Film Distribution

Alex Ferrari 2:27
Well guys today on the show, we have returning champion, Linda Nelson, who is a distribution specialist. She runs indie writes with her partner, Michael Madsen, and is doing a lot of good things for filmmakers. I want to bring Linda back on the show because every time she comes on, there's new stuff to talk about. Since last we spoke, you know, we have been going through, obviously an insane time in in the world and in the world of distribution. And so many things have changed. And she definitely has her hand on the pulse of what's going on in distribution for independent films. So we talk about what's going on in COVID, how she's handling it, how business is booming in some areas, and dying and others. And, and we also do a little bit of myth busting in regards to expectations that filmmakers have for their films. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Linda Nelson.

I'd like to welcome back to the show returning champion Linda Nelson. How are you doing, Linda?

Things are changing almost so rapidly. Like First of all, HD 1080p is still the standard. Right? You, you please put away the whole myth that 4k is an absolute necessity.

Linda Nelson 5:12
That is absolutely true. I would say the only thing that that we don't take any more is st or standard definition. Okay, it just doesn't look good on an ad inch tells so much now. And and and we feel bad about that because our first is honesty and it looks awful.

Alex Ferrari 5:35
I know I put mine in the other, I put mine in the other day. And I was like, Oh, ouch. Let me just blow it up to 720. Right

Linda Nelson 5:45
now, where it stands today, and this could change in six months is that everyone except for Netflix will take HD. Okay, and there are variations on HD. So what we insist on getting is a 1920 by 1080 progress for two to HQ, two channel stereo. That is our minimum and required format, because everyone except for Netflix will take that Netflix now does require 4k. Really? Yes. So you're not going on Netflix without 4k? and professional sound?

Alex Ferrari 6:31
Does it need to be five one surround sound? Or can it be stereo?

Linda Nelson 6:34
Yes. No, it needs to be 5.1. And and this is another thing. The the 5.1 that is required by most by most platforms is not a six channel by point one. It's an actually an eight channel 5.1. And that's because in addition to the regular 5.1, it has two tracks, two stereo tracks attached, that's seven and eight is left and right stereo. And the reason they want that file is because their software can detect what a user is going to play back, you know, the movie on so if you have a television and you have surround sound settings set Amazon, for example, or iTunes can detect Oh, they they can they need, they can have 5.1 but if they see that you don't have 5.1 then they're just going to put delivered stereotypy. So that's why they want that eight track, you know, eight channel stereo very quite well,

Alex Ferrari 7:41
for right now. And in about six or eight months. It could be 8k. I mean, we don't know like, things are changing so rapidly. I hope not to tell that trust me. I I did one of my one of the most popular podcasts I ever had was don't shoot in 4k. And people lost their minds. This is back in 2015 people lost their minds and there was a rationale. It's still I mean, the world has just changed so much.

Linda Nelson 8:09
People should shoot in 4K but they don't necessarily finish into yeah or not.

Alex Ferrari 8:16
Right for but now we got what we're talking about cameras have 12k that are affordable. We're talking about

Linda Nelson 8:22
1000 and that's great. And we're we're about out to buy a new red camera and I think we're going to get a K and what's great about being able to shoot that is that in post, you can recompose the frame. And that's an incredible option. You know, so it can oftentimes save you from having to do a two camera shoot.

Alex Ferrari 8:51
Oh, absolutely. You guys have gotten much a lot of coverage, shooting 4k just even 4k and zooming in. Absolutely. But as Verner Hertzog says, when you reframe in posts, it is the tools of the coward. Well, Werner, I'm sorry, we are all count. Now the the elephant in the room that we haven't spoken about yet is COVID. It is is completely thrown the entire planet upside down, let alone our little corner of the business and industry. How do you see COVID changing the distribution side of the business? What are the platforms looking for? Is there a lack of content? How is it changing?

Linda Nelson 9:35
Well, so far, I don't think there's a lack of content simply because films there were all of these movies going into post as COVID started. So all of those films have been being edited and are now coming out of post and coming to distributors to be put up on platforms. But I think we will start to see A diminished number of films, because there hasn't been any new production. So I think by say, January or February, we're going to start to see fewer films being submitted for us, because everyone, even editors are stuck at home, you know, so they're editing faster, you know, filmmakers that maybe had day jobs. So they had to edit, you know, at night. Now, we're finding that they have more time on their hands and their their editing, you know, quicker than they normally would have. So we're seeing a lot of content, a lot of submissions, our submissions have probably tripled, during COVID. So unfortunately, part of, you know, the downside of that is that we've had to become more selective in the films that we take, because we can only handle a certain number of films. You know, it's, it's very time consuming for us to do the encoding and delivery and QC. So there's only four of us, we have four people in our company, and, and so there is a limit to how many we can handle. The good thing is that that is improving the quality of our catalog. But at the same time, I kind of miss that feeling of being a champion for brand new filmmakers, we

Alex Ferrari 11:23
always love that idea that we could work with filmmakers that were having a hard time getting distribution from, like bigger companies, but the platforms but the platforms themselves aren't accepting new filmmakers and maybe lower quality films that might get been been in the past, given a chance to find an audience. Now those days are gone. Is that correct?

Linda Nelson 11:49
I think that's very true. And, and that's, again, another sad thing for truly new filmmakers, because they've had so much content coming at them, that they've decided that they have to be more selective, Amazon in particular, because they open the doors to anyone, anybody that could get their film uploaded, went up on Amazon. And they started to get heavily criticized by the public in general, that there was a lot of, you know, subpar films, there is, as you know, and because they want to be considered as good a platform is Netflix, or, you know, Google Play, they very seriously decided they were going to be more discerning. And, and, and they didn't really do that, at first by not accepting films, what they did was they were still taking films, but then had to actually compete with all the other films that were on the platform. So that's how they came up with this concept of customer engagement rating. So all of a sudden, they are you're in a competition with studio films, if you want to know the truth. So you actually, your film had to prove that it was engaging with an audience, somewhere above 50% of all of the other films that were up there, or you are going to make a penny an hour. And because of that, so many films that we're actually we're making could be making a decent amount of money at 10 cents an hour, you know, if they were making $1,000 a month or $2,000 a month, that's enough for some filmmakers to live off. But when that turns into $200 a month, you're not paying your rent, or $25 a month, or 25. Right. But I mean that but that particularly that class of indie filmmakers that were able to get a couple $1,000 a month, it allowed them to do to make movies full time, but you just wouldn't it wouldn't cut down to $200 or a couple 100 bucks, you're you're out you're out of the competition, so to speak. So, um, so that was the that's the primary way they've been able to, I can't I guess knock off, you know, or discourage, you know, subpar what they consider subpar, not non competing content. And and so I think that was the first way secondly, they are they started to look at actually purging certain films. And if they found, even if you even if you had a car, but they felt that your film wasn't competing, or it wasn't a good enough quality, or they were getting any kind of, you know, complaints from customers. That they would purge it and without notice, they purged files. So certain files, you know, would just disappear and they don't send you a notice. They just they're gone.

Alex Ferrari 15:13
Right? Because Because basically, it's their sandbox, and it's their rules, and they do whatever the hell they want. And they can care less about the, they truly can care less about the filmmaker. And this is something that has happened with every platform that opens up. At first, the doors are wide open, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, everybody can come in, everyone can make money, everyone could do everything. And then once they have market share, or audience, they start tightening and tightening and tightening and tightening till they all those people that used to be able to get in are no longer invited to the party. And that's what's happening with Amazon and and also with Netflix with to be with all of these other companies where they used to be wide open is that it's a fair?

Linda Nelson 15:57
Sure, absolutely. Before we used to we've had, we used to put several films up on Netflix and Hulu. And in fact, our own indie film, the third film that we did, delivered, made, probably on Hulu, the best money that it made. While it was, you know, when it first came out, first couple of years it was out. But, and Netflix was the first to do this, they have decided that they want primarily original content. So if they acquire something, they want exclusivity. And so now, Hulu has also adopted that. So for the most part, unless they really, really, really, really want your film. They it's going to be exclusive. And and because they there's they pay a flat fee, there's no upside potential. So we don't recommend any indie films. Do it. Because you're that if you're if you're exclusive with them, you might want to sell it to them. And in fact, we've actually even said to some people said, Oh, I have I really have to be on Netflix. I say, Okay, you know what, go go to one of the companies like bit max or quiver that will pitch your film, pay them to pitch your film to Netflix and see if you get on. Because we're not interested in distributing a film if we can only put it on Netflix,

Alex Ferrari 17:26
right? And if like if basically, you take on a film and they give you $50,000 for that film, and that's all you can make off that film for the next two years, or depending on the terms of the length of the agreement. That's not really interesting to you. There's no upside, you can't go anywhere else, you can't make a deal with a foreign distributor to you know, a buyer, but you're done. And I've heard from,

Linda Nelson 17:50
and I want to be honest with him about that.

