Archive for "INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM"

Jan 20 2 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism: The $10,000 Screening
.: by Zeke Zelker

As many filmmakers embark on their journey to Park City to “dance”, I wanted to update a post I made a couple months back concerning how to make money on theatrical self distribution. Many people will tell you that it is impossible to make money in theaters. That theatrical distribution is a loss leader to make money later on video and cable release. I totally disagree, it is possible, because I have done it for all of the features that I have directed, to net $10,000 for one screening of your film.

Plan Ahead

I am a big proponent of building brand relationships early, usually in preproduction. I like to use product placement in my films because I feel it adds to the believability of the film. Many companies will offer free product for your film and the appropriate clearances. The free product goes a very long way. Ask my crew. I would hand out cases of beer after a long day of shooting (I always made sure that I would do this when call was later the next day). People like to feel that they are being taken care of and this doesn’t cost you anything.

Using brands in your film also creates a possibility that they would fiscally sponsor your screening or donate product for your after party in the future. Work with companies that make sense to your project and always keep in mind the company’s image.

When you’re in post production, book a date to have your premiere and screenings. When you’re talking to people about your film you can say we are premiering the film on this date at this place. Do not be afraid of four walling (renting the theatre). People like to hear that you have a plan, and the confidence level in your project goes up. Your investors like to know this too. Find a theatre that you can sell out. The buzz of selling out a theatre is infectious. Word will get out and the possibility of booking more theatres strengthens.

Build a Team

To make your screening a smashing success you will need a team of people behind you and start this process early in post production. Delegate responsibilities realizing their skill set. Have individuals plan your pre and after party, sell advertising, design your merchandise and advertising, do your public relations, etc. As you bring more people onto your team your networking possibilities expand exponentially.

Pound the Pavement

One of the biggest parts of filmmaking is being social. Why do you think there are so many parties in LA and NYC? People like to do business with people they know. Even if you are in Saratoga, NY you need to be social. What do I mean by this? Go to places where you might want to have your after party, go to business mixers and find out who is responsible for community relations and advertising. Fire off a nice e-mail stating how pleasurable it was meeting them. Then in the future you have opened the window for “the ask”. Think of ways that make sense to do business together. You may need sparkling water for a bar scene in your film and for your screening after party. Bingo, Saratoga Water is a possibility. You met Jean at a mixer and happen to have her business card. This adds value to your film because you don’t have to pay for water during production or at your events.

Befriend the Press & Getting the Word Out

Go to events that you know the press will be covering and meet them. Don’t be shy, they can play one of the biggest roles in the success of your film. It is important to map out the various press opportunities in advance. During production and upon distribution are the key times that press will be interested in your project. Press is free and advertising is expensive. Create press often and in different ways. Create a hit list of the potential press and don’t go to them all at once. You want to have a strategic well thought out plan to stay in people’s minds. When it’s time for your big screening, follow up with all of the press on your hit list send them a press release ask for coverage and invite them to the screening.

You also need to invite people using social media, e-mail blasts, and mailed invitations with the details of the screening and a direct link on how they can purchase tickets. If you need 1000 people to fill your theatre you need to invite 10,000 people. Again another reason why you need to be social.

Ticket Pricing

I often have different price points for tickets to my screenings and sell them in advance of the screening from our own store off of our web site. I will close the store 24 hours before the screening and if people still want to go they can pay at the door. I sell in advance for a number of reasons: it pays for some of the incurred costs, I know how many people to expect and if I need to buy advertising to fill the theatre.

I always have a general admission price then other ticket prices if people want to attend the preparty and after party. For instance:

$10 General Admission (750 tickets available)

$35 Admission & After Party with lite bites, entertainment, and free drink from sponsors (200 tickets available)

$125 Admission, Pre & After Parties small intimate gathering with cast with lite bites (I generally make) and champagne toast (donated), limo transportation to screening then after party and gift bag. (50 tickets available)

The total projected income for this is $20,750 and the costs incurred are for theatre and party space rental ($5,200), food ($3,500), entertainment ($500) , transportation ($1,000) and the cost of the merchandise that you give away in your gift bag ($300). You can barter some of these expenses with advertising in your filmbill.

