business model for online filmmaking

F

Fahad

Veteran
1) make a film. at least 30 min long. budget it under $5,000.

2) make a website. budget around $500. a "social network". say, $20/month for bandwidth.

3) post your film to said website.

4) budget for marketing.

5) site contains character profiles, extra story information, non-intrusive membership requirements to comment and discuss said story, non-intrusive "polls" to find what fans like and don't like about the story and characters.

6) revenue is generated from non-intrusive ads on the website.

7) the value of the site isn't the film, or story, but is in the fan-base that you have created from the film/characters/story.

8) make a sequel or another film based on the feedback generated from "polls".

9) repeat 1-8.


feasible?
 
I feel like you need to focus more on making a good film and then focus on fan base. You have 8 steps that follow the 1st step when the 1st step should have 10 of its own.
 
Steve Laramie said:
I feel like you need to focus more on making a good film and then focus on fan base. You have 8 steps that follow the 1st step when the 1st step should have 10 of its own.
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very true.

the assumption is that you do have a good film (made to create a fan base). the focus of the post is on the business side, not the creative.
 
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I wouldnt say that its impossible, but I don't really see it working unless you had an absolutely stunning movie. There are only two movies I can think of that anybody has ever heard of with that kind of budget, Bubble and Primer (yes, even paranormal activity was made with over $10k) and while both those movies have loyal fanbases, I don't really think they could generate any kind of appreciable amount of money just from advertising on a website devoted to them. I could see that business model MAAYYBEE working with a good sketch comedy troupe that produces all of their shorts for under $100.
 
randomname said:
I wouldnt say that its impossible, but I don't really see it working unless you had an absolutely stunning movie. There are only two movies I can think of that anybody has ever heard of with that kind of budget, Bubble and Primer (yes, even paranormal activity was made with over $10k) and while both those movies have loyal fanbases, I don't really think they could generate any kind of appreciable amount of money just from advertising on a website devoted to them. I could see that business model MAAYYBEE working with a good sketch comedy troupe that produces all of their shorts for under $100.
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yeah, you're right, it does need to be great.

my thought would be designing a movie that's highly stylized, with rich characters, and a great plot.

and also, the site itself needs to fit within the theme/style of the movie. it may have character profiles, background information, extra information about the movie.

so the business model is not of filmmaking alone, but creating a "web experience", so to speak.
 
Interesting ideas, but as I've discovered exploring things like this can quickly consume ALL of your time, and keep you from doing that which you should be focusing on the most, which is making a great film.

Alternative marketing and self-distribution ideas like this are pretty vogue right now, but I guess I missed all of the reports of anyone finding legitimate and meaningful success using this route.

With high production value comes great cost in money and time. To make it for $5000 means its really short, which also means less of a chance to hook people with your stylized film full of rich characters. How rich can they be for that budget?

Just make a kick-ass movie.
 
I question if you can create quality content at those numbers. A 30 min film for $5k? A well designed, fully functional website for $500? Doubt it.

Second question i have directly to you. If i'm one click away from hulu or netflix where i can watch productions done for WAAAAAYYYYYYY more then your $5k (thus presumably employing writers, directors, actors, editors, etc that were top notch as they were getting paid well) then why should i care to watch your production? If i have hard time watching music videos or short films (all of 15-10 min in lenght, meaning short) done by my friends - people i know and care about - why will i watch your film?
 
Have to agree with Patryk. Thats the issue you need to face and circumvent if you can. Im not saying it cant be done. But how are you going to do it? If you feel you have a special sauce recipe to this, Im not asking you to share it either.
 
Why the stipulation that it has to be over 30 minutes long? That doesn't make any sense. The few (marginal) success stories we've seen were serialized with new episodes posted frequently to keep people coming back. I don't think this sort of thing is feasible for non-aggregate, longer-form work.

Furthermore, I question the possibility of building up a community around your $5k film. Have you ever been to the websites for various Hollywood movies? Very few of them sustain communities. The ones that do, the project in question was based on some book or video game that already had a preexisting community and even then I suspect the shelf life is incredibly short. If 99% of the big Hollywood productions can't sustain website communities, why do you think someone with a 30 minute, $5k movie could?

On top of all that, if your project actually did become a hit, The Pirate Bay would probably see more ad revenue than you would. Just as likely, your IMDB page would probably have a more active community than your project's website.

Upon release, your audience pie chart would immediately be cut into an infinite number of slices because there is no such thing as "exclusive distribution" on the internet.

The porn industry combats this by releasing cheap content as quickly as possible and at some point a threshold is reached where it becomes more convenient to pay than to constantly hunt around for everything. So there you are, as depressing as that is, it seems the likeliest path to success on the internet is to mimic the porn industry by constantly releasing shorter form, cheap content.
 