Alex Ferrari 17:52
Right, exactly. And from what I'm also hearing from the grapevine I've heard from multiple producers and multiple, multiple producers, distributors, and filmmakers who have been dealing with Netflix is now and I'm not sure if you've had this experience yet, because I'm not sure how much you're dealing with them currently. But now before like Hulu, when I sold my film to Hulu, and licensed it to them, it was a it was I think a six to 12 month deal. And it was X X amount of money. And they would just break that up in quarterly payments during the course of the term. That's right now, Netflix is starting the payments at the end of the term. So if you sign the two year deal, those first two years, those first two years, you don't get a dime. Oh, that's what and I've heard that from I've seen I've actually had filmmakers on or not on. But I've spoken and consulted with filmmakers who've had six high six figure offers from from Netflix, but they're like, yeah, it's a two year deal exclusive. And they're like, Oh yeah, but we can't pay you for two years. And then at the end of the two years, and then we'll start your payments. And we're like, they've just walked away from the deal. Like, why would you? Why would you go with a deal like that? Yeah, sure. It's Netflix, it's like, you know, Warner Brothers or Disney, but if there's no money in it, come on,

Linda Nelson 19:07
right. I know, at some point, you know, you just have to go it's, you know, why is it still considered the holy grail and, and it just really doesn't need to be anymore. So I think that, you know, slowly the word is getting out there, that you don't have to be on Netflix to be successful. And that it that sometimes even if you go with Netflix, that you know you're hurting your film rather than than helping it that you really could make a lot more, because we have plenty of films that might have gotten like a $30,000 deal with Netflix, but they've made 300,000 in the first two years. So, you know, we we are we see our job is being you know, to maximize the revenue that you can see from your film so you can keep making more movies. right that's that's the point. You know, I think There are sometimes exceptions where someone doesn't want to make movies, they just want to be a director for the studios. And so they're more concerned with their reputation, right. So there are occasionally, you know, if some, if that's what they want, you know that, but that's not usually the films that we get, the films that we get are usually from filmmakers that want to make movies to make

Alex Ferrari 20:23
and make money. But the end goal, but the end goal, that's why I always ask filmmakers, when they asked me to consult them on them, like what's your end goal? Is your end goal to get this up on Netflix? So your your your own personal cachet as a director goes up? And you can leverage that into getting another gig? Or do you want to make money? And that's two very different outcomes, and filmmakers have to be honest with themselves about what they want. And I know everyone's like, well, I want both. I'm like, Well, yeah, sure. Yeah, we all want both. Now, do you like you and I've been in the business for quite some time. And I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't making movies in the 80s. But I am a student of the industry. And I and I worked in a video store. So I saw a little bit of what happened back in the 80s, which was that at in the 80s, you could literally finish almost any movie, if you actually finished it, produced it and delivered it, it was sold. Period. That was that was the that was the barrier of entry. Now the barrier of entry to make a movie was extremely high. It was you know, low low end, we're talking three to $500,000. And that's super low. And we're talking Roger Corman style films at that point. But you can make money as the years have gone on, and the the access to the the gear and the distribution, everything has gone up, more and more people have flooded in the industry. So now and I'd love to hear what you think, do you think that you have to be so much more than a filmmaker and so much better at your skill set to even survive as a filmmaker, meaning you need to understand marketing, you need to understand distribution, you need to understand deliverables, you need to understand all these other tools that you use to be able to not just hire somebody to do a lot of times, but you need to have a lot of these tools in your toolbox, just to just to make a living just to sustain you not get rich, not blow up not like just to make a living. Because before you literally it was like shooting fish in a barrel back in the 80s in the 90s just making a movie Got you. And now everyone makes a movie, like so.

Linda Nelson 22:29
That's why your book is a very, very valuable, because it talks about the need for filmmakers to really be entrepreneurs, and to really understand everything they can do to promote and expand their business with their movie. Your movie now, I think can be like the core element of a brand, you know, or a business that you build around your film. But you have got to have the business skills now. It's really, really important. And I'll go back a little bit to that conversation we're having about curation because now and even I'll go back a little bit further to the Amazon situation. Another thing that has happened with Amazon is that Amazon owns IMDb TV, and IMDb TV, is there, a VOD channel, and it's their move to a VOD. And and, and that move is very important for them. Because in the past, they had to pay for all of their content out of this subscription pool. So in other words, everybody would be subscribing to Amazon Prime. But that money is not used just for movies. That was like a freebie that you got because you're getting free shipping. Well there because the COVID everybody's home, nobody's going out shopping, everybody shopping online. They need that, that money to cover all the shipping costs, distribution centers, so they don't want to use that pool of prime subscription money to pay for content. So what do they do? Okay, they just say okay, we're going to encourage everybody to move over to IMDb TV, then the advertisers are going to pay for the content. And we don't have to take that out of our pocket. So we're, you know, and we'll talk a little bit more about this whole move to a VOD and and what that's all about because, but that's that's why Amazon is doing it because Amazon is different than other subscription channels that that's the only business they're in is movies generally speak generally.

Alex Ferrari 24:49
Generally speaking, I met Netflix is Netflix. I've been saying this for a long time. Netflix is extremely vulnerable, because they have basically one stream of income. I mean, Sure they sell them occasional Stranger Things t shirt or a Cobra Kai t shirt at this point. But that is that is not Disney. Disney is a very diversified company like right now, Disney's entire Theme Park and Resort, which is about 25% to 25% of their yearly revenue, we're talking about billions of dollars is shut down. But there other avenues are doing their other revenue streams are doing really, really well. Especially Disney plus, and we'll talk about p VOD later on too, because I'm dying to talk to you about p five, as well. But

Linda Nelson 25:36
to continue that, so that's what's happening with Amazon. And why part of why they, you know, made the pay rates so low, because that's another, you know, encouragement for people to switch to IMDb TV. Now the problem is that an individual filmmaker cannot get on IMDB TV. So that means that all of a sudden, we become a gatekeeper for Amazon in that sense. You know, so there's no DIY aspect to IMDb TV. So and, and they are quite heavy on curation. So when if we submit maybe 50 films to them, they might take 30. You know, so we actually have to pitch unveil.

Alex Ferrari 26:33
Right? And I want it they want and I want everybody to understand, though that you have had a relationship with Amazon. Going back, you were one of the first first films ever streamed on Amazon was one of your films. So you guys have a very unique relationship with Amazon. And if they're treating you like that, how do you think they're gonna treat an independent filmmaker uploaded to Amazon Video direct?

Linda Nelson 26:57
Yeah, you will you won't have access to an individual will not have accesscorrectly? I don't think ever,

Alex Ferrari 27:05
right? No, that's not that's not that's not smart business on their part. There's just enough. There's so much content that the studios can dump into a VOD that, and I've been seeing it constantly that they're just like, Why Why not, we'll just toss it in there and see what happens. And there's just

Linda Nelson 27:20
so much. And the good news is that the pay rate on that is significantly higher, it's almost, it's almost equal to what the pay rate used to be a couple of years ago on Amazon. So because we're getting a share of the advertising revenue, and so it's, it's comparable to like to be if not a little better, so so in the in the end of your film is good enough for us to get you on there. It's good, you're gonna make more money there, then, then you would have made on prime.

Alex Ferrari 27:52
So. So the basically, you know, and this is good. I mean, I didn't want this to be a depressing episode. But there is some depression, there is definitely some depressing concepts that we're talking about here. And issues, which basically are now is a lot of filmmakers are they under the impression that they could just make a movie, any kind of movie with no star power with no niche audience with no anything, and go out there make it and, and there were ways of generating revenue, like an Amazon where you could literally have the power in your hands, upload it yourself, drive traffic there, do some TV ad sales, maybe get part of Amazon Prime. And that's like Low, low hanging fruit, then if you want to go to the next level, you spend it pay money to an aggregator to put it up on iTunes and Google Play and all these other platforms. And before you could make money, make good money. I've had many filmmakers on my show that have made millions doing doing that. But it seems like now, those days are essentially gone. And a lot of filmmakers are still making content or have made content, thinking that that's the way the game is played. Because, and I've said this before, as well, our industry pretty much stayed the same. The technology aspects of it and the distribution side of things stay the same up until pretty much the late 70s, early 80s when VHS was brought into the game. And then even when that happened, we're still talking about maybe a decade to decade and a half, like let's say like eight to 10 years, 12 years, 15 years that VHS was king, then DVD was just another version of that. And that's that was king up until the early 2000s, early to mid 2000s and then streaming but it seems to now everything keeps speeding up. And the change is happening so much faster. Where before it took forever to change. I mean remember, I still remember at the beginning of what I launched in the film, hustle there was still that conversation. This film look better than digital. Like oh yeah, you remember that was the biggest thing and I had podcasts about it. I talked about it like oh is film The texture. People are still having that dumb conversation which they answered is it's up to you. So, so the business is changing so rapidly. A lot of these filmmakers are not if they're not listening to podcasts like mine, or reading books that are current, they're being left behind and they're getting slaughtered. Because, you know, you see films all the time, they come in with a $500,000 budget film with no stars attached with with, you know, barely a good story. And they're just like, Did that film will never make money and unfortunately, sometimes you have to say, Sorry, you're the bad guy. Like, sorry,this is not gonna work.

