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Itinerant Filmmaking
In the 1930s Texas-born filmmaker Melton Barker began to mass produce a short formula film that would star neighborhood kids which he charged their parents for. Barker would repeat this same script in numerous towns changing only the child actors. It was called “The Kidnappers Foil.” It was about a band of kids who outsmart two sleeping criminal. The kids then perform a series of song-and-dance routines.
It was a scam aimed at the unrealistic dreams of parents who believed their children could be stars no matter whether they had any talent. He continued the game for nearly 40 years. You can see some of the films at his web site. You can read more in the New York Times story The Legacy of a Camera-Toting Huckster.
Not all itinerant filmmakers were selling such shady ideas. Back in my New York documentary days we knew a filmmaker who made travel films, much like the old travelogues you’d see on weekend television. These were made on spec before the Internet. When he finished a film, he would book a local library, do some local advertising and sell tickets. These were silent films as sound cost a lot more to do. So he took his projector to the library or other venue then show the film while he did a live narration. His audience loved it. Then he’d take his projector, film reels and advertising materials and move on to the next town.
His travel films often featured more obscure corners of the planet. I’d bet an enterprising producer could do the same thing to day. People do it online as in the films you can watch through iTunes, Amazon, NetFlix, etc. But there’s something to be said to actually being with a live audience and interacting with them.
Filmmakers are doing similar things today such as Sam Green whose film ‘Utopia in Four Movements” can only be seen live. He narrates onstage, while a soundtrack and lyrical score are also performed live. Read about Sam Green’s film.
Video Growing as Print Newspapers Decline
The NY Times, like nearly all newspapers is shrinking. A great many are already out of business. Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the NY Times recently sent this memo to her staff.
It says that the Times is shrinking its staff by offering many staffers buyout packages. At least this is better than laying people off. Rick Berke, currently an assistant managing editor, will now focus on video, an area the company has been trying to expand. Video is becoming an even bigger part of our news report. She goes on to say that video is deepening our ways of telling stories.
If you check out the home page of the NY Times, you will notice more video stories and although it is not clearly obvious, there are probably fewer print stories. I’m glad to see that video is growing in a good way. Video journalists typically shoot, edit and often presents their own stories. The times currently employs 12 video journalist most who come from a television and documentary background. As of 2005 the BBC has more than 600 of its staff trained as video journalists. I am both an avid newspaper reader as well as a video producer so this trend is bittersweet.
Vimeo Adds “Tip Jar” for Producers
Vimeo has just added a Tip Jar which enables viewers to “like” a film with money. To enable the Tip Jar on your video, you must have a Vimeo Plus or Pro account. This is good news for filmmakers. Vimeo apps are available for iPad, iPhone, and Android. Vimeo can also be seen on Roku, Boxee, Google TV, and Apple TV.
The independent filmmaking community has long been partial to Vimeo as a video hosting site. Out of the 65 million unique visitors per month, a great many are film lovers. This tip function puts Vimeo in the realm of crowdfunding sites. Like the others, Vimeo takes a cut – 15%, which is more than most, but at least they don’t make you wait long for it.
So now when a viewer discovers a video she likes, perhaps a tutorial, and wants to thank the filmmaker for it, the new Tip Jar is an easy way to reward helpful or entertaining films. But even better is that early next year Vimeo’s pay-to-view will debut. Filmmakers and producers will be able to charge for viewing their videos. One thing that is different with Vimeo’s Video-On-Demand (VOD) is that anyone with a Vimeo Pro account can use it. Amazon and ITunes, on the other hand, make filmmakers go through an intermediary like Distribber.
Vimeo also has a new music store where filmmakers can find and license music to legally use in their films.
If you’re looking for exposure, YouTube has tons more traffic and it is the second most popular search engine in the world, but if you’re looking for an artistic community, Vimeo wins hands down. Vimeo does not run ads before or on top of videos like YouTube does. What to do? Use BOTH of them and get even more exposure.
Crowdsourcing Commercials With Poptent
An example of a Poptent video for Paypal that was purchased for $7500.