Sell Anything That You Can think Of

Think for a moment how tv, newspapers, and radio stations make their money. They sell advertising!!! Do it! You’ll be surprised how much money you can make. There are a number of ways that you can sell advertising for your screening. You can create a filmbill that tells people at the screening a little more about your film and has advertising in it. You can sell pre-screening slides of advertisements or hang company banners. For $2,000 - $5,000 sell sponsorships. In all advertisements you acknowledge the sponsor (presented by…), in your filmbill you save the back cover for them and rotate their advertisement slide more frequently and give them 25 tickets. Knowing your demographic is a key element in pricing these things.

At the screening sell merchandise, t-shirts, posters, soundtracks, DVD’s, books, playing cards, etc. Be creative and make sure it is something that people want. Printing materials can get expensive so create partnerships.

I BELIEVE FILMMAKING IS A BLEND OF ART AND COMMERCE!

You too can make over $10,000 for one screening of your film. You just need to do some hard work and think creatively. Make your screenings an event and something that you may be able to do in various cities around the country. I would love for people share their theatrical screening stories, the good, the bad and the ugly!

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Jan 08 1 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism #5
.: by Zeke Zelker

Happy New! This is going to be a great year. I can feel it! No more naysayers, just doers, creating their own pathways to profitability in the amazing film business. Are you ready?

Today’s post is about merchandise. Do not leave home without it! I am sure you all have heard that you need to become a carni, selling your wares where ever you screen your film. I believe this is a good way to make a buck or a thousand, but I want to push the idea a couple of steps further. Keeping up with my amusement park background you never leave a park without going through some sort of store. You should do the same with the theaters that you screen at.

In total transparency, the film that I have made the most money on with merchandise is an okay film, not great, just okay. It has its moments, I still love it but I was still learning (still am) and it shows. It’s A.K.A-It’s a Wiley World! I pushed the film into production without taking the time to develop the script. I did it to full fill a dying dream of my dad, he always wanted to be in a film, and I made it happen. He passed away before he could see the finished product. NO REGRETS!

What was unique about A.K.A.-It’s A Wiley World! was the lead character, Pat, aka “The Hawk”, Wiley, played by the amazing Will Keenan (Tromeo & Juliet, Terror Firmer, Trick). Pat, a former mixologist, is trying to make it in show biz while at the same time trying to find a girlfriend. But his approach is all wrong, he uses very bad pick-up lines when preying on women. Just by this brief description you can see the plethora of merchandising opportunities.

Wiley Painting

Wiley Painting

Cocktail Book Cover

Cocktail Book CoverCocktail Book Page

Here’s what I created and sold: t-shirts, the soundtrack (we were still selling CD’s at the time), a cocktail book, paintings, marionettes and shirts. Yes this took a lot of work, but I wanted to create the world that Pat lived in. I guess you could say this was an early model of transmedia (we released the film in 2003), we used merchandise, music, artwork and various web sites to further tell the story of the film. People bought into it and I profited.

First make something that people want to buy. People loved the cocktail book. We sold over a thousand and they were completely hand made (we produced them for $1.96 and sold them for $6.95, a $4,990 profit). We sold them at screenings, bars, stores, and Amazon. It is very design heavy. I wanted to create a book that could fit in your pocket, lay flat or stand up, had a forward by a leading bartender (Dale DeGroff), quotes from Pat and if you turned it over and flipped through it, you could see Pat shake a cocktail. I still get requests for them.

Cocktail Book Page

Cocktail Book Page

Second, team up with talented individuals to help you create your merchandise. For A.K.A. I had a great designer, Stephanie August that helped me design everything printed, Matt Blum with the web based stuff, and Marla Durrant (Project Runway) with the shirts.