Linda Nelson 30:33
The other the other thing is beautiful, important films.Yeah. Just there is no market for them right now. Right. There's not a market for depressing dramas. Right now. Not so much. Right now. People want to be entertained.

Alex Ferrari 30:55
They want to escape. They want to escape.

Linda Nelson 30:57
Yeah. They're feeling bad enough is up.

Alex Ferrari 31:01
Yeah. But again, I've said this. And I've said this on the podcast 1000 times, please. Whoever's making the COVID. Movie. Stop it. Stop it. Well,

Linda Nelson 31:09
we we've had to not, you know, rejected by Amazon.

Alex Ferrari 31:16
Right? Nobody wants a COVID movie. I don't want to watch COVID movie. Do you want to watch a COVID movie? I see that on the news every day. It's the equivalent of watching a 911 film. While 911 is going on, or watching a Vietnam film while the Vietnam films going on the Vietnam War. like nobody.

Linda Nelson 31:32
Some time afterwards. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 31:35
And even then how many people like how many there was this era of Vietnam films? There was what for like 349 11 films? I'm not sure if there's going to be a moment where we want to go back to COVID I don't see it anytime soon. It

Linda Nelson 31:48
might be interesting is when you have kids that didn't experience it and you want you had say

Alex Ferrari 31:54
here's what it was. Because you know, we're gonna be the grant we're gonna be like the grandpas and grandmas in the in the nursing homes. Were you alive in 2020? And I'm like, What was that? Like? I mean, when the aliens landed in November, what was that?

Linda Nelson 32:11
No, it's so funny that you said that because we were having all of us a conversation the other day we're going we're going What else could possibly aliens, but he said aliens are gonna.

Alex Ferrari 32:23
So aliens are gonna live. No aliens are going to land Atlantis is going to rise. The mole people will finally rise from underground and take over the planet. Blood rain hasn't happened yet. I haven't seen locust or frogs rain on us yet. And there's a handful but there's not much left. On the meteor Don't forget the comet, the meteor or the comet that will eventually hit us. It's, it's it's an insane, insane world that we live in. Now with COVID. The other thing is let's talk a little bit about p VOD. And the theatrical because you used to. Well, you know what, before I asked the question, want to ask you one other question, what do you look for? And I want people listening filmmakers listening, when you're looking at films as a distributor, what do you want to see in the film, besides good quality, because that's that's bare, that's bare minimum, it has to be well produced. But as far as actors, genre, niche, things like that, tell me what you are looking for. So people can really understand what a distributor is looking for and what the marketplace is looking for. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Linda Nelson 33:43
First of all, you have to have a great poster. I hate to silly, but it's not silly. repost a great trailer helps.

It's absolutely essential. People have to understand that when when your movies, if you don't have a star in it, the only way people are going to watch your movie. I mean, if you have great social media engagement, that helps but when people are sitting on their couch, and they look up at their screen, and they've got their remote in their hand and they're scanning through what am I gonna watch tonight? What am I going to watch tonight? They have your poster has to be clickbait. It has to grab this absolutely Instagram. So I mean, I made a joke out of that, but it is super, super, super important. So when passed that and it's not the first thing we look at. It's probably kind of the last thing we look at and after if we liked the movie, and we don't like the poster, we just say you got to get a new poster. So so that's how that goes in reality. Because I would say probably only maybe if we're lucky half of the people that submit their films to us have a good poster. And you know so the words getting out there that you know you need to Have a go to post it but but what we look for is something that grabs your attention right away. We're not terribly genre specific because we have very successful Doc's we have very successful thrillers, we have very successful dramas, we have very successful crime films. You know, so it, the story is very important, that acting is critical. The audio is absolutely essential, we, we, we get plenty of films, where they look great. But the audio is so bad, and and that and that just takes you out of the movie. It's really, it's really, really important. But But the most important thing is that the movie grabs you quickly and engages you. And, and we, we so many times we see really good movies that have these slow starts. And somehow people get it in their mind, oh, we're gonna start slow and build? No, it's better to start with a bang, and then explain, right and then get into the story. Because people have so much choice. Now. If you're not engaging right away, people are out of their way. And we saw this, this was an amazing thing that we were able to notice when we were doing screenings in Cannes last year. Because Cannes was a virtual market. All of the screenings that we did, we were able to see how long someone stayed in the virtual theater before they left. And we could see on certain movies, after five minutes, they're out of there. Or after 10 minutes, they're out of there. But the ones that stayed through the whole movie really liked it. But if you don't get people right in the beginning and engage them in the beginning, they're just as likely to go on board with this and just move on to something else. Because there's so much content.

Alex Ferrari 37:14
Well, I mean, this the same thing that happens to me like I will my wife and I now are scanning through old shows like that we've heard we're good. And I'll give them I'll give them you know, 1050 likes, we've literally given a show 15 minutes, and my wife and I go, No, no, and we move on, or we watch a movie, we're like, we'll give it a shot. And we'll give them five or 10 minutes if they don't get us in those five or 10 minutes. Next. And that is for better or worse. That is the world that we live in. So you have to ask yourself Who's that listeners listening right now? What do you do when you're scanning through through Netflix to and this is not just like, indie films, this is all prod all all Ben big productions, things like that. You know, there's there's big giant shows, which will remain nameless, because I don't want to get hate mail that I started. And I couldn't get into. I was like, I'm sorry, I know, everybody loves this show. But I can't. It's not my flavor. And it's not grabbing me the same way. Then there's other shows that I watch that are just like, Well, I mean, let's just call Cobra Kai what it is. It's it's absolutely genius. And, and I watched it on YouTube before anybody you know, I was one of the original eaters. So everyone's freaking out now about Cobra Kai, but you know, but anyway, that's, we're on a side note. But but that's the rule with it. So as a filmmaker, you need to grab them in the first four to five minutes. It's sad that like you don't have the Scorsese time to taxi driver to build it up. You know, or and

Linda Nelson 38:38
what, what's the big mistakes that happens is that I've seen indie films that have 10 minutes of credits upfront in the beginning, upfront. Yeah. You don't need anything other than the title, the director and the stars. That's it, move on. everybody else's credit can go at the end. And I know a lot of indie filmmakers they go all but my friend did this for free. And this one did that for free. If nobody watches your movie, you don't make any money. No one's gonna make any more movies.

Alex Ferrari 39:11
And no one could eat. No one can eat after that. But do you but so obviously, right and then stars and stars obviously, and stars still have some sort of cachet, and faces have cash even even if they don't have a bankable star. Like if Nicolas Cage is not starring in your action movie. You might be able to get a lot of second and third bananas to have good faces to pepper them throughout the piece that you have a nice poster with faces that people recognize Does that help?

Linda Nelson 39:40
I want to tell you two stories. To illustrate that. We have a comedy called to Marcus cousins presents Boogie comedy boogies comedy night this film has by far and away have been our biggest seller. It has done high, high high five figures for the past three months on T lock on Amazon. A TV VOD. Yes. Who's normal?

Alex Ferrari 40:19
How's it? How's he driving? He's driving traffic right there driving traffic.

Linda Nelson 40:22
Okay. DeMarcus Cousins. He's big time basketball player for one. Okay. Okay. He goes on ESPN and mentions the movie. Dun, dun, dun dun, dun, dun. So, so that's that's the perfect example of having a name that is willing to mention the film.

Alex Ferrari 40:44
But But also, but he's not a movie star.

Linda Nelson 40:49
He is not, but he's a huge celebrity and doesn't need to be a movie star. It can be a movie star, it can be a big famous athlete, a musician. YouTube, someone with an enormous YouTube following or a huge Instagram following. It needs to be somebody famous. And and that's the funny thing. It doesn't have to be a movie star anymore.

Alex Ferrari 41:15
Someone who has an audience, someone who has an audience that is passionate about them. It's right. Because you could because oj oj starring in your movies that he's very famous not going to bring a whole lot of dollars in

Linda Nelson 41:27
social media currency. Correct, right. Okay, so now here's another story. You know who Vinnie Jones is? Of course, right,

Alex Ferrari 41:38
some snatching of action movies? Yeah. Ha,

Linda Nelson 41:41
ha. Okay. Well, I have I took a film called Ron hoppers misfortune, which is a beautifully shot and executed and produced and acted. Love Story fantasy, starring Vinnie Joe. It's not his I cannot get anyone to watch that movie.

Alex Ferrari 42:07
But that's not an action though. And that's not what he's known for.

Linda Nelson 42:10
Exactly. If you're if you are going to pick a star, don't cast them in something that's so far out of his genre, per sample. So it'd be like if you, you know, wanted to cast a big horror film in a super serious drama love story. You need to consider that as well. So that's to start stories with very different results.

