The Underlying Cause of Many Issues Facing The Indiefilm Industry.

As an independent filmmaker, you probably didn’t get into the game to sell widgets or do insurance paperwork as your primary 9-5.  As such, it’s completely understandable that indie film producers wouldn’t really consider the distributor’s perspective when making their independent films. Filmmakers got into the industry to make movies, which is an all-encompassing goal in and of itself.

Speaking from the other side of the negotiation table, there’s an issue that most independent filmmakers just don’t consider when they’re setting out to monetize their work.  That issue is around the uncertainty of market demand that really only matters at least three years after you write your script, as well as the uncertainty that requires distributors and studios to plan for the inevitable unpredictability of that faces the film industry and likely always will.

This article is meant to outline some of the issues associated with uncertainty for those creatives so that they can better account for it down the line.

Content is King, but only if it’s good

For a long time, I thought that the saying content is king was primarily a platitude said by speakers at conventions to keep filmmakers making films.  Obviously, distributors need films to sell in order to run their business. What most speakers leave unsaid is that there is such a gargantuan dirth of under-monetized independent film out there I thought it was something primarily meant to keep the film buyers in a superior position so they could get away with some of the shenanigans we all know independent film distributors and sales agents for.  Having led a distribution company for a few years, I can say that both I and the speakers who say content is king on stage were wrong.   Content is king, but only if good.  

Well-made, engaging, commercial films will get distributors fighting for the right to distribute.  Bad films will get bad deals which means the filmmaker is unlikely to ever see a cent.  Unfortunately, the same is true for good films in a non-marketable genre, or with a hard-to-define audience.  

Only about 1 in 10 films makes money

After having released many movies, I can tell you from experience that only about 1 in 10 films will make enough money to cover their budget over the course of a 7-year term distribution agreement.  I know that’s a rough pill to swallow, but you should know it going in. About 20-30% of the others can make a meaningful portion of their budget back over the same time period if they’re working with an ethical sales agent or distribution company.  The rest will get little to nothing back. Again, all of that is assuming you have a distributor or sales agent who actually pays you and is transparent in their bookkeeping, which is rare.  This basic reality of the business influences many more choices made by your distributor than you may realize and greatly informs the business model and operations of distributors.  

Nobody can pick winners all the time.

In the words of William Goldman, nobody knows anything.  Having said that, I think Goldman’s statement is overly broad.  I think there are so many factors that weigh on a single film’s success there’s absolutely no way that even the best distributor or analyst in the world could Plan for and create hit after hit. Pixar did in their early days, but they also had a functional monopoly of hot new technology and the finances and resources of Disney, so it’s not exactly a realistic use case for those of us operating on the independent side of the industry. In the world of distribution, if you get about half of the acquisitions you make to over-perform expectations you’ve done extremely well and you would be inducted into the hall of fame if we had one.  On average, the best of us only get around 35%, but even if you get around 25% you’re still doing pretty alright and will likely keep your job.  

This functionally means that even if your sales agent or distributor is being entirely genuine about their expectations for the film there’s at least a 50% chance they won’t be able to live up to their most optimistic projections.   Again, I don’t mean this as a slight to those of us who work in acquisitions.  There are so many variables that are impossible to predict.  One example of such unpredictable complications (at least for the time) would be the initial release of The Boondock Saints hitting theaters the same week as the Columbine Shooting in Colorado.  While mass shootings are sadly a near-daily occurrence in the US in 2023, Columbine was one of the first of its kind.  Due to a fear of inadvertently endorsing vigilante justice, most theaters that were set to play the film dropped it. For a while this made The Boondock saints was one of the biggest box office bombs in movie history.

There’s no way a studio executive, writer, producer, or anyone involved in the release of this film could have predicted that, and as a direct result the film massively underperformed.  Since it was a pretty modest budget for the time and the film found a second life as a cult classic it’s likely it remained as big a flop as it started.

Granted, this is an extreme example, but it is indicative of the butterfly effect that can cause even the best film with the best team to underperform.  

Producers can’t always be relied on to help market their work.

Marketing a film is expensive and time-consuming.  If you don’t have a big name to help you make a big splash, you’re going to need to help your distributor spread the word about your movie if you want it to find success.  There are so many films released on a weekly basis that without the filmmakers helping to push the film to rise above the white noise caused by the glut of feature film releases the film doesn’t stand much of a chance of finding an audience.   Unfortunately, not all producers can be relied upon to help market their own work.  

Even at this late date, many producers feel that it should be entirely on the distributor to make their film a success.  After all, isn’t that what their commission and their fees are for?  While I can understand the sentiment and I even agree that most distributors should do more to earn their commissions it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Independent Film Distributors have a lot more to do than it may initially appear. Delivery to each platform is extremely time-intensive, and we also need to handle a lot of regular pitches, shifting mandates, filmmaker relations, investor relations, buyer relations, press relations, and a whole lot more.  If you work with us to make our job easier, you’ll get more meaningful attention paid to your film as we won’t have to spend time identifying and engaging with the core audience. 

In the end, if you won’t promote your own work, how can you expect anyone else to? For more, read this blog.  

RELATED: Why you NEED to help your distributor market your film (If they’ll let you)

A known cast helps everything, but the competition is fierce, and not everyone is honest.

In general, the best way to rise above the white noise created by the glut of independent films released on a regular basis is to attach a star to your film.  I know, I know.  Everyone says this, and it’s both hard and expensive.  While it’s not as hard or expensive as you may think if you do it properly, it’s still outside the reach of most sub-100k feature filmmakers.  If you do get a celebrity attached to your feature film, you’ll almost certainly get a lot of distributors coming to you in an attempt to procure the rights to your film.  

Unfortunately, a mediocre genre film with a B list name in it is more likely to garner a decent return than a great film of the same genre without a name in it. Of course, exceptions exist but it is a key indicator that’s likely to lead to success.

The issue here is that while you may be able to get multiple distribution offers for your film, not all of them will be companies you want to work with. Most sales agents and distributors will do whatever they need to in order to get the film from you.  After they get the film, whether they even live up to their own contract isn’t a guarantee. In most cases, it’s exceptionally difficult to get your rights back.

The outcome?  Consolidation and risk aversion, Exploitation of Filmmakers, or sales agents make their own micro-budget content.

There have been massive industry-spanning consequences resulting from the high level of uncertainty coupled with dwindling revenue from physical media and transactional video-on-demand sales.  Many of the resulting decisions that have led to extreme consolidation of the industry are made simply out of a need for the sales agent or distributor to make payroll, although often those issues extrapolate into something else.  Additionally, almost all of them are bad for filmmakers. 

The most obvious example of negative consequences for filmmakers is the fact that many contracts are structured in a way that exploits filmmakers by passing through disproportionate risk and falsified expenses.  This is covered across the internet so I won’t go too far into it here.  Additionally, in the last few years, the industry has been consolidating into the hands of fewer and fewer companies.  This leads to less competition for acquisitions, which means lower payments, less transparency, and an explosion of growth in the exploitation mentioned above.  Simply put, when there are fewer companies who can buy your film, they don’t have to do as much to get it.

Given all of this uncertainty, sales agents and distributors are less likely to acquire content outside of the standard genre fare they know they can sell.  This means newer voices and content are likely to get lost in the shuffle.  In order to combat this, some sales agents have started their own production lines to develop content that fits the needs of their buyers.  The most notable recent example of this was Winnie The Pooh, Blood & Honey Which was made by ITN Studios.  ITN was a distributor and sales agent for quite a while before Stuart decided the best move was to create a bespoke model for his buyers.   It worked wonders and many sales agents are following their example.

The problem with the direct production model is primarily that it creates a new kind of competition for filmmakers, and could quite easily mean that the traditional method of acquisition for independent films is disrupted in a way that leaves independent artists completely out in the cold.  

Again, all of these issues are greatly influenced if not caused by the issue of uncertainty of the independent film industry. Uncertainty faces every industry, but the level of it is significantly greater than in most other industries outside of early-stage high-growth startups or perhaps certain types of small businesses. However, there is one thing that is certain for filmmakers. If you sign up for my Newsletter you’ll get my independent film resource package which includes an independent film investment deck template, festival promotional brochure template, monthly content digests segmented by topic, a free e-book, white paper, and more!  Click the button below to add it.

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The 5 Pervasive Issues Preventing the Emergence of New US Film Hubs

If you’re a filmmaker, you probably already know a lot of other filmmakers in your area.  If you don’t, you should.  That’s one reason why film community events are absolutely vital for the independent film industry.  It’s far from the only reason that communities of independent filmmakers are vital for your success as an independent filmmaker.  

I’ve been involved with a few film community organizations ranging from Producer Foundry to Global Film Ventures, and even the Institute for International Film Finance.  I’ve also spoken at organizations across the country.  From the experience of running more than 150 events and speaking for a few dozen others, I’ve noticed some commonalities across many burgeoning independent film communities, so I thought I would share some of my observations as to why most of them aren’t growing as quickly as they should.  Without further ado, here are the 5 pervasive problems preventing the growth of regional film communities.  

Lack of Resources

It’s no secret that most independent films could use more money.  It’s true for film communities and hubs as well.  In general, most of these community organizations have little to no money unless they’re tied to a larger film society or film festival.  Unfortunately being tied to such an organization often prevents the work of community building due to the time and resources involved in the day-to-day operations of running a film society or the massive commitment that comes with running a film festival.  

Compounding the issues with a lack of resources is that a community organization built to empower a regional film community isn’t something that you could raise equity financing from investors.  Projects like this are much better funded using pages from the non-profit playbook.  There are organizations looking to write grants specifically for film organizations seeking to empower communities.  You can find out more about the grant writing process in this blog below.

RELATED: Filmmakers! 5 Tips for Successful Grantwriting.

While local film commissions do provide some support to locals, their primary mandate is generally built for a different purpose that I’ll discuss in the next of my 5 points.  

Most tax incentives emphasize attracting Large Scale Productions, not building local hubs

Most film tax incentives are heavily or sometimes even entirely oriented on attracting outside productions as a means to bring more revenue to the city, state, region, or territory.  This is understandable, as many film commissions or offices are organized under the tourism bureau or occasionally the Chamber of Commerce.  Both of those organizations have a primary focus on attracting big spenders to the local area in order to boost the economy.  

RELATED: The Basics of Film Tax Incentives

This mandate isn’t necessarily antithetical to the goal of building local film communities.  There is nearly always a local staffing requirement for these incentives, and you can’t build an industrial community if no one has work.  Some of the best incentives I’ve seen have a certain portion of their spending that is required to go to community growth, as San Francisco’s City Film Commission had when I last checked.  Given that the focus of the film industry is focused on attracting outside production, there is often a vacuum left when it comes to building the local community and infrastructure as a long-term project.  

