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Other People’s Money
How to make a living while building a name in Hollywood
(Page 2)
5 DVD Sales: If your film is picked up at a festival for theatrical distribution and becomes a movie, the theatrical distributor will probably keep all or a majority of the revenues from $19.95 sell-throughs (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.), $9.95 downloads (CinemaNow, Movielink, etc.) or $3.95 rentals (Blockbuster, Netflix, etc.). However, even if your film does not get a theatrical distribution deal, you can still go directly to the DVD world of sell-throughs, downloads and rentals and make your own sales.
6 Ancillary Revenues: Once your film has become a movie and you have negotiated either a 50-50 net deal or a split rights deal, permitting you to keep ancillary revenues other than the six major windows, you will now be able to cash in on them. Examples of these are music sales, novelization rights, remakes, branding, licensing, merchandising, iTunes, cell phones, AOL/Google/Yahoo, etc. The list goes on and on.
7 Star-Fuck Bucks: Every director who has established a name for him or herself via making a movie or two gets an amazing supplemental salary of $50,000 to $100,000 per day by directing commercials. This is called “star-fucking.” Big Madison Avenue ad agencies, with clients ranging from Nike to Aflac, like to appease their clients (middle-management corporate execs) by saying they can get Spike Lee or Quentin Tarantino to direct the commercial. Now, you are neither Spike Lee nor Quentin Tarantino. You are someone who has made a 90-minute movie that probably didn’t get picked up for theatrical distribution. But you have your own one-sheet promoting it with a jewel case DVD. With these as your press kit foundation, you can get a lot of jobs directing wedding videos and bar mitzvahs at $2,000 to $5,000 per weekend. It ain’t the megabucks you planned on, but it will pay the rent.
8 Sell Ads: This is today’s Wild West! Broadband is cheap. As a matter of fact, with a majority of the viral video (YouTube, Veoh, Revver, Grouper, etc.) and social networking (MySpace, BlackPlanet, etc.) sites out there, it’s free. In TV, commercials are the price the viewer pays for watching the programs for free. The average price for a 30-second ad on prime-time TV is $50 per 1,000 people (CPM, or cost-per-thousand). Thus, a TV show with a 10 rating (one rating point equals one million viewers) will sell ads for upwards of $500,000 each. The cost for ads (10-second pre-rolls) within programs on broadband streaming sites is now priced at $25 CPM.
So let’s make money from ads…
Take your 90-minute movie. Break it into 20 four-and-a-half-minute streams and market it as a serial that you post on a viral video site. Now market it via the Web and various social networking sites. Bottom line: If you can get 500,000 viewers (LonelyGirl15 got how many?) per segment, this pencils out to 10 million views, with a 10-second ad sold at $25 CPM… you have just made $250,000!
But don’t get too excited. Yes, the digital revolution is here, and, yes, you are going to be cashing in on all those YouTube/MySpace viewers. However, let’s start with a game plan, the foundation of which is based on the fact that your first film is merely a calling card, not a cash cow.
The saying in Hollywood is: “First, make a film. Then make a deal.” Thus, if you want $20 million from a major studio to direct, you must first make an excellent $2 million feature film that becomes a movie. Don’t have $2 million? Well, then you must first make a $200,000 feature film that becomes a movie. If you don’t have $200,000, then start with a $20,000 feature film. You get the picture…
The money available to producers and directors in the form of salaries, revenues or profits is massive—and exploding every day as the Web expands with DSL broadband connections. But 999 out of 1,000 times you will not see any money on your first independent feature film.
So be wise. Don’t go broke. Move the decimal place one number to the left on your first feature film budget and get it made. Attend the proper festivals. Secure a distributor. Maintain your opening title credit. And cash in (Epiphany #4: Nothing is guaranteed) with your second, third and fourth movies.
Dov S-S Simens spent a decade as a line producer before forming a filmmaker’s portal, WebFilmSchool.com, and The Hollywood Film Institute, an alternative film school for adults, with the acclaimed “2-Day Film School™” and “DVD Film School™,” which are credited with launching over 3,500 film careers.
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This story was published in the Guide to Making Movies 2007 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Other People's Money/How to make a living while building a name in Hollywood
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