The Art of Film Funding
Discover the secrets to funding and creating successful indie films with The Art of Film Funding Podcast. Join Carole Dean, President of From the Heart Productions and author of The Art of Film Funding, and Heather Lenz, director of the award-winning documentary Kusama-Infinity, as they chat with top film industry pros. Get practical insider tips on crowdfunding, pitching, saving on budgets, marketing, hybrid distribution, and the latest in A.I. filmmaking. Whether you’re funding your first project or navigating new trends, this podcast has everything you need to succeed. Subscribe and let’s get your film funded!
The Art of Film Funding
5 Creative Ways to Sell your film
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Love So Radio. Now, in its second edition, Carol Dean's popular book, The Art of Film Funding, has 12 new chapters to cover all areas of film financing and how to avoid expensive pitfalls. Learn how to start with an idea and end with a trailer. How to make an ask for money. Create your story structure and your trailer. Legal advice, fair use, successful crowdfunding, how to ask for music rights, and what insurance you can't shoot without. Available on Amazon under Carol Dean and at FromTheHeartProductions.com. Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Capan, along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding. Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. Sherry Candler, our guest, is a digital marketing strategist who is helping independent filmmakers build identifiable brands and connect directly with their audiences. She serves as the director of digital marketing strategy for the Film Collaborative, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit film distribution and filmmaker education organization, where she consults with filmmakers on the marketing strategies for their films. She co-authored the books Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul, and a new edition was just released called Selling Your Film Outside the U.S. And Sherry, we are really excited about having you on the show today. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_03You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_02All right, this is Carol, and I just want to tell you how how exciting we are to have you because I really respect and honor the Film Collaborative for the work that you do and the things you give away free. So I want people to know at the beginning of the show, and I keep reminding that you can get download either of these books for free. So I'd love to start with the uh first for you to tell us more about the film collaborative, how it works, and what goes on.
SPEAKER_03Right, so the film collaborative was founded in 2010 by Orly Levide and Jeffrey Winter, who both had have experience in working uh in traditional film sales and distribution, and we're a little disillusioned with how with the treatment that filmmakers have received from the traditional system of distribution where rights are taken over their work, and then what's done with the work after that is sort of out of their hands, and often they don't even see financial benefit and certainly not any other kind of benefits. It's years before they can even get their films back under their control. So she's she founded this film collaborative as a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to guiding independent filmmakers and helping to strategize their own distribution. And maybe that would be in partnership with distributors, and maybe it will also be distributing directly to an audience on their own. So we also help with fiscal sponsorship to offer tax-deductible donations for those who contribute funding to a film project, which you can only do if you come through a fiscal sponsor. You can't do that on your own as a filmmaker. We also offer flat-fee digital distribution service in order to access the bigger US-based digital platforms like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play. And we consult with filmmakers on their marketing strategy, their social media strategy, and their creative strategy like key art and web design for their films. But I wanted to stress as well that this is a membership organization, which means in order to have access to consultation services and various resources that we have available, both free and non-free, you have to pay to have a membership. And memberships start at $75 and go all the way up to $500, and that includes hours of individualized consultation about your film. So it's never a case where you're going to call, we haven't watched your film, we're just going to give you some rote advice that we give to everybody. Every film or every script, if you're in development stage, is read and coverage is made, and everyone is clear on what the project is and what the goals are for the filmmaker before we ever get on a call to discuss whatever it is that the filmmaker is concerned with.
SPEAKER_02That's brilliant. That's really good. Well, tell me something about this flat fee for a digital distribution.
SPEAKER_03Right. So one thing that sets our organization apart is that we serve filmmakers without ever taking ownership rights of their work. So we're totally different from what a sales agent or a traditional distributor would do, which is the only guidance they're going to give you comes after they've already signed rights to your work. As far as the flat-fee digital distribution, the bigger platforms like iTunes and Amazon and Google Play don't deal directly with filmmakers themselves. You have to go through a centralized process of a few aggregators that they do deals with. And the Film Collaborative facilitates those kind of deals. So you would pay like a flat fee of $1,500, and we would do the encoding, all the metadata and delivery to the different platforms, and then all the revenue that comes after your film is available on those platforms is 100% yours. So we only take the flat fee for doing the technical aspect of shepherding the film through the systems to go on to the bigger platform. And the the platforms have to send the revenues back through us because they don't do deal directly with the film producers, but we take no further fees out of it. It's just a transparent flow from the platform through our company, and then we send you the sales reports and the revenue checks.