Make items limited. I learned this the hard way. I still have t-shirts and CD’s from past films in my basement. I am a firm believer in making things in a limited quantity now. Maybe team up with a carpenter to create a limited run of DVD boxes, burn in the title of the film and some iconography. In it include signed images from the film and cast, directors notes that do not appear anywhere else, etc. Sell them for $50-100. If they are well done people will buy them.

Create items that are original. Not many people, except die hard fans, will wear a logo of your title on a t-shirt. Be more creative. I am still waiting for jump drives/flash drives, thumb drives… whatever you call them to come down in price. I think this is the wave of the future to sell albums/soundtracks. People can download the music from your film, then have a flash drive to use as they may. Every painting that I sold for $25-$50 were original, all the same theme, but all different.

The merchandise needs to make sense. For InSearchOf, a very serious film about the repercussions and consequences of people’s sexual actions, I couldn’t go crazy. I had to create things that lended themselves to the story. We, Steven Leibensperger and I, created posters, soundtracks, t-shirts, DVDs and condom tins. (We got sponsored by One Condoms, see Indie Film Capitalism #1). I also designed and made skirts made from men’s ties that appeared in the film.

InSearchOf Condom Tin

InSearchOf Condom Tin

One Condom Tin

One Condom Tin

Trust me you can make money on merchandise, I know because I have. Look at a couple other models such as Kevin Smith’s View Askew and Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica. Nose around their sites and get ideas.

There are a couple of things you’ll need to make real money, creativity, an online store, places such as Amazon and ebay to put up your merchandise, a reliable, highly professional printer, time, some cash and a great designer. I am certain if you go for a long drive and think really hard you can come up with at least five great merchandise ideas.

I would love to hear what merchandise other filmmakers have created. Remember there are many ways that you can make your film profitable.

Next Up: PRESS

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Dec 02 2 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism #4
.: by Zeke Zelker

WOWZA! Thank you for everyone’s interest in the IndieWear idea. The entire plan and concept is becoming more concrete thanks to other filmmaker input. VERY EXCITING STUFF! We can create a team to make money together.

As promised I wanted to address how filmmakers can make money on YouTube. Let me first share with you a challenge that we had. I met the lovely Sarah Pollock from YouTube at Power to the Pixel last year and we chatted about the possibility of showing InSearchOf as part of their YouTube Screening Room. She asked what the film was about… The repercussions and consequences of people’s sexual actions. She then asked about nudity. I told her that we needed over twenty nudity riders for the film and then she told me that they couldn’t show my film on their site. I told her that I understood her position even though deep down, I don’t understand why seeing the human body affects people more adversely than violence. We are such an uptight society, (see my rant about iTunes here).

On the flight home I conjured my plan. I would sign up for Google’s Adsense, making money on their pop-up ads. I would show the “censored” first half of the film on YouTube. There is a clear delineation between the first and second part of InSearchOf. Then I would direct people to our site to download the entire movie or buy the DVD. THIS PLAN WORKED BEAUTIFULLY.

We had 2885 people view the censored version of the film. Close to 148 people visited our store and bought either the downloaded, DVD or merchandise off of our site, (this is a huge percentage, over 5% of the people who watched the censored first half of the film bought the entire film). We didn’t do any marketing for this, out of fear that we would be pulled and we finally were after six months. YouTube doesn’t like it when you promote other sites on the content that you post on their site.

Sure these aren’t huge numbers but this test proves that it can be done. Oh yeah and we receive a check every couple of months from Google for a couple hundred dollars thanks to people watching our stuff on YouTube.

When trying to make money on your film do not take no for an answer. Think of ways around the challenge/obstacle to make money.

Next Up: MERCHANDISE

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Nov 19 0 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism #3.1
.: by Zeke Zelker

There has been a lot of interest in my last post about the Indie Film Apparel line. I wanted to put out a couple more ideas out there around the concept.

