Filmmaking Stuff Filmmaking Stuff provides resources for independent filmmakers. The website includes articles on how to take a story idea from script to screen, including articles on scriptwriting, producing, finance, shooting, editing, directing, marketing, distribution and how to build an audience. Filmmaking Stuff also has articles detailing how to make money making movies – including interviews with Hollywood Producers, Directors, writers and other filmmaking professionals.

If you’re currently working on your next movie script, this might be of interest to you. My screenwriting friend Jurgen Wolff is hosting another MAD (Massive Action Day) on April 9. It’s all online and it’s free.

According to Jurgen, here’s how it works:

You commit to working on some writing (or other) project that is important to you for up to 8 hours, with short breaks every hour. You plan it so you know what you’ll be doing (for instance, nobody will actually write for 8 hours, but it could be a combination: some research, some writing, some getting organized, etc.) You don’t have to participate for the full 8 hours–even four or six hours of focused effort will give you a big boost.

Everybody checks in online very briefly every hour (during the breaks) to say what they achieved in the past hour and what their goal is for the next one. These messages will be posted in our chat window and we can support each other.

Every hour Jurgen will create a five-minute live video feed to give you a little tip or motivational quote to help keep everybody motivated. During your time together, Jurgen will also randomly award some prizes, like a book or another useful item.

The MAD event starts at 9am London time on Saturday, perfect for the UK and Europe, and he will stay on the air until 2am Sunday morning so people in the US and Canada can get their full eight hours in as well. In the last event, Jurgen had participants from Russia, Bali, India and New Zealand as well!

Here are some more comments from our first MAD:

“This feels good—have been wanting to get this story sorted out for ages”…
“Amazing how much work we all do together!” …
“This is such a great way to work!” …
“I am so focused it’s as if my mind has had a kick up the backside.”

Join Jurgen and other writers from all over the globe and give your project a great shot of energy and momentum.

To reserve your spot, go here: www.writingbreakthroughstrategy.com/MAD

Let me know how it goes!

Posted under SCREENWRITING

Think back to a time in filmmaking history when your greatest challenge was actually making a movie. At least the idea seemed easier.

For those of you new to independent movie making, let’s review. In the past, many first time feature filmmakers were driven by something I call “The Sundance Model.” This is the idea where filmmakers went out, acquired or wrote a screenplay, got money, made the movie and then hoped like heck they would get into a major festival and garner a significant (and profitable deal.)

From a pure business perspective, this was a crazy way to make movies. I mean, can you name one other industry in the world that produces a product without having a solid distribution channel in place? Can you name another industry that, once the product is made, relies on other outside people for ALL of the marketing, sales and distribution of the product?

These days things are a bit different. These days DVD distribution is dying. And with this death, the days of relying on some outside distributor to validate your work and sell it are numbered. The upside to this modern moviemaking movement is, you can finally put all those years of creative accounting and bad deals behind you. The bad news is, as an independent filmmaker, you are going to have to add yet another hat to your overflowing rack. This time, the hat you wear will be sales and marketing.

[A side note: Before you leave a gazillion comments telling me that foreign DVD territory sales and (even) pre-sales are alive and well - I provide this disclaimer. Consider any deal that makes sense. But in the event the deal only pays you validation and a copy of your DVD, hopefully this series helps you create a more profitable plan. I also want to caution both new as well as veteran filmmakers of the following: The day is fast approaching when DVD retail will eventually join VHS, CDs, Cassette Tapes, 8-Tracks and the silly stores that used to sell them  in the great abyss of a bygone era. And rightfully so!]

So all of this said, if you’re just reading filmmaking stuff for the first time,welcome! In this community we don’t over complicate the filmmaking process. We make movies and we work to sell our movies without asking permission. And in this respect, you are reading article 5 of my 7 step process for selling your your movie on iTunes, Amazon and Netflix for Maximum profit.

So to recap, once you have sharpened your hook (pt. 1),  targeted your target audience (pt. 2),  set up shop (pt. 3) and created a movie sales funnel (pt. 4) you are ready to begin the process of driving traffic to your movie sales site.

Step 5. Refine Your Trailer (And Promote It)

Take a look at your trailer. Is your trailer congruent with your hook and the marketing elements we covered earlier? If not, I suggest you recut and refine your trailer to make sure your marketing message is consistent. In doing this you will have to find the balance between showing enough to sell your movie and giving away so much that you spoil the story. And since your movie trailer will be posted on various websites, you should also add a title card with a link to your movie website.

The internet is full of places where you can upload and post your trailer. But out of all of them, YouTube is top-notch. Aside from being the second largest search engine on earth, the service also incorporates a built-in social networking component that allows people to comment and discuss your movie and create community around your title. This is important because word-of-mouth indicates what people like and dislike about your movie. And as you will soon learn, more
discussion (good or bad) equals more sales.