SPEAKER_02That's brilliant. And most of the other aggregators take a percentage, is that correct? Right.
SPEAKER_03Well, it it depends on the aggregator. Some of them offer flat fee services as well. Some of them, and a lot of them, actually have you pay a small encoding fee and then they take a percentage fee out of all the sales that come from the platform. So it depends on the company you deal with and what their terms are. But for us, we give 100% of the revenue back to the filmmaker.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well that's great. That's very beneficial. All right, so um let's get started with this new book. I really wanted to learn more about the book that you're giving it free called Selling Your Film Outside the United States. So I understand that you uh you did a couple of case studies on this, on filmmakers who distributed films in Europe. So let's start with that. What's the word, what happens? Okay.
SPEAKER_03Well, one of the reasons the last book we were selling your film without selling your soul was um mainly targeted toward U.S. filmmakers and what happens in the US system as far as direct distribution and working in hybrid distribution where you have some control over your film, but then also you've sold rights to other companies to distribute in other ways. And so at this point, we wanted to have a look at Europe because in 2011, when we first published the first book, a lot of direct distribution was not being done in Europe. And since that time, it has become much more prevalent. And there are a lot more VOD services, many more distributors that are available. The mindset has changed a little bit with European filmmakers to think more about taking control of their work. So that's why we wanted to look outside of the U.S. We thought this would also be beneficial to know about the different services in Europe for U.S. filmmakers who were thinking that they might want to distribute on their own or in tandem with other services that are available outside the United States. So my case studies were two for dramatic feature films. One of them was for a UK-based filmmaker named Marcus Marku, who made a film called Papadopoulos and Sons. And the other one was for an India-based filmmaker, Pawan Kumar, who made a film in his native language of Kannada language, which is in the Kanatarka region of India. Uh, and they you know have a small but you know prevalent um film scene there, but not very many films are made in his language. They're mostly made in Telugu or in Hindi, and he wanted to try and make a different kind of film for people who speak that language. But he found that there are a lot of people outside of India who were interested in his work, and a lot of them were in Europe and especially in the UK. So the case study talks a bit about how does one distribute in Europe from outside of Europe in a small language, which means a language that is not widely spoken through the world, and still find success that way. So they're very different stories, but um but both illustrate d uh directors, filmmakers who are using their own power, their own energy, and the services that are now available to them to find audiences wherever they are in the world. And so the first one of Papadopolis and Sons kind of reminds me a little bit of what most independent filmmakers think of when they make a film. They make a film at a lower budget. A lot of them do kind of feel good or coming-of-age drama kind of movies. Um, but one thing that Marcus found out, which is very prevalent for distributors of indie films, is that uh indie dramas are only a good sell for the industry if they have big names attached. It's very difficult to sell a small budget indie drama with nobody's in it. And so that's what he found, surprisingly for him, that when he made this film and it was a good film, and um and he thought that it would do really well, that it really wasn't edgy enough, the storyline wasn't edgy enough for most film festivals to want to show it, and most indie distributors to want to pick it up. Um so he had a lot of trouble, you know, going out and meeting with sales agents and meeting with distributors who all said, yeah, it's a nice film, but it's too commercial to be indie, and it's not edgy enough to be commercial in the indie space, and it doesn't have any big names in it, so we're not that interested in picking it up. Uh so he worked with a sales agent in Europe, Mara Ford, who um does not also does not take rights over the work, and she helped to position the film in Europe for sales, but in the meantime, Marcus wanted to release the film in the UK, his home base, um on his own. And so he had to find what the hooks were in his story. And the story is mainly about a family of Greek descent who suffer a financial loss in the financial collapse in 2008, 10, that area, and instead have to start all over again from their roots of being chip shop owners, fish and chip shop owners in London. So he has two very distinct audiences that can be reached with a storyline like that. One, the Greek community living in the UK, and the other is chip shop owners who live in the UK. And of course, chip shops are very big, you know, in Europe, in UK especially. So those are the people that he decided he would try to find. And in the in the case study, you'll read how he went about doing it exactly, the budget he used to reach them, the revenues he got from that. All of those are numbers specifically there because filmmakers always complain that they hear these case studies, but they never know what the outcomes are. They don't know what kind of labor was involved, what kind of services were involved, what kind of budget was spent, what kind of revenue especially came in from all these deals. And Marcus was very transparent, very open about all the deals that he made, how much honey he received, and a lot of that transparency is what's needed in independent film now. And so if somebody's interested in knowing what kind of revenues are out there, they should read Marcus's story and find out. But one thing that he did note is that because he didn't have a big budget to market his film and use mass media like distributors, like exhibitors, like sales agents do. They want a mass audience and they use the mass media to reach them. And that's why they like to have celebrity names attached because it makes it easier to capture people's attention with a name that people know. He put in far more work than money. And that's something that the business side does not do. They have processes in place to spend money, to reach mass, because they're not interested in niche, and they really don't dig down into the dirt to find the niche audience and how to connect with them. So this is an opportunity for filmmakers to find an audience that may not be huge, but if you have a very small amount of budget to spend to reach, you can reach you can reach that audience by being really laser-targeted. So he identifies the Greek community. Sorry.