Additionally, given that film productions are highly mobile by their very nature using tax incentives to consistently attract large-scale projects is almost always a race to the bottom very quickly.  If a production can simply say to Colorado that they’ll get a better deal in New Jersey, then the incentive in Colorado fails its primary purpose.  Eventually, these states or regions will continue a race to the bottom that fails to bring any meaningful economic benefit to the citizens of the state.  While the studies I’ve seen on this often seem reductive and significantly undervalue the soft benefits of film production on the image and economy of a state, the end result is clear.  If all states over-compete, eventually the legislatures will repeal the tax incentives.  After that, outside productions will dry up.  

When this happens, local filmmakers are left out in the cold.  The big productions that put food on the table are gone, and there’s no meaningful local infrastructure left to fill the void that the large studio productions left.  

Creating a film community is a long-term project with Short Term Funding.

It takes decades of consistent building to create a new film production hub.  People often have the misconception that Georgia popped up overnight, and this isn’t true. While the tax incentive grew the industry relatively quickly on a governmental timescale, I believe the tax incentive was in place for nearly a decade ahead of the release.  Georgia’s growth was greatly aided by local Filmmaker Tyler Perry’s continual championing of the region as a film hub.  

Most of the funding apparatuses available for the growth of film communities are primarily oriented toward short-term gains.  That makes long-term growth a difficult process, but if cities and regions outside of NY, LA, and ATL are to grow it needs to be a part of the conversation.  

There are some organizations out there pushing to build long-term viable film communities outside of those major hubs.  Notably, the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience has a great lineup of speakers for their event in a few weeks.  I’m one of those speakers, so if you’re in the area check it out, and check out this podcast I did with them yesterday.  

It’s hard to bring community leaders together

As I said eat the top, I’ve been involved with and even run several community organizations.  One consistent theme I’ve noticed is that most community leaders are very reticent to work with each other in a way that doesn’t benefit them more than anyone else.  This means that one issue I’ve seen consistently is that while there are disparate factions of the larger film community throughout most regions it’s nearly impossible to bring them together to build something big enough to truly build a long-term community. 

Most filmmakers and film community leaders are much happier being the king of their own small hill than a lord in a larger kingdom.  

Filmmaking is a creative pursuit, and it requires some degree of narcissism to truly excel.  This is amplified when you run a local film community.  Sayer’s Law states: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics because the stakes are so low.” If you replace the word “Academic” with “Filmmaking” can be said for the issue facing most film communities. Call it Yennie’s Law, if you like. #Sarcasm, #Kinda.

I discussed this in some detail with Lorraine Montez and Carey Rose O'Connell of the New Mexico Film Incubator in episode 2 of the Movie Moolah podcast, linked below.

The industry connections for large-scale finance and distribution generally aren’t local.

If you’ve read Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant’s book Writing Movies for Fun and Profit you’ll already know that LA is the hub of the industry, and if you want to pitch you need to be there.  Given the fact I live in Philadelphia, I believe it should be fairly clear I disagree with the particulars of the notion the overall sentiment remains true.  Also, if you haven’t read it click that link and get it.  It’s a great read.  (Affiliate link, I get a few pennies if you buy. Recommendation stands regardless of how you get it.)

If you want to make a film bigger than at most a few million dollars, you’re going to need connections to financiers and distributors with large bank accounts.  You can find the distributors at film markets, but all of the institutional film industry money is in LA.  While you may be able to raise a few million from local investors, it’s really hard and it is an issue facing the growth of independent film communities nationwide.  

Another issue is around the knowledge of the film business and the logistics of keeping a community engaged and organized.  While I can’t help too much with the latter, I can help you and your community organizers on the knowledge of the film industry with my FREE film business resource Pack!  It’s got a free e-book, free macroeconomic white paper, free deck template, free festival brochure template, contact tracking template, and a while lot more. Just that is more than a 100$ value, plus you also get monthly content digests segmented by topic so you can keep growing your film industry knowledge on a viable schedule.  Click the button below!

As I said earlier, I’m speaking at AFMX this year.  If you like this content and you’d like to have me speak to your organization, use the button below to send me an email.

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Commercial Doesn’t NECESSARILY Mean Crap

Everyone has seen at least one bad movie in their lifetimes.  They’ve probably seen more than that.  However, unless you also work in film acquisitions or have done first-round review for film festivals you have not seen as many bad movies as those of us who do those jobs have.  That’s for the simple reason that any movie you have seen out in the wild had to go through someone like us.  There’s a narrow exception for self-distributed content that is generally limited to silos on Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD) platforms and some easier to access Advertising Supported Video on Demand (AVOD) platforms, but in general, unless someone with the power to act as a gatekeeper for film festival programmers or independent film distributors has given it the go-ahead, the general audience won’t see it. 

This functionally means that anyone who works or has worked in these positions, myself included, has seen a Jurassic park sized pile of poopy submissions.  Which is to say that we know the milieu of a crappy film.  We can, and frankly should talk about the flaws inherent to the current system of gatekeeping, and how sometimes gatekeepers don’t know the difference between a revolutionary piece of cinema and more of the same old skeet. That conversation is beyond my personal scope to change it alone, especially not in a single blog post.  Instead, this blog is an examination of how to avoid getting lumped in with the pile of crud we constantly reject.  The basics are really easy to sum up:

Commercial Films Get Selected.

I don’t think I need to tell you why sales agents and distributors are drawn toward feature films that they deem commercial.  They’re all business people, and if they don’t think they can make money with a project they won’t pitch it up the chain to their bosses and generally won’t take it out if they are the boss.  Sure, there are exceptions here, but when you’re spending two, three, five, or even ten years making something you don’t want to bank on getting lucky at the end of it.  If you make a commercial film in a known genre, your road to getting that film seen is going to be a lot easier.  

Related: What Distributors Mean by Genre

While this is obvious for indie film sales distributors, you may not be familiar with the fact that most festivals make a similar calculation.   There’s a pervading assumption that film festivals focus solely on the art, weeding out the diamond in the rough to give emerging independent voices a leg up.  There is at least a bit of truth in that, and in general film festivals will focus significantly more on art than sales agents.  What that assumption ignores is that most festivals also need to pay their bills, cover the expenses of their year-round staff, and overall build their brand so they can attract bigger new releases.  This means that nearly every festival is also concerned about filling the theaters for the films that they select.  Many if not most festivals also program with something of an eye for whether a film will have a life outside of their own screening as it grows their own renown.  In short, festivals also care whether your film is commercial.  

Dramas Don’t Sell

What mat makes us scream, gets our heart pumping, and brings us to the edge of our seats tends to be pretty universal for us as a species.  What makes us emotional, or what makes us laugh isn’t nearly as universal.  This means, that dramas and comedies tend not to export outside their country of origin unless you have a few big stars in them or they serve as a once-in-a-generation breakout.  This is why those of us who work behind the back office tend to refer to those genres as regional films.  

Speaking as a distributor, even domestically it’s really hard to get people to pay attention to an independent drama without names in it.  It doesn’t matter how well made it is, if it doesn’t have a name people would often rather re-watch a Marvel movie than watch an enlightening indie drama that helps us better understand the human condition.  I want to be clear here, I like those movies.  I think we need more of them out there in society.  However, if they don’t make money and make it hard for programmers to fill seats, it’s hard for us to focus on them when there’s so little profit margin for most independent film distribution companies. 

If People Don’t See It, Your film has no impact.

If you want to make some revolutionary avant-garde piece, you’re going to have an uphill battle to get people to see it.  If your work is about your strong and uncompromising vision and the statement you need the world to know, you could be doing yourself a disservice by focusing solely on the packaging you put your messaging into.  Auteurs don’t get discovered as easily as they used to, and there’s such a glut of content it’s nearly impossible to have the impact you most likely desire without traditional distribution infrastructure behind you.  Of course, there are exceptions, but they tend to involve years of building your own audience which can detract from the work that drives you to the point of burnout if you’re not careful.  

Instead of banging your head against the wall trying to make your film exactly as you want to, you should consider boiling down your message to its core and then creating a story that fits into a strong, marketable genre in order to at least plant the seeds of your message for when you come back to the message film you initially needed to make.  It could likely be a faster path to your end goal and will help you combat the issues inherent to my next point. 

Tastemaker Fatigue is Real. 

We as tastemakers, programmers, gatekeepers, buyers, distributors, and whoever else needs to review unreleased movies often have limited time and mental energy to get through our stack of submissions that piles much higher than you would ever expect if you haven’t seen it in person.  First-round programmers at most of the top 10 major film fests have to say no to at least 9 out of 10 submissions.  This means that they look for any possible reason to say no and when they find it, they put it on the poo poo pile.  

Even if it makes the most timely possible statement and would get programmed if you don’t know somebody who can get you to a final stage programmer directly, the odds are not in your favor.  The only way you can get an advocate like that is if you’ve been in the festival before or you attract a talented producers rep or distribution executive to champion your project.  Generally, for those people to be your champion your work needs to be commercial.  

Commercial doesn’t mean Crap

So what am I advocating for here?  Do I want you to make the same old bloody, gore-y, craptacular boobfest of a horror movie?  No, I’m not saying that.  Well, unless you want to.  If you do, it will get distribution, I might even help.

Defalcating Dung beetles!  I just went against my own point for a shill and a bit.  Let’s try again.  

The commercial doesn’t NECESSARILY mean Crap

No one will tell you that every overtly commercial film is a masterpiece of cinema.  There have been quite a lot of major blockbusters that turn out to be stinky bowel movements.  What I am saying is that if you have a message you want to get out to the masses, one of the best ways to do that is to insert that message into a broader story that meets genre guidelines.  Bryan Singer’s X-Men has strong undercurrents of self-acceptance and coming out in a time where that wasn’t really acceptable in a movie targeted at Teenagers.  James Cameron’s Aliens is an Allegory for the War in Vietnam, and Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining is a tale of the fate of indigenous people and the increasingly aggressive subjugation they faced.  

I doubt anyone out there would say that those movies or those messages would be considered shitty examples of cinema or messages, and almost anyone would consider them strong examples of highly commercial genre films.  But that’s just one executive producer’s opinion.  If you want more of my opinion, you should join my mainlining list via the button below.  You’ll get monthly content digests to help you continue to learn on a manageable schedule.  You’ll also get a FREE e-book, white paper, and some really useful templates to help you finance your film. Check it out via the link below. 

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7 Things I Learned as CEO of a US Film Distributor

If you’re reading this, you might already know that I founded and lead a company called Mutiny Pictures.  That company has since sold to Bayview Entertainment. Given I’ve been a producer’s rep for quite a while, I thought I was prepared to step up to leading a team to take films to market directly, I found that while I was up to the task there was still quite a lot of personal growth involved for myself and every level of the team. This is to be expected out of any new venture.  Here are some of the biggest things that I personally learned throughout running a US Distribution company.  

(Almost) Nobody pays on time.

