50 before he was allowed to distribute, in addition to the £80!
3. It's obviously dramatically cheaper to make a film if: A. You make a documentary, as documentaries have much lower audience production value expectations and B. If you don't actually make much of the film yourself but rely on other professional filmmakers to create much of your film's content at their expense! In this case, the considerable use of unlicensed clips from other films.
Point 3 is of course misleading. I'd like to know where he is buying his 64GB memory sticks for less that £0.62 (about 90c) but despite this insignificant point, digital technology has made certain aspects of filmmaking/distribution cheaper but overall, meeting audience expectation is really not so much cheaper than it ever was and in some regards it's more expensive.
Point 10: How "desperate" can a filmmaker really be to recoup 0.07% of their budget?
I'm not saying Charlie Lyne hasn't been clever, taken a calculated risk and accomplished a lot for someone his age, I'm just questioning the trend of deliberately misleading the public and new/inexperienced filmmakers.
G
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LOL! Yeah. No.
That's not quite the common-decorum-overstepping marketing and promotion approach I had in mind.
I have produced no material product, marketed nothing, and have made no revenue.
Until I can figure out a way to make a sensible rate of return on not only my financial I investment but that of everyone with hopes of producing something "meaningful" I'll continue to be a student of the biz.
And as a student I see too much pie-in-the-sky "film it and they will come" meritocracy hogwash.
Filmmaking is fun. Business is work.
I'd distribute through CreateSpace.
Marketing through social media is limited by cast & crew's six degrees of separation.
This means significantly broader approaches need to be deployed, traditional advertising.
Until I can figure out X input = Y output >10% I'm not "investing" anything.
Film festivals are a farce regarding distribution potential.
Even acceptence at major film festivals* has no meaningful correlation with distro deals.
I need for this art to make business sense.
I could buy another rental property and make more sense until I figure out this game.
* I believe Sundance 2015 had around 4,000 submissions for 140 fiction & doc slots, and historically very few received distro deals that exceeded production costs, and even fewer went on to make a positive return for the distributor.
Filmmaker/director/producer bears all the risk.
Feeding pigeons in the park.
In 2014 Sundance had a total submisssion of 12218, for 187 accepted films.
http://www.filmthreat.com/features/80165/
wtf ray. I thought you were the research guru. haha.
I suppose you still could be right for 2015, but I doubt it, as submissions increase every year at Sundance.
http://www.filmthreat.com/features/80165/
wtf ray. I thought you were the research guru. haha.
I suppose you still could be right for 2015, but I doubt it, as submissions increase every year at Sundance.
Aw, man. Why you make me go do work on a Saturday afternoon? 
http://www.culturalweekly.com/sundance-infographic-2015-dollars-and-distribution/
XO
Addendum:
And that's from Sundance, the Mecca of indie filmmaking.
Smaller local/regional festivals are little more than bogus cash generating activities for organisers, $20-40 per submission x 1,000-2,000 submissions + a paltry few hundred $ in entry fees minus event location rental fees and a few hundred in traditional advertising costs, maybe a thousand or two.
Pfft.
Hmm...
Maybe I should examine festival hosting instead of filmmaking...
Hmm...
http://www.culturalweekly.com/sundance-infographic-2015-dollars-and-distribution/
"For the 2015 festival, there were 2,309 dramatic features submitted, and 1,796 documentary features submitted."
XO
Addendum:
"Financially, however, what does that really mean? In most cases, indie film financiers won’t get their money back. Only a handful of movies will get deals topping $1 million; last year’s highest sales price was a relatively modest $3.5 million. Getting distribution is easier today because of the digital explosion, but along with that has come a price implosion.
Yes, there were 95 Sundance movies that got distribution last year, but that was spread out across more than 50 distribution companies... As it was last year, most of the distribution deals in 2015 will be digital-only, and most will be for extremely low numbers: $25,000, $10,000, and in some cases zero — literally zero dollars, with the promise of financial participation based on sales."
Yes, there were 95 Sundance movies that got distribution last year, but that was spread out across more than 50 distribution companies... As it was last year, most of the distribution deals in 2015 will be digital-only, and most will be for extremely low numbers: $25,000, $10,000, and in some cases zero — literally zero dollars, with the promise of financial participation based on sales."
And that's from Sundance, the Mecca of indie filmmaking.
Smaller local/regional festivals are little more than bogus cash generating activities for organisers, $20-40 per submission x 1,000-2,000 submissions + a paltry few hundred $ in entry fees minus event location rental fees and a few hundred in traditional advertising costs, maybe a thousand or two.
Pfft.
Hmm...
Maybe I should examine festival hosting instead of filmmaking...
Hmm...
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I'm not disagreeing with the fundamentals of what you're saying – and I definitely think that Point 1 is misleadingly worded, in light of the other points – but obviously his site has made its name by being glib and irreverent and not offering serious, detailed breakdowns.
So I take the actual tips with a pinch of salt, but I do think that Beyond Clueless provides a really interesting distribution model, one that I hadn't seen before first-hand. We've all seen people gruellingly four-walling their flick, but Charlie Lyne has done something different by using the film's publicity and his contacts in the cinema industry to get straight to the programmers. I know from the Doc/Fest book that the film had a top sales company repping it (a company that I almost went to work for last summer) but with no distributor attached, they've done an amazing job of getting the film shown at a major chain around the country and a bunch of other really great cinemas.
I'm sure there's a few very useful titbits in there, I'm not sure I can comment directly though because most of what I work on already has broadcast/distribution lined up and/or has a well connected Producer who can achieve the same as C.L. From what I've seen on IT, I would say that the role of Producer is generally the least well understood/executed.
Although Beyond Clueless might provide a good/interesting model for distribution, I'm not so sure it's a good model as far as a film is concerned. C.L. has taken a big risk and IMHO it actually breaks copyright law.
G
I also thought this might be a snaffoo but presumably the BBFC's certification means they don't consider it to break copyright laws? And I'm presuming that sales agencies and the big film festivals make basic legal enquiries?
That said, perhaps that's the reason potential distributors baulked at the notion of buying the film...
AFAIK, and I don't pretend to know much about exactly what the BBFC look into, but I was under the impression that they were only involved in the actual classification of content. IE. It's suitability for various age groups based on language, violence, discrimination, sexual content, etc. Rather than the legal status of the content, such as copyright ownership, etc.
Actually, in my experience film festivals generally make little or no legal enquiries regarding copyright. If a copyright infringement is blatantly obvious I'm sure that would raise a red flag or two but festivals protect themselves to a large extent by requiring the filmmakers to effectively indemnify them against copyright breaches. In this case I don't think the copyright infringement is "blatantly obvious" because I'm sure C.L. would just say "fair use". The problem is that I can't see how the UK's "fair dealing" exemptions are applicable to Beyond Clueless but that's a more subtle/complex issue rather than a "blatantly obvious" one.
I would have expected a sales agency to be more diligent. After all, who would want to invest time, effort and money in trying to sell something which it turns out cannot legally be sold? I can't say I'm knowledgeable about sales agents though, so maybe I'm missing something.
Seems at least possible.
G