SPEAKER_02Let me just ask you right here, did the amount of time, and labor rather, that he put into finding his audience uh pay off? Did he make enough money back for the amount of time?
SPEAKER_03He made enough money to recoup the costs that he spent marketing the film in the UK. Plus, he got deals all over the world, even broadcast deals, DVD deals, digital deals, as a result of having his theatrical release in the UK, which previously to him doing that were non existent. His sales agent had told him, nobody's interested in picking up this movie that has no names in it and doesn't have any buzz and doesn't appear to have any audience. So in a way, he could have said, oh, well, I guess that I'll just put the film on the shelf and I won't spend any more money on it, I'll just accept that nobody will take it. Or he could do what he did do, which is I strongly believe in the film. I'm willing to um invest some money and an extreme amount of time in order to have a bigger release than what um everybody's saying I will have. And yes, it did pay off because all those other deals never would have happened if he hadn't done this work and proved that there was an audience that was out there for his film. And he but he had to really sit down and think. He did it after the fact. I also I uh talk about all the time, he should have been doing this from the beginning, thinking about who is my audience, who's the core audience that's gonna be most interested in this story and how am I going to reach them? Where can I find them and how am I going to reach them? That is what a marketing strategy is. And it's one thing that most filmmakers don't think enough about or don't think about at all until after they've made the film. Now he's lucky that he had the hook of the Greek community and the chip shop owners. Because if this was just a straight coming of age or feel-good family drama with nobody in it, and really not any other kind of hook, I don't know that he could have had this kind of success. Because I don't where where do you go to find the coming of age drama fan base? Like there isn't one. There's no place that they hang out online, there's no magazines they read, there's no Comic-Con they go to, there's no no place where you can reach that person without you know, really having an expansive marketing campaign, usually built on the names of the people who are in the film. If you're making that kind of movie with no name people in it, you're gonna have a really, really tough time finding an audience for your work. And so luckily he didn't have that. Luckily, he could reach the Greek community of London. He mapped out all the Greek churches in the UK because where there's a Greek church, there's a Greek community. Um they have Greek radio, they have Greek newspapers, he invested in some advertising just in those publications. He also used Facebook to uh target them geographically to where he was going to show the film in cinemas, uh, their interest in Greek music, Greek dancing, um, you know, Greek drama, that kind of thing. He could find all that from Facebook targeting and target those people very um, you know, succinctly, was spending less budget than he would if he had bought bus shelter posters and you know, handed out leaflets and made ads in the newspaper and you know a general newspaper. He was very smart about how he spent his money so that he could reach people who were going to be the most interested, not just a broad audience, most of whom wouldn't care at all about his story.
SPEAKER_02Well, if you had a coming-of-age story without any of this in there, would you recommend that they either c consider making it towards some ethnic group or putting in something that has a more definite distribution avenues?