Filmmakers often complain about Sales agents and Distributors not paying on time.  While it goes without saying that there are a lot of shady, dishonest sales agents and distributors out there, I was surprised exactly how few reputable companies did not pay on time.  Given that when it comes to film distribution and international sales all stakeholders are part of the same waterfall or pay chain, if one stakeholder is paid late that eventually means that the filmmaker is paid late. We can’t pay you money we don’t have.   

So if you’re a filmmaker reading this, you should know that just because your sales agent is late on their reports doesn’t mean they’re not being honest with you.  It also doesn’t mean that they’re the reason you’re being paid late.  It’s entirely possible that possible their vendor, supplier, or other provider hasn’t paid them yet. 

That said, they should still communicate with you about when this is happening, and if they’re paying late you should still be tracking it as much as you can.  

Analytics and Reporting really, REALLY suck at every level of the distribution.

Given I do other forms of online and affiliate marketing and used to run marketing for a tech startup, I was utterly flabbergasted by the utter disgrace that is analytics around digital film marketing.  In most industries related to digital marketing, the insights are nearly immediate.  However, If you deal with a servicer or aggregator, they often won’t give you any level of real-time insight.  The best most do is once a week, which is nearly meaningly when it comes to agile marketing practices.  

I did find a workaround for my clients, so I’ll share it here.  If you’re a filmmaker and want better insights, sign up for the Amazon affiliate program and use those links to your film to market it. This is less about the few extra cents you get from pushing your work and more about real-time sales insights.  It can cause some issues around online postings and social media algorithms though, so it’s not a perfect system.  I’d love better suggestions in the comments if anyone has any.

Insurance and legal paperwork are way more of the job than you realize.

This wasn’t exactly a surprise.  At its core, film distribution and international sales are businesses based almost entirely around tracking rights and trading signatures on paper.  is entirely about buying and selling intangible rights restricted by non-physical attributes like territory, right types, region, and other highly specific terms of art.  It’s easy to mess this up, so it only makes sense to have solid insurance coverage.  What I didn’t expect was how many hours in my standard week were around litigious paperwork around insurance, compliance, reporting, and proposals, as opposed to growing the business. 

Additionally, you as a filmmaker will need to provide a lot of insurance paperwork.  

You have to pitch earlier than you think.

If you want to have a film on all major TVOD platforms, you generally need to have them pitched/placed 5-6 months ahead of the date.  You can do it in 3 months on a rush job.  This was surprising given I submitted my first book for publishing less than 3 days before it was available on Amazon.  If you sell to an SVOD outlet, they normally require delivery at least 3-6 months in advance as well, and they’ll either pay over the course of the license or a set period after the license begins.  

Payouts take longer than you think.

Reporting is one thing, payment is another.  Most platforms only pay quarterly, and they pay 30 days after the end of the quarter.  There has recently been an additional 90-day delay that was initially for COVID, but that seems to be less of an issue than it used to be.  Additionally, they won’t pay for partial quarters, meaning if you launched in February, you won’t get any data from a lot of platforms until August or even November. If there’s a service involved, you might get an additional 30-day delay.  

This makes it really hard to run a business, and the only thing you can really do is use a different aggregator or servicer.  You can supplement this with direct vendor payments from streamers and physical media outlets, but those are only getting more difficult to place.  There are very few companies that are occupying the servicer or aggregator space in the market, and unfortunately, the ones with the greatest physical reach tend to also have the worst reporting timelines.  

There’s a great amount of room for an aggregator with fast recording and greater ability for brick-and-mortar physical releases.  However, given the rapid decline of physical media, there might not be time for such a company to access that window before it closes forever.  

The industry still operates on a tentpole model.  

The sad truth of the matter is that on the ultra-low budget scale, only about 2 or 3 in 10 movies make money.  If your sales agency or distributor is made up of really good curators, you might be able to get that to 4 or even 5 out of 10.  If you’re hitting that high, most industry people will be amazed.   If you’re running a distribution company, this means you either need to be exceptionally picky and run a very lean company, or you need to take everything you can and see what sticks.  I’ve written another piece on this going into more detail. 

Producers get in their own way a lot.

I said earlier that it’s no secret that there are a lot of shady sales agents and distributors out there.  That said, not all filmmakers are saints either.  Some filmmakers are a complete joy to work with, but others will second guess everything you do and think that the only film that you should ever focus on is theirs.  

I had a filmmaker say precisely that to my face.  We got tons of press for this person, but nobody wanted to watch it and the film tanked.  When this filmmaker wasn’t getting the returns they expected they started taking up a ton of time in angry calls and emails.  This reduced A LOT of my available time to actually get their film out there, which further impacted the returns and became a vicious cycle.  

Marketing a movie is best when it’s a partnership between the filmmakers and the distributor.  In general, you should discuss when you’re making any level of announcement with your distributor so that it can make the biggest possible splash.  It’s generally unwise to drop assets like posets and trailers without talking to your distributor, as you may ruin potential exclusive press drops.  Worse, if you put your film up in various territories through self-distribution channels, it could cost you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.  Even if you can take a film down, most buyers won’t want it if it’s already been placed on any platforms in their region. I could go on about this for a while, so I’m going to leave it for another blog.  

This is a collaborative process, so they’re definitely give and take, but keep in mind there’s probably a reason you didn’t self-distribute and instead decided to work with your distributor.

In the end, this is a relationship business.  If your distributor likes you, they’re more likely to go the extra mile for you.  That’s a reality of human nature. If you want your distributor to like you, you might want to grab my free IndieFilm business resource package as it’s got lots of goodies to help make marketing your movie easier for all involved.  The resource pack got templates for contacting distributors, and tracking that contact so you don’t bug them, an e-book on the film business, and a whitepaper on the metrics of the film industry.  Plus, you’ll get monthly content digests to help you better understand the industry in a manageable way and occasion updates on new releases, courses, workshops, and announcements from Guerrilla Rep Media.  Check it out below.

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How COVID-19 Affected the Indie Film Industry

Many Filmmakers, like everyone else affected by COVID-19, are itching for some level of a return to normalcy.  Unfortunately, like many others think that there may never be a full return to normal.  It may well end up as a pre-COVID and a Post COVID period.  Similar to how the world changed before and after the great depression, 9/11, The internet, or World War II.  Societal traumas tend to leave lasting scars, and that tends to effect the market as a whole and certain industries in meaningful ways.  So let’s look at what one executive producer thinks is likely to happen in the film industry as a result.

2023 Update: I put some self-reflection on this blog commenting on how I think my predictions were, and adding more context to what’s happening in 2024 and beyond.

1. The Majors will bounce back quickly

Historically, the film is industry mildly reversely dependent on the economy.  It remains one of the cheapest ways to get out and one of the best ways for families to bond while in isolation.  The most unpredictable part about this recession’s likely impact on the film industry is the much greater presence of free or cheap entertainment options available right now as compared to the past. 

In any case, A significant amount of the pain that’s likely to be felt from this crash is going to be on the lower end of the spectrum.  Right now many of the major studios are already gearing up for their next projects since the projects they have will either be released ahead of schedule while people are quarantined or they’ll need to find alternative release plans. 

2023 Update: This was right. The majors bounced back quickly. They may not bounce back as quickly from the strikes though.

2. Freelancers will be hurt in the short term.

There’s no sugarcoating this.  Freelancers are going to be hurt in the short term.  Government stimulus may help, but won’t solve the issue.  If you’re in a position to help out by hiring someone to help with your web maintenance or other jobs they can do in isolation, you should do so. 

As this crisis continues to drag on, it’s really important we band together as a community and help each other to get work made, even if it ends up making many of us less money than it normally would. 

2023 Update: I was wrong, it wasn’t just freelancers that were hurt. As Aide dries up we’re likely to see a lot more pain on the lower 3 quintiles of the economic spectrum. I think this will hurt the entertainment industry as we’re a mass-market product that still only makes significant margins from transactional sales. I’m not sure film is still reversely dependent on the economy, and I’d write a blog about it if someone comments.

3. SVOD Surge

Given people are going to be locked at home with less money than normal and lots of time, we can expect to see viewership and subscriptions to Subscription Video on Demand platforms go up significantly.  Not all of these new subscribers will cancel when we return to the new normal.  I’m not the only one seeing this, it looks like development and acquisitions are on the rise form many of these people. 

It’s very possible that the balance of power between distributors and creators could see a minor shift in the coming months as distributors are going to need more content and the current embargo on production in many states, regions, and territories might cut down on the glut of content that’s been driving down acquisition prices recently. ​

2023 Update: The consolidation in streaming platforms ended up keeping license fees for the major streamers as low as they were pre-pandemic. It’s unlikely that trend will get much better any time soon.

4. AVOD Surge

Given the general financial issues that were facing the majority of Americans prior to this recession, many may seek to cut recurring subscription services.  This may well give rise to AVOD platforms like TubiTV and PlutoTV.  I bet Fox is really happy that they bought Tubi right about now. 

2023 Update: This was very much true, but the amount of consolidation in the AVOD space is looking like there will be a royalty cut due in part to advertisers tightening their belts. This will cause a lot of problems for indie productions.

5. TVOD Plummets

Transactional VOD hasn’t been healthy for quite a while.  If people are hurting for money, it’s unlikely they’ll continue to buy movies one at a time when there are so many films that are available for free or with a low subscription cost.  This might not happen immediately, but as the crisis wears on and belts get tighter the TVOD crunch might well continue to worsen. 

2023 Update: This one was right on the money. IT’s a rough time for micro-budget films outside of SVOD and AVOD.

6. ​Presale Surge

Given that we’re likely to see a surge in demand for content right as equity markets are drying up we may well see a surge in presales from distributors in order to fill the gap.  This is somewhat speculative, but there is ample historical precedent, most recently in 2008 after the economic meltdown.  However, it should be noted this can only go so far given production embargos. 

2023 Update: Presales did surge, and they’re still growing for small and midsize films. I’m negotiating a few right now.

7. Theaters may fold at a high rate

Theaters have been in trouble for quite a while.  Independent theaters have been very hard hit, but even giants like AMC may end up closing many of their locations instead of re-opening them.  The possible Amazon Acquisition of AMC is really quite interesting for the entire landscape. Drive-throughs also seem to be seeing a bit of a resurgence.

​2023 Update: Some indies folded, the chains largely survived, although some smaller chains took a haircut. Luckily, theatrical exhibition is still around.

8. Rise of legal simulstreaming

People are feeling lonely and isolated.  Film is an inherently social medium.  Given we can’t go to the theater as we did before, we might end up seeing the rise of simulcasts for consumers to watch content with their friends.  This is something that happened with the Netflix computer App, and Alamo Drafthouse starting virtual streamings limited to certain territories is quite an interesting development. 

2023 Update: Sadly I was wrong about widespread simulstreaming, but I am aware that it happened with families via zoom a lot at peak quarantine.