Yeah

Yeah

I agree with what these guys are saying.

I'm always a bit curious why everyone wants to try to reinvent the wheel, though, when I don't see the wheel as broken. I guess I just see things in a lot more of a mainstream light.

People here talk about how oh DVD / Blu-ray is dead, the future is online, blah blah, can't make money with indie films, blah blah etc. None of that is true. Most people like me, still big film buffs and big Internet fans, consume their content on DVD, on TV / cable / VOD, or on Blu-ray, etc. Most people aren't going to pull up iTunes or some crap video site to play a movie. I will never sit in front of a computer to watch a movie. Ever. It's just not going to happen. The only way that I would consider a new approach to the way I consume movies is if we have VERY large hard drives for very cheap, where I can watch 1080p movies from a huge library (the current downloadable HD files, like for House, don't look good, they certainly don't look as good as a Blu-ray, not sure what compression they're using but a 45 minute show should be like 10 gigs not 1 gig). As it stands, I have about 3,000 discs, why would I want to have that content in digital form only? It's a disaster. I trust digital media, but I don't like hearing I can't transfer my files easily from desktop to laptop, or that I can't just have a system hooked up to the TV where it plays easily, etc.

In the future, the only Blu-ray / optical media killer (and people are wrong to say we're even 15 years away from this, it's probably at least that if not 20) is to have a device like the Apple TV that is somehow attached to a massive RAID storage system where I can have all of my movies like my songs on an iPod, and basically just select them at will. That would be incredible. But for now, you can even get a 1,000 DVD holder that functions like that, where you select a DVD and it puts it in for you and plays it.

I only will watch music videos online, maybe some 2-3 minute skits, that kind of thing.

The reason 95% of people say that you can't make money on an indie film is because 95% of indie films completely suck, like really badly. If you just focus on making a great movie, with at least something approaching a real budget, $100,000+ anyway, you give yourself a great chance to go to market with a sellable product and none of these silly business plans that won't pay off. Indie films sell constantly, every day, to good distribution companies, but they're not made for $5,000 by people in Oklahoma with no filmmaking knowledge and a consumer camera with non-actors. They are made by professional production companies or professional filmmakers with elements in place, by people who know how to do them.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
Second question i have directly to you. If i'm one click away from hulu or netflix where i can watch productions done for WAAAAAYYYYYYY more then your $5k (thus presumably employing writers, directors, actors, editors, etc that were top notch as they were getting paid well) then why should i care to watch your production? I i have hard time watching music videos or short films done by my friends why will i watch your film?
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fair question. the competition is stiff. the only thing i could compete with would be quality writing/directing/editing. those three things are cheap (money-wise) to do. granted, it would need to be an ingenious approach to story telling. therein lays the thing i can compete with.

if you care to know my philosophical stance on this, read on.

i got into researching filmmaking because i wanted a way to engage people by presenting an emotional and thought-provoking experience through image and sound.

i have come to the conclusion that i do not want to sell dvds, subscriptions, theater showings, or anything that would exclude a particular person from viewing my film. this is why i'm trying to figure out how to utilize the internet for my purpose.

of course the internet does exclude everyone with no internet access, but it is the widest distribution system in the world for digitized content. how can you not use that for sharing art with people from everywhere? everyone seems to be fighting against the BEST media distribution system in the history of human communication (sans technical considerations).

theater, before film, used ticket sales to generate revenue. then film came a long, and they charged for tickets to enter the theater. makes sense, if it worked for stage production, it can work for film. then home media came about and people bought media to view at home, for later (more intimate) viewings.

my argument is against the home media market. with internet access, why should anyone buy media anymore? it's been done the same way for so long:

1) projection film
2) tape
3) disc
4) megabytes

with megabytes, all you need is internet access. buying a downloadable anything is nonsense. subscription makes a bit more sense, though you would need a lot of (valuable) content.

but, and herein lays the conflict, the production has to pay for itself. i have a fair understanding of business and cannot deny this fact. if i want my content to be freely accessible, i'd have to have ads, and i'd have to have a kick-ass film (like Snazzy Flapper said).

ok, so how much would a kick-ass film cost to make? to keep production costs down, let's see what Aristotle said about making kick-ass movies (with my interpretation):

Aristotles Six Elements of Drama


1) PLOT – what happens in a play; the order of events, the story as opposed to the theme; what happens rather than what it means.

2) THEME – what the play means as opposed to what happens (plot); the main idea within the play.

3) CHARACTER – the personality or the part an actor represents in a play; a role played by an actor in a play.

4) DICTION/LANGUAGE/DIALOGUE – the word choices made by the playwright and the enunciation of the actors delivering the lines.

5) MUSIC/RHYTHM – by music Aristotle meant the sound, rhythm and melody of the speeches.