SPEAKER_03Right. Well, like I said, the just definite isn't distribution was not his problem because there's always a way to get the film out to the public. Marketing is a problem. Just because you market film on iTunes doesn't mean that people are going to find it or watch it. So if you're making a coming-of-age drama, there's got to be more to it than just the coming-of-age story. Is it coming of age about a certain ethnic group, about a certain uh you know, around a certain interest topic, about a certain cause? Um, usually coming-of-age dramas are made with someone's name in it because that's how they're sold the best. The other way to do it is that your film gets into a major film festival like Toronto or Sundance or Berlin, you know, something that because of its acceptance there puts a mark of quality on it, and Cinephiles watch those festivals to see what's playing there and what they can look forward to seeing in the market. But that's a huge gamble if you make a film with nothing, no one in it, with no identifiable audience for it, and you say, well, I'm just gonna get it into one of those festivals and I'll have it made. There's no get you can't control that. There's no guarantee to that. So, you know, that can't be your only hook. Um, if you think about it from the start and say, okay, you know what, this is a low budget film, and I'm not gonna be able to have anyone, you know, big a star, I'm not even saying like a big celebrity. I mean, think about somebody who has a big social media following. Think about a YouTuber or somebody who who wants to be in films, hasn't hasn't done anything in films, but does have some kind of presence with an audience that wants to see their work. And there are lots of examples of that existing now. Um, with Cant Dakota, with um uh Grace Helbig and um Mamre Hart, you know, there there are um Freddie Wong has moved into that kind of thing. There are lots of people who are now online celebrities who have fan bases that are interested in working in films, and you can use that to your advantage. They're not gonna cost you the same kind of money as somebody who's repped by CAA and you know is a big prestigious film name. But if you don't have any of that, it may not be the best story to tell because you have to know who's gonna see it and how are you gonna reach them. Um and if you're not putting aside some kind of decent budget in order to find them and you have nothing else to hang the story on, I know people all say to me, Well, it's the story, it's the story that's important. People will see, they won't watch the story if you don't hook them first. They aren't gonna know anything about the story when they first encounter your film. So what's gonna make them want to click through and watch more? You have to have something. You have to have some marketing hooked there. Either it's an interest hook, it's a cause hook, it's a name hook, something has to be there. So that really has to be considered. And like I said, luckily for Marcus, he had the Greek community angle and and he did his marketing well enough that people actually showed up. Not only did they know about the film, but the film plays theatrically in the UK for seven weeks. That's a long time for NT films, especially one that's really not represented by any distributor. You know, he used a service company and that was all. But the first weekend he had a bigger pre uh per screen average than Oblivion, which was a a Tom and Tom Cruise movie. You know, so he was in the top 20 movies of the UK the weekend that his film opened, all because he had done that community outreach and really m mobilized them to show up in the cinema on opening weekend.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic, fantastic. Well, what you're saying is that no sales agent or distributor or exhibitor is ever gonna put in the time and energy to reach this small niche audience.
SPEAKER_03So they have a a slate, you know, they have a lot of film to be working on, not just yours. So this is so labor intensive that for them the payoff's not going to be big enough. But for you it is.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. All right. Well, tell us about Kumar and his film. How did that work out.
SPEAKER_03So he was he is actually um an interesting case study because he's very technologically savvy. So he um has been online, you know, talking with his audience through his blog and through his um social media accounts for many years because he's a an actor and this is this was his um second directorial debut. He had a previous film that he had made that was very well received and he was a little shocked when he presented this latest script for his film Lucia to a lot of local producers and distributors and no one was interested because he had a track record. You know, you would think that that would be the sign that he would get a pickup but it didn't happen. And I think it was mainly because he was insistent that the film be in his local language which was not it's not a high profile language for India so a lot of people weren't interested in that. And also it's a very experimental kind of story. It's um about a guy who has lucid dreams and and you know hallucinations and and it's a narrative film but it's told in a very um uh untraditional way so he decided he would go straight to his followers and say listen this is my idea and he just gave them very small snippets of what the story was going to be and he asked for their feedback and overwhelmingly people messaged him back saying you should make it we want to see this and they were willing to put money into it and he crowdfunded through his own bank account rather than through Kickstarter or Indiegogo. He did not use any third party um crowdfunding to start with to make the production money for his film. People because of the trust that he had built up with his audience that they had seen his work they had spoken with him for years online they were willing to send small amounts of money directly wire transferred into his bank account and so that's how he raised the money to make the film. And all along his journey of making the film he uploaded videos he had a a blog where he told about what was going on with the production all that kind of stuff. And he invited the his audience in to like um uh the comment on some of the music that he was going to use because Indian film in particular is very um emphasized on on music and so he had released um little pieces of music that his composer was working on to get feedback and he asked for it to be remixed and people could make music videos out of it if they wanted and and they did. You know they were very active about it. So the film had a lot of buzz even when it was in production but because of that buzz the film was invited to premiere at the London Indian