TIPS ON PLATFORMS AND SERVICES FOR SELLING YOUR FILM WITHOUT SELLING YOUR SOUL
SELLING YOUR FILM WITHOUT SELLING YOUR SOUL
– TIPS ON HOW TO DO JUST THAT –
– Highlighting DIY Tools & Services You Should Know About –
By Sheri Candler and Orly Ravid
These tools and services are either ones that were used by filmmakers in the book Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul or ones that we reached out to for support of the book because we believe in what they’re doing. To be sure there are others to be covered in future posts.
1. Amplifier-http://amplifier.com/what-we-do/ – ECOMMERCE TOOL –
This company powers the estore for Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. She sells DVDs (both standard edition and artist signed edition), tshirts, necklaces, pins and soft toys. Amplifier is an ecommerce tool that allows you to sell custom merchandise directly to your fans, cutting out the retailer middlemen, by providing fulfillment and customer service. If you don’t have a warehouse and staff and equipment to store, pack and ship your merchandise and deal with any complaints (and I know you don’t), Amplifier takes orders from your site, stores your merch in their warehouse or fulfills just in time merchandise, ships it out and handles any customer problems seamlessly. They can also service custom orders (like give freebies to any order over $50 if you want to do that, or they can fulfill print on demand merchandise) all under one roof.
2. Believe Limited-http://believelimited.com/ – Monetizing YouTube and Viral Videos – Adventures of Power utilized this service to help raise their Youtube profile. There is a whole section in the book written by Ryan Gielen about what Believe did for the film. The gist of their service is video marketing that helps a film reach the top spots on Youtube, Amazon, iTunes etc by spreading video content around, collecting large amounts of views, comments and subscribers (in the case of Youtube). They design branded channels and help craft video content that is compelling enough to spread and help seed it around the Internet to ensure that it spreads. According to their service sheet for a $50K campaign that runs 6 months, they recommend creating 20-25 pieces of video content that they can drive roughly 5-6 million views on Youtube. They start from the film’s target release date and work backward to help plan out the content release strategy that will ensure a continuous build up of interest and viewers.
3. ConneXtion – http://www.theconneXtion.com – Fulfillment services of all Media Jon Reiss recommended them to handle fulfillment for our book and he has been happy with them as is Topspin which considers them a preferred vendor. The ConneXtion was founded in 1997 and has been running the direct2fan (d2f) business for artists, labels, authors, filmmakers, comedians, nonprofits ever since. They’ve worked with films such as The Yes Men. They handle fulfillment and manufacturing for DVDs, CDs, Merch, books both on digital and brick and mortar side. COSTS are: OFFICIAL D2F STORE: $200 setup fee & 80% paid on all physical items and digital albums sold direct2fan. DISTRIBUTION to DIGITAL RETAIL: No setup fee; 85% paid on each dollar from retail. ConneXtion’s services are: DISTRIBUTION -D2F: physical and digital cds/merch/etc sold via an estore; DIGITAL to RETAIL (ie iTunes, Amazon, Emusic/400+ others); PHYSICAL to RETAIL (ie. brick and mortar stores); DISTRIBUTION of PHYSICAL items via AMAZON, eList/Newsletter Management (coming Fall 2011), Tix, Licensing, and Clearance of Cover Songs, and eMarketing.