Poptent is a crowdsource exchange that connects producers with advertisers. The arrangement produces thousands of commercial videos each year for clients which include numerous Fortune 500 brands and agencies.
One of the Superbowl XLVI ads was produced by a poptent producer. Thirty-five of Poptent’s top producers were invited to submit their creative vision for Dannon OIKOS yogurt featuring John Stamos and positioning OIKOS as “Possibly the best yogurt in the world.” One production was chosen and the producer paid.
How It Works
Advertisers, agencies or brands post a “Creative Brief” explaining the video assignment and what they are willing to pay. The producer works on spec and takes most of the risk when they produce a video in a contest arrangement. The payment for these videos tends to be $7,500 to $10,000. The client guarantees they will purchase a video(s) from at least one of the producers. There are also cash awards for videos which are not purchased.
There are open assignments and invite assignments. Invite is for a smaller group of experienced producers.
The Open Assignments
Poptent works with the brand to help shape the creative brief in a way that will best speak to the community and attract on-point, quality submissions.
The brand provides electronic assets to assist in the creation of the videos (logos, pictures, music, styles guides, etc.).
Poptent creates a custom landing page for the assignment, where creators can read the creative brief, download the assets, and ask questions.
Then producers have 30 – 45 days to produce their videos and upload them. The brand selects which videos they wish to purchase for use.
Jared Cicon who hosts http://videocontestking.wordpress.com ,a site for video contests talks about his experiences with Poptent, “In 2011, I submitted 8 commercial projects to 8 assignments on the poptent.net website. Half of my submissions were purchased by the brand. This year, I have so far produced 4 commercials for different assignments whose conclusions elapsed. I won (sold) only one of the four submissions, and lost three. Six weeks of production work (four commercials) for a gross payment of $7,500.00. Amortized, I was paid (gross) only about $1,850.00 apiece for the each of the four submissions.”
A Great Time For Documentaries
We’ve come a long way from the days when the only way you could see a documentary was if you lived in a big city that had an art house theater and happened to know which of the one or two days a particular film was playing. Today, the Internet is exploding with feature-length docs you can watch for free. There are scores of sites that specialize in showing these films. Here are just a few:
And, of course the biggest ones are YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube has a special section just for documentaries. Vimeo has a section called Documentary Films On Vimeo.
Vimeo has been the preferred site for filmmakers because it’s considered a more artistic community. On the other hand, YouTube has an enormous audience. So there are advantages to each. Some filmmakers post their films to both sites and them cross-promote them.
Some doc producers would physically take their films to special interest groups and charge per viewer or give a talk for free and show clips and offer to sell the DVD on the spot. Some people actually made a living doing this. Of course like many businesses they spent a lot of time marketing and they traveled extensively.
Today we have easier ways to show a documentary. YouTube, Vimeo, and others will even pay you based on number of viewings of your film and the ads that run on your film, but unless you are getting thousands of views every month, the income is likely to be small.
To make money showing your video online, you’ll want to distribute your film across as many platforms as possible. This includes Video On Demand (VOD) from sites such as Amazon Instant Video, hulu.com, distrify.com, filmbinder.com, site.dynamoplayer.com, and others. That’s pretty much the easy part. The hard part, which makes all the difference, is marketing. This takes work, often more than the work of producing the film. A smart place to start your marketing efforts is by registering the name of your film as a domain name or as close as you can get. Then build a website for it, even before you have the film. When you’re ready, the site should have the trailer for your film and a “Buy It Now” button which links to a video on demand site and or DVDs. Use WordPress to build the site because it’s so easy and powerful.
As part of your marketing campaign, you may also want to advertise your film through Google Adwords and possibly Facebook ads. If you do, find some expert help because advertising with Adwords gets expensive and you want to make sure it is money well spent.
