Is Self Distribution possible?

Y

YOUDIO

New member
Greetings!

I am gathering market research with the hopes of finding support for a website that centralizes online video distribution so that anybody can upload a film and anybody can buy a film. Something between Ebay and the iTunes store where customization and communication is possible and easy.

I'm hopeful that I can get enough response so that our solution can serve as many filmmakers and fans as possible.

Much thanks for your efforts filling out the short questionnaire here: http://www.youdio.com

YOUDIO hopes to make passion profitable for filmmakers.
 
How have sales been on there? I noticed that you haven't even uploaded your movies there, Nate. Why not?
 
My movie was the featured film for a month and a half, and was written up in all the online Mac-zines, it's definitely there.

You really should check out my book "Action Filmmaking" and "Action Filmmaking Handbook". They both on Amazon. There's a whole section on self distribution. Both books together can help you work up a solid plan.

-Nate
 
Last edited:
Before we buy the book can you allaborate more on your success with self distribution?

Thanks!
 
Your movie "Divinity" was not on Hungryflix so I apologize for my mistake.

Is there a reason that hasn't been uploaded to Hungryflix?
 
Divinity has yet to be made. Wages of Sin is definitely there.

ChipG said:
Before we buy the book can you allaborate more on your success with self distribution?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you consider success. I can tell you what has worked and what hasn't. I've had more success taking the DVD to Festivals (keep in mind I've sold these at a festival I wasn't even in) and film related groups. I get on the microphone and tell people about myself and they buy, but honestly I'm not rolling in dough here. I'm not going to be telling anyone how to strike it rich because I don't know. People do download and buy a DVD from time to time and if you have the money and time to do good web promotion you can make some decent sales but when it comes to real money then you have real concern.

Honestly I have not had tons of success on the web unless I've linked the movie to something. Like being the first indy film for Apple TV, that was big for a moment. It was timed decently but not well enough. The mainstream press didn't go for the story. The Mac-blogs ate it up. It was a happy accident, not solid marketing. I did the same thing with the iPhone and got a few orders but again nothing huge.

Now that the film can be seen for free most people generally don't buy it because they see it. Some film students buy it for obvious reasons. The irony to it is the books make money because people see the film and want the book to learn to make a film.

I won't sit here and tell you I'm a marketing genius, I'm not. I'm a guy who took a different approach based on financial reasons. Basically I was broke. I made a film and I use the fact I made that film to get things I need. People do things for me and open doors for me because they see my name online in connection to a film that seems big because there's tons of information on it and me. Seriously if you Google my name there's tons of stuff. (My books are actually on someone's Amazon wishlist. I'm even on Campus Book Rentals and Creative cow right next to "Rebel without a Crew" and Stu's "DV Rebel's Guide". It's crazy).

Film marketing isn't about the film, it's about you. Simple as that. Since "Wages of Sin" I've written, two books, got a job teaching based on the film and books and had several software companies send me free software (several of the packages were expensive one being close to $1000 and pretty important for a small genre film company) because they want to be included in my next book which will be a bigger more involved book that builds on the Action Filmmaking text. All of this based on a small film that had no stars and a film that's yet to even be made (Divinity).

I refused to give this film away for free to a distributor. I wasn't sure about this. I show it for free but I can sell DVDs and downloads at my discretion and use it as a draw to my site to sell other merchandise and I can leverage it as something to show that I am a filmmaker. (Your average person who sees anyone made a film is shocked and amazed provided you live anywhere but LA).

I'm selling the "Divinity" movie but things have went so well on the back end of "Wages" (keep in mind it was a long time coming and I had to get my lazy butt up and do a lot of leg work) I'm really thinking about keeping North American rights to have some control over packaging (I hate York's packaging) advertising and direct sales. We will be pushing Divinity incredibly hard when everything is all said and done. The mindset has to change when it comes to "success" in this game. Your film is close to crap no matter how good it is. The mindset use to be "the film is my product" but unless you have the right connections, money and all those other good things your mindset needs to be "This film is a great way to market my product." Your product of course is you.

Now when Divinity is done people may think the ballgame is different but it won't be, not for me, no matter how much money it does, it's still about marketing a person not a product. The product has a shelf life. Your shelf life is until you die. If you do something really great the product may out live you, most times, that's not the case. Keep that in mind. (I'll be expecting you to buy that book now Chip, but I'd wait until June though because after I'm revising and expanding it now, but that's our little secret :beer: ).

-Nate
 
Last edited:
Nate,

What are your thoughts on why most indies have not had big success marketing on the web? Is it search engine placement? That fact that everyone is a media whore for free so it kind of gets lost in the mix of billions of other web pages?
 
Is self-distribution possible?
Click to expand...
Not only it's possible, in most cases it's necessary.

