Is there honestly any money in making indie films?

When we're discussing how much George freakin' Lucas makes in his deals, in a thread titled "Is there honestly any money in making indie films?", I submit the thread has jumped the shark.

And I don't know why Tyler Perry is relevant either. Tyler Perry for sure got his niche nailed. But is Tyler Perry's success something you can plan out? May as well plan out how to win the lottery - hint... you can't. Tyler Perry's success is only tangentially connected with his films - the guy is a very talented performer. I know people love to bag on him and how technically bad his stuff is, but I don't care - he is a hugely talented performer. 90% of Tyler Perry's success is his Madea character... but have you ever seen Perry live? I have been to a show of his - the guy is brilliant live. This is the kind of talent you can't buy. Now, if you are as talented a performer as TP is, fine - go ahead and scout out that mansion you're buy with all the money from your successes. But my suspicion is, that talent like that is super rare. I know there are a lot of haters on TP, but that's just lack of understanding (and for some, jealousy).
 
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Kholi said:
Then where does Tyler Perry come in? Because he wasn't indie at all, not at our level. And never will be.

Trying to compare anyone's career here to Tyler Perry is a flawed logic that's waiting to be disappointed... severely. Tyler Perry spent a good portion of his life in a gutter, literally. Those names shouldn't have come into the equation, or you'd might as well bring Lucas up, too.

And, let's also make it known that distros DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR YOUTUBE NUMBERS without YEARS OF DATA to back them up. They may say "oh, let's keep an eye on this guy for another year and see what happens."

If you aren't showing a fanbase over an extended period of time or you aren't producing content that's up to theatrical standard, you should be ready to do this non stop for a good five or more years (like Faith) or being prolific as heck (like Freddy Wong).
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I never said that we shouldn't include Lucas, in fact I expanded on YOUR inclusion of Lucas. All I said was that I don't believe he gets 70 percent of the box office take. I even went so much futher to say that if we the indie film maker have a potential franchise project, WE should def try to maintain merchandising rights even if it means trading up front cash.

Tyler Perry was rich before he made his first film, you're right. And I never once tried to compare his career to anyone else's here or otherwise. But he's still a model for us the indie film maker because he couldnt' get a profitable deal. Lionsgate didn't see the potential with him. He brought the execs to his plays and showed them the numbers and he turned around and dictated the terms of his distribution. HOW IS THAT NOT RELAVENT? I'm not saying we'll get to dictate terms by no means but if we have a massive audience turn out for our screenings at film festivals, and strong national presence documented html clicks and google tags, those can't be ignored and surely it WILL give us more bargaining power if we get a meeting with a distro. I don't see how following a model (creating an audience before your project is screened) is flawed logic? And what does him living in a gutter have to do with making movies?

Also viral numbers are incredibly important. They aren't hard and true and again I never said they were but when you have local recording artist scroing major record deals with labels off of 3 million hits of her very low budget music video on youtube (in the case of Kreayshawn, who signed with colombia records and who's nominated for an MTV VMA and she only had that 1 single out) there is no way you can discount the importance of having a viral presence for your project. Heck, even the "What's In the Box?" from 2009 got those guys a few inquires from Hollywood execs. 3 million hits on youtube is nothig to laugh at. If I take my project and sell for .99 on iTunes and only take home .50 on that .99 that's still a crazy profit and yet another check mark in your favor when you go to any meeting whether it be for funding or project ideas.

To completely discount the potential profit margin or power a viral presence has is dangerous to us. All of us. From a business stand point. Investing years into developing a following is a solid start but if you can hit the 3 million mark in a week with out anyone having knowledge of who you were a month ago, well that's just as good.

At the end of the day, I agree with you on your last point: You need a fan base, and your project needs to be up to theatrical standard. My original post stated both of these points. The OP asked is there a way to make money from an indie project and I still feel vehemently that you can if you press forward and create an audience for yourself so when your project is being screened at a festival, there's such a riot of fans trying to get into the theater to see your film that any exec walking by has no choice but to stop and ask "what are they showing over there?"

The names I originally posted: Jay-Z, Diddy, Soulja Boy, Tyler Perry, and let's not forget Blair Witch. These are people who are now successful but they earned their success the unconvential way. They created their fan base, and brought the majors to them.

This is all my opinion. I am no expert and have not been in this industry nowhere as long as most of your, I'm still working on my first project. But I have looked at all forms of media and adopted those points as my model. If I'm successful, I'll let you know. If I'm not, I'll go back, re-evaluate and try again and yes I will still let you know.
 
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RyanMKincaid said:
Can someone link me some info about this 'Faith'? I'd like to know more about it
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Faith Granger came to us having barely picked up a camera. Her very first project is Deuce of Spades a feature movie shot on an HVX200 with a 35mm adapter. Her first movie, a period piece about hotrodding in the fifties that is simply one of the best movies I ever seen from a first timer EVER! Its absolutely brilliant. She has a thread buried now in the User Films section with over 100,000 views. I bought a few copies to show to some colleagues in the industry and they've all been absolutely blown away with just how good it is. She took a while because she had a full time job and could only shoot on weekends. But she figured out very quickly that if you can take your time, you can keep at it until it looks just right. The first link is a link to her official movie site and this link is a link to her thread here in the User Films section
 
OldCorpse said:
When we're discussing how much George freakin' Lucas makes in his deals, in a thread titled "Is there honestly any money in making indie films?", I submit the thread has jumped the shark.
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Agreed, lol.

