America the Beautiful

That dosen't sound too bad if the 50% Amazon fee isn't taken off the 30% indiefix fee.

I'm all for avoiding the middle man and it's not very hard to put your dvd's on the sites they list for a 30% fee for each sale + the sites fee's.

I understand the time issue but it takes no more than 3 or 4 hours of time (if your dvd is ready to be dist) to set up your own accounts with these sources without having to pay the 30% fee. You do it one time and your done...
 
totally agree. I did it because I get 90% of all revenue, not 70%. and because it's "non-exclusive" unlike Cinetic. and there are other advantages. Netflix wouldn't have even considered a short (despite my turning them down) without IndieFlix bringing it to them on my behalf. they are also getting my short on the Xbox360.

side question: anyone know how you submit to hulu.com on your own? i'm looking and I can't find a direct method, other than a sales agent.
 
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how is indieflix doing all of this? they just let my movie sit there. i keep hearing about indieflix getting the movie to all sorts of companies, but i haven't seen that happening. did you pay for another service? and how are you getting 90%?
 
I put my film on indieflix, filmbaby and createspace (amazon subsidiary). So far http://www.createspace.com is doing best for me, and it's actually Amazon that does most of the sales. They have more visibility on the Internet than all the others. So they pay less but make more sales. It's in the numbers, isn't it?

Again, so far the Internet strategy for indie filmmakers is to get into as many non-exclusive deals as possible. It will become a problem if many of these online distribution platforms begin to push the same film into iTunes, for example. Who gets it in first? Because if they are non-exclusive, then they can't sell exclusive rights, so they're not supposed to represent a filmmaker anyway. If they want to distribute then they should pay upfront for exclusive representation rights. Otherwise it's a free-for-all.

These are new issues cropping up now that the Internet distribution industry is just getting off the virtual ground.

As for distributors that take more than 10% and pay nothing upfront, well, no filmmaker should ever deal with them. It's ridiculous. They are not distributors; they are agents. Agents don't take 50%.

So here is a guy -- Mr. Roberts. He is sharing with us his marketing plan. This is what makes sense -- if you want to make your money back on a movie that you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. As I'm sure his ongoing marketing strategy will reveal:

"It takes time, it takes work and it takes effort." I'm quoting an article or interview someone on this user group posted.

The best way to sell DVDs is going from door to door.

The best way to find an agent is going door to door (in markets, festivals, etc.)

The best way to make money is going door to door.

Now, the Internet is supposed to change all that -- sell your movie to 5 billion people around the world. Ok, show me; I'm from Missourri. LOL
 
filmman said:
I put my film on indieflix, filmbaby and createspace (amazon subsidiary). So far http://www.createspace.com is doing best for me, and it's actually Amazon that does most of the sales. They have more visibility on the Internet than all the others. So they pay less but make more sales. It's in the numbers, isn't it?

Again, so far the Internet strategy for indie filmmakers is to get into as many non-exclusive deals as possible. It will become a problem if many of these online distribution platforms begin to push the same film into iTunes, for example. Who gets it in first? Because if they are non-exclusive, then they can't sell exclusive rights, so they're not supposed to represent a filmmaker anyway. If they want to distribute then they should pay upfront for exclusive representation rights. Otherwise it's a free-for-all.

These are new issues cropping up now that the Internet distribution industry is just getting off the virtual ground.

As for distributors that take more than 10% and pay nothing upfront, well, no filmmaker should ever deal with them. It's ridiculous. They are not distributors; they are agents. Agents don't take 50%.

So here is a guy -- Mr. Roberts. He is sharing with us his marketing plan. This is what makes sense -- if you want to make your money back on a movie that you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. As I'm sure his ongoing marketing strategy will reveal:

"It takes time, it takes work and it takes effort." I'm quoting an article or interview someone on this user group posted.

The best way to sell DVDs is going from door to door.

The best way to find an agent is going door to door (in markets, festivals, etc.)

The best way to make money is going door to door.

Now, the Internet is supposed to change all that -- sell your movie to 5 billion people around the world. Ok, show me; I'm from Missourri. LOL
Click to expand...


In theory anyone from across the globe is supposed to be able to download. In practice, you are getting yourself domestic DVD distro. THe money is made in foregin sales which you aren't going to see much of on sites like those.
 
You're right, the real money for indie filmmakers is in foreign sales. BUT... this thread is the other side of the coin: domestic releasing by the film producer, building a grass roots audience (going door to door), word of mouth, getting on TV shows, local cable, newspapers -- plugging the movie every which way but loose :-)

A movie that the distributors don't pick up because it's non-genre falls into this category also. You can find an audience for any movie. There is no move that "sucks". This is a highly overused word in describing indie movies. Every movie sucks until it finds its audience.