Self-distribution used to carry a stigma. If a distributor who had distributed one of your films before saw you in a foreign market like Cannes, Mifed or the AFM walking around trying to self-distribute your own movie, he was pissed off and would never pick up your film again. And in fact, he would tell his colleagues not to pick up your film either. You were essentially black-listed.

Today, things have changed. The Internet has truly leveled the field for filmmakers. You can literally make a movie today and post in on the Internet as a finished product for sale the same day.

If you make a movie professionally and spend more than $5,000, you have the hope of finding a distributor who can sell it for you and give you a million dollars or even more. But if your $5,000 movie doesn't get picked up for distribution, what do you do? You can't afford to lose $5,000 so you must self-distribute or shelve the movie (especially if it's embarrassingly bad :-) At low budgets it happens a lot of times.

Personally, I think what Nate is doing and recommending is better. Do your best to market your own movie and don't sell yourself short when it comes to finding an agent or distributor.

What's especially valuable is that Nate has discovered for himself that retaining the rights to a movie that's difficult to sell is better than getting a quick buyout for a few bucks. Oftentimes the prestige of marketing your own film is better than the recognition of being picked up.
 
ChipG said:
Nate,

What are your thoughts on why most indies have not had big success marketing on the web? Is it search engine placement? That fact that everyone is a media whore for free so it kind of gets lost in the mix of billions of other web pages?
Click to expand...

Money is the main factor. Everything is money. Here's the breakdown. In 2007 we did promotion for WOS. We made a name for ourselves, but NOT SALES. To get big on the web you need to go viral and that means money. Many things that go viral are not happy accidents, they're the product of we'll thought out marketing.

Lonelygirl was marketing as well as many other things. You pay these companies to make things go viral. These companies work on it until it finally does go viral. We took a traditional approach which got us notice but that's about it. Admittedly most of our sales came from web articles but I wouldn't be nearly enough to sustain an actually income.

Promotion is the key and most indies suck at promotion. If they don't get into a festival that's it. This isn't just indy filmmakers it's many different types of artist. They don't get that promotion is about saying "Hey I did this." Most of the time the most over hyped project is often the most questionable (Blair Witch) but it makes money.

Blair Witch had a strong web presence but that's because they were smart about the marketing. The book "John Dies at the End" did the same thing, they made the customer come to them before they even knew they would be customers. That's what everyone is working on. "How do I make the customer come to me because I can't afford to go to them."

Another thing is you have high school kids playing around with mid and pro level effects doing web series and such for free. There's a lot of media out there and you have to be doing something so different people are willing to pay for it THEN ON TOP OF THAT make sure the people most likely to buy know the stuff exist.

filmman said:
What's especially valuable is that Nate has discovered for himself that retaining the rights to a movie that's difficult to sell is better than getting a quick buyout for a few bucks. Oftentimes the prestige of marketing your own film is better than the recognition of being picked up.
Click to expand...

Yes, keeping control of your product does turn out to be pretty valuable. In many ways. Personally I'm really more interested in overseas distribution. I think there's a lot of money there. I could hang on to domestic rights until I either get a great deal or simply start to push it myself. With the money from domestic sales I could promote and put a little bit in the bank and start on another project.

-Nate
 
Last edited:
filmman said:
Not only it's possible, in most cases it's necessary.

If a distributor who had distributed one of your films before saw you in a foreign market like Cannes, Mifed or the AFM walking around trying to self-distribute your own movie, he was pissed off and would never pick up your film again. And in fact, he would tell his colleagues not to pick up your film either. You were essentially black-listed.
Click to expand...

Is that an excuse for not having a good movie? The people I know in the biz will HUNT you down if your movie is a 3 on a scale of 1-10. 3's make money, lot's of it!

Do you really think they will pass on making $ because someone tells them not too? HELLO?

I undersatnd you have been in this businesss for 30 years with little success but come on man.

FYI I don't make movies (I'm into Nat Geo & Disco type shows) or want to but I get an education about the movie biz everyday from the best people in the world and not one will pass on making a dime on you if they can.
 
Last edited:
Nathyn said:
Money is the main factor. Everything is money. Here's the breakdown. In 2007 we did promotion for WOS. We made a name for ourselves, but NOT SALES. To get big on the web you need to go viral and that means money. Many things that go viral are not happy accidents, they're the product of we'll thought out marketing.


-Nate
Click to expand...

I hear ya, you have to have a web page for your movie but that's about where it stops for indies.

Big money now to get a good viral campain! I read the numbers for Cloverfields myspace viral campaing and about had a heart attack. Chump change to them but big money for indies. It paid off but what do you think is the next new thing for reaching people in a new way via internet?

Just picking your brain, no wrong answers.
 