OldCorpse said:
And I don't know why Tyler Perry is relevant either. Tyler Perry for sure got his niche nailed. But is Tyler Perry's success something you can plan out? May as well plan out how to win the lottery - hint... you can't...et all.
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I disagree. He's relavent in that he (at one time, even though he was already rich from his plays) like all of us, wanted to score a profitable deal with film distribution. So he used his audience which he created, to show that his projects would have an audience and turn a profit. If we the indie, can create an audience that will back us when we're at a festival screening, instead of just hoping that the movie is good enough to speak for itself, then we are in a better position, like Perry, to score a good distro deal.
 
craigbowman said:
Faith Granger came to us having barely picked up a camera. Her very first project is Deuce of Spades a feature movie shot on an HVX200 with a 35mm adapter. Her first movie, a period piece about hotrodding in the fifties that is simply one of the best movies I ever seen from a first timer EVER! Its absolutely brilliant. She has a thread buried now in the User Films section with over 100,000 views. I bought a few copies to show to some colleagues in the industry and they've all been absolutely blown away with just how good it is. She took a while because she had a full time job and could only shoot on weekends. But she figured out very quickly that if you can take your time, you can keep at it until it looks just right. The first link is a link to her official movie site and this link is a link to her thread here in the User Films section
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Thanks for this. The back story of how the project comes about looks like something I'm going to throughly enjoy. If it's a general belief that her story and the film are monumental as you say, maybe the project and some of the insight that she gave as well as recieved should be summarized and made a stickie. Not everything but some key points that we as current and future indies can pull inspiration from
 
OldCorpse said:
When we're discussing how much George freakin' Lucas makes in his deals, in a thread titled "Is there honestly any money in making indie films?", I submit the thread has jumped the shark.
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Or people's definition of "indie" has gotten confused. To me, "indie" means the filmmaker is independent -- not answering to some mogul at a studio, or some marketing department's demands. "indie" means that the filmmaker makes the film the way she wants to, independent of other influences. But it doesn't imply budget. Terms like "microcinema" or "guerilla filmmaking" are more appropriate to referring to budgets.

I submit that George Lucas is the most successful "independent" filmmaker out there. Because he's independent. He can do whatever he wants. He can actually dictate to the studios as to who gets the right to distribute his film, what terms they will do so at, what previews will get shown, etc. George is ultimately completely independent of anyone or anything. Of course, there's downsides to that (as in, nobody could tell him just how horribly EP1 and EP2 were). But as far as independent goes, he's completely independent.

Actually I think reading a bit about George's history and how they made Star Wars would prove rather enlightening to this discussion, because they did basically everything folks are talking about in this thread, just pre-internet. They tried to make a film that nobody thought would be successful. They went out and built an audience and built demand. They didn't wait for the studio to do it, they didn't just sit back and get rich, they went to the comic book stores, they went to the customers, they built the niche audience. Today you can do it with facebook, but back then they did it with a motorhome. They did it the hard way.
 
As usual, couldn't agree more with Mr. Green.

On YouTube Numbers: Music and Movies are not the same. They're often compared, but I have no idea why? When the overhead and time needed to create music these days (Garage Band) and gain a following in comparison to the overhead to make a movie that someone wants to buy for thousands of dollars and then turn around to sell to others for hundreds of thousands is vastly different.

The numbers/hits are highly irrelevant if they are not tracking for a significant amount of time. One hit wonder videos may put you on someone's secret radar, but until you prove you've got 30K fans, a consistent amount of views (try for at least one million a video) , and buzz around your effort (positive or negative) it's not translating into much.

I say this from experience: Rainfall FIlms' LEGEND OF ZELDA trailer had a total of 10+ Million hits by the end of the day on April Fools about three years back. By the next day it doubled that. The company did get a nice amount of work and noticed, but the kind of thing we're talking about did not happen. And, that was a pretty dang high profile web release.

The only thing you can really count on is what Barry describes above, and that's hitting the pavement and suffering through the process. Finding a very strong niche to make fans of is a deal sweetener, and IMO that would be the first place I'd start.
 
Kholi said:
and that's hitting the pavement and suffering through the process. Finding a very strong niche to make fans of is a deal sweetener, and IMO that would be the first place I'd start.
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Yes, this is the point I was making.

And youtube views, goggle tags, twitter accounts, basically a strong viral presence is a form of hitting the pavement. So I don't understand why you qualify them as irrelevant.

As for the people I mentioned; Tyler Perry and the rest, they created a fan base to supported their projects, giving TP and the other bargaining power when they negotiated their deals.

