When a member of our film community commented on my segment about Withoutabox, an Amazon owned company, a small debate went off inside my head. How much do these corporations help or hinder us. Netflix doesn't help out, as I was told, because they buy small wholesale amounts and then rent it out from one location forever, gaining an audience perhaps, but not money for recouping or future production costs.
So, today we look at pros and cons of corporate help or exploitation. Starting with www.Withoutabox.com , which gives access to tons of festivals and connects you directly to www.Imdb.com to set up a title page, once you've submitted to a qualifying fest. Okay, it was mentioned that Withoutabox is out to get your money by throwing festivals down our throats. Sounds correct, but it is the mandate of any corporation doing business to find the most annoying way of getting our money, first and foremost. That addresses the comment, and acknowledges that there is some business greed in even the most seemingly pure setup to help us poor artists. However, there is a flipside. They do give you a free project page for your films and allow you to search for all the cheap free festivals out there to submit to. Some even qualify to allow you to smoothly get your project into the Internet Movie Data Base, or IMdb. From personal experience, I know this alone is hard enough to accomplish if even just one tiny flag pops up when submitting and needs approval from the IMdb editors. Yes, Withoutabox crams all their promotional "buy this and buy that" stuff down our throats, but they aren't doing everything soley from the bottom of their hearts, especially when any corporation is made up of a "collective" of people that are out to make money for themselves and stock holders.
Now, we've got www.Amazon.com to look at. They own Withoutabox and IMdb. That's kind of nifty, isn't it? They also own www.createspace.com , formerly Customflix, a company that manufacturers DVD-R's on demand with full printing and processing. Amazon, as once mentioned, seems like a good idea for the independents, but unfortunately, their whole business model revolves around "a sale here, and a sale there" all throughout the world. When you, the filmmaker with a product, sell through them just as a DIY entity, you in essence echo that model and become a number that isn't really marketed, unless you do that successfully with lots of exposure. You will sell one or two copies a year that way, without marketing, if lucky! To Amazon, it's the group collective as a whole of one to two per year that brings them money. Their business storefront is purely internet based, so overhead is much lower. They connect you to your customer, but only when that customer is searching for you or stumbles upon you. I've said it before, that they cut out the storefront on Createspace to bring sales through their Amazon web ads, instead. This is because they get more money out of your sale through that, than just through the shop leading into your Createspace hosted webpage. I've lost my bonus customers from the shop, because of this, forcing me to look at other options to sell DVDs. In their defense, they do let you keep your hosted webpage to bring customers directly to, but it's totally on you. They claim to now act as your distributor for DIY models, linking between the Withoutabox and IMdb, but that is little comfort when you lose some of the only sales you got, due to their changes. Also, fyi, many distributors see using createspace as a red flag, and don't understand why you use it, or what the rights issues are. That's something to think about!
Then, we've got www.IMdb.com , the famous Internet Movie Data Base! They've become big! They've always been big! So, now you've got your festival model through Withoutabox, you are using Createspace to make some dvds, and you've gotten your own IMdb title page with a fancy trailer up and your cast linked to all the other projects and IMdb offerings. Just because there are millions of visitors to the main site per day does not mean you will get hardly any of them. They all want to see the next Twilight and Star Trek information and who's in it. Perhaps most visitors don't even want to do that, but want to see who's doing the voiceovers to a direct to home video animated sequel when it's not listed at the beginning and your cellphone has internet., all whilst you are in mixed company and can't skip to end credits.
Another thing to consider is manufacturing your DVDs and future BluRays through companies like www.Discmakers.com and selling through companies like www.Filmbaby.com , where you still may have a chance, but not too much with that alone. This model works if you spend only $1,000 to make your film, $1,000 to get the DVDs, sell 200 of them at $10 a piece, having cast and crew selling a handful to each of their family and friends, while doing the filmbaby model. You'd probably have to have a few showings, charging for tickets or mandatory dvds upon entry, too. Tha can be a fun way to do it, but I personally don't like having family and friends buying what a true audience should be out in the real world. You can't make a living off of this model, unless you have mad skill!
Let's face it, unless you've got some major festival buzz and marketing, it's simply an uphill climb. Your best bet is to go to the American Film Market to sell your film off, find a good sales representative, or make an output deal with a distributor, if you can! It's all about niches and finding your paying audience. Even if you could find a non-profit organization to fund your filmmaking to give to a captive niche audience, that would be something. These last three models may help make a small career, but it's not likely to ever make you rich unless the Hollywood studios see potential from this. Hating to be a downer, but it's a very rough world out there, anymore. Doing films for the fun of it, seems to be the only thing we can do without some serious financial help from the front and the back. There is satisfaction in creating either short or feature films that have substance and enough quality to be put on your movie shelf. The experience is worth a try for the bold and you definitely learn something in that process.
Till we find better solutions, may we proceed with our art.
Best, Kenny
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