Last edited:
Film marketing isn't about the film, it's about you. Simple as that.

The mindset has to change when it comes to "success" in this game. Your film is close to crap no matter how good it is. The mindset used to be "the film is my product" but unless you have the right connections, money and all those other good things your mindset needs to be "This film is a great way to market my product." Your product of course is you.

Now when Divinity is done people may think the ballgame is different but it won't be, not for me, no matter how much money it does, it's still about marketing a person not a product. The product has a shelf life. Your shelf life is until you die.
Click to expand...
Excellent points, Nate!

It's foolhardy (DVXusers excepted :-) to make an indie feature without box office talent for more than $5,000 -- if it's your own money and you're not a millionaire. Because there are no distributors that can take a chance on you by giving you an advance when you deliver the film to them. If they didn't do it for Orson Wells (his last films) and David Lean (Nostromo), what makes you think they will do it for you? And things are much worse now.

IMO, after 40 years of making feature films, success is a matter of perception. It's what you think of yourself as a filmmaker. If you were trying to make commercial films and you're not wealthy by now, it means you were not successful in business. Artistically, nobody can tell you anything. Maybe you were unlucky or ran into crooks. There are a lot of crooks in distribution, you know.LOL

However, if you're an artist and filmmaker, then financial success has nothing to do with it. You're successful if you lived the filmmaker's dream. What's a filmmaker's dream? It's different for every filmmaker.

I've lived the filmmaker's dream :-) Want to know what that is? Read my book :-) http://www.amazon.com/Filmmaking-Z-...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233767180&sr=1-2
 
ChipG said:
I hear ya, you have to have a web page for your movie but that's about where it stops for indies.

Big money now to get a good viral campain! I read the numbers for Cloverfields myspace viral campaing and about had a heart attack. Chump change to them but big money for indies. It paid off but what do you think is the next new thing for reaching people in a new way via internet?

Just picking your brain, no wrong answers.
Click to expand...

I have some ideas but I can tell you a back to basics approach coupled with a good web presence is the way to go. Google "TimeCode Mechanics" and we pop up number 1 in a Google search. (Sometimes we're number two to our IMDB listing. In my new book I talk about picking names). The first step is naming your company something original as well as your film. It's hard coming up with original names for films so I tend to subtitle them. And I don't promote my films anymore unless I've just released one, now I promote my site and my name.

-Nate
 
Great thread guys!!! I just started a similar thread over on Stacy Park's Film Specific entitled "But Did You Make Any Money?" I was surprised how honest Stacy was (since she makes a living selling the "stars in your eyes" to filmmakers) where she says most filmmakers she knows loose money...and some...a lot of money.
My question was "Is there a business here?" since getting real data, real numbers is next to impossible. How can one realistically write a business plan? How can one honestly tell an investor how they'll make their money back? Or are you really simply looking for "gifts" since they really don't have much of a chance of a return. Adam Curtado chimed in with "there is no business here"...it's all about moving up in the size of the next production. I was disappointed, but he's probably right.
The next question was, will the download be the savior? Since we're seeing new large screen TVs coming out with a built-in browser, will the little guy be able to self-distribute and cut out the middleman (distributors)? At least for a while.
 
FrankC said:
Great thread guys!!! I just started a similar thread over on Stacy Park's Film Specific entitled "But Did You Make Any Money?" I was surprised how honest Stacy was (since she makes a living selling the "stars in your eyes" to filmmakers) where she says most filmmakers she knows loose money...and some...a lot of money.
My question was "Is there a business here?" since getting real data, real numbers is next to impossible. How can one realistically write a business plan? How can one honestly tell an investor how they'll make their money back? Or are you really simply looking for "gifts" since they really don't have much of a chance of a return. Adam Curtado chimed in with "there is no business here"...it's all about moving up in the size of the next production. I was disappointed, but he's probably right.
The next question was, will the download be the savior? Since we're seeing new large screen TVs coming out with a built-in browser, will the little guy be able to self-distribute and cut out the middleman (distributors)? At least for a while.
Click to expand...

Yeah I am wondering that myself, I mean I find it a very difficult question. I want to be smart about the business, and as a filmmaker in general, I don't want to be ego-driven and stubborn, but I don't want to be weak and spineless, either.

In other words, when I hear that most films get rejected from X film festival, or that the odds are really bad of getting accepted let's say, well generally I know that's because most filmmakers are hapless morons. It's nothing personal but indie filmmakers are mostly incompetent, lack the funds to pull off a professional project, don't use professional tools or actors, etc. I've seen a lot of indie work, I know it's awful, so it's not discouraging to me because I know I can do far superior work.