Alex Ferrari 42:40
Now, I know there's another film of yours that has done extremely well. And the kind of currency that it carries is arguably even more powerful sometimes than having a famous person, or movie star in it, which is the niche. And the niche is what I talk about in my book a lot is extremely powerful. The film Netflix versus the world. Yeah, that documentary out, which I've saw, and I love and it's, and I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have the director on the show soon. But they the director is so smart, because he's leveraging a book, if I'm not mistaken, right? It was a big based on a book. And Netflix, which is a brand that everybody on the planet knows. And the title of the show, the document is called Netflix versus the world. So I'm gonna watch that I know the story, read the book and everything but but that's done extremely well

Linda Nelson 43:30
has an extremely well. And in fact, we actually have, we sold it to Japan, and they are actually doing a theatrical release of the film. And they have, they're also doing DVD and blu ray. And they also just sent us an agreement to sign off on them being able to sell t shirts for it. Like I showed interest you. Wow. Okay. Yeah, she's staying for that movie.

Alex Ferrari 44:03
So and

Linda Nelson 44:05
they're following your plan.

Alex Ferrari 44:08
Which is right, there's creating ancillary product lines. So whoever bought the film in Japan, they're like, wait a minute, we're gonna milk every little drop of add of this. And what are they doing? They're leveraging the Netflix brand. It's that and that's what a good documentary a lot of not good documented, but a lot of successful documentaries have done that is by leveraging brands or topics or emotions, have a niche audience.

Linda Nelson 44:34
documentaries about food, for example. Always do well, we've been called fat fiction, which is about a low carb diet, doing extremely well.

Alex Ferrari 44:44
The vegan diet vegan documentaries always do well, paleo documentaries, those kind of things. Yeah.

Linda Nelson 44:52
And so they're, you know, there are definite things and and there's the old favorites genres, you know, like horror films. It's there. You know, fairly well executed to well, in Java films are the exception when it comes to production value people seem to be more forgiving of the production value.

Alex Ferrari 45:11
But But Amazon but Amazon might not be

Linda Nelson 45:13
No, no we're screwed either way. Well, if it does, if it does well, you know, they're there. They're okay with it. But it's it has to be popular.

Alex Ferrari 45:29
Right exactly. There was a film A while ago called thanks kill and it was a thanks killing I think it was thanks killing which is about a killer, a killer Turkey. A serial killing Turkey. And this guy and this is going back probably seven, eight years. A movie like that today would not would be would not get into Amazon, though that movie by the way was was sold to Warner's direct direct digital, a direct link to v two v two VOD back in the day, and they made hundreds of 1000s of dollars in the movie cost like seven, like 7000 to 10,015 20,000 or something like that. And they had t shirts and they had, but a movie like that in today's world might not even get to see the light of day on these platforms because they're just gonna go No, no, we're not. We're not into this.

Linda Nelson 46:19
Well, we're testing that out right now. We have one called not Zilla and ot Zilla that has the coolest hokey monster in it you've ever seen in your life. Nice. It's, well, it's a fake monster movie parody.

Alex Ferrari 46:38
Might so why not? Let's see what happens. Well, we'll see what happens. Now let's talk a little bit about p VOD, because that's been it, you know, as as of this recording has been in the news a lot. And when I say p VOD is premium video on demand, which is kind of taking the place of a theatrical release, or has or doing it in conjunction with a theatrical release. But because of COVID, theatrical has pretty much dried up. You I know you used to have a theatrical release for a lot of your films, and used to be able to leverage that to get better sales and to get reviews and rotten tomatoes and all that kind of good stuff. But that's pretty much dried up as well, at this point. Is that correct?

Linda Nelson 47:20
Well, we have not been able to do a theatrical release since last March. And in fact, the COVID shut down, shut down in the middle of three theatrical releases we were having. So they got to do three days instead of their seven. So, but they did get their reviews. So probably somewhere between a third and a half of our films that we were taking at the time, we would do at least a one one week theatrical release in Los Angeles. So we could get an LA Times review and maybe, you know, a couple of other good reviews and and and that would also get you a Fandango page. Right? Because Fandango, and their trailers on their trailer promotions are fantastic. No, absolutely massive. They have they have a trailer channel for each individual genre on YouTube.

Alex Ferrari 48:17
And they all have millions of followers,

Linda Nelson 48:19
millions and millions of views. So that Fandango was important. And you I used to only get a Fandango page. If you did theatrical because Fandango was for selling tickets, that's a ticket sale site. That is nuts. Not so much anymore. Well, exactly. So and then, and the same thing, Rotten Tomatoes, if you have theatrical release, you got, I could get you a Rotten Tomato page up even, you know, a couple weeks before your theatrical release. So that was those two pages were very, very valuable and popular with people wanting to know about a movie. And so once the theater shut down, with a little convincing, we were able to talk both Fandango and rotten tomatoes into putting up pages for our releases saying this was a plan theatrical release, but due to COVID. You know, we had to release it straight to VOD. Right. So now, there's a couple we have a couple of alternatives. We have a movie called unbelievable. That has Snoop Dogg in it. And they had a and this fits into the category you're talking about a virtual theatrical

Unknown Speaker 49:46
virtual pro

Linda Nelson 49:47
advance ticket sales, how it went, Okay. Um, we were disappointed in the number of tickets sold, but I think that you have to be very Very careful about how you design and price those. There's a company as it gets called Addison interactive, that does these for studios. And depending on how much money to spend, they actually can be quite expensive, but they will set up like a virtual Green Room for you so that you can have the stars from the movie actually, in this green room and people can interact with them. Right? And, you know, and so, so there's, there's various options. And, you know, it's if you can promote it well enough to get good enough ticket sales, and I think it can be worth it. Otherwise, it could be a lost leader. But you know, so while we didn't sell as many tickets as we thought we were going to sell it Did you know, it was an interesting, you know, to see how that would work? Well, we have, we haven't been as successful trying to do drive in the drive ins that we have spoken with want stars. They want movies, you know, with names that they can really,

Alex Ferrari 51:11
yeah, there's a limited, there's a limited inventory of screens. So they want to be I want to just release Hocus Pocus, the movie from the from the late 80s, early 90s, the Disney movie with Bette Midler. And it's number one at the box office make $2 million, you know, for Halloween. So this is the world where I mean Empire Strikes Back was Jurassic Park was number one again a while ago. It's It's insane. But now the whole the whole p VOD conversation has changed because of Milan, which was not because originally trolls to did it. But that was a very unique scenario is a kid's movie, it was right in the middle of the shutdown. Parents were going crazy. It was a different conversation. Milan showed up. And from what I understand the number the ticket sales numbers is they sold about 9 million tickets at 30 bucks a pop. So they ended up being whatever that is 20 $270 million, which is 100% there's not no splitting with the theater. And a lot of those people turned into a Disney plus customers because you need a Disney Plus account to even get access to watch it. So if that's the case, and that's what the movie like Milan, which is not a franchise film is not it's big, but it's not like it's you know, it's not a Marvel movie. So I'm curious when this hat when they put James Bond up on like something like that, or the next Marvel movie, but I just heard that Wonder Woman is going to go p VOD.

Linda Nelson 52:42
Yes. Yep.

Alex Ferrari 52:44
So that's a very, because like, that's a movie that I probably would spend 30 bucks to watch. I don't,

Linda Nelson 52:51
you know, if you've got, what I would do is I would I'd invite over a couple of friends. Sure. And have a watch party. Right? You know, we've got an 80 inch television. And you know, and you have four people, you know what, two people cannot go to the movies for $30?

Alex Ferrari 53:11
Well, you can if you sneak in your own popcorn, and you sneak into you know, drinks, and you and you go and you go at nine o'clock in the morning in LA, then yes.

Linda Nelson 53:23
Other than that mean, otherwise, you're spending at least 50

Alex Ferrari 53:25
Oh, and that's if that's just that's just to people that don't have kids that don't I've taught

Linda Nelson 53:32
Oh, you got a couple kids, you're talking 200 bucks, it's easily so 30 about $30 there's nothing

Alex Ferrari 53:37
in arguably is a really it's not reasonable in the scope of standard rentals that we were used to a blockbuster even on TV currently. But go it's that or go to the theater. It's going to be a very interesting, the world is changing so rapidly. And I thought well, let me ask you, do you think theatrical is going to come back in the way it was pre COVID? Or is it going to be completely different? Because regal just shut down? Like literally

Linda Nelson 54:02
and by the way did the new james bond is been postponed to 2021?

Alex Ferrari 54:06
Of course it has now and I know

Linda Nelson 54:08
that they're not gonna let that out that needs me to see that next year. It's

Alex Ferrari 54:12
the last look tenant was supposed to be like this Savior and it didn't do anything. Say tenant did not bring people like me. 20

Linda Nelson 54:21
Isn't that good? So

Alex Ferrari 54:22
I know but based on Christopher Nolan's back, you know, past you know, movies, you would expect it to do you know, real gangbuster, but I think it made total theatrical, he was like 20 million bucks, which is embarrassing for a film like that. But a lot again, a lot of films, a lot of theaters are closed. So it's a really interesting dilemma.

Linda Nelson 54:44
Doing which I was dying. I was actually going to risk going to the theater in December to see them postponed to 2022.