I think it would be possible to use the t-shirt concept to raise money for a film to complete the picture, although the filmmaker would need to have the resources to create the t-shirts. The film would need to have a clear clean concise call to action page that is in the same branding feel as the t-shirt and film. (here’s an example for InSearchOf) The URL listed on the hang tag would direct people to a donation page, maybe we could team up with Indiegogo or Kickstarter on this, that would give the details of the film, trailer, what the money is needed for etc. I would like to offer the stores the same affiliate offer where they would receive 20% of the donation. If you think this is too high please remember that you are getting the customer in your store and their contact info to sell them the DVD or other merchandise directly down the road.

The other part of this concept is taking the indie film apparel line on the road at various film festivals. If the t-shirts are well designed they can stand on their own and generate traffic. The festival in return for having us would get the affiliate compensation. Think sxsw.nameofwebsite.com or sundance.nameofwebsite.com or ifp.nameofwebsite.com I feel that the films do not need to be in the festival to accomplish this. It’s about filmmakers coming together, helping each other and making money to further one’s creativity.

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Nov 18 4 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism #3
.: by Zeke Zelker

We’ve all heard from Hope, Weiler, Broderick, and many other sources exclaiming that indie filmmakers now-a-days need to sell things, besides their films, to sustain themselves. Filmmakers sell posters, soundtracks, t-shirts, etc. at screenings and off their websites to make a couple of bucks. I’ve been doing this for over ten years. My peers always looked at me strangely, why was I selling merchandise for my little indie film? I was making money! If I have a captive audience why not sell them as much as I can? Remember I grew up in an amusement park.

Yes, anyone can sell merchandise, this idea isn’t new, but what I am about to share with you is. I will leave the all encompassing idea of merchandising for a later post. Today I would like to focus on selling t-shirts with a twist. Sure anyone can get a t-shirt screen printed with the name of their film on it and hope to sell it for a couple of bucks to fans of the film. How about creating a t-shirt that transcends your film and can stand on it’s own, simply as a cool t-shirt? Why you may ask? The potential to sell more t-shirts isn’t just limited to fans of the film. Stores most likely won’t be willing to stock your t-shirt if you only have the title of your film on it. You need to think bigger, think like a designer. Would you wear a logo of a film that you don’t know anything about if you saw it in a store? Probably not. But what if the logo was part of a cool design and you liked the design? The chances of purchasing that t-shirt are greater.

Now let me go one step further in helping you get your awesomely designed t-shirt into stores. I hope you have created an affiliate program for your film by now. If you haven’t, you should. I am telling you there are so many revenue streams that can be created with the help of an affiliate program. Okay I just stepped down off of my soap box.

Your t-shirts should have a hang tag on them. We printed on the back of a postcard, punched a whole in it, fished a piece of string through it and affixed it with a safety pin. On the postcard we wrote the purpose of the t-shirt, a synopsis of our film, some reviews and URL where they can purchase the film. The most important bit of information I just told you is the URL. This is how I’ve been successful in getting our t-shirts into stores.

We created a specific URL for each store that we have our t-shirts in that links to our affiliate program. For instance http://homebase.insearchofmovie.com or http://armynavy.insearchofmovie.com We did this so we know which store is responsible for each sale but more importantly we give the store 20% of every sale that they generate off of our web site. Store owners that I’ve approached really think this is a cool idea. They have the potential to make money off your film. Name a retailer who wouldn’t like that idea?

Let me walk you through the numbers. I get our t-shirts printed on American Apparel t-shirts for $6.26, the hang tags cost $.04 for a total cost $6.30. We sell the t-shirts wholesale for $10 a piece. That’s a $3.70 profit, (yes you can shop around for better pricing, I’m loyal to my friends). The stores sell them for $15.00 ($5 profit for the store) or whatever price they would like to. If someone then downloads the film for $1.99 we give the store $.40 for a total profit of $5.40. We make $5.29 (3.70+1.59). Yes we do sell our t-shirts directly to consumers meaning we make a larger profit but having your t-shirts in stores validates your efforts and makes your film seem bigger to the public. By selling to stores you’re also getting advertising and volume purchases. We sell our t-shirts by the dozen.