As far as having 'tracking over a significant amount of time' I think this is only relevant (in my opinion) if a studio was to say, want to create a TV show off of a web series or hire a internet personality for a project, or if someone is approaching them for financing. But for a standalone project like a film which is already created, picture lock and theatrical quality, having a significant amount of buzz surrounding it, having a positive festival run, and huge amounts of fans filling up screenings (a la Blair Witch) there's no reason why a distro won't pick up a project for say $300K if they know that at worse it will make $2 mil in DVD sales to that same fan base that's already in place.

As for the Legend of Zelda example, I suspect that because the property wasn't owned by Rainfall, and instead was more fan made, nothing other than contacts and recognition were all the company should have expected. Hollywood has problems getting major franchises (ie; Halo) made into film so I can only guess the hurdles smaller shops have. Don Murphy had Transformers since 2000 and it took him 7 years to get the first film out.

At the end, I think we can agree to the following:

Can you make money off an indie film? Yes
How? Make a niche project, which targets and successfully captures a hard core fan base.
How do I do that? In this day and age (IMHO) create a huge viral buzz which reaches this fan base. Different genres will require different approaches so I can't give a broad example. But this is a form of hitting the pavement.
Closing thoughts? Just relying on festival runs and positive feed back at screenings is not enough to help you earn money if and when you sign a distro deal.
 
A 300K movie with no names making 2M in DVD sales?

... okay... well, moving on...

You forgot the last point: get ready to eat dirt, make no money, and find a way to make three or four more features to prove yourself.

Keep fighting the good fight, though.
 
RyanMKincaid said:
And youtube views, goggle tags, twitter accounts, basically a strong viral presence is a form of hitting the pavement. So I don't understand why you qualify them as irrelevant.
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I think a big problem people have is that they don't do anything else besides this. And that's just not going to be successful. And I do think that this "viral marketing"/"social medial marketing" is highly overrated.

As for the people I mentioned; Tyler Perry and the rest, they created a fan base to supported their projects, giving TP and the other bargaining power when they negotiated their deals.
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It's easy to just blithely say, "Go create a massive fanbase!" as if that's easy to do, or as if there are a set of steps you can follow to do such a thing. It's not that easy.

As far as having 'tracking over a significant amount of time' I think this is only relevant (in my opinion) if a studio was to say, want to create a TV show off of a web series or hire a internet personality for a project, or if someone is approaching them for financing. But for a standalone project like a film which is already created, picture lock and theatrical quality, having a significant amount of buzz surrounding it, having a positive festival run, and huge amounts of fans filling up screenings (a la Blair Witch) there's no reason why a distro won't pick up a project for say $300K if they know that at worse it will make $2 mil in DVD sales to that same fan base that's already in place.
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And yet I bet it happens. Sometimes things are just outside of any rhyme or reason. You can't bank on that always being the case. Even so, you are describing a best case scenario that is incredibly hard to reach.

As for the Legend of Zelda example, I suspect that because the property wasn't owned by Rainfall, and instead was more fan made, nothing other than contacts and recognition were all the company should have expected.
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I think Kholi's point was that Rainfall films wasn't able to leverage those YouTube films into other film projects, not so much that they were looking to do an actual Legend of Zelda film, but he would know that for certain.
 
Gary Huff said:
I think Kholi's point was that Rainfall films wasn't able to leverage those YouTube films into other film projects, not so much that they were looking to do an actual Legend of Zelda film, but he would know that for certain.
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The exact point. And to date we STILL get emails about it being real, asking when it's coming out.
 
Kholi said:
A 300K movie with no names making 2M in DVD sales?

... okay... well, moving on...

You forgot the last point: get ready to eat dirt, make no money, and find a way to make three or four more features to prove yourself.

Keep fighting the good fight, though.
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I completely agree that you need to "pay your dues" on the outset. But even that is not entirely accurate. People like to work with "sure things" in this biz. If you can prove that you can create a catalog of material, then you become viable and valuable to people looking to potentially work with you (i.e. studios and investors). This will also help you attract higher visibility actors and actresses since they can tell that you're legit at that point.
 
Great thread! Bottom line...No, you are not going to make any money from your 'indie'...'micro-budget'...'zero-budget'...'guerrilla' film. However, you can pacify the wife by claiming your outrageous obsession with film gear, costing thousands of dollars, will eventually pay off because Blair Witch or Paranormal made five billion dollars.

I play around with film because I enjoy doing it. I enjoy working with other filmmakers, crew, even cast (for the most part...actors are different folks...).

I never expect to make a dime from one of my films. I haven't and I won't. But that's not the point. I make films (or work on other people's films) because I enjoy it.

I never disabuse folks who are young and selling everything to move to LA to make it as an actor, or somebody with a T2i who is aiming to be the next Woody Allen. That's their parent's job. Why ruin somebody's dream? It's better that they try and fail, and get a job selling insurance or building retaining walls, instead of not doing it and always wondering.

Me, I'm too old to have any illusions.

But, no, you won't make any money at it. Unless you are willing to work very, very hard, and are incredibly talented and extraordinarily lucky. So, no, you're not going to make it in this business. Sorry.
 
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