Alex Ferrari 54:53
Right, exactly. Because there's only so many slots that you could fill because now all these things audios is all these big projects that they had in the can? Are they there's only so many, there's so much inventory and not enough slots. So not like and I and I promise

Linda Nelson 55:08
you that they can only put, you know, even when they do open at first it's going to be 25% capacity or something. So if

Alex Ferrari 55:15
you're if you're lucky, right, if you're lucky, and how many screens we're not gonna have the same amount of screens as we did before. So I don't think we are we in

Linda Nelson 55:24
let me know what you think yours, at least are. We're back to any kind of normalcy. And that's if we get rid of the virus, or I mean,

Alex Ferrari 55:35
and that's a big F that's a very, very big if because it's going to eventually go away hopefully with a vaccine and things like that. But this could take years it you know, it could take years for it to be kind of eradicated or at least being dealt with like dealt with like a fool that it's not a terminal thing. But you know, the the trend with theatrical was going down and had been going down for years. So we all knew Oh, indeed, this is completely up but even the studio's you could just start seeing the numbers Marvel you pull out Marvel for the last 10 years out of the theatrical experience. And did Marvel held Disney held up the theatrical, you know, business by themselves with Star Wars, Pixar, Disney movies and all the brands that they own? So it's been going down, down down, I dis just just accelerated everything. I think you theatrical will always be around. I think there'll be some sort of theatrical, but it will not be what it was before. Because some so many people are just like, it's just the same thing as working from home before working from home wasn't a thing now. Everyone's like, well, this is this is so much better.

Linda Nelson 56:45
Well, except that you know, I mean, it is a social experience. Yes, eight nine thing, you know, and so I think for especially for a young, younger audience, that will always be you know, something date type thing. You know, you have to you know, it's it's, you have to have some courting. That's like our part of our courting process, right? First of all, put it delicately

Alex Ferrari 57:12
Linda, you using the word courting, no one uses the word courting anymore.

Linda Nelson 57:18
There you go to dinner, and you got to go out to dinner in a movie in order to get laid, or at least I make out in the car afterwards.

Alex Ferrari 57:31
All right, so let's talk a little bit about the myth of T VOD, and s VOD. In the current world that we live in. Because I've been yelling from the top of the mountain, that T VOD is dead. Unless you can draw for independent films, unless you can drive traffic in one way, shape or form. So the example that you gave, he goes on ESPN that's driving traffic. That's, that's exactly driving traffic. But if you're an independent filmmaker, and you just put up a film with no actors, no star power, not even a niche. Let's say it's just a genre horror film. And you throw it up on iTunes, hoping for it to be discovered. You're dead in the water. So I'd love to hear your opinion on it.

Linda Nelson 58:12
Okay, I can speak with authority on this topic, because I have over 1000 films on Amazon. Okay. Out of the 1003 are making anything on TV. One is doing high five figures, which we discussed. The next one is making Low, low five figures. And the next one is making high three figures.

Unknown Speaker 58:43
High three figures. Yeah,

Linda Nelson 58:45
that's 100 100 Okay.

Alex Ferrari 58:47
And then everybody else is making pants.

Linda Nelson 58:50
Yeah, $5 $3 $2 a month, a month on TV right now. It's just insignificant. Okay. And and every now that movie fact fiction, it did 30 the first month then just dropped off to 10 and then dropped off to you know,

Alex Ferrari 59:12
intervention in transactional and transaction

Linda Nelson 59:14
transactional so what we do is we give everybody two weeks we put you out there on two weeks if you don't have any traction, we turn on fraud. Right? Then you start making money.

Alex Ferrari 59:29
Yeah, and even then though now minutes you start using you used to start making money now

Linda Nelson 59:34
it start getting minutes watch how much you're gonna make depends on how well you engage with your audience.

Alex Ferrari 59:40
Now if you're over that 50% Mark, are you in the six to seven cent world at that point?

Linda Nelson 59:46
No, it's they've scaled that back even. I think you you get you're gonna get you have to get up. In order to make 11 cents. You got to be over 90 By and you got to be over 98 to get 12 cents. It's very very

Alex Ferrari 1:00:06
so your fight you fighting for basically crumbs, you're fighting for crumbs,

Linda Nelson 1:00:10
your your four cents at 50% up, maybe by the time you hit 55 or 60 or up to five or six cents, you know, but it's a slow too slow, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:00:25
So essentially Amazon doesn't want you business, essentially not you personally I'm talking about just as a general statement.

Linda Nelson 1:00:31
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They're they're weeding out you know what they consider to be

Alex Ferrari 1:00:38
undesirable undesirables?

Linda Nelson 1:00:40
Yeah, it's it's, it's sub studio content level content. I mean, they're, they want to be regarded as having quality. You know, studio level quality.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:50
Well, to be honest, I've always I mean, I've had amazon prime forever. And I've always considered amazon prime kind of like the dumpster of a film's like I would find, occasionally you find gems, but you got to cut through a lot of crap that's up on there. Where Netflix is not like that Hulu is not like that. HBO is definitely not like that. These other these other platforms, definitely a more curated, and to me was like that originally as well. They let everybody in because they wanted. They needed content. They needed numbers, but now they're starting to pull back too, which we'll get to a VOD in a second. But, alright, so t VOD. So we can now officially say everyone listening. T VOD is dead. Unless you can drive the traffic to it and sustain it.

Linda Nelson 1:01:35
iTunes, we're seeing nothing.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:38
Nobody's using iTunes anymore. like nobody. Like unless it's a studio. If it's a student

Linda Nelson 1:01:44
studio film so fine.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:46
Yeah, still, people still rent and people still rent studios, films in studios and TV show and especially

Linda Nelson 1:01:51
young families with young children. You know, a couple of young couples with young children. So they'll use Apple TV, you know, to, they'll buy for their kids. And the kids can watch them over and over and over again. Yeah, for 10 years, any film, you know,

Alex Ferrari 1:02:10
yeah. 10 bucks or something like that in your in your rock and roll on for a while. And yeah, I mean, I've done that

Linda Nelson 1:02:15
same thing over and over and over again.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:17
Yes, they will. Yes, they will. I never want to see frozen again. or hear that song. It's still it's I still wake up in cold sweats. So everyone listening to VOD is is officially dead. So please don't think that, you know, I've had people on the show before who've made millions on T VOD. But we're talking about 2012 with one of the examples and another one was like 2015. And they both had massive either stars or audience that they could leverage. So t VOD is dead. So now let's go over to sa with Google Play with LTV LTV, that's included on all the platforms,

Linda Nelson 1:02:56
and also a major one.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:58
So okay, so that's another thing. Another myth that I want to kind of break here today. The the the three major platforms, if you're going to put up something on the platforms, which are the platforms, you need to focus on Amazon, iTunes, Google.

Linda Nelson 1:03:14
Those were the go to this week to blog. Right.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:17
But but there's fan, but there's also Fandango, PlayStation, Xbox, and all these other kind of smaller ones.

Linda Nelson 1:03:23
Don't leave these on Fandango. We're doing nothing either. Right. So we have we have probably we have maybe 50 films on Fandango. And the reason that we even went to Bendigo is they were the first one that allowed us to put 4k Films up. And we've had 4k Films up there for close to three years. Not much.

You know, but indie films don't get any play there at all.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:55
And in a lot of filmmakers will go to an aggregator, and they'll go well, I want to be on all the platforms. So they'll spend five, five grand to be put up on Fandango PlayStation, Xbox, for the pure ego boost to say, we are everywhere. We're on VUDU, we're on Roku, we're on all of these platforms. And a lot of times, most times, you're not gonna see a dime, that you're not gonna get an ROI on that investment. Generally.

Linda Nelson 1:04:26
No, we still do it just because people expect it expected. They just think it's so important. And it's so hard to talk to convince them.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:37
That's why I hope this episode gets seen by everybody watch and listen to everybody. Because there's there's just realities that are currently happening now that filmmakers are still stuck to the old way of doing things. So before it was you have to go out to T VOD, for what three to six months. Then you would turn on s VOD. And God forbid Three years later, you go to a VOD. If that's even a thing, so let's go to S. Let's go to S VOD. Next. So s VOD, essentially, is amazon prime at this point, because there is Netflix and Hulu, but those are like the cream of the crop get accepted to those situations. Is that fair to say?

Linda Nelson 1:05:16
Well, yes, there there are others. Like for example, we're being et et is is a great subscription channel for urban film for black cinema. Sure. And we have quite a few black cinema films in our in our catalog, we probably have the prime black cinema catalog. Because people that want black cinema approached us, we don't have to go asking, you know, to get on their platform. So we've supplied a lot of content to urban flicks. We're in the process of working with bt. And and those are subscription channels. At they tend they, by the way, foreign buyers buy they pay flat licensing fees. However, what's good about subscription channels is that they will let you still be on T VOD. You know, they don't require a hold back from t VOD. And then usually they will have a set hold back for other subscription in a bot channel. So, for example, they might say, okay, we wait you you can't go on any other a bot or? Or s5 for three months? or six months or something like that? Yeah. Well, yeah. So so. So those deals are and there's quite a few subscription channels out there. Oh, yeah, specific. You know, they're, they're, they're genre specific, in some way or niche specific. So, so those, those are worthwhile, and we look at those first, because they do want that hold back. Right. Or if you already hold on to a VOD, then they're going to cut slash the price down really low, those who want it, but they're not going to pay, you know, so it's worthwhile for us to look at those and we can get an answer pretty quick on those. So it's not a big holdup.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:27
And, and the one thing that a lot of these broadcast channels that are now going into streaming plant, like a bt, AMC plus just got announced all of these kind of platforms. One thing that these guys want is, you know, insurance. So can you talk a little bit about you know, insurance and and how you didn't accept it, you didn't accept it, but you didn't require it. But now, some of these old school broadcasters are asking for it.

