How to make money from internet distribution of movies?

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

OK, I have another (brilliant) idea.

I can’t get no sleep, LOL.

(It’s okay, Mods, no illegal pirate manifestos this time.)

***

OK,


How to make money from internet distribution of (indie) movies?


To keep it short, the scheme is this:

1. You make a great movie that people want to watch [a docu, short fiction, feature-length fiction, whatever]. You can’t get away without that.

2. Then - you'll distribute it in the Internet [only]. Free legal downloads for all.

You make a download page for the movie or register it on some P2P torrent tracker.

BUT,..

3. Before you launch the download page\site, you go to a company [or companies] and [somehow] convince them to sign this particular kind of (advertising) contract:

- The download page is designed in such a way that it includes advertising banners\clips\logos\pop-ups, etc., for the product of this particular company [companies].
- Your movie stays free-of-charge for the users from beginning to end.
- The company doesn't have to pay you ANYTHING, unless your movie becomes popular.
- But if your movie DOES become popular, the company gotta start paying you money [in a scheme fixed by the particular contract you’ve signed].

Let’s think about the situation:

The downloads of your movie are free of charge [killing piracy]. But if the movie becomes popular, the company benefits from this, because many people are being exposed to all of their ads\banners\clips\logos\whatever, that are neatly positioned on your download page.

Example contract:

- Say, if your movie has been downloaded [freely and legally] under 10 000 or under 100 000 times, you get NOTHING.
- But if your movie has been downloaded by 100 000+ people, the company is obliged by the contract to pay you money - a pre-negotiated amount, or a given figure for every new 100 000 or 1 mln. downloads., or whatever contract details you have negotiated.

There’s your money from the Internet!

Roughly put.

In such a scenario everybody wins cause:

- If your film fails at the download-boxoffice, the company doesn’t lose anything [and you don’t gain anything either].
- If the movie is successful, then - yes, they gotta pay you money, but they also got their shi*ty products [in]directly advertised.

Problem solved.

Just like TV. And applicable to both music and movies.

Of course, you gotta include the ads\banners in a way that they don’t become too annoying. Otherwise some pirate will hack the movie and put it on a free-of-banners site in China.

Also, you gotta have very secure download sites, so that the companies will feel safe that noone messes with the download counts.

This is just rough outline.

Whaddaya think? :red_bandana:

I’m so excited… and I just can’t hide it.

***

I’m excited cause, (Maybe) I won’t die of hunger. LOL.

 

[Anthony Gratl]

I hate it Karapetkov.....not because it's a bad money making idea, but because i hate the notion of always commodifying everything into an advertising 'tie-in'. And I hate the idea of combining movies and advertising, which is why i now avoid theatres like the plague. It's an affront to my instinct, my intelligence, and my soul to pay 12 bucks to sit there and be sold shit for 20 minutes before I even watch what I paid for. I'm so sick of the destruction of art and culture for profit. So to me combining those ideas with the internet is even worse....the last bastion of democratic space should not be an advertising medium. People should pay a token amount to watch a film online. If it's good, word of mouth will take care of making money from the streaming through sheer volume. But advertising? I fucking hate unwanted advertising!!!!!!!!!Hate it!!!!!!!Why do we always whore ourselves for a free thing? I'd rather pay a buck for what I want to watch as opposed to paying nothing and being subjected subliminaly to things I don't want to watch and don't need. At what point in our existence did we decide it was a good thing to do that as a permanent facet of our identities?

So, now that I got that out, I'm gonna reach into the closet and get on my flame retardant suit, as i'm sure y'all are igniting your torches....

EDIT: it's unfortunate that you acknowledge that the products are shitty, but are willing to play ball with them......you might want to consider applying your creative idea overload to making things work for both artist and purveyor without the advertising shite......much more real and challenging....

EDIT2: oh and your line "just like television" belies the reality: television is a wasteland, an unwieldy and tasteless plague that contributes almost nothing to our collective wellbeing....let's not turn our young filmmakers and artists such as yourself into droids just yet.....