4. DISTRIFY www.Distrify.com – DIY TOOLSET
One can use Distrify to sell a film anywhere on the web and via social media platforms by embedding their widget. Ideally one gets one’s fans to embed the widget on forums, blogs, websites, etc.. If your trailer and film are on Distrify, when you share the clip, you’re also sharing the store to buy the film or find out about upcoming screenings. When your audience shares it further, you’re always spreading the point-of-sale along the way. Anyone who shares it gets paid a share of sales they generate. One does not have to start selling through Distrify right away – one can use it to promote screenings and events through the trailer interface. If the film’s not available in the user’s area, they can make their interest known directly through the player as well. Distrify compiles the statistics for filmmakers and give them the mailing list data – all part of their service. Any new screenings you add are also automatically listed in all the players that have been embedded around the web. And when one wants to start selling the film, one can add it as well. There are no up-front charges, fully non-exclusive, and they don’t need any rights. They take a 30% transaction fee on sales and split the 5% affiliate revenue with the filmmaker. Distrify worked with Adventures of Power and is also working with Lionsgate in the UK, for example. Excerpt from the book regarding Adventures of Power: “In terms of the player/purchase options, Ari noticed a huge emerging fan base in Mexico that he speaks of in his interview. He realized 50% of his 100,000 Facebook fans were in Mexico. Distrify added Spanish closed captions as well as English and they introduced streaming as an option in Mexico. They’ve been told that several companies prevent streaming in Mexico, and they added the Mexican Peso as a currency that people can sell with.” The Adventures of Power team was especially impressed with the Facebook tab – which will soon have customizable art, html linkage, and of course, the Distrify player widget. It’s easy to add (embed) the widget – so not only is it easy to get on the film’s website and blog, etc. but it is easy for affiliates to embed as well. NOTE: The key will be to have consumers be comfortable with buying films this way and via DIY services in general and that should get easier and easier with time. And of course marketing and publicity are up to the filmmaker’s team as usual.
5. Dynamo Player – www.Dynamoplayer.com – DIY TOOL
Filmakers use Dynamo Player by embedding the video viewer on their own website and by having a film’s fans embed it on their websites or blogs for a rental period of the filmmaker’s choosing. Prices are set by the filmmaker, payment is immediate via Paypal and a monthly statement is sent letting one know how many streams were sold, geographic information, and where the traffic originated. Dynamo is non-exclusive and enables any filmmaker to immediately upload their film, set a price, publish the film on their own site and elsewhere with no up-front costs or monthly fees. Filmmakers receive 70% of every transaction, every time, with no hidden costs, no matter what features they use and they get paid immediately by every viewer, no matter where they watch the film. They can include a free trailer, supplemental videos, multiple language versions and other bonus material at no additional cost. Viewers pay easily with PayPal, Amazon or credit card in just a couple of clicks. A single-click auto-debit option is coming soon as well. Payments are made to the rights holder by PayPal or Amazon, on-demand, at any time. Some filmmakers get paid every week if they want and we are happy to write checks for high volume publishers. Dynamo accepts all currencies and works in any country. Dynamo provide sales numbers and a range of related data by day, week, month or by a custom range of dates. Sales statistics are immediately available, so there is never a need to wait for a monthly report to see your sales performance, but a formal downloadable or printable monthly report will be available in July. Filmmakers can also see statistics for trailer views, player interaction, payment follow-through and more, so they can gain insight into viewer behavior and tweak the presentation of their film to boost sales. Filmmakers can control access by DVD Region, continent or country with a simple set of checkboxes. Dynamo enables geo-blocking at no cost because we consider it absolutely necessary for independent filmmakers to have this option while shopping their films in different markets. Dynamo often includes films in public announcements, blog posts, tweets and other marketing efforts. Dynamo filmmakers have been featured in stories on IndieWire, GigaOm and other media sites, and have earned new sales when their films have been embedded within the articles.
6. EggUp – www.EggUp.com – DIY Platform / Tool
EggUp is a publishing platform for filmmakers and film distributors. They note that they “help filmmakers and distributors rent and sell their films online while preventing piracy”. Their free online publishing tools can help one distribute and sell film or video which is all packaged and encrypted into a file called the “Egg”. The Egg is made available for download and allows consumers to watch and share with friends and family virally while filmmakers are able to make money. With EggUp gets a website to promote their film together with an integrated pay per view solution. They also list your films in our film catalog called GoEggit. One can distribute the Egg on a website, and other online retailers with your very own buy now button without setup fees and inventory. They are Worldwide and can Geo Filter as needed. Again the key is marketing one’s film; they can’t do it for you.
For pricing and fees etc go to:
http://www.eggup.com/how_it_works/transactionfees
http://www.eggup.com/pricing
7. LBi-http://www.lbi.com/us/ – ePR and Internet/Viral Marketing Services
Case study Adventures of Power utilized LBi for their ePR services paid for by their distributor Phase4. LBi focused on media placement for trailers and news stories on a large array of film and entertainment websites. LBi provides a multitude of services, including social media maintenance, but AoP did not find their “voice” authentic for the film’s social media sites and instead funneled the firm’s work into utilizing relationships with website editors and bloggers to secure unpaid editorial features for the film, a useful service since filmmakers typically do not have these relationships.