Film Festival. So not within his own country it was asked to premiere in London which was the first um film from his a region of India to premiere at a at a foreign film festival the first one in 75 years to ever have done that. So he got this you know really of course his his followers were very excited about that they were you know his film was recognized inside of his home country and a lot of the backers of his film came and were in the audience. But then he had to turn to um a an online video player called Distrify which is based out of Scotland and he asked them if he could set up an affiliate sales process wherein his film would be available made available online for pay through streaming via Distrify. And people would sign up to be affiliates and receive a percentage of the sales that were made because of their sharing the trailer and the video player where you could buy the film on their own website. And so he had something like 130 people sign up right away to spread the film around the internet and some of his affiliates ended up making several thousand dollars in affiliate sales percentages just by sharing the film trailer and the the viewer on their own websites and distributing it online. So in that way the money that that he made in pre-sales for the film being available helped to um fund his theatrical release in India which was one of the first times that any film had been theatrically released through crowdfunding money in India. His was a very interesting case study as well about how you can reach an audience and like I said the majority of his audience was in Europe. They weren't in India he could reach them via the internet which never would have happened even ten years ago people wouldn't have been able to do this. So taking advantage of the opportunities that are available now and thinking about it in a smart way and not waiting around to see if someone will pick up your rights or somebody will pick your script and choose to make it all those things are what's empowering these filmmakers to go ahead and do it. And he got a ton of press opportunity out of it. He ended up selling remake rights to the film for other languages like I said that are more popular in India. He ends up making something like almost $200,000 in remake rights to remake his film plus he's going to direct those remakes so he gets a fee for that too. But uh all of all the revenue specifications and things like that are in the in the book and shows you you know how the breakdowns went.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well let me go back. I want to know more about this uh distrifime is that what you called it and uh can you start and tell us more a little more slowly or clearly how he set up these like sales agents.
SPEAKER_03Right they and that is truly like they were they weren't his own sales agent but they were an army of Lugia you know that for his film. They weren't selling a whole bunch of films. They were they were backers of his film that um wanted to help spread the word about how great this film was and wanted other people to see it. So Discipline is an online like direct distribution service. They work a bit like VHX or like Vimeo on demand where um people can take an embed code of your trailer which usually also hosts your film for streaming and put it on any website they want all over the internet. And you can elect I think only with DistriFi at the moment but I think Vimeo and VHX are also working on an affiliate sales program but for the moment DistriFi is the only one that I know of that offers it. Where you can tell people that they can sign up as affiliate for your film and you can you can apportion out how much of a percentage of the sales they generate they can get as um a fee. So for Lucia um people could pre set pre-buy the film and at certain levels of pre-buying so they could pay five dollars they could pay ten dollars they could pay all the way up to a hundred dollars in pre-sales and the higher they pre-sales which in a way is is like crowdfunding you know crowdfunding is almost pre-selling the film in that the one of the perks you often get in crowdfunding is a copy of the movie. These people the more they paid for the pre-order of the film the bigger the percentage. Some of them even got 75% for a sales agency. So if they gave $100 they could have 75% of every sale they were responsible for making through their website or through wherever they posted the film online. Every time you sign up for an affiliate sale there there's a special tracking code that you get and you have to use that tracking code wherever you embed the film on other websites because every sale that comes through because of that tracking code goes back to your account. So any of these affiliates also can go into the back end of the Distrify system and see how many sales have I got you know how many people have clicked through on the sites where I have posted the player. And he had one guy who was very good SEO specialist who set up his own dedicated website to the Lucia film who ended up getting several thousand dollars in affiliate sales money because he was so good at optimizing his his uh player on the site where he hosted it. But it's uh a system that's you know like I said very unique to Distrify at the moment. I'm not sure how many filmmakers actually take advantage of the affiliate sales um but I do know that uh the Guardian newspaper, the Times of India also use DistriFi when they do film reviews. And I'm sure they set they're set up as affiliate revenue share people as well. So if they host your player of your film while they review it on the website and anyone clicks through to buy it based on their review, they get a percentage of the sale. So there's an incentive for those publications as well to host the film on their website and they get tons of traffic so they could generate quite a lot of revenue that way. Oh that's fantastic. Look at all the ways that you can market a film nowadays. It's true yes yes yes it's it's uh you know there's new technology popping up all the time. This is one of the things that I constantly struggle with keeping up with luckily a lot of these services contact me so I don't have to run around trying to find them but um you know something that filmmakers now need to be aware of that not just the there's not going to be an occasion where they can just make films and not have to worry about anything else. They have to be aware of all these different revenue possibilities because the typical sales agent's not keeping up with this. The typical distributor is not thinking about this although Distrify actually does work with quite a lot of distributors now because they are starting to see the benefit of direct sales to an audience too. It's just that you don't have to go through a distributor to access.