9. Death of DVD greatly Hastened

It’s no secret that physical media (DVD/Blu-Ray) has been in trouble for a while now.  Now that it’s been confirmed COVID-19 can live on plastic (like a DVD case) for several days, I can see consumers being even more hesitant to buy movies like this when there are so many options available on Streaming for free. 

2023 Update: I was right about this one, although there’s a bit of a nostalgic re-emergence of rental stores going on so there may still be a very limited niche market for physical media.

10. Easier Microbudget sales for a time.

I’ll end on a cheerier note for Most of my readers.  Acquisitions seem to be picking up since so many catalogs are being watched much more quickly than originally expected.  This spells an opportunity for many filmmakers.  

2023 Update: It was easy for a little bit, but the WGA (And probably SAG) strike may still represent an opportunity for micro-budget filmmakers. That said, I stand in solidarity with the Union and I think the cause is just, but I don’t really think micro-budget films are similar enough to be called competition, so let’s get those low-budget films out there so we can swell the ranks of the guilds.

If you want someone to help you sell your movie, track down a presale, or strategize how to market your movie Check out Guerrilla Rep Media Services below.

Also If you’re not convinced about Guerrilla Rep Media Services yet, grab my Free Film Business Resource pack for an ebook, a whitepaper, an investment deck template, and a whole lot more.

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Can Independant Filmmakers Survive the Streaming Wars?

It’s no longer a controversial statement that streaming has changed the whole game for independent film distribution.  It hasn’t been controversial for quite a while.  However, it is becoming apparent that not only has streaming changed the game, it might as well have become the game, at least here in the US.  That’s not really a good thing for Indies.  Here’s why.

Streaming has made such a vast library of content available people don’t need to buy movies.

The biggest reason that Subscription Video On Demand streaming has engulfed the entire media landscape is that it’s put a giant library of films at the fingertips of anyone for only around 6-15 bucks a month for most platforms.  It’s putting entire on-demand catalogs that are even more convenient than owning a film on DVD.

It wasn’t so big a threat when there were only a few companies in the space, but once HBO blew the doors open with the launch of HBO NOW the writing was on the wall for those of us paying attention.  We all knew that Disney and Warner would follow.  With Disney+ putting a gigantic pile of legacy content on their platform, it’s going to get harder and harder for independent films to compete.

Physical Media used to be the primary way people could watch films when they felt like it.

It used to be that licensing a film to A TV station was pretty lucrative, and didn’t really affect your physical media sales.  In fact, it often increased them.  People didn’t want to have to wait around for your film to screen if they liked it, so they bought the disk.  Yet SVOD companies license a film, and for the term of the license their subscribers can just watch the film wherever, whenever they want. 

This level of convenience has made it significantly more difficult for filmmakers and distributors to sell content for a transactional fee which has a much higher margin per unit sold.  When Netflix started the game, it was still just one platform, and many people didn’t have the level of internet needed to stream without a significant amount of lag.  This result often ends up that filmmakers and distributors are left with whatever the license fee for each film is, and will see little to no revenue beyond those licenses.

It basically means that not only is streaming taking up a much bigger part of a given film’s revenue mix, it’s also shrinking the pie. 

With so many platforms and so much content, there must be lots of licenses and acquisitions being made though, right?

It depends on how you’re looking at it.  Sure, these platforms are creating massive amounts of content, and acquiring still more.  However, the price they tend to pay for acquisition is lower than you’d think, and some of the terms tend to be a bit unreasonable.  For originals, it’s a long road requiring a strong package that 95% of filmmakers will never reach. 

You might think that many new platforms are going to be looking to make even more original content in order to make sure subscribers keep paying for their content.  There’s some truth to that, but the problem is that there are so few outlets likely to survive the streaming wars that the system of gatekeepers that the streamers were supposed to break may become even fewer than they were before. 

The big problem here is that there are A LOT of these same sorts of platforms seeking the attention of an oversaturated audience and market.  The impact is that there’s a lot less money to go around for indies, and much of the consumer base is just subscribing to a few services, and not buying a lot outside of that.  So unless a filmmaker has a strong engaged audience, they’re not going to be able to compete. 

Essentially, the SVOD wars intensify the problem creators have been facing for several years, and that’s the fact that while anyone can get their film out there, getting anyone to see it is an entirely different matter. ​

It all comes back to audience engagement.

This comes back to one thing. Build and engage with your audience, and create content that speaks to them on a deep level. It needs to evoke an emotion or speak to an experience that no one else can. In order to succeed, we Indies need to defragment our market and find our tiny place in it. We don’t need to be 8 people’s 6/10, we need to be 2 people’s 10/10.

Thanks for reading. This one was more of a think piece than my general practical advice. Let me know what you thought about it in the comments. If you like this and want more, please consider joining my mailing list, you’ll also get a great film business resource pack that includes templates, a free ebook, a whitepaper, and more!

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5 Things to expect from the 2019 American Film Market #AFM2019

AFM this year will be interesting.  Here’s the current state from someone who’s been going for 10 years, and has been a Practicing Producer’s rep for 6 years.  Two quick things before we get started.  

First, You should definitely go to AFM at least once.  It’s eye-opening, and if I hadn’t done it I probably wouldn’t have a career.

Second: These opinions are mine alone, and have not been approved, endorsed, or otherwise condoned by the International Film and Television Alliance (IFTA) owner of the American Film Market.  (AFM is also a Registered Trademark of the IFTA.)

And with that, we’re on to the less optimistic (or legal) parts of the current state of AFM and Film Markets.

Film Markets could be in trouble.

All Film markets might be in trouble.  I’ve spoken with many buyers, and they’re pretty much ready to pack up shop.  There’s nowhere near as much money in it as there used to be, and it’s difficult to contuse to turn a profit in this changing landscape.  They’re not going away in the next year or so, but they are likely to recede over time. 

AFM is Becoming much more filmmaker focused in their marketing, which means less involvement from Buyers and Sales agents.

AFM Themselves have been shifting focus to their filmmaker services and somewhat away from their buyer and exhibitor services.  

That's not necessarily a bad thing in general.  It's what I tend to do with content like this, but I go for a very different customer set than AFM has historically. 
​ 
Buyer numbers have been on the decline for a few years, and if they continue to decline it will be difficult to attract the higher-priced exhibitors, and the culture of AFM and all markets is likely to change.  The Image below should help illustrate my point. 

The current system is prone to collapse in a down economy

2008 was Terrible for AFM.  I’ve been expecting a recession to happen at any point since around this time last year.  While the time that I was expecting it to happen seems to have passed, I’m still convinced of an impending recession, but willing to admit I might have missed the timing and the immediacy. 

In any case, when the recession happened in 2008, the market dried up and it still hasn’t fully recovered.  If we were to see another recession, it might spell the nail in the coffin for AFM and potentially the entire market scene.  What would replace it has yet to be seen, as after Distribber’s recent collapse it will be very interesting to see how filmmakers can get their films out there. 

Buyers have been on the decline for a few years. 

I mentioned this above, but total buyer attendance have been on the decline for the past 2 years.  It’s difficult to tell whether the size and number of deals have been increased, but given that the number of tickets sold on the top 100 box office films have remained largely stationary despite the box office revenue going up as well as a few other metrics and the general sentiment of my contacts on the sales agency side I’d be inclined to doubt it. 

Again, if buyers dry up, sales agents won’t keep coming.  When I’ve talked to sales agents about this over drinks, there’s a feeling of extreme pessimism bordering on depression about the current state. 

AVOD and SVOD buyers likely to be the biggest players this year. 

Given that many believe there’s a looking recession, SVOD and AVOD players are going to be even more sought after than they already are. AVOD is free for all, and SVOD doesn’t require extra payment on the consumer end. Given that the economy is a house of cards, many people who are struggling financially are more likely to cut services and stop buying individual rentals. They might even cancel subscriptions, which is likely to lead to a greater viewership of TubiTv, PlutoTV and other similar services.

Thanks so much for reading. If you want more on AFM, Check out Last Week’s blog, my first appearance on IndieFilm Hustle, or my book. Also, if this all seems a little dauting, consider submitting your film via the link below.

Why you ABSOLUTELY MUST Become an Indiefilm Entrepreneur

The concept of filmmaking entrepreneurship has been coming into vogue for quite some time now but has really started to take hold in the zeitgeist of our industry in the last 3-6 months.  The culmination of this was the launch of the Filmtrepreneur website, blog, and podcast.  From Alex Ferrari (Best known for Indie Film Hustle.).

However, Alex is far from the first to advocate for filmmaking entrepreneurship, despite potentially being the loudest voice in the space.  This blog at ProductionNext explores a lot of the most influential voices on this topic. I’m among although I didn’t have the foresight to brand it that way.  I think the reason for this is that more and more people are catching on that if you really want to be an indie filmmaker, the best answer in the current state of the industry is to be an entrepreneur.  Here’s why.

1. You’ve (Probably) got to

If you don’t have the ability to move to New York or LA and network your way into the studio system and don’t want to work for a local TV affiliate, becoming an indiefilm entrepreneur is your best way to make a sustainable living.  Most of us would rather not have a side gig or a 9-5 in order to keep a roof over our heads, but if we don’t build a brand and a company around our work there isn’t going to be much of an option.

In essence, building your brand, leveraging that into a community, and leveraging both of those into creating a sustainable company is your best bet to building sustainable revenue for yourself from your work.

2. There’s no money in MAKING films, only SELLING them.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  Any accomplished filmmaker will know that you only spend money when you MAKE movies.  That’s fine, and it’s true for almost any product.  However, you can’t pay your bills if all your money goes to buying lenses and camera equipment.

If you get investors, you’ll need to pay them back.  If you put the film on your credit cards, you’ll need to pay those back too.  (Also, don’t do that.)

3. If you want a sustainable career in film, you need to make money

I know I said this in the last point, but you can’t pay your rent with exposure.  You also shouldn’t pay your crew this way. In order to make money, you need to sell your film.  As such, you should consider this from the moment you start writing your script.  You should think about your audience, your marketing strategy, and who is going to absolutely love your film to the point that they annoy their friends because they just won’t shut up about it.  That segues nicely to...

4. The Notion that if you just make a great movie, people will find it is a fallacy.

We all heard it in film school, but while there are a few kernels of truth to it, it’s not even close to true overall.  It’s definitely easier to sell a good movie than a bad one, and word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing.  That said, quality isn’t the only determining factor in selling a movie.  (Check out the box office numbers for Transformers if you don’t believe me.) Things like Genre, recognizable names, and the amount of publicity you can generate also have HUGE impacts on the salability of a film.

Regarding word of mouth, it’s like a virus.  If you don’t hit a critical mass, it won’t do you much good.  In order to get your critical mass, you need to have a strong marketing strategy and a well-defined target market that is ideally made up of an underserved niche.  The reason for the underserved niche is that it helps make it much more cost-effective to market the film.