EDIT3: so i just reread what i wrote. Karapetkov, i'm not intending to be harsh or cut you down, although it might sound like that. it boils down to a question of philosophy, and i had a strong reaction to the notion you were proposing.....but at least i had one. So I wish you luck with your idea if that's what you're gonna pursue.

peace out

 

[Tom Lowe]

Lol. Many have tried, my friend, and many have failed.

The trouble is, people like to watch movies in full screen... and in HD now. They don't want some Burger King ad sitting in the corner of the screen. Plus, they like to "own" a copy of the movie, whether that means a little plastic disc or an MKV file on their harddrive.

The future looks kind of bleak for producers of content. Even TV stations are having trouble because so many people are zipping past commercials with their DVRs now.

Best hope for the little guy is to sell Blurays (saving a long download time for the consumer) or maybe offering very, very high-speed, direct downloads of the content for like a couple of dollars. If you offer an HD movie to a guy for 3 bucks that he can download legally at 2MB/s vs having to take two days to download it illegally off bit torrents at 350KB/s, he might go for it.

Some people will say, "Three bucks! That's selling your product too cheap!" But the times are changing, and business models need to change. I would rather have 1 million people download my indie movie for $2 than 5,000 buy it for $25.99.

 

[Anthony Gratl]

Some people will say, "Three bucks! That's selling your product too cheap!" But the times are changing, and business models need to change. I would rather have 1 million people download my indie movie for $2 than 5,000 buy it for $25.99.

Tom is right on the money:whistling: ....not only more cost effective, but much wider audience potential for your next film AND the best part is you get to maintain your integrity as an artist instead of pandering to advertising whims.....

 

[laguun]

We are remastering >100 movies a week for iTunes and other large internet distributors. To run such operations is $$$.$$$ business -and the prices are ~2-5$ per movie for rent.

 

[mikeburton]

This is an interesting discussion, one that I certainly understand and am engaged with if you will
First off, I must say that it is still quite early in the monitization of media content. As much as you would like to think people would rather do electronic sell through rather than ad supported media, the majority of the online media consumers would highly disagree which I have seen and studied first hand. Subscription based and or rental content agreements are somewhere in the middle meaning its about 50/50 (love,hate relationship with the public).
Here are my personal observations as a seller of the online content distribution world and as a general media consumer myself;
Monitizing your content via a web distribution platform is still not a great way to assume profit from your films. Bottom line is, 9 times out of 10 most will NOT make their money back or even a fraction there of the budget of the film large or small. The best way IMO to utilize the web distribution methods is for your own personal advertising. Get some BUZZ around your film and you as an up and coming artist. Even highly successful online films wouldn't turn much of a profit if they were to attempt to sell their films online first cause no one would have watched it to begin with if they had to pay even a low premium of .49 cents.
That brings me to my next point that people have a way of thinking about media on the Internet in that they are owed something. They feel if its online it should be free without interuption of advertisments. I hate having to sit through ads just as much as the next guy but I would rather that than have my paypal account charged everytime I want to sit through a short film that will 9 times out of 10 be mediocre at best. What I'm trying to say is someone is going topay for the content you consume online, you or the advertisers.
I have another mountain of info I could spill but I would love to hear others thoughts first.

 

[Joel Kaye]

Tom is right on the money:whistling: ....not only more cost effective, but much wider audience potential for your next film AND the best part is you get to maintain your integrity as an artist instead of pandering to advertising whims.....

I think you'd probably be wise to do a hybrid approach. Watch SD for free but with ad breaks. Pay $3 and watch 720P with no ads. Sell a BluRay 1080P with extras for $25.

You're still going to have to market it for anyone to watch. Word of mouth is almost always preceded by advertising. But you hate advertising. I'm kinda curious how people are going to find out about your movie if you don't market it somewhere somehow. And then aren't those people being subjected to an unwanted ad?

Hating marketing is great until you have to sell something of your own.

 

[Joel Kaye]

We are remastering >100 movies a week for iTunes and other large internet distributors. To run such operations is $$$.$$$ business -and the prices are ~2-5$ per movie for rent.