You’ll also want to sell your film to Netflix and iTunes, but this requires a third party. A producer cannot sell directly to Netflix or iTunes and other outlets of that size. These companies want to protect themselves from poor quality so they don’t become just another dump for videos like YouTube almost did. So they require that films be submitted through what is called an aggregator. They’re really distributors and until recently most of them charged a fee and took a percentage for doing this. Now they just charge a fee and let you have the payments. Here’s an example:
Distribber.com charges $1295 (SD) or $1595 (HD) to distribute your film to iTunes for both the US and Canada and to Amazon VOD: US only. For additional fees, you can also have them distribute to Netflix Watch Instantly: US and Canada, Hulu: US only and Cable/Satellite/Telco VOD services:
US only.
Distribber is one of the most popular aggregators for filmmakers. They were purchased by Indiegogo, a competitor to Kickstarter. Their fee structure is designed so they collect no royalties. All the money from a sale goes directly to you. But, of course, it’s bit more complicated than that so you’ll need to study the field carefully.
After you have an aggregator, the sales begin. Here are numbers:
iTunes splits sales 70/30. The filmmaker gets 70% and iTunes gets 30%. If you film sells for $9.99 on iTunes, you get $7.
Hulu streams films to the public for free and inserts ads. 50% of this advertising money goes to the filmmaker.
Amazon VOD pays the filmmaker 50% of what they collect.
Netflix purchases a license for your film for 1 or 2 years and they can play your film as many times as they like during that period of time. The license fees vary on a film by film basis.
Many people think “my film is perfect for Discovery,” but take a breath. On the Discovery Channel Producer’s Portal, you learn that
“This site was designed exclusively for industry producers to submit proposals, manage contract deliverables, and find information about all aspects of producing for the Discovery family of networks. This website is for established television producers and production companies. If you are a viewer with an idea for an episode of a currently airing series, please contact Viewer Relations.” (Their underline.)
The bottom line is that one of the most important skill to a documentary producer is marketing.
Why I Self-Distribute My Documentaries (11 so far)
by David Wittkower
http://www.davidwittkower.com
I went the distributor route many years ago when everyone told me that was the way to go, but the promises of quarterly reports did not happen and the checks were so small. So I confronted them about it and they finally admitted that I was one of 500 other titles and I was now a small number in line with many other titles, so when I questioned why they were taking 75%, that is what they told me, “it’s standard.” I told them I could do a better job and so they tore up my contract and I’ve been doing it myself ever since.
I had also gone to Walmart to see if they would distribute one of my films. They said they would, but I would have to sell it to them for $3.00/ each. They would sell it for $19.95. They said they could get the video into 3,200 stores. I thought that even with such a high markup it would do okay, but they said if after 1 year if the videos didn’t sell, I would have to buy them all back!
I went to another distributor once who wanted 80% so I asked what for. They said they would push my title, re-design the cover, (I liked the one I had) get it into tons of stores, etc. I learned from another producer that this 80% from each producer, afforded the distributor to fly 1st class to Cannes, wine & dine other distributors, and attend parties. So the producer makes 20%. I would have had to sell $500,000 worth of my DVD’s to make any kind of money at all.
Needless to say, since then I bought a disk duplicator and a printer, I buy the cases and DVDs wholesale, shrink wrap them and ship them, I make the calls to the stores, I offer the stores a 50/50 split which most stores will agree with, I get letters from people who have bought the films, telling how much the film has meant to them. I go to film festivals and reap those rewards, none which would happen if I had had a distributor for the last 10 years.
I have sold about 37,000 DVDs (most sell at $19.95 retail) and won over 27 awards for excellence in film making. None of this is easy mind you, but I feel if you want to make a living doing this, you have to see it through to the end, if you hand it over to a distributor, you might as well be saying, “Here’s my film, you can have all the money from it, because I don’t care.” Be the film maker, be the distributor and get back what you put into it. Of course I know film makers who with the right connections have done okay but I know even more who made one film, then quit because it was too hard. There are plenty of people out there who are more than willing to take all of your hard work and reap the rewards without doing very much work.
Sorry, will get off of the soap box now.
-David
Promos from some of David’s documentaries
Jitterbugs
Guardians of the Gates: The Surfboats
The Eagle: America’s Tall Ship Trailer
Jitterbugs
Guardians of the Gates: The Surfboats
The Eagle: America’s Tall Ship Trailer
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