The State of International Sales for Independent Films

MichaelP, not sure if this is the right section, but your movie has had international sales I believe, correct? I think there was a thread I came across a while ago on it. I think it got a sale in Russia, among others. Anything new with your film? Just curious, thanks! Happy Gobble Gobble Day!
 
I had a three year deal I negotiated with a foreign sales agent, they originally wanted seven, but I asked for three with option to renew. At the end of three, I could tell that they had done everything they were going to do with it, so it was good timing. During the three years, deals were made for Japan, Croatia, Czech Republic, and Benelux. Japan was the biggest money wise - in the end, and the sad part is that while there were these sales, I have yet to see any money whatsoever on the film. So while deals can be made, and good for facebook updates, making a living based on movie sales is a very tough one. That movie took 2 years of my time off and on - granted it was only $8K in total cash, but I can make more money on a one hour consulting call, than the revenues on that movie! ;) Which is why there's always the day job. :)

Michael
 
That's what I thought, so many people going into films while there are no money to be made. Good thing I'm going into nursing. But film will always be my one true passion.
 
Victor Nhat Nguyen said:
That's what I thought, so many people going into films while there are no money to be made. Good thing I'm going into nursing. But film will always be my one true passion.
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That is not true. If there truly were no money to be made, the industry would have crumbled already.

There is still money to be made, but only if you have the right project, meaning you are on the right budget level, you're working within a sellable genre and you have names that sell.

The days are gone when all you needed was a Mini-DV camera, an empty house and a couple of topless girls and you could shoot a horror movie for nickels and double or triple your money just by selling the movie to one buyer.

I know a couple of guys who made a small fortune within that 3-5 year period before 2008. They made two to three movies a year, each of them costing probably under $10k, but because they were horror movies and they had awesome looking Key Art, they made a killing. Their best titles sold for well over a $100k.

Now of course as everyone and their cousin are making movies there is an oversaturation of product, and most no-name indies are beyond worthless.

If you have a good product, you can sell it.

I read an article about this year's AFM where buyers and distributors were saying that there were barely any action movies being marketed this year, at least not too many with a solid cast. And it's true, just by reading Hollywood Reporter's AFM issues, you couldn't see any ads for action movies. There were a few, but the names they had for those weren't great.

Buyers were saying that they would have bought more movies, but there weren't too many movies worth buying.
 
I have no doubt there is money to be made, but the question is who is making it and how much of it is getting back to the original filmmaker? In my case, it is zero. I have friends I work with that have different stories and do quite well, and one actually makes "a fulltime living" at producing and directing feature films. I just completed the legal process of taking an exec producer position on a film, that does meet a lot of the criteria for reduce the risk, and does have one of the top sales companies rep'ing it worldwide. Perhaps that will be a different experience - but the legalese of the waterfall in the deal makes your head spin for days. It is good to get the quarterly reports. But somehow in the end on my little film, I felt I was doing more contributing to the company's collective catalog in marketing, than time spent on actually pushing mine. But that's the way it works. There are more streaming services that you can click a stick at ;) but the issue there is marketing, as none of them will pay for that on their own. It is mainly a controlled streaming service with built-in e-commerce. Whether anyone really knows your film is available is up to you. And content marketing takes a lot of time to do well. More than I wanted to take on between the day job and trying to get other movies into production. Some indie films have done well with that, and those are fantastic stories - but are few and far between relative to the number of people doing the same thing.

There certainly is a glut in the market with the democratization of the technology from a production standpoint. Talent of course is still needed in all phases - from script, to director, to cast, to DP and sound, editing, etc. all play their part. I can imagine it is harder and harder for sales reps to pick through the mountain of offerings and festivals really become an even more important part of the filtering process. I haven't done any action movies myself, but I imagine that the budget to get adequate production value and cast is beyond many of the people on this forum with what I estimate to be a $500K starting point depending on your definition of "action".

But the day job is in the industry, so I work with some of the best out there, and that feeds the passion of the creation and storytelling process. I also develop tools for the industry which is fun as well and has very similar challenges when introducing a product to market. It is a passion that doesn't go away - the art of creation where filmmaking is the combination of so many individual art forms makes it fascinating and addicting.

Michael
 
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