How much of that gets paid back to the filmmaker?

 

[Tom Lowe]

Tom is right on the money:whistling: ....not only more cost effective, but much wider audience potential for your next film AND the best part is you get to maintain your integrity as an artist instead of pandering to advertising whims.....

Not to mention that the consumer gets to retain his or her integrity and support the artists.

Wow, I love this forum. We start a convo on a subject, and BAMM, a guy from Vuze shows up! I love Vuze. A lot of us have our clips up there now, and I use it as my BT client.

Mike, what do you think about the model I suggested? Sell your Bluray for $3 online with a super-fast download and simply count on volume? To me, when I want to DL an 8GB Bluray movie, I would easily be willing to kick out $3 bucks to get it at 2MB/s rather than dealing with all the hassle of P2P.

In fact, this model is already up and running. Many BT tracker sites basically charge you $5 a month to be a "VIP" member with access to direct, super-fast downloads from megashare or rapidshare sites. And we are talking about young teenage punks mainly who are kicking out the 5 bucks a month for "VIP membership" on these trackers.

 

[laguun]

How much of that gets paid back to the filmmaker?

I am not allowed to share this information.
But i can say that the copyright owner gets the largest share and the distributor the smallest.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

One problem you will run into with either model, free with ads or pay per view free of ads, is something that runs parallel to "mouth to mouth" phenomenom. Whenever a film gathers steam and the words starts getting around, let's review how that happens. Somebody has downloaded/seen the film and liked it and then starts promoting to kindred spirits. But at that particular point, more and more frequently, these people are more likely to just hand you a CD or a flash drive with a copy of the film for you to watch. Copying directly from your hard drive is always quicker than downloading online, and people are bound to do this because it saves others the hassle/time of downloading from a site and (don't laugh) there is degree of coolness that comes with being the "provider" as opposed to merely the informant. Once you have a core group downloading the film, free or paid, and then the private redistribution begins, the actual purchase or the consumption of ads with the freebie dissappears from the chain and you're back to square one: profiting from the film becomes an almost impossible endeavor...

 

[jpp]

There will never be a profitable distribution model for tens of thousands of unknown movies. And how could there be? Even forgetting that the stuff is competing against pirated titles available "for free" over the internet, who exactly wants to watch this material and is willing to pay for the privilege? Not me, for one. What about you?

Traditional "artists" - poets, painters, sculptors, composers, etc. - have long accepted that there's no way to make money doing what they do. Internet or no internet, there are no buyers. At best, maybe they can give the work away.

Why would movies be any different? Where do these expectations of making money outside established distributions networks come from?

 

[number6]

At best, maybe they can give the work away.

Why would movies be any different? Where do these expectations of making money outside established distributions networks come from?

REDRAY? Could happen... one way would be for individuals to make a very good movie, then only let out RED RAY encoded hdds to digital projection theaters. Each hdd could have an embedded code for each theatre served, and if a copy showed up with that hidden code, then that theater would forfeit a bond and would be blacklisted for future showings for a time. This is not meant to serve as the ultimate solution, but a starting point for arriving at one.

edit: of course my post strays from Karapetkov's idea of how to make money from INTERNET distribution of movies. The only way I can think of doing that is sell the rights to the movie to one or two big corporate sponsors to put their logo in one corner or another and let them fade in and out with regularity. Or to carry it one step further, an example might be a TV ad saying:

"Kapapetkov's Movie" Brought to you by Ford Motor Company and a Ford Dealer near you. Stop by and get your free DVD in your favorite format, today... and while you're there, watch a little of the movie on the DVD player as you test drive the new Ford Edge. You'll be glad you did.

But if the movie is good enough, it will not have to go the internet route.

 

[Vigen Vartanov]

How you will protect youre movie . Because if it will be QT file all gays fith QT pro will copy movie on hard drive , sow you need to convert it to some codec and then make Streaming it is hard job. It is working with Porn industry now thing like you want to do .

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Evolve,

I understand exactly what you mean, and it's the truth.

But not the whole truth, IMHO.