8. Prescreen – www.Prescreen.com — PLATFORM
Prescreen is a new platform that curates films and distributes them via a daily email to an opt-in audience. Their list is presently approximately 40,000 and growing daily. It is free to sign up to receive the Prescreen daily email. One has the opportunity to ‘rent’ the movie to stream. Each movie they feature lives on Prescreen for 60 days (and this is an exclusive period in terms of digital distribution). On Day 1, the movie costs $4 and one will have up to 60 days to view the film; while on Days 2 – 60, the movie costs $8 and one has 60 – (x days) to complete the film. Though a moviegoer has up to 60 days to complete the film, ‘renting’ on Prescreen is similar to that of any other mainstream steaming services offering 48 hours to complete the film once one starts the stream. TFC worked with Prescreen for its first film during the Beta phase, HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRY, and the numbers of transactions are as follows: As of 10/18/2011 (when this was drafted) the movie will still be available on Prescreen for another 27 days, so the numbers will probably change. 19 sold during Private Beta; 46 sold on Day 1; 18 sold after Day 1 (21% of total sales have come after Day 1). Prescreen noted: “This 21% is consistent with the breakout we’re seeing for other movies as well. Across the site we’ve seen about 22% of purchases come after Day 1.” RE: The 60 Days and WINDOWS (I quote Shawn Bercuson Founder & CEO): “Individual filmmakers typically view Prescreen as a marketing and distribution outlet while bigger libraries and producers tend to see prescreen as a promotional tool given the finite amount time a movie lives on Prescreen (60 days)… We built Prescreen as a way for content owners to gain more visibility into their target market and transparency about their core audience. At scale, we believe Prescreen is most powerful when used as a promotional tool along side other distribution windows in other mediums (theatrical, DVD, etc). By doing so, a content owner is able to leverage existing marketing dollars from other windows and capture (and capitalize) on the audience however way they want to consume online. Once the content owner understands his/her audience, they can market within the digital medium much more efficiently and cost effectively. “
9. Sonicbids-http://about.sonicbids.com/bands/how-it-works – PAIRING BANDS TO BRANDS: Sonicbids is an online matchmaker between bands looking for gigs and promoters and brands who need music. According to their website, their mission is to help create and empower an Artistic Middle Class through the use of innovative technology. The site helps fashion an EPK for bands who are looking for bookings, either live or in partnership with brands (your film is a brand) so that they may be found by promoters or marketing people. They also allow bands to search people looking for talent for international music festivals, clubs, songwriting contests, radio, licensing and more and vice versa. This how Hunter Weeks and Mike Dion found music for their film Ride the Divide‘s soundtrack.
Excerpt: “In the case of Ride the Divide, they specifically targeted bands that
lived in one of their niche communities. They used a source for music called SonicBids.com, where musicians offer their music for use in films, events and concerts. Half of the musicians in RTD came from Sonicbids and they specifically searched for musicians from the states along the Rocky Mountains.”
10. VODO- http://vodo.net/ – Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Monetized File Sharing
Case study Pioneer One has been releasing their episodes on VODO since day one. To date, their series has been downloaded over 3.2 million times and raised almost $80,000 for the production costs through fan donations.
According to their website, VODO was launched in late 2009 to help creators promote and distribute their independent films, music and books using Peer to Peer technology [some call them pirate sites]. VODO believes there is immense untapped potential for independent creators in P2P distribution and that the new model of networked, free-to-share, peer-powered distribution will soon present better opportunities for creators than the old scarcity-powered models (theaters, DVD, etc.). Each month they release and promote one free-to-share film, in conjunction with their distribution partner BitTorrent and viewers are encouraged to donate funds to the productions they view. Pioneer One raised $30,000 in its first eight weeks using VODO. The Yes Men Fix The World raised over $25,000 in its first month using VODO.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Both Prescreen and Dynamo player sponsored our book but we pursued them because we believe they provide a good service to films and filmmakers and are great solutions.
Orly Ravid November 7th, 2011
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