atomfilms.com : what do they pay?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Does anybody know what atomfilms.com pays filmmakers per view of short films put on their site? Anybody done this, comments on whether there is typically an initial surge of views, then fade off, or if there is a constant trickle of views, etc? What genres do you think would fare best?
UPDATE: I found out a rough figure: 1 cent per view (0.8 cent per view).
http://www.atom.com/creators/go_pro/
Looks like you upload your content for free, and *if* atomfilms staff likes it after a time THEN you get pro status to earn the 1 cent or so per view. Is that reasonable, competitive, or are there better sites? $/view (or rather cents/view) is not the end all, because though some sites might pay more or less than that, it is the cents/view multiplied by the number of views that matters, so the popularity of a short film site matters greatly in the equation too.

I wonder too if a filmmaker had a collection of so many short films, or grouped together in force with other short filmmakers, if a package of so many short films could be licensed to a mobile cell phone content provider?

I like filmmaking for the sake of art, but making some money to at least get back some of the film projects' costs would be nice too, and so as to have bigger short film budgets to also afford to pay more to crew, actors, etc. Plus, for a tax write off, one needs to show a profit in filmmaking after so many years I believe.
 
Last edited:
The response from atomfilms.com after I emailed them asking what they pay for filmmakers' shorts on atomfilms:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Atom Entertainment, Inc.

Many of the specifics of our contracts are confidential between us and
our filmmakers. If you submit a film for review and we offer you a
contract, we will provide all of the details at that time. If you don't
like the contract, you are under no obligation and you are free to take
your film elsewhere.

For more information about submitting your work to Atom, please follow
the link below and select the appropriate tab (Pitch An Idea, Make
Money, etc.).

http://www.atom.com/upload/

We look forward to seeing your work!

Regards,
The Atom Team
 
Hi Randall,

I've got a two minute comedy short that I'm thinking of sticking on atomfilms.

There have been some notable successes on there, like Possum Death Spree so I figured it would be worth a go.

There are other sites as well, like Revver, obviouly Youtube is now splitting advertising fees.

Here are a few more suggestions.

http://www.scottkirsner.com/webvid/gettingpaid.htm

As you have probably worked out, the issue is getting enough people to watch, so you need a site that gets traffic. One good thing about revver is that you can embed the film elsewhere and you still get paid. So even if a stranger puts it on their website, you get paid.
 
I'd like to find some way to potentially (I say potential because a bad short film is a bad short film and hoping for revenue from that would be a pipe dream) at least make back production costs. A cheasy five minute short film (my first film, in post now) is one thing; but I am looking at $3500 to produce my next short, a 15 minute horror. If done well, which I would prefer, it would be nice to see most of that budget come back to me. Sure I could keep doing no-budget shorts, use talent with no talent, no experience, use music loops for soundtrack, but I would prefer to find some talent with film acting experience, which means I need to pull them in from Minneapolis to drive here to northern Minnesota. That means gas money, hotel, meals. Then there is the fee for a film score, a minimum of $1000 if I get lucky; I am still thinking of going the twistedtracks.com way of film scoring in the future, although I have worked out an arrangement with Alex Beard for scoring my 5 minute first short. But music is a huge cost, I might just have to shell out $800 for the soundtrack collection at twisted and be done with it, have music for all my future short films. Save fees for composers for a funded feature film in the future. I am looking at short films as a way to create 'calling cards' to pull in investors in the future for a feature film, as well as my path to learning the craft of filmmaking.

I wonder if there could be revenue in hosting short film downloads of one's own short films on one's own website? Charge 25 cents for a high definition download, make it easy to pay with PayPal? Put low quality downloads free on youtube or whatever, with a notice on the film to go to blahblahblah for a high quality download? At a quarter a download, 10,000 downloads could pay for a short. Six billion people on the planet. Or maybe license shorts, if they are high quality, well done, as fillers on indie film cable TV channel?
 
Take this concept you have and bombard it with gamma rays :-)

Make a 90 minute movie with whatever you have available to you ... and send it to a festival or two. If it flies, you're on your way. If it doesn't, shelve it.