Related: Why your film needs a niche market

5. It’s the best (and maybe only) path to true filmmaking freedom

If you want to make the movies you want to make, building a brand, a community, an audience, and a company is the best way to achieve that goal.  If you work up through the studio system, you’re not going to be likely to reach the upper echelons before relatively late in your career (if at all) Even then, you’re likely to be subject to studio mandate which will make it difficult to make the films you really want to make.

As such, if you want to make films that really strike your fancy, the best way to do so is via becoming a film entrepreneur.  I was speaking with Rob Hardy of Filmmaker Freedom about this shortly before writing this particular blog, and that’s a lot of the new direction for his filmmaking podcast, which you should check out.  (I’ve linked it below)

CHECK OUT THE FILMMAKER FREEDOM PODCAST |Apple Podcasts|

Thanks so much for reading!  If you want some help building your company, you should consider hiring a consultant with exits behind them. I’m one of those, learn more about my services in the services button below.  If you’re not ready to do that, check out my free film business resources pack. You get the Entrepreneurial Producer E-Book templates to help you make an investment deck, festival brochure, track distribution submissions, and more. It’s free when you sign up for my email list.

The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT Asset for growing your Indiefilm Career RIGHT NOW

Last week I wrote about how distribution has changed over the last several years.  This week, I thought I’d expand on the number one most important thing for independent filmmakers when it comes to building their brand and marketing their movies. What is it?

AUTHENTICITY

Gone are the days when you could simply push out your product with a cool poster and bomb trailer that had nothing to do with the film and expect to make a lot of money.  If you’re going to be a creator, especially one who focuses on selling content to Gen Z millennials like myself you’re going to have to make sure you’re authentic about it. Here’s why

Authenticity makes you more relatable

Most people (especially younger people) have been watching insane amounts of media from a young age.  As such, we’ve learned to tell when someone is full of it.  Most of the time, we can tell when people are playing a character (even if that character is TOO idealized a version of themselves) and when they’re not telling the whole truth.  The rise of youtube and social media has shown us that millennials crave authenticity. If you want to relate to your audience, you’ll need to be authentic. 

Authenticity helps you build stronger relationships with your community and fan base.

Similarly, if you’re not authentic, it’s very difficult to build a relationship with your audience or your community.  It’s not the 80s anymore.  You can’t just blast out music and ads in a pink windbreaker, puffy shirt, big hair, and striped socks and expect people to buy your movie.  Every brand tries to build a relationship with its potential customers using various social media platforms.  However, you can have the advantage, if you’re careful about it. 

Major brands are such a large collection of people it’s not possible for them to maintain an authentic, personal brand.  As such, they generally need to spend a huge amount of money on advertising and sponsorships to keep moving their products. ​

You, on the other hand, need only be authentic and work to speak for your audience in a relatable and non-condescending way. 

Authenticity helps you organically grow your brand reach

Paid growth on social media is expensive.  Authentic, valuable content has more viral reach, and as such it will help you grow your brand, your impressions, and as a result your audience.  If something seems extremely corporate or sponsored or unrelatable, nobody is going to share it. Most filmmakers can’t afford the fees to boost content regularly enough to build their entire brand by it. 

Authenticity correlates to higher reviews

I talked about this at the top of this blog, and in much more detail in this blog. But you can’t just sell your film as something other than it is anymore. If you do, the reviews will suffer. If you made a wonderfully written break in narrative time thriller and then it gets marketed as a heart-racing action film, people are going to be pissed. I would be too, if I was expecting Commando and got Memento.

Thanks so much for reading! If you want to know more, you should join my mailing list for blog digests of blogs just like this one, as well as an awesome film marketing resource pack. That button is right below. I don’t just write about film distribution, I also used to run a US distribution company, and I still represent films to bigger players to myself. If you still need distribution for your film, you should consider submitting it. I rep on commission and there’s no submission fee.

How Did Film Distribution Get So Broken?

It’s no secret that many (if not most) filmmakers think film distribution is broken.  While there are many reasons for it, part of it is due to the rapid change in the amount of money flowing to distributors, and what constituted effective marketing.  What works for marketing films now isn't what worked in the past, and the systems distributors built themselves around have fallen apart.  Here's an elaboration.  

First, some history.

​Independent Film Distribution used to be primarily a game of access.  By controlling the access and becoming a gatekeeper, it was easy to make buckets of cash.  If you had a VHS printer and access to a warehouse facility that could help you ship to major retail outlets you could make literal millions off of a crappy horror film.

In those days it was also significantly harder and significantly more expensive to make a film, as you’d need to buy 16mm or 35mm film, get it duplicated, cut it by hand using a viola, and then reassemble it and have prints made.  This was a very expensive process, so the number of independent films that were made was much smaller than it is today. 

Then DVD came along, and around the same time some of the early films from the silent era that actually had followings entered the public domain.  As such, a good amount of companies started printing those to acquire enough capital to buy libraries and eventually build themselves into major studios.  Sure, DVD widened the gate a bit, but it also expanded the market so everyone was happy. 

Around this time, Non-Linear Editors and surprisingly viable digital and tape cameras were coming into prominence.  As a result, it became much more possible to make an independent film than it was before.  Of course, at that time it was still beyond the reach of most people, and since the average amount of content being made went up, the demand was growing enough that there still wasn’t a massive issue with oversaturation.

A similar expansion was expected with Blu-Ray, but at around the same time, alternative services like iTunes were starting to become viable as broadband internet was becoming commonplace.  As such, the demand for physical media started to dwindle, and as a result, the revenue being made dropped.
​

At the same time, Full HD cameras were now very affordable, and some even rivaled 35mm film.  So the amount of money being made in the industry went down, and more films were being made than ever before. 

Shortly after that, the ability to disintermediate and cut out the gatekeepers came to be.  As such, the market became flooded with often low-quality films that the challenge was no longer getting your film out there, it was now getting your film noticed.  That’s where we are now, and nobody has fully been able to solve that problem yet. ​

Here’s a summary of how we got there, and how the process of distribution has changed.

Access USED to be enough

It used to be that access was all you needed.  Once you had that, you could make an insane amount of money selling other people’s content.
​

Sell it on the box art

The box art being caught was the most important thing.  Stores didn’t let you return movies because you didn’t like them, and other than your own limited circle of friends consumers didn’t have a lot of power to let people know about bad movies, or bad products in general. 

Sell it on the trailer

Even if it was bad, nothing would come of it.  Once you had their money, that was all you needed.  The idea of making your money in the first weekend before bad word of mouth got around was much more viable as people couldn’t just tweet it out or rant about it on Facebook or YouTube.

Let’s contrast that with how things work Now:

Access is easy

Anyone with a few thousand dollars can put their film up on most Transactional platforms on the internet.  You can also put it on Amazon or Vimeo yourself for free.  There are very few in terms of quality controls. 
​

the Poster/keyart is still important, but reviews are more important.

Sure, people still get their eyes caught by a poster.  But the reviews matter significantly more in terms of getting them to a purchase decision.  The poster may catch their eye, but the meta score from users on whatever platform you’re watching the film on is important. 

The trailer might still be the deciding factor

Generally, after people see the poster, they’ll read the synopsis, and then they’ll either watch the trailer or read the reviews.  If they watch the trailer, they may have more leniency on reviews.

Also, if the trailer is really good, it can get a bit of viral spread.

If it’s bad, it will become known.

Thanks to social media, if the film is bad it’s not hard to let people know about it. If the film is mismarketed, people will know. As such, authentic marketing to the film is extremely important.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this blog, you’ll probably like the stuff you get on my mailing list. That includes a film marketing & distribution resource packet, as well as monthly digests of blogs just like this one. Or, if you’re researching whether or not you want to self-distribute your independent film, you might want to submit it. I have hybrid models for distribution that help filmmakers build their brands, and get the right amount of visibility for their films so they can rise above the white noise. Check out the buttons below, and see you next week!

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Should you STILL Release your Indie Film on DVD?

We’ve all heard about how Physical media is dead. However, for a long time, there was still a significant amount of money in DVD and physical media. In fact, DVD impulse buys are and large rental orders are a lot of what allowed the independent film industry to exist at all. TVOD (Transactional Video on Demand) has not risen to replace the revenues lost from Physical Media, so it only makes sense to try to get revenue for your film from as many sources as possible to try and cobble together an ROI from all the different pieces. ​

But in order to truly understand the problem, it helps to understand the history behind it.  So I’ve decided to make this into a 2-part series.  The first of which (this one) gives background and context for how physical media came to prominence and why the fall of physical media spells trouble for the industry, and the second examines the real question of does Physical Media still make sense as part of the planned revenue mix for indie films. However, in order to properly utilize the practical advice, it helps to have a thorough background of how these things came to be and as a result which tactics are most likely to succeed.

This part is about the history of physical media in the film industry.  Check out this blog for a more practical guide to making money from it.

Blu-Rays vs DVDs

Prior to VHS (god that makes me feel old) the primary way people would see movies is either when they aired on TV, or when they toured through the local cinema.  This meant there were both huge gatekeepers and huge costs associated with distributing a film, as you needed a 35mm print for every theater you were going to be in, and there wasn’t much else that you could do to get your work seen.  When VHS came along, a lot of that changed.

The VHS market largely defined the independent film scene starting in the 80s.  But VHS tapes were expensive to manufacture.  This led to fewer gatekeepers holding more power.  VHS tapes started out exceedingly expensive, and it was only when Top Gun made you watch a full-Trailer length Pepsi commercial that the price of VHS dropped low enough that most consumers could afford it.
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When DVD entered the scene, there were some initial wins from people with DVD Replicates printing lots of recently public domain films to bolster their catalogs, then using the revenue to bu up old catalogs and grow their revenue even further.  So even though more people had access to the technology, the Lower price point and manufacturing costs expanded the markets​

When Blu-Ray entered the market, many expected that it would largely act as DVD had.  That was not the case.  Around the same time Blu-Ray dropped, TVOD became viable.  While the 2.99 movie rentals from iTunes worked very well at first, it wasn’t long before Netflix launched the first public iteration of its Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platform.  Once people could stream a huge array of movies over the internet any time they wanted for free, many consumers didn’t see the need to buy physical media or pay for content the same way they had in the past.

Also, with the glut of content that was beginning to be created by the wide availability of cheap HD cameras and other lowered equipment costs, the price SVOD and PayTV platforms were willing to pay for content took a nose dive. This is among the biggest challenges that are facing the current indie film industry.  How do we break out from the white noise, and create enough revenue to pay our investors back? 

​I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers, but it’s a lot of what I work towards as an entrepreneur, If you want more of what I’ve learned from my decades in the business, grab my resource pack to get an e-book with exclusive content and a whole bunch of other goodies like a whitepaper, templates. and a blog digest.

Thanks for reading.  Check out this blog for the practical portion.