Let's just make clear that I don't look for ways to make money, but more like how to make art and survive financially.

I didn't decide to become a filmmaker in order to make money. But I also want to have a normal life, doing this very thing.

You have to also make a living out of your movies. I'm not talking about millions, I'm talking about survival.

Let me tell you why I write all these stuff about piracy, Internet profit and sh*t.

In my country, the music industry is DEAD, musicians cannot make any income from their work and they're forced to work [something else] to survive. This kills creativity, because artists are also humans, who have to eat, have homes, take care of families.

It's the same with cinema and home distribution.

There are two reasons for that:

1. Post-communist chaos and BS.

But most importantly:

2. The Internet

I see so many talented artists here, who cannot do their thing, cause they can't survive financially.

You can't be a part-time artist in your spare time.

Music is not easy, nor is cinema. They require a lot of work, if anything good is expected to happen.

Work means time. You can't work [something else] and expect to achieve a work of art in your spare time.

***

Otherwise, the US is a big country\economy\market and these things aren't that obvious there, but they're coming.

Cause more and more people will choose the free stuff on pirate sites. iTunes is doomed.

Free stuff will always win, IMO, even against Tom's 2 dollars. Cause people simply don't care. For 1 person who supports art, there will be 10 who will download it for free [from "China"].

The other [ideal] option would be if you're simply rich and don't care about profit.

Or if your movie is so low-budget that it wouldn't matter.

Or if you manage to find a sponsor who doesn't care about profit.

Hey, if I can afford it, I would give all my work for free on the net.

But I can't. :waaa:

So all this is about survival, not big profit.


P.S. And yes, I hate TV too, i almost never watch it, except for the morning\evening news.

 

[number6]

Hey, if I can afford it, I would give all my work for free on the net.

But I can't. :waaa:

So all this is about survival, not big profit.

Karapetkov, I predict someday you will sell out and make for-profit pandering movies just for the bucks. And I predict that I will succumb to that temptation even before you do.

 

[Craig Ryan]

I wouldn't call it selling out. The creative artist in me wants to make movies for the rest of my life. But I also need to survive, and in order to do that, I'll probably do all kinds of media related jobs/gigs throughout my career whether it be shooting a wedding or some advertisement-ridden filth. It's all part of the career we have chosen.

The motion media industry is becoming so complex, it's going to be hard to keep up with the forthcoming changes, and as artists, it's going to be increasingly difficult to find ways to make a living off our art. I've come to the conclusion that I am content with doing whatever it takes to survive, while kindling my creative needs as a hobby. Hopefully one day, as we all dream, I will get my break and be able to live off of my art. But I certainly would not call doing jobs solely for money as selling out. That's almost like saying the symphony orchestra musician who takes a commercial gig for a quick buck is a sell out. It's all part of survival and using your skills to make a living.

 

[amrrahmy]

if there were more popular sites that would publish trailers and clips for independent movies that also offer to publish whole nonprofit movies, that would be gr8 and ideal for every indie, to get noticed and to publish work.

if u make a good movie, there will always be a slight chance that ur movie would be seen by a producer or distributor, if there was a specific popular site for independent movies that has the attention of producers.

many indies would be glad to upload there movie to be seen by viewers and potential producers.

also if small prices were to be given to only the best movies, that would also help.

but i don't think ads(more than something to support the site) or charging viewers would be a good idea.

 

[Marc Berger]

1. You make a great movie that people want to watch [a docu, short fiction, feature-length fiction, whatever]. You can’t get away without that.

Yes, I agree! And if this first point happens, IMO People will also go to cinema to watch it, buy DVD´s...every way of distribution will work.
Karapetov, just try it! Go to a major company and propose your idea. It does not need money to try this, just a good contract. Wish you luck!(I don´t mean it ironically).
Great thread!

Marc

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Karapetkov, I predict someday you will sell out and make for-profit pandering movies just for the bucks. And I predict that I will succumb to that temptation even before you do.

I admit that you might be right.

And if we do, it won't be that bad.

But I'll always try to put some meaning in what I do.