SPEAKER_02Okay and is that distrify.com?
SPEAKER_03Yes D-I-S-T-R-I-S-Y.com I-f y dot com okay great oh that's brilliant so he ended up uh making money getting jobs as a director and he was very pleased with but it all started because of the fan base that he had created right his his his fan base not just the difference I guess between what what most filmmakers do and what these two filmmakers did in particular was they actually made real deep connections to their audience. They didn't just sit and tweet all day, watch my film, watch my film, watch my film, and and then it just took off. He spent years, Powan spent years talking with his audience. So when he came when it came to his ask they were more than willing to help him because he felt like a friend. He felt like somebody that they had been in touch with whose work they admired over time and they wanted to help. And with Marcus he is of Greek descent himself he got in touch with with all the Greek churches like I said and he talked to the the um priests there and um and enlisted their help and wanting the their flock to come and see his movie and it it wasn't just about the buzz, you know, it was really about I I'm contacting you because I really think this film is something that you would be interested in. It was almost like you know helping instead of you do so I just want you to do something for me. You know they he didn't approach it from the standpoint of I need you, I need a favor, when they don't even know you know he had to really talk them up for a bit and and get to know these priests and um and get to know the Greek community. Or he he he was already part of the Greek community in London but even in the other parts of the UK you know just really doing the outreach and spending he spent about four to five months ahead of his theatrical release doing this work. So it wasn't like two weeks before his film hit the theater he decided to get a Twitter account. You know he he had already been doing this for a while.
SPEAKER_02Right so c but creating trust with people is the number one thing that you need before you make an ask, right?
SPEAKER_03Right, and you and that takes a lot of time. I mean there's another there's a book out now by Gary Vaynerchuk called Jab Jab Jab Right Hook and the jabs are you it basically means give, give, give take that you have to do an awful lot of giving you an awful lot of um uh relationship building and trust building before you can ask and most people want to skip that part they uh they don't see how that's going to get them anything right now and you're and they're right it's not going to get you anything right now. You don't do it when you need to have something right now you know you have to do it well in advance and have much longer term strategy for this.
SPEAKER_02Well uh what do you think about using YouTube to promote yourself?
SPEAKER_03Um I feel better that's right. I was gonna say I I really have I guess sort of um a moral problem with thinking about social media in terms of promotion. If the only reason you're doing it is to promote yourself, it's probably not going to come off very well for you. Because people can feel that the only reason you're there is because you're trying to get something out of them out of out of them. And it's turnoff. You know advertising is understood that way. We know that when we see an ad, it's there because they want us to buy and we understand that relationship. We don't understand using social media to do the same thing. We understand social media to mean relationship building to build up trust to get to know somebody and offering them things that are valuable to their life not just things that are valuable to your own life. You will get something out of it you will but if you only use it because you want to get something out of it it comes off as false and it's really a turnoff and it rarely works especially for the independent filmmaker who's trying to use that tool mainly as their only tool for sales.
SPEAKER_02Okay well what I'm talking about is like Mark Mike Mark Maury Maury M O R I told us in an interview that he had taken some of the outtakes or uh material that he used while making the film Betty Page and he had gave them to editors and said here give me a three-minute clip of this and he loaded those on YouTube as marketing for the uh soon to be released film and it really built up a large audience for him.
SPEAKER_03Right and I can understand that being an appeal because Betty Page is very iconic. There are definitely a lot of Betty Page fans around the world that would be interested in you know any behind the scenes that he might have gotten interviews or photos or things that are rare and little seen you know out on the internet already that would appeal and in that way he is giving his fans something that they would want anyway. And in return that's their question they would ask, I would suppose after that was where can I see more? You know, and that's what he wants. So it's where can I see more oh well I happen to have a film that I'm working on and let me tell you when it's available. I I can definitely see that working um to his advantage. Or if you're working with some kind of you know notable star that people want to know more about and you release very rare or exclusive splits both interest. I think it's much harder if you're not a known person and you're making a film with not known people and um and you're releasing behind the scenes splits. It's kind of like okay yeah you know may not be interesting to a lot of people. It it really depends on what the quality is of the clips you're releasing and who is going to be interested in seeing these kind of clips. Just because you made a film doesn't mean people will be interested in it.
SPEAKER_02Right. Okay. Well let's get back to the European distribution and um tell us what type of film you think has a better chance of distribution in Europe.