You are now a filmmaker. Make a better movie next time. Ingmar Bergman wrote somewhere, it took him four films before he knew what he was doing.

Don't think about spending money. How much for this, how much for that? What can I get for this, what can I get for that? Always go for the best with what you have; what you can muster; what you can promote.

Shorts films are like short stories; you won't learn how to make a full feature film from them, just as you can't turn a short story into a novel. Of course, you can, but trust me, it's the hard way...

Just a piece of advice I gave myself a long time ago and this I never regretted...
 
Respectfully, I am not sure I agree, even being a noob. It just seems common sense that doing shorts first, of increasing length, at least 3-5 shorts, can only help an aspiring filmmaker learn sound, boompole, DP, editing, music, working with actors, obtaining locations, learning motion graphics for titling, etc. etc. I could be wrong, I am just starting out. But you don't run a marathon it seems to me without first building up to it.
 
perhaps you can give us your background then
there is merit to your point of view and what you're trying to do
 
Randall,

As I'm sure you know, somewhere around 95 percent of shorts are for love, experience, and the portfolio - not money. However, the emergence of webisodes will looks like it will provide a few breakthroughs so stay tuned. And thanks for sharing your numbers on Atomfilms.

As an aside (not to highjack this thread), most will agree producing shorts has little to do with making a successful feature film. Still, we should acknowledge works like Robert Rodriguez who professed having previously filmed about 30 shorts to learn all his errors before making "El Mariachi" (his predecessor to the remake, "El Dorado").

Happy Trails, Michael
 
I think Rodriguez said everybody has 20 bad shorts in them to get out of the way before doing a feature. That seems like a bit of hyperbole to me, but it could be true.

As for shorts for fun and not money, I can see that for no budget 5 or perhaps 10 minute shorts, wannabe local actors, etc. But for higher quality shorts with actors with film acting experience that will cost some money, shorts 20-30+ minutes long, shorts requiring $$$ to e.g. rent a location (such as two lodge cabins on a lake) which again costs money, I would hope for some way to maybe make back some of the production costs. Mind you I am not expecting to make back money, I am just saying it would be nice.

moonlitnite said:
Randall,

As I'm sure you know, somewhere around 95 percent of shorts are for love, experience, and the portfolio - not money. However, the emergence of webisodes will looks like it will provide a few breakthroughs so stay tuned. And thanks for sharing your numbers on Atomfilms.

As an aside (not to highjack this thread), most will agree producing shorts has little to do with making a successful feature film. Still, we should acknowledge works like Robert Rodriguez who professed having previously filmed about 30 shorts to learn all his errors before making "El Mariachi" (his predecessor to the remake, "El Dorado").

Happy Trails, Michael
Click to expand...
 
My background (you asked): I am a noob at filmmaking, no doubt about that. So please take any disagreements I put out here on dvxuser as polite dialog, debate for learning purposes.

I am just finishing post production on my first short film, a five minute one actor short supernatural thriller. Turning out much better than I hoped.

My strategy is to progress now to a few two actor 15 minute shorts (snagged a very experienced film actor for my next short, she loved the script), then a couple of 20 minutes 5-6 actors, then a 30 minutes 5-7 actors. Already have the scripts written.

I also am writing my third feature length screenplay, with the help of a couple of mentor-consultants, plan to enter those into contests, also seek an agent when the third feature script is completed. I want to write a feature screenplay yet to conceptualize, that I could produce indie style with the greatest chance of success--- keep the number of actors very low, mostly in one simple easily accessible location; film that in several years from now.

I am a noob in filmmaking to be sure, learning. But I have a strong background in art and fine-art photography (as in studio lighting of people), music (guitar virtuoso, learning theory and composition), technogeek on top of all that (the PC part of post comes easily to me-- editing footage, motion graphics and titling and VFX/CGI with After Effects, etc). So I am hoping all that helps with the filmmaking.
~:beer:Randall


filmman said:
perhaps you can give us your background then
there is merit to your point of view and what you're trying to do
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top