But when it comes to feature films, and you hear statistics about let's say only 1% of indie features less than $1 million making their money back (just throwing out an example), then it makes me wonder, because I don't sit around thinking, "Gee, I am so great, my film will be that 1% for sure." No, I know there is probably a lot of good work, I'm guessing, that doesn't have much success. So then I wonder whether there are certain common elements to the films that do at least break even. Is it that they have proper star power, someone involved who interests distributors? Is it a professional look from camera work and lighting to production design and wardrobe? Or is it a great story? The right market niche / built-in audience? Great marketing or hype? The right connections? It's hard to understand or make heads or tails of what is the deal with that.

It doesn't seem to be good advice to say, "Well most indie features never make a profit, so you shouldn't make one at all, especially with your own money," because I knew (and hopefully everyone knows this) that when I got into film, the odds of success *in general* were far stacked against me, and I was not concerned by that because someone has to make it, and it might as well be me. But when it comes to spending serious money on a feature film, you shouldn't just jump into it assuming somehow your ability is going to win the day and you're going to get lucky where other people haven't. You need to have a plan of sorts, and understand what common elements work for selling a feature. There are no guarantees but you at least would want, I would think, a good idea for what gives you the best odds.

And I have to agree that it does depend on your expectations, whether something is a success or not. For my short film I just did, I am not expecting somehow that it will get into a bunch of major film festivals, I will meet big players, and magically be teleported into a great position directing a feature film or, I don't know, TV episodes or something. I have no expectations at all like that. I would love to get into a big festival or two, but mainly I want to get the film in front of audiences, get into a lot of festivals big or small, and share my work with other people who hopefully enjoy it. I got out of it the experience as a director, and something to put on my reel, and it's part of my overall growth as a filmmaker, so I'm pretty happy with it already. But I feel a lot of people go into everything with such high expectations, whereas in this case I know that my thousands of dollars spent was not going to come back to me in all likelihood.

For a feature film, if I spend $200,000 and get one B-list actor aboard, I would really like NOT to lose all of my money, haha, but I have to say that I could potentially be happy if I found a distributor to pay $100,000 for it and it had some success. It would probably open up doors for me in the future and give me additional opportunities, although ideally you don't want to lose money on anything. I'm more concerned about not losing it all, however, than making a profit.
 
Well Jonathan... You're going down Adam Curtado's road. Get you movie "seen" (it's not about the money there)...and maybe someone will give you a job. That's cool... But I was talking about making a filmmaking "business". Film Festivals would not be part of that equation. Festivals are nice parties, but have very little relevance to making any money. You won't get a distribution deal out of a festival... Unless you are in festivals where Acquisition Executive are in attendance... and that's only about 5 or 6 festivals. So Jonathan, I think you have to make up your mind... Do you want to be the next great director, like Nathyn said "You are the product". Or do you want to figure out how to make a business out of this. So far most people have said to me that it's not possible to make a sustainable business out of low-budget movie making. They could all be very correct...But I'm determined to find a way. And BTW, that TV C-list actor won't get a distribution deal for anyone either. If the Distrib hasn't ever heard of them, it won't matter.
 
filmman said:
However, if you're an artist and filmmaker, then financial success has nothing to do with it. You're successful if you lived the filmmaker's dream. What's a filmmaker's dream? It's different for every filmmaker.
Click to expand...


Depends where you want to be in life with your movies. I respect people who have a passion about it and that's why I hang on this board, (ONLY REASON!, well, Louis, Adam, Justin (bastard) Faith, DAN, Barry and all the other people who chime in to help me out)) it's about people who love this stuff even if it's shot with a $300 camera, thank god most of it is on an hvx.

All I'm saying is it takes a lot of money for us to do this stuff and as much business advice as you give out it should come back to you more than it does?

:thumbup:
 
Last edited:
Nathyn said:
I have some ideas but I can tell you a back to basics approach coupled with a good web presence is the way to go. Google "TimeCode Mechanics" and we pop up number 1 in a Google search. (Sometimes we're number two to our IMDB listing. In my new book I talk about picking names). The first step is naming your company something original as well as your film. It's hard coming up with original names for films so I tend to subtitle them. And I don't promote my films anymore unless I've just released one, now I promote my site and my name.

-Nate
Click to expand...

You know who I met here on ths board from Adam's thread is D. Roberts who is making LOTS of progress outside of the web. Great guy who is one of the few to develope a special niche. America the Beautiful, thread.
 
Nathyn said:
...

Generally don't buy it because they see it. Some film students buy it for obvious reasons. The irony to it is the books make money because people see the film and want the book to learn to make a film.
...
Click to expand...

This is strange because Tiffany Shlain(The Tribe) mentioned that when her film was on the net for free her dvd sales jumped. Maybe it was the hype of the moment since it was during her festival run.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top