6) SPECTACLE – the visual elements of the production of a play; the scenery, costumes, and special effects in a production.
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if Aristotle is right, the financial considerations would as be such:

elements 1 through 5: writing, editing, acting, and a sound track. those four things are pretty cheap to come by (money-wise).

element 6: cinematography, locations, costumes, set design, and special effects.

for cinematography: a minimal VDSLR setup ~$2-3k
locations: doesn't have to be fancy (look around your town and the country side/desert)
costumes: go to goodwill, party store, etc. again, nothing fancy, as long as it serves to take your audience into the extraordinary.
set design: have a weird-looking mat on the floor, put up a bunch of tapestries, go to a junk yard (interesting location, too).
special effects: practical effects can go a long way (eraserhead, anyone?)

(i'm using the world hollywood loosely)

my view is that the normal hollywood-type production has come to concentrate almost entirely on the SPECTACLE element. no small budget production can compete with hollywood on the spectacle element. but elements 1 to 5 are all at our finger tips.

if you've ever been disappointed with a big budget film (e.g. last air bender), in the Wikipedia article it says:

if a play has "beautiful" costumes and "bad" acting and "bad" story, there is "something wrong" with it. Even though that "beauty" may save the play it is "not a nice thing".
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in the article about spectacle (Opsis in greek) Aristotle says:
"spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet"
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so basically, he's saying that, as filmmakers wanting to engage and provoke the emotions and thoughts of our viewers, we should focus less on the spectacle of the film, and more on the art of the film.

high-production value and special effects are nothing more than an extra treat for what was, regardless, a great movie.

so, if i can't compete with hollywood budgets, why would i spend all my money and effort in that department?

a decent camera setup is cheap. weird looking places can be found for cheap. a decent sound setup is cheap. a computer to put it all together is cheap. good writing ain't hard to come by. you may or may not get good actors (may or may not matter).

a 50mm 1.2 lens would be cool, a crane would be cool, a dolly, a shoulder rig, etc. would all be cool to have. be they aren't any more than "cool" to have, i think. if they ad to what is already a great production, and can pay for itself, get these toys, if not, then don't.

i think anyone (team) can compete with hollywood on the more important parts these days.

however, the other thing that hollywood does extremely well, is distribution. they can sell their films in most video-stores around the word. in fact, this is hollywood's outlook, as it seems: they don't distribute great movies, they make movies to distribute them (but this is for another discussion).

ok, so we can't compete with their distribution channels, right? wrong. with the internet, hundreds of millions of people are a google search away from your content. in the comfort of their own home. how can we, as low budgeters, not make something out of that? i have been researching the ad-revenue business model as it is the best as far as accessibility goes. sustaining such a business model is hard (some say impossible, but if magic isn't involved, nothing's impossible).

ok, so it's hard. well, business ain't hard unless your costs exceed your expenses. but, according to Aristotle's elements, filmmaking isn't expensive these days.

but in the end, the proof is in the pudding. guess i won't know till i do.
 
arroway said:
Why the stipulation that it has to be over 30 minutes long? That doesn't make any sense.
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yeah that was arbitrary. the point was to have something interesting to attract a following.

arroway said:
On top of all that, if your project actually did become a hit, The Pirate Bay would probably see more ad revenue than you would. Just as likely, your IMDB page would probably have a more active community than your project's website.
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the film will be downloadable. the value of the site, like i said, isn't the film, but the community.
 
JonathanLB said:
I agree with what these guys are saying.

I'm always a bit curious why everyone wants to try to reinvent the wheel, though, when I don't see the wheel as broken. I guess I just see things in a lot more of a mainstream light.

People here talk about how oh DVD / Blu-ray is dead, the future is online, blah blah, can't make money with indie films, blah blah etc. None of that is true. Most people like me, still big film buffs and big Internet fans, consume their content on DVD, on TV / cable / VOD, or on Blu-ray, etc. Most people aren't going to pull up iTunes or some crap video site to play a movie. I will never sit in front of a computer to watch a movie. Ever. It's just not going to happen. The only way that I would consider a new approach to the way I consume movies is if we have VERY large hard drives for very cheap, where I can watch 1080p movies from a huge library (the current downloadable HD files, like for House, don't look good, they certainly don't look as good as a Blu-ray, not sure what compression they're using but a 45 minute show should be like 10 gigs not 1 gig). As it stands, I have about 3,000 discs, why would I want to have that content in digital form only? It's a disaster. I trust digital media, but I don't like hearing I can't transfer my files easily from desktop to laptop, or that I can't just have a system hooked up to the TV where it plays easily, etc.