Linda Nelson 1:07:53
Absolutely. And, and it's interesting, because any, any of the new tech company streaming companies like Amazon, Google Apple, to be none of those have required no insurance, because that was our specialty early on, you know, was dealing with tech companies, because back when we started our company, we couldn't get a studio to talk to you. Right? So we, we were, you know, we went with the innovators, right? And that boys that paid off for us. But, you know, so so those companies, whether it was I don't know, whether it's they just didn't know about it, or what, but they just never required it. And the primary reason they don't require it to this day is that if there's an issue with something, they just shut it off. It's like a light switch, right? Boom, you're out. You know, and so

Alex Ferrari 1:08:50
it's not like you it's not like you produce like 5000 or 10,000 DVDs that now you're like, oh, man, I've lost all my money.

Linda Nelson 1:08:57
That's right, you can't there's nothing to pull, there's nothing to retrieve. You know, and, and so it's very, it's a very simple solution. And the second anyone complains about a film for copyright issue, it's turned off. Very, and then they'll look into it. So like, or, for example, many times, especially like, after the distributor thing happened. When we first started to try and put films back up on Amazon, that had been on there through distributor and other channels, they would say, Oh, no, sorry. So and so that's already been up there by with somebody else. And so we would have to go through a legal process of of supplying a copy of our contract to, you know, their legal department. And, you know, we finally got it down to a process that was fairly quick. And we were able to do it but but that's that's the solution in the streaming world, but in the broad caste world, old fashioned television broadcasts and cable always have required E and O insurance. So now that we are now that all of those companies are branching into streaming to bring that old and totally, they're just going to drop the broadcast, I think that's going to go away completely. I think everything will be streaming within a couple of years. So but as they now add streaming to their old business, they their legal departments are going, Oh, no, we still need to have the, you know, so. So, you know, and they won't let go of it. And the first instance that we had of that was with the team, and different broadcasters have different limits. Because they have different experiences with lawsuits. And so one channel might say, okay, we want, you know, insurance, where every time we get sued, you know, you have to have coverage of at least $1 million for each instance. Others asked for $3 million dollars, for instance, and be ETS for $5 million, for instance. So you know, it and I'm not sure why they set the limits where they do, but, you know, it is, if you want your film to be on one of those channels, you have to acquire that, you know, so we've built a relationship with a couple of different brokerage firms, insurance brokers, that, you know, are able to provide that insurance. And it's not that expensive, and it's not that expensive. Well, a $5 million, per instance, with, say, a $25,000. Retention could cost you up to $10,000. Right? For three year policy. Sure. And a one year policy, the difference between a one year policy and a three year policy is a couple 100 bucks. So you might as well get it for three years, and then you're covered if something else comes up. So that's a really important thing, you know, to remember, but

Alex Ferrari 1:12:06
both of them No, but but a standard 1 million per instance,

Linda Nelson 1:12:09
it's a one by one question. $22,000

Unknown Speaker 1:12:12
Yeah, two to 3000 bucks is gyla.

Linda Nelson 1:12:14
Right? 3000. So, but no, that's not always enough. So you know, you want to. So again, our advice always, is to our filmmakers Don't, don't get it until we get you a deal. Or if we if we get you a deal, we'll make sure that the deal will cover the cost of your get you're getting that, you know, because the filmmaker has to get that email,

Alex Ferrari 1:12:41
right? It's their responsibility. Right? So you can have like a policy, a blanket policy with your company that covers all of them, they won't do that. They will not do that.

Linda Nelson 1:12:53
And I have to tell you, that the application, it's about a 10 page application, that's really, they ask such really detailed questions

Alex Ferrari 1:13:02
as they should, as they should, you know, and, and if anybody wants to know what any, you know, in policy is, you can, yeah, you can go online, on my website and find out or I'll leave a link about what it is to have talked about it multiple times. But it's something that you do need to have. If you want to start playing with the old school guard, if you will, the new school, they don't care.

Linda Nelson 1:13:25
But let me tell you, I think as I said before, I think they're all moving into it now stars has a streaming channel, Showtime, HBO to be at Turner, AMC. So we're, I think eventually they'll all and you know, a really easy way to see is if you have a Roku box, go look in their streaming Channel Store. And you will see right now there are 953 movie channels 953

Alex Ferrari 1:14:00
and growing up on a daily basis, and growing on a daily basis. Alright, so now let's talk about what you've done. I know you've been dying to talk about a VOD, and which is I guess, ad based video on demand or advertising video on demand. A pod was basically the redheaded stepchild. Sorry for all your redheads out there. But the stepchild of a video on demand and it was like the place where films go to die was with the original concept of a VOD is like oh man, if your movies not making any money, or it's just pretty much done. You put you put it up on a VOD or YouTube, like YouTube is a VOD, essentially, you know, but it's just not an exclusive a VOD. It's literally open to the whole world as well. So that has changed dramatically. So can you please tell us your experience with a VOD and how it is currently affecting your bottom line and your filmmakers bottom line?

Linda Nelson 1:15:01
A VOD now is providing the best ROI for our filmmakers. And I think that is going to just keep expanding. And there's very good underlying reasons for that, if you think about how the old fashioned television was, has always been paid for by advertisers, and everybody watched television and everybody sat through the ads or got up and went to the restroom, or, you know, or made some popcorn or whatever, you know, it was just a part of life. You watch television, you watch ahead? Well, when the street streaming came around and on demand, where you were paying for it, basically, there was nothing in it for the advertisers. Right? There they hadn't so they had no interest in it. But when the first a star, a VOD channels started to come about and the very first one that got hugely popular it was to the TV. And to be TV we had been on for more than 10 years. And for the first eight, no one even knew what it was. First of all, it wasn't called to be it was called add rice. And it was interesting how that happened. Because we one of our very first channels that we were on or stations was called casting. And in the beginning, on the internet, it wasn't streaming. It was downloadable DVDs. So in other words, right, that's how I started this whole journey, because the internet wasn't fast enough to watch over the internet, right? But you put by instead of going to the video store, you could download the movie and watch it easier, then go to the video store, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:17:00
Are you arguably the technology was a little bit wacky, let's say right?

Linda Nelson 1:17:04
So there were two. Amazon was the first was unbox, right. And our movie shifted was the first indie film on unbox. And then there was another one called Kashi. And it was started by this guy by the name of Tom Hicks. Well, Amazon survived, but Kashi did not because they weren't charging enough. They were giving 70% to the filmmakers. And it was so early that that it wasn't enough for them to survive. So they wound up you know, closing that company. Well, then Tom Hicks got involved in a whole new business. And that was the start of ad rise, which is to make advertising based streaming. And that ad rise became to be and it was only renamed to Toby I don't know, three years ago, something like that. And and when we first started doing it, people were just as adamant about not doing a VOD, is they were putting your movie whole movie up on YouTube. Right? It was like, Oh, you're giving away my movie for free. And I still have people that say all my movies for free on this channel. You know, they, they just don't get the concept that. Yes, it looks like it's free. But people are watching ads, and you are getting half the advertising revenue. Right? You just don't understand coming in from a different place. Now, what's happened is that the advertisers now see that everybody's going to streaming so their way of getting in on the streaming business, right is to go with these Avon channels. Because it's just they've created a new television. Avon is the new television. And it's an it's a better television than the old television. Only in that you can watch what you want when you want to watch it. You no longer have to be home on Tuesday night at nine o'clock to see such and such show are recorded or

Alex Ferrari 1:19:22
recorded on your VCR

Linda Nelson 1:19:24
or write us to TiVo is what it was called TiVo.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:27
That's what I'm talking about old school VHS, you know, automatic record. Yeah.

Linda Nelson 1:19:33
So now, so so it's only natural that that the advertisers have glommed on to streaming. And so that's why you see that, especially that the company is a big media companies like universal, right, that are losing their advertisers from their regular linear TV. Right. They have moved these, watch their Advertisers leaving them and going to streaming. So that's why universal part of what universal has peacock, which is streaming a VOD, right. So it's a way to transition from the old school broadcasting and cable into modern streaming and modern television. So that's why I see a VOD as you know, the the new frontier for filmmakers to earn revenue.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:31
Now but but with to be specifically because there's to be in Pluto and there's an IMDb TV and peacock and a couple other ones as well. But with Toby first, lots of Juliet, lots of love and Excuse me. And growing as I'm sure there's five of them that just opened up while we've been talking. The the issue I saw was that originally to be was wide open, and there weren't a lot of movies up there. So any movies that did get up on the platforms, they would get a bigger chunk of the advertising revenue, because it was less competition. Now there's a lot more competition on on to be are you seeing revenue drop per movie? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Linda Nelson 1:21:23
The advertising, it's measured in ecpms, you know, per 1000 views of an ad, right? The number of ad impressions, we're getting paid the same amount for the ad impressions that that we've always got paid per

Alex Ferrari 1:21:41
title, is it? Is it a per minute per ad, but per title i'm saying is like the pie smaller per film, as it is because before the 10 Films up on to be, each film would probably get a lot more ad ad placement and a lot more plays because there's less competition, but now that there's so many more, so much more content on to be the ad revenue still might be the same, but the per film might be less or am I mistaken?