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The HOT and NOT Film Genres of 2019

If you’re a filmmaker, you’ve probably heard that making genre pictures is generally the best way to get your start.  They can be a good way for you to start developing a community, and building a brand around yourself, your company, and your work.  But the popular genres change on something of a regular basis.  So to start the new year off right, I’m writing this blog to share the hot genres of 2019.

Oh, if you’re not convinced as to why Genre is so important, I encourage you to read the blog below.

Related: Why Genre is VITAL to Indiefilm Marketing Success

1. - Hot - Family

I know, you were probably expecting me to say horror or action.  Well, while some of those might be on the list, Family is at the top of it.  There’s a huge demand for family films right now, and it’s not being adequately filled.  That said, it’s kind of hard to make a family film well on the cheap due to child labor laws and safety concerns.  If you can, great, it will be easy to find distribution.  If not, then you might want to move on down to #3 on the hot list. 

Generally, family adventure content is also something you can pre-sell if you get the right package.  Animated sells the best, but live-action works as well.  Mixing it with animals or international holidays is also good for trying to attach a presale.  All of that being said, you’re going to need a really strong script and a strong package to get that presale. ​

2. - Hot - Action

Surprise surprise.  If you want to make a film that’s easy to sell, make an action movie.  As we all know the problem with that is that action movies tend to be expensive.  Even with that, you’ll probably need a name in it to really get the sales price up where you need it to be.

If you’ve already made a few projects, Action films can get some level of resale financing.  However, you’ll be much better off if you focus on a popular subgenre as well.  As of right now adventure or sci-fi looks like the best bet. 

3. - Hot - Thriller

Psychological thrillers tend to be one of the best options for first time filmmakers as the film is easy to sell, there’s a built in audience, and they can be shot on the cheap.  Just keep in mind to make sure that the film is suspenseful, otherwise, you’re just rebranding a genre.

Note from the future - This was and remains more warm than hot (as of mid 2023)

Now for the Not so Hot Genres.

1. - Not - Drama

But Ben!  I read that dramas have the most breakout potential!  All the Oscars winners are dramas!  Yeah, but from those articles written by Bruce Nash and Stephen Follows also go into great detail to say that most of these films were budgeted between 1 and 3.5 million dollars, generally went through something like Sundance Labs on the Nichols Fellowships, and had some REALLY strong cast involved.  If that sounds like your project, great.  Make a drama.  If it doesn’t, make a thriller.

The sad fact of the matter is that in order to make any real money, a drama has to be EXCEEDINGLY good.  As in, 9 or above on IMDb.  Also, dramas tend not to export well unless they have A-list talent in all the major roles.  I believe for most of my readers that’s not really in the cards.  However, if this does sound like you, an extra big thanks for reading, I’d like to remind you I have a submissions portal.

2. - Not - Comedy

Unfortunately, comedy is very difficult to sell internationally due to the cultural intricacies involved in making any situation funny.  As with drama, you’ll need to make something with strong, recognizable name talent at the helm to be able to make any significant amount of money from it. 

The Mixed: Horror

The future of horror is somewhat uncertain. It made a strong showing at AFM 2018, but in 2017 it was dead. If you can make a horror film better than you could make anything else, then you should consider it. If you can’t, I’d say focus on making a well-made horror film.

Note From the Future: Horror bounced back more than I expected, but the rest was right.

Also, you should join my email list for blog digests segmented by topic, and A FREE Film Market Resource package, plus everything on the button below.

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How to Finance your Indie Film/Media Project in 2019

The year is starting to wrap up, so now’s a good time to plan for how to make your career skyrocket in 2019.  If you’re not developing a film, you should be.  But if you read last week’s blog outlining why we’re likely going to be looking at a recession in 2019, and what that means for the film industry then you might be understandably nervous as to how you’re going to get your work done.  So here’s my advice to you.

By the way, this blog is going to heavily build on last week’s blog.  If you haven’t yet, read it by clicking below.  I’m going to reference it a lot in this week’s blog.

Related: Where the Film Industry is Headed in 2019

Angel Investment Money will be Harder to Find but can be Easier to Close.

If I’m right about the impending recession, then it’s likely that investors are going to get skittish.    However, investors will likely need to put their money somewhere.  In an uncertain economy, the film industry becomes comparably less risky, so you might want to talk to your investors about how the risk profile of the investment has become slightly less risky than it was.  However, you’ll need to make sure you have a way to capture attention and get eyeballs on your film. 

It may well be that your investors kind of took a bath when the stock market takes a pretty massive hit.  If that’s the case, and it looks like their portfolio will bounce back then you should have them ask their broker about a portfolio loan.  The blog below will provide much more insight. 

Related: One Simple Trick to Reopen Conversations with Investors

Pre-Sale Money might become more Viable

Given that we discussed last week how SVOD and AVOD platforms are likely to come out of the recession with an increased market share, it’s more likely that they’re going to need to put up their own money to finance content to keep their pipelines full. 

That said, you’re going to need to develop a good package, and you’re going to need more than just a presale to finance your film.

Consider a Pivot to Episodic Content

As discussed in last week’s blog, if a recession hits, the film markets are likely going to be in more trouble than they already are.  Given that the way we generally consume content has shifted from the theater to binge-watching shows on platforms like Hulu and Netflix.  If you have the ability to get enough money together to get an entire season of TV content together you should consider it as an alternative to financing a feature.  That being said, I wouldn’t bother with a pilot.

If you can’t get 10-13 episodes of TV content together, then you should consider a web series.  It’s easier to guarantee distribution, and if you do the web series fest circuit, you can build enough buzz to get a strong series deal out of it.  Something similar happened with Diary of an Awkward Black Girl which turned into HBO’s Insecure.

I’m currently working on a blog post that dives into this in much more detail based on a segment from one of my workshops.  When it’s released, I’ll post it here. 

Tax Incentives may well go Down.

As the economy shrinks, states may feel the need to cut back on spending.  Often, the arts are one of the first places where deep cuts are felt, especially in red states.  So if you’re planning on using a tax incentive to finance your film once the recession hits, you may want to reconsider.  I’ll admit, this one involves a lot more speculation than most of the others. 

Grants may be Tricky.

If you were counting on a grant for your film to get funded, you may be in a rough spot since when people have to tighten their belts, charitable giving tends to go way down.  This isn’t certain though.  Some larger foundations are likely going to be able to weather a few years in a bad economy before taking some big cuts. 

Now Could be a Good Time to make your First Feature

If you can make your first feature for a very small amount of money, now might be a good time. You’re likely going to have the time to kill, and some of your contacts who tend to work on corporate videos may be less busy than they were due to the recession.

If you decide to go this way, I would make sure you make a film that can be profitable on SVOD and AVOD alone, and that you spend time developing and engaging with your following across all platforms. When money is tight, it’s much easier to convince someone to watch your movie on Amazon than it is to convince them to buy it.

If you’ve made a low-budget film, and gotten it reasonably widely known and distributed, then you’ll be in a much better position to get investment when the economy bounces back.

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday. Come back next week for my final part in this 3 part series, the Hot and Not Genres of 2019!​

In the meantime, check out my mailing list!  You’ll get lots of great goodies, including blog digests organized by topic, an AFM Resources Packet, and money saving resources for film markets and festivals.

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Where the Film Industry is Headed in 2019

Sun Tzu wrote the following in The Art of War:  “The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers, and distances, constitutes the test of a great general.”  While no one can tell what the future holds, there are some trends that many of us have been following that are greatly impacting the way we run our businesses. This blog is one observer’s look at the position of the overall independent film industry, and some level of the economy as a whole.

​The US Economy is heading for a Recession

Now I’m just a guy who helps people make movies.  I’m in no way qualified to give you financial advice or recommend stocks or bonds.  I’m just a guy who follows these things and is paying enough attention to know that the indicators are there.  So you can choose whether or not to listen to me on this one, but it is something that I’m quite certain will happen by the end of 2019.

I originally thought that the stock market would start to dip significantly around March or April, and then we’d have a fairly widespread crash around the end of October 2019.   There were a lot of things to do with the fiscal year and annual payments made by corporations to make me think that timeline would end up being about right. 

However, the stock market is already more volatile than it should be at this time of year.  I thought the Trump tax cuts that mainly financed stock buybacks would inflate the stock market longer than they seem to be doing right now.  To me, this may indicate that we’re either in for more trouble than I initially thought, or we’re going to be in trouble much sooner than October.  As of scheduling this post to be published, I’m not entirely sure which that’s going to be. 

So you’re probably thinking “Great, thanks, Ben. I read your blog for insights into the film industry, not for rampant speculation on the state of the entire economy.  I JUST WANT TO MAKE MOVIES!” Well, as I said at the top, if you want to be successful, you must understand the terrain you’re playing in, and that’s why I wrote as much about this impending recession as I did.  Now there’s probably another thing you’re thinking.

It’s Unlikely the Film Industry is still Mildly Reversely Dependent on the Economy.

Most filmmakers know that the golden age of film was during the great depression.  Most producers believe that the film industry is still mildly reversely dependent on the economy.  I’m going to buck orthodoxy here and say that I don’t think it is anymore.  At least not in the way it used to be. 

The film industry USED to be mildly reversely dependent on the economy because it was a comparably cheap way of getting out.  But now ticket prices have risen to the point that a family of 4 going to the movies will cost around 150 bucks once you factor in popcorn, concessions, parking, gas, and more.  Compare this to buying a game like Super Smash Brothers, where all 4 family members could get dozens if not hundreds of hours of entertainment for only 60 bucks.  (Although, I have yet to see a family where that would totally work for Smash.) Due to other forms of entertainment entering the marketplace, movies are no longer the cheap option.

Further, when the last major recession hit in 2008 the independent film markets took a pretty big blow, and have yet to fully recover.  If we see a massive crash next year, it’s likely that the markets are in for another blow just as they were really starting to recover.

What about the home video/VOD market?

Most people know that the home video market is kind of in the toilet.  Pretty much nobody buys DVDs outside of the Midwest and rural areas with poor internet connectivity.  This problem is likely going to get worse when the economy gets rough, as those areas tend to be some of the worst hit by economic crunches.

Regarding Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) I think we’re going to see those sales figures dropping as well, and they’re already on the way down.  After all, why pay to watch a movie when Netflix has so many of them?

Some platforms may do alright since they’re primarily used by older people who tend to have more money.  These platforms are ones similar to Comcast InDemand, DirectTV, and Dish Network.  If I had to guess, I’d say that Dish was the most likely to lose subscribers first, as they’re already kind of the budget option, and cord-cutting has become such a viable option that those looking to save money on cable bills may look there first.

Airlines and other ancillary revenue streams are likely to see a drop in passengers, and thus likely have a corresponding drop in their acquisitions budgets for media.  This will probably affect smaller-scale projects before bigger ones because to the average consumer having the Marvel Catalog is significantly more useful than having the Criterion Collection.