SPEAKER_03When we're talking about distribution in Europe, if we're talking about more traditional you know distribution as far as what a sales agent or what a distributor might be looking for, it's really the same as what you'll find in the U.S. You know they want a a film that had a somewhat of a bigger domestic distribution or came out of a large festival, especially a European festival like Berlin or Cannes or Venice or Licarno or something like that. And they like celebrity names but they have to be names that are known in Europe not just in the United States. So the same rules apply in that way that in order to attract more traditional foreign distribution you have to have some elements in place that are the same that you would have in the U.S. Now there are some genres that travel you know no matter who what names are involved and that would be like horror and some in some ways science fiction and also family films, children oriented films always have you know big demands and there are always people looking for that in their slate of films that they offer especially if they're known to be a horror distributor or they're known for family friendly movies, those films can have a better chance of getting picked up than just the straight drama or just the straight comedy because comedy doesn't always travel well around the world. But just looking at the sheer volume though of the number of VOD services through Europe, I was looking at um what Wendy had written in the book and also some studies online and there are over 400 about 447 VOD services just in Europe which is amazing. You know there's 447 services that your film could be on which is way more than what you would have in the United States you know so the possibility of being able to get your film out to bigger audiences once it does have received some kind of acclaim or prestige or makes a name for itself are fascinating. That number of revenue streams. Now what it doesn't mean and I I think Wendy made this point in the book but we've talked about it internally a lot is it doesn't mean that all those revenue streams are going to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of them are buying these movies in bulk to populate their VOD services and they're only paying a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars a title. So it's going to be a lot more revenue streams but smaller revenue from each one of them. So rather than getting one big deal for television you're gonna get four small deals for VOD from telecom services or from over the top services or from cable VOD services. You know it's not it's they're gonna be smaller but more plentiful.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And your book explains how to assess this up yourself, how to distribute to these VODs it does but in in some ways I mean Wendy was w has had explained as well that some of these services are looking to buy say a slate or a catalog of film.
SPEAKER_03They're not really that interested in doing one off deals because it takes them just as much work and time and effort to set up one deal with one film as it does one deal with ten films. So you know like she said a lot of these deals are being done through savvy sales agents, which is not all of them and savvy distributors that have catalogs of films that they've bought you know, say two years ago that they have the rights to for 10 years, they're looking for additional revenue streams after they've hit the main theatrical, digital, DVD, TV, then the film is sort of just sitting on the shelf and so they're looking for ways to monetize those titles that have sort of had their big you know part of their life and can then go to rest on some of these VOD services where people can watch them over and over again. But they're just going to get a license fee for those and not necessarily are they going to get a transactional fee. Some of them some of them do go to iTunes or Amazon where they sit and people can buy them as pay-per-view but some of them as well go to subscription services where they get a license fee and then people can watch them as many times as they want and there's no additional money coming in. So you know she she does talk a bit that it might be smarter to approach a lot of these services if you're a producer who can get several other producers' films that are similar to yours and they have the rights to to distribute you know digitally in Europe on their own to package them up as a list of titles rather than just as your one off film or to work with a sales agent who's working with a slate of movies that are similar to the movies that you movie you have to package them up and approach some of these services to sell them in bulk if if the sales agent isn't already doing that.
SPEAKER_02Right. That sounds great. No one has started that type of business for European films. You're doing that now for European films where you're uh putting you're an aggregator for a domestic in the United States but no one has started that where they take a lot of films and put them together by genre and then sell them in Europe.
SPEAKER_03Not that I know of though you know like I said Wendy does a lot of work with um with sales agents and with distributors who are not as savvy about the new services that are available. She is About the services available, but needs to approach these different sales agents or distributors to convince them that they could take, say, five or ten of their titles and package them together and sell them to these sites. A lot, like she talks in the book, a lot of these sites are also looking for thematic content, especially at certain times of the year. So if you have a lot of horror or Halloween for children themed films, you might want to package that up for an October release, and it will only play as a featured package in October. Or if you have Christmas or holiday themed movies that you could package together for a December kind of promotion, or romance for February, you know, for Valentine's Day. That these are different ways of looking at how can we repurpose these titles or repackage them and take advantage of a theme, you know, and that that would be served to audiences heavily promoted in the months where they would be most interesting.
SPEAKER_02Gosh, that's a brilliant idea. Right. Well, let's uh we're running out of time. This is so educational, such uh great information. But I wanted you to tell us about uh your trip to New Zealand. That sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun for you.