Linda Nelson 1:22:08
Like any platform, your maybe your top 10 15% of your movies are making 90% of the revenue, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:22:16
It's the 8020. It's the 80 20%.

Linda Nelson 1:22:18
Yeah, it's it's that 8020 situation. And that's true. I'm just about every platform that we're on. But the actual amount of money we're getting paid, you know, per ad is pretty consistent.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:36
Is that enough? Do you mind? Do you mind asking? Was that number kind of classified as far as a per ad

Linda Nelson 1:22:40
between nine and 11?

Alex Ferrari 1:22:43
sensor? Oh, dollars? Yeah. Oh, per per 1000 views? Yeah, per 1000 views, impressions for impressions. So that's actually pretty good. And that's actually pretty good. And I've even I've had filmmakers who've decided to put their movies up on YouTube. And if they have a monetizable channel, and they have a lot of views, some of those cpms. I've seen depending on the on the genre and things we're talking about 20 $30 cpms, on their 1000 1000 views of what they're

Linda Nelson 1:23:15
doing very definitely make money on youtube movies.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:18
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's fairly insane. But this is this is this. This is what we're trying to do with this episode is to change people's mentality about about what the realities of the world that we live in. Currently, as of this recording is, in a year or two. Avon might be old. I don't know, maybe there'll be some new thing that you and I don't even know.

Linda Nelson 1:23:42
But for the immediate future, yeah, BOD is where the business is trending towards and is in. Something that's interesting to know, is that different Eva channels have different demographics. Mm hmm. So my top 20 list on tubi is extremely different than my top 1020 lists on Pluto, or like top 20 list on IMDB TV. It's a very, very different demographic. You'd think it would be all the same, but it's not.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:20
Yeah, one movie that does well on one platform could tank on another.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:24
Yes. And and

Linda Nelson 1:24:28
I think why that part of why that is is that to be was first. And it was available to people that couldn't afford cable and couldn't afford a lot of subscription channels. So they watch we're forced to watch for that.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:52
Right? But isn't but

Linda Nelson 1:24:54
is that and that audience grew and is growing? Yes. And so to be tends to be that, you know, that audience, although it's changing, and people are other people are starting to change but but that's not true of IMDb TV because people that have IMDb TV one, they're getting on there through Amazon Prime. So there are people that had money to spend on prime. Right. Right. Right. So So is it again, Democrat, Democrat?

Alex Ferrari 1:25:30
Now, are you seeing are you seeing that the, the numbers on these AV platforms are starting to go up because we are in an economic downfall right now. And it's,

Linda Nelson 1:25:42
all the people are at home, right.

Alex Ferrari 1:25:45
And then they've lost their jobs, and they don't have the money and they still want to be entertained. So they'll download, they'll buy Roku, a Roku connection, or a box for what does Google cost like 30? bucks,

Linda Nelson 1:25:55
Roku? their premium box, I think is like 60 or $70. And, or you can get their streaming stick, which is a lite version of it for I don't know, 30 bucks. Right? Exactly. for Amazon Fire

Alex Ferrari 1:26:13
Fire Stick, right? Yeah, cuz that's like 20 bucks or 30 bucks, right?

Linda Nelson 1:26:18
If you buy a new TV, it's all built in. Right?

Alex Ferrari 1:26:21
Exactly. So for no money, you could just if you bought a new TV, if you're lucky enough to have a new TV, but if you don't, you could buy a 20 to $50 box, essentially, have access to all the content you want for free, just have to deal with ads. And for somebody in the family that is hurting or lost their jobs or our economy's really hit them hard. This is an option. And it's becoming more and more so not only here, but around the world. Now, another thing, how are you? How are your sales internationally? And how, how are you generating revenue internationally? Because before I know prime was a very big deal for you internationally, but how are you doing it now?

Linda Nelson 1:27:03
Well, every month, more and more people are streaming globally. And every month. channels are increasing their territorial reach, like when TV for the first couple of years was only us. And then they added Canada. And then they added UK and now they're adding Latin America. So and they plan on expanding. So I think we're gonna see the streaming channels go global. I really do.

Alex Ferrari 1:27:39
Right and so but for right now we're what are the trends that you're seeing currently, in regards to revenue streams coming in for independent films internationally? like where are you making money? internationally?

Linda Nelson 1:27:51
UK is probably you know, English speaking territory still, is, is the primary.

Alex Ferrari 1:27:57
But is it? No, I understand. But is it like as far as a T VOD, is it a VOD, what is the form?

Linda Nelson 1:28:03
Oh, it is prime? Because that's where we're in the most territories. Got it. So prime is

Alex Ferrari 1:28:08
still internationally prime is still generating revenue for you.

Linda Nelson 1:28:11
And you felt hurt? Yes. And prime and prime outside the US and UK is not as dependent on that car.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:20
Oh, because they want market share in those areas?

Linda Nelson 1:28:22
That's right, because they're, they're growing those markets. So they have higher pay rates,

Alex Ferrari 1:28:29
right? Because they want if they have content in those markets, and God so and that's another thing. I think we talked about this privately, if you can have a dubbed version of your film, or a subtitle version of film, how does that work? And does that generate revenue for you?

Linda Nelson 1:28:43
Alright, so first, look at Amazon first. There are 68 territories that are English speaking. And so automatically, we can put you at all those 68. Although we have a tendency if we think something has the potential to sell at a market at AFM or can we'll hold off turning those on until we go to the market. And then that way, if we say sell do it all right deal for the UK or for Japan or whatever, then we don't, then we don't turn those on private, then after the market. We know what we can sell them what we can sell, then we can go back and turn it on everywhere where we didn't sell it. Right. So that works really good. So then, if you get French subtitles, and rev does subtitles in all languages,

Alex Ferrari 1:29:33
right? Yeah, I'll put a link. I'll put a link in the show notes. Rev is

Linda Nelson 1:29:36
very reasonable pricing. French gives you 30 more territories. I had no idea that French was the actual national language in 30 countries still.

Alex Ferrari 1:29:49
I mean, they weren't they weren't Empire.

Linda Nelson 1:29:50
I mean, I didn't realize that. I didn't know. I mean, I knew they were big, but they didn't realize there were that big. Sure. Sure. Right. Right. So they were huge. So So that's 30 more years. And then for Spanish, you can get 22 more. So that brings you over 100 just for those three. We don't in general, we don't recommend you doing single language countries like Italy, or Germany, only Italy. Well, Germany. Germany is requiring dubbing.

Alex Ferrari 1:30:21
And that's expensive.

Linda Nelson 1:30:22
That's expensive. Probably like five to eight grand. Sure.

Alex Ferrari 1:30:27
Yeah. Cuz you need actors. You need a Yeah, it's a whole thing.

Linda Nelson 1:30:29
And same with Japan, Japan, a date for two for streaming. It's got to be duck. So those for those countries, we try to do foreign sales to buyers. So right sales at the market, you know, and then they'll take care of the Guppy. Right, right. Right. Right. All right. And and, and sometimes they'll actually give you a dub version of it. You know, like, and same with China. So So those three, we don't do with Amazon, we do with foreign buyers?

Alex Ferrari 1:31:05
is China even a market anymore? I mean, I know the embargo is really hurt the market.

Linda Nelson 1:31:11
They're not happy with us right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:13
Is this obvious?

Linda Nelson 1:31:16
We've been very mean to them. Yes. China flu?

Alex Ferrari 1:31:21
Yes. This exact among other among other things. Yes. The trade embargo, and the tariffs and all that stuff?

Linda Nelson 1:31:28
That we'll we'll see what happens with the election. Sure, depending on who's president that could change dramatically.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:36
So pre so

Unknown Speaker 1:31:36
buyers?

Alex Ferrari 1:31:38
Right. So pre this administration, I sold my I sold this is made to China in

Linda Nelson 1:31:45
40 films to China.

Alex Ferrari 1:31:47
Right. So I mean, there was a market. Oh, it was good, buddy. Absolutely was good. But so it's all dependent on that. But right now, there's still kind of like, are you selling anything to train anymore? Or not as much?