That pretty much just leaves Subscription VOD (SVOD) and Advertising Supported (AVOD). 

I think that larger SVOD platforms are going to be in a very good position to gobble up more market share.  Since so many forms of distribution such as theatrical, Transactional VOD (TVOD) are likely to see their revenues diminish, I believe it’s logical to assume that the bigger named SVOD platforms will grow to take up their place in the market.  These platforms would include offerings like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO NOW, and some of the new ones entering the fray like Disney and potentially Apple.  

To me, it’s only logical that as belts tighten, cord cutting will increase and these platforms are likely to largely take up the air left by the deflation of other sectors of the distribution chain.

That being said, I think that smaller services are in trouble. Fandor all but went out of business earlier in December, and FilmRise shut its doors recently. These were two services targeted at bringing eclectic artsy films to cinephiles across the country. Unfortunately, they just couldn’t make themselves profitable.

This leads to one other piece of this landscape that you should be paying attention to. You should be looking at VOD Service bundles like VRV. It’s not that dissimilar to a cable package, but much less expensive and all OTT. It looks like most of the content from FilmRise will end up in something akin to those sorts of packages, or largely absorbed into bigger platforms owned by their parent companies.

Finally, we’re on to Advertising Supported Video on demand. This one is where I think the biggest boom is going to come from. People with no money but lots of time will watch ads, and the number of people that’s true for is set to increase substantially in the event of a recession.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with my final blog of the year, which will show you how to take the information you learned here and turn it into a functional strategy for building your career in 2019.

In the meantime, make sure you’re on my mailing list, it’s a great bargain at the recession-friendly price of FREE.  You also get lots of great stuff, all of it listed on the button below

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Why Every Filmmaker Needs a Strong Personal Brand

Most filmmakers want to make movies.  However, few think about establishing themselves a brand as a filmmaker.  In the immortal words of Alex Ferrari of Indie Film Hustle: “If you don’t think you need a brand as a filmmaker, you’re wrong.”  As wonderful as I personally find that quote, I think it needs a little elaboration. What follows are 5 reasons you NEED a brand as a filmmaker.

1. It helps to further relationships with your customer

A brand is essentially the cumulative interactions any potential business partner or customer has with an entity or organization.  So in a sense, saying a brand helps you further your relationships with your customer is a bit redundant.  However, the idea of you your brand, is essentially the personification of your company.  Having this personified image of your company makes it much easier for your clientele to establish a relationship with your company.

2. It helps people better identify with the creators behind the content.

At least when a brand is starting out in the film industry, the brand will be heavily associated with the filmmakers themselves.  As such, for the first couple of films your company makes, the brand you’re developing will also be furthering the personal brands of the key crew.  If your key crew tends to put out similar films time and time again under your production company’s brand, then eventually the brand itself will develop a following of its own.  After a time, it creates a feedback loop.

3. It gives your audience something to you and your work with beyond a single film.

​If you develop your brand correctly, then consumers will come to know what films you make that they like.  Giving your customers a brand to rally behind can really help them to develop a relationship with the creators.  Instead of being able to say I really Liked Paranormal Activity, customers can say I really like the movies Blumhouse puts out.

4. It helps you develop a community around yourself.

People can have a really deep association with brands.  Look at what happened when Coca-Cola Released New Coke.  Even though taste test after taste test proved that consumers strongly preferred New Coke to Coca-Cola, the brand eventually experienced a tsunami of customer complaints for getting rid of the old flavor of Coca-Cola.  Essentially, the brand had built such a large community that were so attached to their original product, when they took it away a small but extremely vocal part of their community couldn’t handle it. Even though many of those parts of the community were shown they liked New Coke Better in blind taste tests. 

Branding and Community building can be so powerful that even when a customer prefers an alternative product, they’ll keep coming back to yours for that warm fuzzy feeling they get when they use your product. Don’t forget, that can be a double-edged sword if you ever want to pivot to somehting new.

5. It turns you from a person to an icon.

Most of the people reading this already know that JJ Abrams is the head of Bad Robot Productions. However, there are a lot more people involved in Bad Robot than just JJ Abrams. The bumper of the robot running through the field gives sets the scene for an exciting time at the movies since you associate it with other times you saw great movies that were preceded by that bad robot bumper. You remember that bumper, it’s iconic. Such associations are how JJ has become an icon that will likely outlast him.

If you want help building your brand, you should check out my FREE indiefilm business resource package. It’s got an e-book, a whitepaper, lots of templates, and a monthly blog digest to help you grow your knowledge base so you can build a filmmaking career.

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Top 4 Reasons to Crowdfund your Independent Film

Most filmmakers hate the idea of crowdfunding.  While nobody likes constantly having their hands out and asking their friends for money for a whole month straight, it’s something that most filmmakers are going to have to do early in their careers.  It’s very possible that most filmmakers will have to do it more than once.  But the reason you crowdfund isn’t just about the money.  There are lots of other reasons crowdfunding can be a boon for a filmmaker’s career.  Here are 4 of them.

1. It’s one of the Most Viable Ways to get First Money in.

The first money in is always the hardest.  In the past, the most common way to get the money was from friends and family.  More recently, this has been replaced with crowdfunding, although in practice it’s still primarily a friends and family round, it’s just a scaled-up version of it that handles taking in the payments for you. It’s also something you can do even if you don’t have a rich uncle. 

​But keep in mind, nothing worth having is free.  While this is one of the most viable ways to get first money in, it’s far from easy.

Related: Top 5 indiefilm Crowdfunding Techniques

2. It’s one of the Quickest Ways to get Money you don’t have to Pay Back.

But wait, Ben, haven’t you said in the past that a crowdfunding campaign’s preparation starts a whole year in advance?  Like in this blog linked right below this sentence?

Related: Indiefilm Crowdfunding timeline

Well incredulous voice in my head that sometimes comes out in the form of content on my website, I did indeed say that.  Not only did I say that, but I stand by it.  I stand by it due to the fact that the real, hardcore prep only starts about 3 months prior to the campaign, and the work before that is primarily engaging your community (which you should be doing anyway.) 

Generally, grant money isn’t very fast, tax incentives both tend to be rather slow and come with a lot of strings, and product placement tends to not pay out until the film is completed, and often isn’t even money that’s directly given to you.  Pretty much every other form of financing are things you have to pay back. 

Although it should be noted that you do have some pretty big responsibilities to your backers.  You need to fulfill the rewards you promised them, and you need to keep them up to date on your progress as you move through the various stages of development. ​

3. It’s a way to Engage with your Community at an Early Stage

One of the biggest things that set successful filmmakers apart from hobbyists in the current landscape is the ability to cultivate community around themselves and their work.  Crowdfunding can be a really powerful means to support this end.  Crowdfunding is a great way to identify and engage your early adopters and the core of your community.  It’s a great way to stay involved with them and make them feel like they’re an important part of your project.  In actuality, they are important parts of your project. 
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But engaging with your community is about far more than getting crowdfunding backers. Your core community of backers can become your most vocal advocates from the earliest stage.  If your work comes out well, they’re likely to share it with their friends and start your word-of-mouth marketing when it comes time to distribute your project.  They’re a lot more likely to do this than the average person since they’ll have been around since the beginning.  Their friends might even join your community the next time you crowdfund. ​

4. It’s Validation for your Project

One of the biggest things investors look for in a project is also one of the things that’s the hardest for filmmakers to provide.  Especially in the early stages of their career.  Having a successful crowdfunding campaign proves to investors that not only is there a market for this project, but that you know how to reach them.  This is a huge hurdle to overcome when approaching angel investors.

That being said, it’s important to keep in mind that the reverse is also true.  If a project fails its crowdfunding campaign, it’s incredibly difficult to convince an investor that there is an addressable target market.  Or, at least that you have the ability to address said target market.  So with that in mind, you should only try to raise what you know you can get via crowdfunding, and then plan to get the remaining sources via other financing methods. 

Thanks so much for reading!  If you liked this content, you grab my film business resource package. You’ll get an ever-growing list of templates, money-saving resources, and even an e-book or two.  You’ll also get monthly digests of blogs segmented by topic.

5 Takeaways from AFM 2018

I’ve been going to the American Film Market® for 9 years now, and I’ve been chronicling what’s going on with the market in many ways from podcasts to blogs and even a book or two.  So given that AFM® 2018 wrapped up yesterday, I thought I would do something of a post-mortem.  While I’ll outline my feelings on the whole thing in this blog, the long and short of it is that the state of the American Film Market is mixed

But before I dive into it too deeply, I’d like to say this.  My vantage point on this is purely my own, and subject to the flaws that one would expect from experiences of someone only attending the market for a few days this year.  I went on an industry badge because I simply needed to take a few meetings to check in on things I’ve already placed with Sales Agents, as well as shop a couple of my newer projects to the people I prefer to do business with.

I considered exhibiting this year but decided against it after hearing how slow Cannes was in May, as well as the massive drop in buyers AFM Experienced last year.  We’ll see how that changes next year.   One last note, I wrote this blog in traffic in LA, while my wife drove.  I normally don't publish first drafts, but it's time-sensitive, so apologies for any typos. 

So without Further Adieu, let’s get into the post-game.

1.  Buyer numbers appear to be up, and they’re buying

Word in the corridors last year was that AFM went from around 1800 buyers in 2017 to around 1200 buyers in 2017.  After talking to a few sales agents who shall remain nameless, it appears that the total buyer count at this year’s AFM is somewhere in the vicinity of 1325.  While walking the corridors I definitely saw a lot more green badges than last year. 
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Not only were there more buyers there.  It appears that they’re actually buying films.  I heard several sales agents remarking that they had closed multiple sales at the market, and the buyers were sticking around much longer than they have in years previous.  Overall, this is good for the market, especially given that for many years almost all of the business was done in follow-up not actually during the market, especially for smaller-budget films. ​​

2.  Exhibitor numbers appeared to be down

In previous years, both the second and third floors of AFM were packed with smaller sales agencies,  This year, only the third floor was booked and even then it seemed as though fewer offices were booked.  Also, it appeared that many of the offices on the 8th floor seemed to be vacant. 
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After talking with a few exhibitors, it appears likely that this trend is going to continue next year.  Several I talked to were unsure of whether or not they would continue to exhibit at AFM.  Although we’ll see if new names come up to take their places.

3. The Entirety of the Loews required a badge to access

This made a lot of headlines prior to the market.  I was hesitant to believe that this would be a good thing for the market, particularly for the high priced film commission exhibitors on the 5th floor.  I only showed up to the market on Saturday, but apparently it was extremely quiet for the days preceding it.  The market seemed somewhat slow to me, but mildly busier than I expected it to be on Saturday, and, but began steadily dropping off on Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday was VERY slow, even by the generally slow standards of what is functionally the last day of the market.  

