So, today's blog will tie in with yesterday's a bit.
I am currently "my own boss". I "run" two businesses with varying degrees of success and have for a good portion of my adult life been "my own boss". As a freelancer and in hospitality this has really meant always working for a new boss. Sure, I make the policies I work by, but clients need to be happy to come back again and the demands of freelance work change regularly. You have laws to guide you and professional wisdoms to follow, but in the end, the client is the "boss", you just get to decide whether or not you're working that week.
Self-distribution isn't much different. Trying to distribute a film is an odd thing. You own the rights (or should ) to your creation. You want to get it out to the masses. You need help doing that. When you work with distribution streams, you're the "client", so you're the boss, right? Not really. They also have viewers to consider as clients and they're the ones sending the money in. You're a product provider and they can get more product as long as the distribution channel is providing money. You become stuck using "middle men" to get your movies seen. Even when you distribute yourself you need third party help for payment methods, storage, channels, streaming, store placement (if you still deal with physical media). All of these companies have similar, but different requirements and you find yourself in control of your own work, but not entirely.
Amazon Video Direct is a good last leg for making money on an older title, but the pay isn't great unless the numbers are super high and since it's become very crowded, there's a lot of competition just to be noticed. They also make it nearly impossible to promote your "brand" beyond the viewing of your movie. I understand the reasoning behind not letting producers throw web addresses on art work and in videos. They don't want people led to random sites. You can bet major studios still get to put URLs in the credits though. What bothers me is that you can't even mention social media pages, like Facebook. It's an established brand, but I had a video flagged for suggesting viewers "look for us on Facebook". I guess they're afraid they'll click away right away.
Not being able to use one movie to sell more movies is a major drawback. It also means having to export multiple versions of a movie from YouTube to Amazon to Physical media. A bit annoying when it's not your only job.
I would love to sign my movies over to a distributor and be done with it, but I've done this before and there are a few types of distributors out there. Ones that deal with bigger ( or even better ) movies than mine, ones that are honest, but take such a shotgun approach to titles that you don't make much and ones that aren't honest at all, sell your movie for five years, make money, but always find a way to manipulate paper work as to show that they don't owe you anything. Then there's the last. The ones that do NOTHING with your film for months...and months...and months.
Bottom line, they care about their bottom line. You care about YOUR movie. It's your creation. Your "baby" and nobody will love your baby like you do. Experiences like this are why I like to keep as much control as I can over my titles. The control may be an illusion. It may cost me money in the short run, but as I build my library it helps to be able to throw old titles back into the mix when I see fit and not have to wait for new titles to be released when a distributor runs out of other stuff to promote.
It's also possible that I'm just impatient.
I am currently "my own boss". I "run" two businesses with varying degrees of success and have for a good portion of my adult life been "my own boss". As a freelancer and in hospitality this has really meant always working for a new boss. Sure, I make the policies I work by, but clients need to be happy to come back again and the demands of freelance work change regularly. You have laws to guide you and professional wisdoms to follow, but in the end, the client is the "boss", you just get to decide whether or not you're working that week.
Self-distribution isn't much different. Trying to distribute a film is an odd thing. You own the rights (or should ) to your creation. You want to get it out to the masses. You need help doing that. When you work with distribution streams, you're the "client", so you're the boss, right? Not really. They also have viewers to consider as clients and they're the ones sending the money in. You're a product provider and they can get more product as long as the distribution channel is providing money. You become stuck using "middle men" to get your movies seen. Even when you distribute yourself you need third party help for payment methods, storage, channels, streaming, store placement (if you still deal with physical media). All of these companies have similar, but different requirements and you find yourself in control of your own work, but not entirely.
Amazon Video Direct is a good last leg for making money on an older title, but the pay isn't great unless the numbers are super high and since it's become very crowded, there's a lot of competition just to be noticed. They also make it nearly impossible to promote your "brand" beyond the viewing of your movie. I understand the reasoning behind not letting producers throw web addresses on art work and in videos. They don't want people led to random sites. You can bet major studios still get to put URLs in the credits though. What bothers me is that you can't even mention social media pages, like Facebook. It's an established brand, but I had a video flagged for suggesting viewers "look for us on Facebook". I guess they're afraid they'll click away right away.
Season 2 of "The Simplest Things" for example had an episode held up for this very thing, I believe.
The "Help Desk" doesn't get very specific.
Not being able to use one movie to sell more movies is a major drawback. It also means having to export multiple versions of a movie from YouTube to Amazon to Physical media. A bit annoying when it's not your only job.
I would love to sign my movies over to a distributor and be done with it, but I've done this before and there are a few types of distributors out there. Ones that deal with bigger ( or even better ) movies than mine, ones that are honest, but take such a shotgun approach to titles that you don't make much and ones that aren't honest at all, sell your movie for five years, make money, but always find a way to manipulate paper work as to show that they don't owe you anything. Then there's the last. The ones that do NOTHING with your film for months...and months...and months.
Bottom line, they care about their bottom line. You care about YOUR movie. It's your creation. Your "baby" and nobody will love your baby like you do. Experiences like this are why I like to keep as much control as I can over my titles. The control may be an illusion. It may cost me money in the short run, but as I build my library it helps to be able to throw old titles back into the mix when I see fit and not have to wait for new titles to be released when a distributor runs out of other stuff to promote.
It's also possible that I'm just impatient.
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