Take Corrado, for example. You've done with it practically all you can do; you've gotten articles and TV programs to review it. Yet Corrado's best market is the foreign market.

The problem now is that the foreign market costs $30,000 to do. CANNES, AFM, Berlinale. They're all expensive, and the distributors don't have good action movies like Corrado to take there. Distributors are hurting because of the global economy, so they don't have the money to pay an advance.

So where does that leave you? If it were my film and I had $30,000, I'd take it myself to the foreign market. Even better than that, get together with four or five other filmmakers (like me and Nate) and let's go to the market together.

Is there going to be competition between us for the same customers? Sure, but so what? Every film competes for sales with other films. We will still make more money than we would by giving our films to agents. At least that's been my experience.

It was in the LA Times yesterday: Hollywood movies are costing $100 million now. Hollywood studios are sending fewer sales executives to the foreign market now. There are few buyers ... with less money. Hollywood movies asked $250,000 from certain territories per film. As indie filmmakers we can compete, because we can afford to take $5,000 per territory if we have to.

I'm not saying anybody can do a foreign market the first time out. Mr. Roberts lost some money when he started out doing domestic distribution. So it takes one or two market to learn the ropes. I've been going to the foreing markets since the mid-80s. If you come with me, you will get the benefit of a thousand things I've learned about doing a market like CANNES or the AFM.

But doing what Mr. Roberts is doing is even bigger money. Imagine if there was a sales agent like Mr. Roberts doing the selling for all dvx users here?

:-)
 
Actually Vic, your 100% right. The point I neglected to mention is that There are different ways to distribute different movies. Darryl has found the best way for his flick by far.
 
Okay, for PART 2 here. So we left off with the full page article in the LA Times. My initial intention was to hype an agent or film festival into taking on the film.

That didn't happen but I got a call from a branded entertainment company. Branded entertainment companies are the one's that marry corporations and Hollywood studios. So for instance if you're watching the Hulk and Toyota's are being driven in the movie and it's seems that it's a small part of the storyline, then probably a branded entertainment company set it all up.

It used to be considered product placement, but studios realized that companies were willing to pay to be in the movie and they also put up P&A a lot of times. Well this company from santa Monica, CA flew me out and arranged a screening of the film for their staff and the studio that they were aligned with Lionsgate. They also recruited some moviegoers off the street to get that perspective. After the screening, the execs at Lionsgate told me they really liked the film and the branded entertainment company said they loved it and wanted to move forward.

In case you don't know what my film is about, it's about America's unhealthy obsession with beauty. So the branded entertainment company put the deal together. They would own the film outright. All rights forever. They would give me $1,000,000 as a buyout fee. They would get a beauty company to put up $4,000,000 in P&A to release the film. This would make the distributor happy because they could release the film and get their distribution fee without any expense. The branded entertainment company would be happy because they would charge a hefty fee for putting together a marketing plan.

I will say this. Normally when a film is released this way it usually grosses way more than it normally would because these branded entertainment marketing people are awesome. They don't do the throw it against the wall strategy like the studios, they come up with unique and creative ways to reach a targeted demo.

I will admit it. The marketing plan that they came up with for my film would have made it a blockbuster. Studios just don't think this way. I adopted one of the things that they planned on doing in my strategy now. Many of them I can't do because I don't have that $4 million in P&A to play with.

The hitch! I have a scene in my film where I expose toxins in cosmetics that are linked to causing allergies and cancer in women and since a cosmetics company would be putting up the P&A, I would have to take that scene out. At this exact moment my best friend was dying of breast cancer and after being there with her and seeing what she was going through, I wasn't about to sell women down the river. Not even for a million bucks. So I didn't do it.

The agent at UTA said I was nuts. He said there was no way in hell I could get a million dollars out of a small doc that didn't get into Sundance. He said I should take the million even if I had to decorate my house with fecal matter. Actually everyone I talked to said I should take the money and move on with my next project.

I thought wow! What if this was a brilliant plan by the cosmetics company to buy the film and put it on the shelf. You know how creative we independent filmmakers can be with our thoughts. So NO WAY!

A week later the branded entertainment company had the guy from Lionsgate call me and say that I really should do it. He said that kind of money is just not out there. After toying with the idea some more, I decided naaah.

So here I was. No deal. No agent (the guy at UTA didn't count) and no major film film festival.

The film cost $800,000 so what was I going to do? This was the pivotal moment because I decided I was going to come up with a marketing/distribution plan that would not only get the investors $800,000 back, but it would be a model where I could do films in the future for $750,000 or less and make a profit on them. This way I would need a studio. Every film I do I'd submit to Sundance. Shop it to the studios and if they didn't do the right thing, I'd release it within the confines of my model and make a profit.