Word on the street is that many of the regular exhibitors on the 5th floor were not too happy with it, especially for the first few days.  Although I’ll keep my sources on that anonymous.  One notably missing 5th-floor exhibitor was Cinando.  It’s possible they moved, but the spot that they normally occupied was vacant.  This could be due in part to the growing prominence of MyAFM. 

In some ways, it was nice, though.  It was never too hard to find a seat, and once you got into the building there were no additional security checks.  Not sure if that makes up for the drawbacks though. 

4. The Location Expo on the 5th floor was fantastically useful, but under-attended

AFM opened one of the Loews Hotel Ballrooms for use by film commissions and specialty service providers starting on Saturday.  It was really useful to be able to talk to various commissions and compare incentives.  However, there very few times I saw more than a handful of people there, and I dropped by at least 8 or 9 times because of various sorts of business I had to do with some of the vendors in the rooms.  (More soon)
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Overall I hope to see it again, but I can’t help but think it would be more useful to all involved if it were in an area that did not require a badge to check out. 

5. Early Stage Money exists there (For the Right Projects

I was surprised to see how much traction my team got for an early stage project, despite the fact it has a first time feature director.  Admittedly, we came in with a good amount of money already in place, and it’s a good genre for this sort of thing but the fact that there might be a decent amount to come out and report in blogs early next year.
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Thanks so much for reading!  If you haven’t already, check out the first book on film markets, written by yours truly.  Also, join my mailing list for free film market resources so you’re ready for future film markets.

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All opinions my own. AFM and the American Film Market are registered trademarks of the Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA) This article has not in any way beed endorsed by the IFTA, AFM, or any of its affiliates.

7 Reasons Courting an Investor is Like Dating

There’s an old adage that Investing is like Dating.  In fact, I’ve talked about the similarities both on meetings with investors, and dates with people who are qualified to be investors.  So as something of a tongue-in-cheek yet still (Mostly) safe-for-work post, here are 7 ways courting an investor is like dating. ​

​1. Your goal is to see how compatible you are with the other person.

Most of the time, if you want to get into bed with someone, you want to be compatible with them first.  Getting money from an investor isn’t like a one-night stand.  You don’t just get the check and then never hear from them again.  Getting into bed with an investor is a long-term deal, so making sure you two work well together is simply a must.  Otherwise, the break-up may not be pretty. 

2. If you come off as Asking for too much the first time out, you probably won't get a second.  

The first time you go out with an investor is kind of like that first coffee date.  you’re both sizing each other up, and you want to see how you click.  If you went on a first date trying to make out and take the partner back to your place, it’s probably not going to end well for you.  Similarly, if you start asking an investor to whip out their checkbook on the first meeting, then you’re not likely to get a call back for a second. 

In summation, the goal of your first date should always be to get a second.  If you’re out with an investor, then the second meeting is the sole goal of the first meeting. 

3. It Generally takes at least 3-5 meetings to jump into bed together.  

As with dating, it generally takes 3-5 meetings to decide to get into bed together.  Often, the longer it takes the more likely it is that the relationship will be fruitful down the line.  At least to a point.  If it takes more than 7 meetings to get a check, the investor (or your romantic partner) might just want to be friends. 

4. Both Parties have something to gain, but generally speaking one has significantly more options than the other.  

Just like women are generally more sought after than men in the dating scene, Investors are generally more sought after than entrepreneurs. This may sound crass, but the only pretty girl in the room is going to get a lot more offers than the 10 guys pursuing her.  The ratio is similar for investors. 

So sure, while everybody is looking for a mate, and every investor needs deal flow, generally one side has more options than the other.  It’s important to remember that when attempting to court an investor.

5. They're Probably going to Google You.

Everybody does diligence in this day and age.  If you didn’t think your date was going to check out your online presence, you should probably think again.  Investors are going to look into your past history, and maybe even check your credit before they invest in you.  Dates will do as much as they can on a similar level, but probably not check your credit.

Related: 5 Steps for Vetting Your Investors

6. If you jump into bed on the first date, you're in for a wild ride.  a

One-night stands can be fun and all, but if you jump into bed with the wrong person right after meeting them it can be a real nightmare.  (Or so I’ve been told…) If you don’t take the time to get to know somebody before you get into a serious relationship with the, you’re going to be in for a nasty surprise.  All investment deals are serious relationships.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

7. When you seal the deal, you might be stuck with that person for YEARS.

If you take money from someone you’ll be dealing with them until all investors somehow exit the company.  This can be many years.  The Series A Investors at Twitter didn’t exit until their IPO Years later, and a film generally takes 3-5 years to pay back their investors, if they ever do.

If you do get into bed with an angel investor to finance your feature film or web series, they’re going to be a part of your business for a long time.  It’s not just about finding independent film angel investors, it’s also about courting them and making sure you’ve found the right investor, not just the first investor who makes you an offer.

If you want some help with this courting process, my free resource package is a great place to start. It’s got a free e-book that might answer some questions your investor may have. It’s also got a deck template you can use in your first meeting. Get it for FREE below.

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Why Exclusivity is GOOD for Filmmakers

In closing contracts, one question I get asked a lot is why distributors, sales agents, and producer’s reps need exclusivity when we do our jobs.  Sometimes, this question even comes from the lawyers of my clients.  I understand there is risk when giving someone the exclusive right to represent your project, so I thought I would write up a blog post examining exactly why we need exclusivity.  Generally speaking, the goal is not to tie up your rights and make it so you can’t do anything with them.  There are lots of other reasons why sales agents or producer’s reps need exclusivity.

To truly understand the need for exclusivity, one must first understand the nature of our business.  We deal in the buying and selling of rights to infinitely replicate content.  If something can be infinitely replicated, the only way to ensure it's value is to control who has the right to produce it, or to authorize others to replicate the content.  

I can guarantee you that any sales agent you would actually want to work with will require exclusivity at least for international.  If you try to negotiate their exclusivity out of a contract, I can guarantee you will not be successful.  It's the nature of the business. In fact, if you try to negotiate too much to be non-exclusive, then you’ll likely just end up scaring off the sales agent. 
​​

Buyers want exclusivity, and if the sales agency doesn't have exclusivity, then they can't sell it to the buyer.  Producer's reps have less necessity for this normally, but if they work directly with domestic buyers, then they will generally need exclusive rights for similar reasons to why a sales agent needs exclusivity to sell international rights. ​

As a more practical example, let's say that two sales agents each have the right to sell your film.  There are a lot of territories for which only a few buyers come to the market.  There's a good chance that the sales agents would both know these buyers.  If the buyer can buy it in one of two places, then the two sales agents will just undercut each other to make the sale, and the filmmaker ends up hurt.  Giving Sales Agents exclusivity actually protects the filmmaker, if the deal is done properly.  

Further, almost all license fees and deals with a minimum guarantee require exclusivity. The buyer doesn't want to pay good money for a film, only to have it air on the competition's channel or platform at the same time.  Of course, if you're looking at Transactional VOD, this is not really the case, but those deals generally don't pay up front.  Also, that's essentially an aggregation deal.  

I'll admit, a producer's rep needs exclusivity less than a sales agent.  Since most of what Producer’s Reps do often involves shopping the film to sales agents, so long as there's a lit of who I'm approaching that's separate from who you would be approaching, there's room to negotiate.  However, since I act as a sales agent for North America, I at least need exclusive rights domestically for exactly the same reason.

Also, to avoid issues, if you’re working with a producer’s rep non-exclusively, then you’ll need to list what companies that producer’s rep will handle. If you don’t, you could be in for a tricky legal battle down the line, in case multiple approaches are made to the same company.

So I’d like to thank you for reading and say that I hope you found it helpful. If you did, you should grab my FREE Film Business Resource Package. It’s got a free e-book called The Entrepreneurial Producer to grow your filmmaking career, templates for investment decks, film festival brochures, and other money and time-saving resources. Check it out below.

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6 Reasons Filmmakers Are Entrepreneurs

Filmmakers often don’t like to think of themselves as business people.  Often, they’d rather be creative, and focus solely on the art of cinema.  Unfortunately, this is not the way to create a career crafting moving images.  In order to make a career, you must understand how to make money.  The easiest way to do that is to think like an entrepreneur.  here are 6 reasons why.

1. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs both Must Turn an Idea into a Product.

At its core, the goal of both being a filmmaker and an entrepreneur is the same.  To take an idea, and turn it into a market-ready product.  For an entrepreneur, this product can be anything from software to food products, and everything in between.  For a filmmaker, the product is content.  Generally speaking, that content is a completed film, web series, or Television series.

This alone should be enough to see how filmmakers are entrepreneurs, but it’s not the only way the two job titles are similar

2. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs are both creative innovators birthing something that has never been seen before.  

Every successful company does something no one else ever has.  Every successful film brings something that’s never been seen before to the market.  Some innovations are minor, others major.  Both sets of innovations are born by iterating on another idea that didn’t quite make their product in a way that the entrepreneur or filmmaker thinks is the best way. 

Innovation is at the core of both filmmaking and entrepreneurship.  Both involve intelligent and creative people who want to change the world.  Some through technology, some through storytelling.

3. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs both must figure out who will buy their product.  

If either a filmmaker or an entrepreneur is to be successful, then they need to figure out who will buy their product when it’s ready to ship.  If they don’t know what their target market is, then it’s impossible to make enough money to keep the company going or help investors recoup so you can make another film. ​

Market research is key to this.  If you want to find out more, check out last week’s blog by clicking here. 

4. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs both often need to raise money to create their products.

While everything else on this list is true nearly 100% of the time, this one is only true 80-90% of the time.  While some entrepreneurs and filmmakers can finance their companies out of pocket, most filmmakers need to consider how they’ll pay for the things necessary to create their chosen product. 

Both filmmakers and entrepreneurs must develop a deep understanding of fundraising if they’re going to be able to make their career in their chosen field a long-term sustainable one. 

5. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs must both assemble a team to turn their idea into a product.  

No one can make a film or build a company all by themselves.  Both must build and manage a team of creatives and business people to create their product and take it out to the world.  Without the ability to build and lead a team to success, the film or the company will not succeed. ​

6. Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs must both figure out how to take their products to market.  

After coming up with an idea, figuring out who will buy their product, financing their vision, and assembling a team in order to create a product, filmmakers still need to get that product and figure out how to take it to market. For both, this is generally referred to as the distribution stage of the process.

For filmmakers, it’s relatively well-defined despite the information about it not being widely enough available. For entrepreneurs, their distribution plan will vary greatly by industry. But in either case, if the end user/viewer can’t access the product, they won’t buy it.

Thank you so much for reading.  If you’d like to become a better indie film entrepreneur, you should check out my FREE Indiefilm Resource package. it’s got a free e-book called The Entrepreneurial Producer, several templates to help you organize your operation including a pitch deck template, and monthly blog digests to help you expand your knowledge base.

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