In the future, the only Blu-ray / optical media killer (and people are wrong to say we're even 15 years away from this, it's probably at least that if not 20) is to have a device like the Apple TV that is somehow attached to a massive RAID storage system where I can have all of my movies like my songs on an iPod, and basically just select them at will. That would be incredible. But for now, you can even get a 1,000 DVD holder that functions like that, where you select a DVD and it puts it in for you and plays it.

I only will watch music videos online, maybe some 2-3 minute skits, that kind of thing.

The reason 95% of people say that you can't make money on an indie film is because 95% of indie films completely suck, like really badly. If you just focus on making a great movie, with at least something approaching a real budget, $100,000+ anyway, you give yourself a great chance to go to market with a sellable product and none of these silly business plans that won't pay off. Indie films sell constantly, every day, to good distribution companies, but they're not made for $5,000 by people in Oklahoma with no filmmaking knowledge and a consumer camera with non-actors. They are made by professional production companies or professional filmmakers with elements in place, by people who know how to do them.
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sorry Johnathan, but i disagree with everything you said on philosophical grounds. but then again, you're doing and have done more in this business than i, so i do respect your opinion.

every time movie-making technology gets cheaper, somehow production costs get higher. is that the reality of it? no great art can be made for under $x? really? i mean, seriously?
 
Well

Well

There is always someone who comes along who has some incredible idea, some really innovative concept, that can be done on a very low budget, unconventionally, and still turn out great because it's different, fresh, fun, etc. You can't arbitrarily say that you need X amount of money to make a good movie.

But that being said, yeah it costs $100,000 to $200,000 to make a conventional film with a professional crew using professional gear. That's about the range you're looking at, at minimum of course, and up to hundreds of millions. It's already hard enough, trust me it's very hard, to make a film for a few hundred thousand, so the awesomeness of an idea and the sheer originality of the filmmaker to come up with something that truly is great for a few thousand bucks or maybe $25,000 for a feature, that is simply not done often. It's like saying you can buy a really fast, amazing car for $5,000. Maybe it's possible, maybe a talented enough mechanic with incredible resources really could put together such a car for that price and it would be astonishing. They'd spend a long time laboring over it and doing every little thing right, and voila, a 400 horsepower monster that even looks fantastic for just $5,000. But the reality is in general it's going to cost you $25,000 or more to get such a car all the way up to $250,000 or more.

There are always exceptions, I'm not denying that, just looking at the situation realistically because I think it's important to know what you need. It's not easy to obtain money, but getting a few hundred thousand is certainly possible, a lot more than $5 million or something, which would put filmmaking completely out of reach of most anyone.

I think the important thing is to look at the limitations you are creating with a budget, like we knew that because we didn't have millions of dollars, we couldn't do a bunch of effects and stunts and car chases, etc. I wrote a script that was based on a great story, not effects. We knew we couldn't get a lot of locations, or very fancy locations, so we kept it to a relatively small number of locations and ones that were obtainable. There were a ton of technical limitations. We knew time-wise we wouldn't have the time or manpower to have a Chapman or Fisher dolly, so we went with a door dolly and usually used other shots, like on a slider, tripod, hand-held, and steadicam. We knew we'd only have 12 days of principal photography because our budget was very tight, so that limited what we could do as well.

Now take our budget and cut it in half and imagine how much less we'd have to work with. Cut it in half again. Pretty soon you can't shoot this movie at all. I don't believe we could have done it for any less than we did. We worked hard to get the budget as low as possible, and with half as much money the film wouldn't have happened.

So that forces you into a new concept. Now let's say I only had $25,000, well I have this kind of nifty documentary idea that might be doable on a budget like that and would still look really good and sound really good, especially for what it is. So I might have tried that out if I had a lot less money.

I've noticed that people are pretty unwilling to accept they just don't have the money to make a good movie, though. They basically just decide they are going to do it anyway and they waste their time and other people's time. I don't agree with that approach. You need to know that filmmaking isn't cheap, it isn't easy, and in fact it's probably the most expensive art form ever created. Unless you want to count like massive building architecture as an art and talk about billion-dollar buildings, but the point is you really can't make anything professional without hiring professionals and having professional gear, and that costs money.
 
JonathanLB said:
So that forces you into a new concept. Now let's say I only had $25,000, well I have this kind of nifty documentary idea that might be doable on a budget like that and would still look really good and sound really good, especially for what it is. So I might have tried that out if I had a lot less money.
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documentary making with the suggested business model (community building) might be a good idea. however, generating revenue from ads might taint the credibility of the work. although, traditional journalism outlets have done it for years.

you might be on to something, Jonathan.
 
never mind. i think i'm way off on this wild goose-chase.

i believe it to be financially impossible. a project like this would require much more money to launch and get any kind of following.

i appreciate the input of everyone here and on the other thread.

i thought i could fight the tide, but the tide's too strong.
 
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