SPEAKER_03I it is. I have never been to New Zealand or Australia, that part of the world, and I was invited to come and do the keynote address to the Rough Cut 2014 event that's presented by Tropfest New Zealand. It's on September the 4th. And earlier that day I'll be meeting with New Zealand producers to talk with them about how they're going to market their work in the various stages of that they are in production. So it's going to be a really full day for me, September the 4th, doing the consultations in the daytime and then speaking at night. But I'm really excited. I'm going to really be talking more about the mindset change that needs to happen with filmmakers, thinking more about how am I going to connect with an audience, not just for my work, not just connecting my films to an audience, but also connecting themselves so that they have more sustainable career options. If you're always waiting for somebody to pick you, somebody in the industry to pick you, pick your project and pick your work, that's really subjective to their whim, you know, and how much they have going on with other filmmakers. There's always a hot new thing coming down the road behind you. And so if that's the only way that you have a connection to an audience is through another entity, and you're completely dependent on that, you're in a weak position. And you don't have to be now. You can build an audience around all of your work, around you as an artist. And so I'm going to talk some more about how to do that, some role models of people who are already doing that, and the advantages you can find in doing something like that. And then I'm also talking with the New Zealand Film Commission to hold some one-day workshops where we will talk through how do you put together a marketing plan, how do you identify an audience, how do you connect with them. We all hear about people saying, you need to do this, you need to do this, but not very many people saying, okay, here's how you do it. Here's what you, when you're sitting in front of that computer screen and you go, I'm going to do this, where do I even start? That's what this workshop is going to be about. How do I get started with this? How do I even start thinking about this while I'm developing the script? Now I'm not one to say, you know, you should only build something that has make something that has an audience. You need to find out what the audience wants and then make that. That's one way to approach it. But there's another way to approach it is in that you can make what you want as long as you are reconciled to the fact that it may have limited appeal and you may have to work a little harder to connect what you're making with somebody who would love it. It's possible to do it, but you shouldn't be expecting mass success. You have to be happy with niche success if that's the kind of work you truly want to make. And that's okay. It's okay it might not be okay by industry standards, but it's okay from an artist's perspective to make something they just truly, truly are passionate about making, as long as they're okay with the fact that maybe it's not going to be a bestseller. It's not going to be a huge success. But it's something you have to do and there are ways to connect it with whatever audience there is out there for it.
SPEAKER_02Right. So sometimes success means different things to different people and you have to uh analyze what is success to you and realize where you stand with the market that you have or don't have when you're making your film. Right?
SPEAKER_03Yes, definitely. That everybody's goals are different, that they shouldn't be held to only the box office. You know, that's that's one measurement, yes. And it's not even a true measurement because the box office doesn't reflect the true profitability of a film. It only reflects one the top line aspect of revenue for a film. But maybe that wasn't even the main purpose that the filmmaker had in mind. Maybe they were trying to say something, maybe they're trying to change the world or change policy, or you know, maybe they're just interested in having the most people see it as possible, no matter what kind of money it makes. Those are, you know, things that are repugnant to the majority of the industry, but they're definitely valid goals for filmmakers to have.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. They are. Well, thank you so much, Sherry. I I want you to please tell everyone how they can find you and the film collaborative.
SPEAKER_03Yes, we can uh the film collaboratives can be found at filmcollaborative.org or online at film collab, S-I-L-N-C-A-L-L-A-B on Twitter. We also have a Facebook page and we have a LinkedIn page as well. And then you can find me uh pretty much every day on Twitter, um Sherry Candler, S-H-E-R-I-C-A-N-B-L-E-R. I also have Facebook page, Sherry Candler Marketing and Publicity, and I have a Google Plus community that's devoted only to independent film marketing and distribution. We have about 2300 members around the world now, where I post things and other people post things every day that had to do with developments in marketing and distribution for independent films.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's marvelous. Thank you so much, Sherry. We hope to have you back in the future and talk about marketing next time.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and don't forget as well, sellingyourfilm.com slash store is where you can get the two copies of the book. It's also available on Amazon for Kindle and on iBooks for iPad.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Yes. We really are. Thank you so much, Sherry. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Okay. Until next time. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_04Be well, everyone. I want to remind our listeners that David Rakelin is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra. David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story, please contact him at DavidRakeland.com. That's david R-A-I-K-L-E-N.com. And Carol and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Art of Film Funding. Please visit our website at FromTheHeart Productions.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films, everyone.
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