Since YouTube records the number of views, this is also a great indication of how well your trailer is being received. If viewership is low, refine your title, tags and description to complement your niche subject matter. Martial Arts Movie? One tag might be “Karate” or “Kung Fu.” After tweaking and re-tweaking your description, if viewership is still stagnant, consider cutting, tweaking and testing multiple versions of your trailer.

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Posted under DISTRIBUTION

Filmmaking is changing. Like it or not, if you want to make a living making movies, you need to learn about the business side of independent movie making. And if this is your first time on filmmaking stuff, you are reading step 4 of a 7 part series on How To Sell Your Movie On iTunes, Amazon and Netflix For Maximum Profit.

So picking up where we left off, once you have sharpened your hook and targeted your target audience, and set up shop in the popular VOD marketplaces, your next step is to create a movie sales funnel.

Step 4 of 7 – Create Your Movie Sales Funnel

To set up an internet movie sales funnel, you will have to modify your website to funnel all traffic towards a sale. This can be achieved easily by removing all the potentially distracting content from your site including production photos, press kits and actor bios. Once removed, further emphasis should be placed on your trailer, your about page, and most importantly, your “buy now” buttons.

Most of your visitors will exit your website and never return. So to increase your odds of converting these visitors into paying customers, you will want to create ways to capture visitor contact information. One easy way is by creating a Facebook page for your movie and then placing a Facebook link on your site. This way, once your visitor joins your movie’s Facebook community, the added social proof of like-minded fans touting the joys of your movie may increase your sales. This goes for Twitter and other social networking communities too.

But because many social networking sites run the risk of going out of vogue, you will want to migrate your fans off the social networks and get them into your own mailing list. For this, I recommend using a third-party email marketing service such as Aweber.  Aweber provides ease of service. As soon as you sign up for one of their inexpensive accounts, you can easily create a way for your fans to connect with you. For example, if you would like over $100 dollars in useful filmmaking tools, FREE simply enter your info into my Awber opt in box below.

If you just signed up, you probably noticed how you were redirected to a “Thank You Page.” And on that page you were able to download all sorts of premium filmmaking tools, for free.

While I am obviously utilizing list-building to create a more meaningful relationship with filmmakers (and YOU), this model can be (and should be) applied to your own movie business. But instead of giving away filmmaking books and audio courses, you might consider allowing your prospective movie audience to download a free movie soundtrack.

The reason why I stress Audience List Building so much in my Filmmaking model is because no matter what happens in distribution, the size of your targeted audience list  (a community of people who know you and your work) – this will determine your rate of success over your long-term career. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Three Tips for building your Audience List:

1. From now on, as soon as you have a website, start buiding your list.
2. Put your website on your business card.
3. Collect names and email addresses at film festivals.

Companies like Aweber allow you to manage your email communication with thousands of fans. And since reputable email companies have good relationships with internet service providers, the odds of your movie newsletter ending up in spam folders is decreased.

If liked this Filmmaking article, could you kindly click one of those little buttons below?

Posted under DISTRIBUTION

When we compare modern moviemaking to widget production, it oftentimes seems as though we are saying that the end product of our work carries with it so much more human, emotional weight and experience than the mere production of a widget. And while I understand that watching a feature film has so much more value to ME, and as most of us would argue, humanity – Our friends at the widget factory might disagree.

If we think about it, widgets run our moviemaking; Think about our cameras and our equipment and the computer (or mobile device) the enables us to read these words. Now think of the companies and factories that produce these widgets, and the widgets that create the cars that drive the widget production team to work. And when these widget craftsmen and craftswomen go to work, (to take the analogy further), some of them will spend the next twelve hours dreaming up the next award-winning widget, with one goal in life: They want to make your experience on earth more valuable.

Sound familiar?

Like making a movie, creating the perfect widget takes tremendous time, effort, planning, research and development, financing, prototype creation, craft, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sales. These business components, like modern moviemaking are all essential to the success of a mere widget. And none of it would have happened without the creativity or tenacity of some entrepreneur (or movie producer) with an imagination and the desire to create and share something that might just make your life better.

As a modern moviemaker, I have no problem with this analogy. Most folks know I’m a little bit too obsessed with Video On Demand distribution and how it finally enables us to effortlessly share our finished films (our widgets) with the world. But what this means to me is, moviemakers finally have a business that no longer requires the outsourcing of marketing, distribution and sales. We can finally operate as a stand-alone business, albeit a small business! And unlike widget production, our product does not have to be delivered in physical form. This means we can NOW reach our customers (our audience) without the headaches, time consumption, fulfillment and shipping costs previously associated with our industry – which are still cumbersome elements most always associated with other industries.