I have to tell you. It's very empowering.

So what did I decide? Coming up in PART 3...
 
roberts321 said:
The hitch! I have a scene in my film where I expose toxins in cosmetics that are linked to causing allergies and cancer in women and since a cosmetics company would be putting up the P&A, I would have to take that scene out. At this exact moment my best friend was dying of breast cancer and after being there with her and seeing what she was going through, I wasn't about to sell women down the river. Not even for a million bucks. So I didn't do it.
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I like that. Seriously, you have some balls :)
 
Hey Darryl Ihave a question.

I haven't seen the trailer or interviews (no time yet), but how does a doc shot on a DVX100 with no name talent cost 800K to make?

Not knocking you at all, just wanted to know what the budget was comprised of.
 
roberts321 said:
I thought wow! What if this was a brilliant plan by the cosmetics company to buy the film and put it on the shelf. You know how creative we independent filmmakers can be with our thoughts. So NO WAY!

A week later the branded entertainment company had the guy from Lionsgate call me and say that I really should do it. He said that kind of money is just not out there. After toying with the idea some more, I decided naaah.
Click to expand...


Epic.
 
a question to all ... with indieflex and other online companies as such... do they accept short films or just features?

have a 20 minutes short that got into a bunch of festivals and now I want to know if I can make a few cents on it?
 
Rubbersquare said:
how is indieflix doing all of this? they just let my movie sit there. i keep hearing about indieflix getting the movie to all sorts of companies, but i haven't seen that happening. did you pay for another service? and how are you getting 90%?
Click to expand...

email them. yu have to tell them which services you want to take part in. they don't mass distribute by default so as to not violate terms of other agreements you might have. you'll notice alot of films on indieflix arte only streaming because filmmakers have DVD distribution with another company.

pixhershko said:
a question to all ... with indieflex and other online companies as such... do they accept short films or just features?

have a 20 minutes short that got into a bunch of festivals and now I want to know if I can make a few cents on it?
Click to expand...

both.
 
Hey Taormina,

As far as the $800K question. In a snapshot. We shot for 5 years.

We had a 35mm blowup.

We had the editor of "Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me," edit for 2 years. They fluctuate around $2500 a week.

We shot 900 hours of footage. We had 735 separate interviews. Most on different days. I probably flew to 200 cities. A lot of times it was to the same cities over and over.

And even though I did it on spec at the time, I have a 4 year writng, producing and directing deferment.

You have tons of music to pay for. You have some clips to pay for. Even though a lot of it fell under fair usage. But using beauty commercials to attack the beauty industry was a monster. I even used the archival producer from "Fahrenheit 9/11." Now that I think about it, I probably used 9 of Michael Moore's key personnel. His budgets range from 3 million to 6 million.

Actually the $800,000K is cheap when you think about it.
 
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roberts321 said:
Hey Taormina,

As far as the $800K question. In a snapshot. We shot for 5 years.

We had a 35mm blowup.

We had the editor of "Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me," edit for 2 years. They fluctuate around $2500 a week.

We shot 900 hours of footage. We had 735 separate interviews. Most on different days. I probably flew to 200 cities. A lot of times it was to the same cities over and over.

And even though I did it on spec at the time, I have a 4 year writng, producing and directing deferment.

You have tons of music to pay for. You have some clips to pay for. Even though a lot of it fell under fair usage. But using beauty commercials to attack the beauty industry was a monster. I even used the archival producer from "Fahrenheit 9/11." Now that I think about it, I probably used 9 of Michael Moore's key personnel. His budgets range from 3 million to 6 million.

Actually the $800,000K is cheap when you think about it.
Click to expand...

Awesome, dude. What an epic project!!!! great work!
 
Hello

So what was that teenage model like? ethereal off the charts beauty? Did you find her friendly? aggressive?
roberts321 said:
Hey Taormina,

As far as the $800K question. In a snapshot. We shot for 5 years.

We had a 35mm blowup.

We had the editor of "Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me," edit for 2 years. They fluctuate around $2500 a week.

We shot 900 hours of footage. We had 735 separate interviews. Most on different days. I probably flew to 200 cities. A lot of times it was to the same cities over and over.

And even though I did it on spec at the time, I have a 4 year writng, producing and directing deferment.

You have tons of music to pay for. You have some clips to pay for. Even though a lot of it fell under fair usage. But using beauty commercials to attack the beauty industry was a monster. I even used the archival producer from "Fahrenheit 9/11." Now that I think about it, I probably used 9 of Michael Moore's key personnel. His budgets range from 3 million to 6 million.

Actually the $800,000K is cheap when you think about it.
Click to expand...
 
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