Here’s what I would like to do, and please pass this along to your filmmaking friends and I am serious about this. I would like to partner with at least 10 other filmmakers in creating an indie film apparel line. I know if I have 10 different t-shirts to sell in this way I can get them into national chain stores. I’ve approached a couple and they are keen to the idea as long as the t-shirts are well made and designed. This is the type of thing that retailers like, something that generates excitement and revenue. A collective of filmmakers will have more power and influence than one filmmaker pushing alone.

If you are interested in this please e-mail me at zzelker at idreammachine dot com.

Next up: Making money on Youtube!

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Nov 11 7 comments
INDIE FILM CAPITALSIM, InSearchOf

Indie Film Capitalism #2
.: by Zeke Zelker

Thank you to all of those who emailed me about my first Indie Film Capitalism post. I hope I can provide my fellow filmmakers with fun and innovative ways of making money on their passion. Please share your successes and plunders. I would like this to be a learning experience for everyone.

One of the things that we’ve done to drive revenue, has received a lot of curiosity and inquiry from my more established filmmaking friends, I guess because they have the most to gain. It’s a way to enable your fans and audiences to make money on your films. How cool is that? It’s an affiliate program that we created for InSearchOf.

The idea came when my long time friend and collaborator Matt Blum and I chatted about different ways to spread the word about InSearchOf. As a lot of our conversations go, I have this crazy idea and we debate on how is the best way to make it happen, he’s a master at figuring out how to make things work. We talked about banner ads and how we can monetize them. BINGO our affiliate program was born.

An affiliate program is a crowd sourcing idea, as a way to market your film and reward people for driving the traffic to your store via banner ads, widgets and links. There are a number of reasons why this idea works. It’s endorsed by the person who becomes an affiliate.”Hey Jimbob, you have to see this film! It’s amazing, really makes you think, http://download.insearchofmovie.com - SuzyQ”. It’s a way for you and your fans to make money on the word of mouth that people create around your film. There’s little/no cost in creating an affiliate program. It’s a way to get people energized and talking about your film. You can create distinct URLs that push the endorsing side of things further http://ku.insearchofmovie.com and on every item sold you can collect data that will help you in your future projects/endeavors.

Here’s how you can create your very own affiliate program.

1. You need to have a store front on your web site. Your film film needs to be available via DVD or Download.

2. Shop around for an eCommerce site you want to partner with. We chose jrox.com for our affiliate program.

3. Once you’ve chosen your eCommerce partner you need to figure out how you are going to set up your plan. Here’s what we did: http://store.idreammachine.com/affil.html (this is an overview of how our plan works and the benefits of becoming an affiliate).

4. Ask a designer friend to help you create banners and widgets promoting your film. You should create at least three different campaigns with three different angles to pin point your marketing to a specific audience type, while maintaining your branding. If you need ideas e-mail me, zzelker at idreammachine dot com, we can brain storm together.

5. The last and most important step is getting the word out about your affiliate program to your fan base. Promote the hell out of it, using direct e-mail, social networking sites, post cards etc.

Here’s an example and walk through of how we created our affiliate program for InSearchOf. Go to: http://download.insearchofmovie.com click on BE A PARTNER. Read all of the stuff we have here, even copy it if you wish when creating your own program. Click on SIGN UP NOW and nose around, see how it works, see what you like and dislike about what we’ve created. Make yours better!!!

Now that you’ve created your film, you need to start making money on it. What’s a better way than giving an opportunity to your fans to make money and you make money on their efforts? There’s a reason why I’m calling this Indie Film Capitalism. We’ve had success using this method and there are so many other things you can do to make money after you’ve created an affiliate program.

Up next: T-shirts with a twist!

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