If nothing else, I believe this analogy should serve to help all modern moviemakers quickly communicate OUR business to prospective investors – with a reception we have never known! Because like it or lump it, most prospective, private investors make their living dreaming up and manufacturing the perfect widget in some other industry. And because we finally have a middle-man-less, non-discriminatory sales channel (VOD), prospective investors might finally understand that OUR business, like their widget business, makes sense.

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Note: This posting was initially published as my response to a posting on Ted Hope’s blog, Truly Free Film. Because I went on for quite a few paragraphs, I decided to post it here too.

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Posted under FILM FINANCING

Thanks to HDSLR technology, any filmmaker with passion and a story can make a feature film. And unlike years past, these backyard indie filmmakers are not prohibited by cash or creativity.

Yet despite this movement, many of my high profile “professional” friends in Los Angeles, have made a conscious effort to ignore the rise of backyard indies. Why?

Because inexpensive HDSLR filmmaking doesn’t count!

I mean, with these movies, common questions asked by Hollywood hot-shots are: Who signed the SAG agreements? Who contacted the Unions? Who notified the MPAA that another movie will need to be rated? Who paid enough people to call this a “real” feature film?

Nobody.

Guess what? Audience word-of-mouth doesn’t care if the movie was an official union indie or a backyard indie made for pocket change. And thanks to the demise of traditional distribution and the increased market domination of iTunes, Amazon and Netflix, the big difference between a $10,000 back yard indie and a $2,000,000 dollar indie isn’t the budget, it’s which filmmaker gets the most clicks on his or her “BUY NOW” button. And to break even on a 2M feature, the filmmaker is gonna need a lot of clicks!

As a rough example, to recoup 2M dollars, the filmmaker will need to to sell (roughly) 200,000 video on demand downloads at $10 a pop. These first sales will cover the 40% cost allocated to VOD providers (the real winners here), after which, the filmmaker will still need to sell an additional 200,000 downloads to repay the investors.

400,000 VOD downloads x $10 = $4,000,000 minus $2,000,000 in VOD fees = the initial $2,000,000

Meanwhile, the filmmaker with a backyard indie only has to sell 2000 VOD downloads to recover the initial 10K costs.

While nobody wants to make movies for pocket change, many filmmakers still believe we can somehow continually produce unprofitable (movie) products and expect the money and the subsequent jobs to keep rolling in. And unlike years past, filmmakers can no longer approach investors with the cliche pitch: “Filmmaking is a risky investment – if we are lucky, we might win Sundance and get a deal.” Now, with transparent distribution options availabe to all filmmakers, that line of give-me-money reasoning is reckless, no longer applicable, and in my opinion, unethical.

Aside from the initial challenge of sales and marketing, the ripple effect reveals an even greater conundrum: How will you raise enough money to pay your cast and crew AND still pay back your investors? I mean, what’s the new sweet spot? How can we once again make independent filmmaking profitable?

“SO NOW THAT I CAN’T AFFORD TO PAY MY CAST AND CREW, WHAT DO I DO?”

Here is the Jason Brubaker model on how to save the movie industry. Ready?

To survive in this ever changing world of indie filmmaking, we have to change our strategy. Instead of making that one big awesome indie, we now need to focus on building a genre specific movie library and spend all of our downtime building a ginormously targeted audience list.

Step 1: Find your top-ten closest filmmaking collaborators. Form a company.

Step 2: Write a business plan, but instead of putting all of your focus on making one movie, concentrate on making 3-5 feature films.

Step 3: Make sure that you include a sales and marketing plan. To do this, take your proposed budget for all movies and work backwards. And start asking yourself, “How many downloads do we need to sell to recoup our investment?”

Step 4: In this model, instead of paying freelance day rates, you’ll have to hire long term employees and provide each with a salary and back end points (sort of like stock options) on each title.

Step 5: When the title wins, you all win. Over the years, your titles will add up. And the real compensation will come back in the form of residual movie income.

While this is not a fully refined model, it’s a start. It’s better than ignoring the fact that backyard indies are being sold right next to Union Indies as well as mainstream Hollywood movies. This is a time of change. This is the indie movie distribution equivalent of the automobile replacing the horse drawn wagon.

You can choose to ignore this movement, and you can probably succeed for a few more years. But there will come a day when all entertainment will be on-demand and cheap to consume. The question is, will you ignore the backyard movement and continue to play your distribution lottery ticket in hopes of winning the dream deal, or will you  join the movement and help us filmmakers figure out a way to make indie movies profitable?

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Jason Brubaker is a Hollywood based Independent Producer, PMD (Producer of Marketing and Distribution) and an expert in digital self-distribution. He is focused on helping you make, market and sell your movies more easily by growing your fan base, building buzz and creating community around your title. To learn more about Jason and grab over $100 dollars in FREE filmmaking Tools, CLICK HERE

Posted under FILM FINANCING