Linda Nelson 1:32:01
You know, what, we've got a couple buyers, recently. And I think what they're doing is they're like, trying to hedge the market thinking, Okay, we're gonna buy now, because it's gonna open back off, right? Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 1:32:16
All right. Let's see. It's it's an ever moving playing field. The rules are changing all the time. the playing field is changing all the time. The players are changing all the time. And I want filmmakers listening to understand that you have to stay on top of this just because you started your movie 12 months ago. The distribution landscape is not what it was. When you started the process of making your film, you have to stay on top of it almost all the time. And the players are changing. The scams are changing. I mean, I don't know about you. I heard the other day, I had a consulting client, showing me a deal. This company wanted the rights in perpetuity in like literally is blatant

Linda Nelson 1:33:00
as it was like they're out buying the film,

Alex Ferrari 1:33:03
but no money up front. Oh, no money up for it was a percentage deal. Oh, it was like a 35 or 40% deal. For the for them and then the filmmaker to get the rest. And it was a perpetuity it was in perpetuity. And I'm like, Oh no, no expense cap, no expense. Kevin, also, you'll never you're just you're basically just giving them your movie. Okay. You get it's a gift. It's a gift. It's a very generous, very, very generous, but this is the kind of stuff that's happening all all the time. So in the future, where do you see I guess we kind of answered that question, but in the future Do you see a VOD is a place for filmmakers that's gonna be

Linda Nelson 1:33:43
for the foreseeable independent filmmakers. Sure, right? You know that that a VOD? And, and some s VOD.

Alex Ferrari 1:33:53
And some NT VOD. If you have an audience, you can drive traffic.

Linda Nelson 1:33:56
If you if you have if you can drive the business or you have serious names, then you can get away with it. But no, but it's

Alex Ferrari 1:34:07
Let me ask you one question. This is a this is going to be a hard question. So feel free not to answer it if you don't want to. The The question is, what kind of budgets? Like if you have a $350,000 movie, if you have a $500,000 movie? can you expect to generate an ROI on that investment through a VOD, specifically, or just a VOD or just like basically the revenue streams that you're talking about? without selling international without? Like, what's that? What's the boiling point where you're seeing like, you know what I really mean, if you movies over 150 200, and again, in this case by case basis, I know that every movie is different. But generally speaking, if it's $100,000 movie, I mean, obviously you have a $10,000 movie that has Nicolas Cage in it, you have a really good chance of making your money back. So the lower the budget always better, but there's a balance so I don't know what what do you think?

Linda Nelson 1:35:00
I think that if you have a decent film that you spent $150,000 on, you can expect to recoup in a couple of years.

Alex Ferrari 1:35:09
Right? But if you haven't, but once we get we start getting into that half million 600,000 set, you really have to you have to you have to have all all cylinders firing at all times, hitting perfectly every single time.

Linda Nelson 1:35:24
Yes, unless there is something going on in the market that makes your content valuable, an anomaly,

Alex Ferrari 1:35:36
an anomaly basically.

Linda Nelson 1:35:38
Well, our black cinema, we have lots of films that make 345 $100,000 Okay. It's an underserved market right now. Right. Right. So how long that will last? I don't know.

Alex Ferrari 1:35:58
I mean, Tyler Perry built an entire Empire off of that niche.

Linda Nelson 1:36:03
You know, so it, it The answer is it depends. So if you don't necessarily and none of those have stars, right, don't have any stars. And, you know, a couple of them might have some Instagram. So, yeah, but but, but in general, it's not necessary for them to be successful. It has to be a good start has to be a good story and have good production value.

Alex Ferrari 1:36:33
But generally, that's not enough anymore.

Linda Nelson 1:36:38
But, you know, but that is an underserved market. And, and we see quite a bit of success for that. You know, so

Alex Ferrari 1:36:45
Alright, so what advice would you give a filmmaker that is going to sell their film in today's marketplace?

Linda Nelson 1:36:55
I would keep I would not do anything more than an ultra low budget, right? If you're making a SAG film 100 100,000

Alex Ferrari 1:37:01
and below 150,002 50.

Linda Nelson 1:37:06
sag Oh, for low budget. Okay. So I wouldn't go over that. If you could, if you don't have any names, I wouldn't go over 100 grand. We have a new low new movie coming out. It's supposed to have a theatrical release in an arena on the 30th called blood from stone. And it's a contemporary vampire film. And meant to be you know, a Halloween release. But as of today, the theater sold out open, so it doesn't look like it's gonna be open on the 30th. So, we don't know, there's a very slight chance that in the next two weeks, because California is one of the few states that actually has a very low infection rate right

Alex Ferrari 1:37:55
now, currently, as we as we speak right now.

Linda Nelson 1:37:59
Next week, so I don't know. So anyway, if it doesn't, then we'll demo just forget about the theatrical go straight to straight to VOD, but that, you know, that film we were able to keep in low six figure. And that's, you know, you have to do that very low six figure. And I think that will be fine. No, without scarp doesn't have

Alex Ferrari 1:38:31
genre, but its genre. Its sub niche of genres. Its horror, and its vampire horror. So like zombie horror, Ghost horror, or,

Linda Nelson 1:38:39
like, I would stay away from relationship drum genres. I would stay away from cabin in the woods. It's, there's certain ones that are just so tired and overdone. Right. Right. That, you know, and I would not reach too far into serious subject matter right now. Like,

Alex Ferrari 1:39:09
don't go too deep.

Linda Nelson 1:39:10
We've gotten, we've gotten probably, I would say, in the past six months, maybe 20 really beautifully done movies about mental illness.

Alex Ferrari 1:39:21
But nobody wants to say that right

Linda Nelson 1:39:23
now. I just think it's a very, very hard time.

Alex Ferrari 1:39:27
But we'll go with documentaries. But documentaries with that same topic might do better than a narrative or you're saying none at all, even with documentaries.

Linda Nelson 1:39:37
I wouldn't even do it with a documentary right now. And, you know, again, we have several of those and it's just you know, I think people are more receptive to that when they're when we're having better time. Right then they can be a little more contemplate of and look at some serious subject but but right now You know, people are suffering enough in their own life. And it's, they, they need something that's uplifting.

Alex Ferrari 1:40:06
And that is why if you guys are watching, you guys know that I always have a Yoda in my office, my trusty co pilot in life in the 70s, which I was, I was born in the 70s. I'm not that old. But I do but from from history books and films I've seen that is the late 70s. And mid to late 70s. It was a really dark time in our country. Economically, we were rough, the Nixon thing happened, the war was going on. And there was these dark, depressing taxi driver and, and you know, the Godfather, like these really just heavy films, then something called Star Wars showed up. And everybody was like, Oh, my god, yes, I want to escape into a galaxy far, far away. And that's where we're actually in right now. We're in a very dark time in our in not only our history, but the world's history. And it ain't over yet, Jim, folks, we don't know. We don't know where this trains go. And it's it is a dumpster fire that's wrapped in a in a train that is just careening down a dark tunnel. And we have no idea where the exit is or where the exit is. So it could be another year, it could be another five years. And I don't want to say that. But Oh, God. I know, I don't want to. But I think that movies moving forward, do you really kind of look at the marketplace? And I think you're absolutely right, you have to create content, that is going to be uplifting, that's going to be escapism. That's why the Marvel films do so well. That's why the superhero, that's why superhero films have been doing so well. It's complete escapism, it's complete escapism. So it's, um, it's an we're in a, we're living in a very interesting time. Linda.

Linda Nelson 1:41:52
I agree. I'm very glad that I'm, you know, in this particular part of our industry right now, because it is the part of the industry that is suffering the least. And we are able to give people something that can allow them to escape. And, you know, there's very little entertainment right now, there's no sports, there's no concerts, you know, there's no theme parks, so at least we can be putting out, you know, we feel good that we're putting out movies that can entertain people and, and, you know, like, help pass the time.

Alex Ferrari 1:42:30
Now, one last question, I'm going to ask you, do you, do you cuz you're doing very well, but you've been, you've actually been prepping for this moment for the last decade. And plus, so you were in the online, hey, this is the future thing, as long as I've known you, and and many years before that. So you are primed to take advantage of this moment in time and what's coming down the line. So you're actually prepared. A lot of other distribution companies, especially the older ones, and especially the the larger ones, were not prepared and aren't ingrained and don't understand this side of the business nearly as much as a company like you. And also you're a small limb Lumber Company, you can pivot very quickly. You're like a speedboat, where a lot of these guys are giant carriers that take days and weeks and years to kind of even make a slight adjustment. So you are perfect kind of company to be in this moment. What do you think is going to happen to the distribution side of the business? Do you think that you're going to start seeing companies crash and burn around you like, like in 2008? Because I still think we haven't even begun to feel the economic hit yet. So

Linda Nelson 1:43:45
I absolutely think that we are going to lose probably half the distributors out there. And the reason I say that is that anyone that's been in business, you know, like more than 10 years, and there are many of these companies that been around for 30 years. Right? Those ones that started 30 years ago. They have big offices in Beverly Hills,

Alex Ferrari 1:44:10
yep, overhead.

Linda Nelson 1:44:12
They have huge staff. They have warehouses filled with DVDs, and screening rooms, and all of this huge overhead. I don't know how they can survive. I just don't know how they can survive. And because they're so late getting into the streaming business. There are very few of these companies that do what we do in house, right? We, we take in films, we QC them, encode them and deliver them to the cloud now we have a cloud based inventory system where we manage our content in the cloud. So these other companies, they're still they have deals, output deals with labs and post production, they're still sending out hard drives. And they're sending, they're sending the film's to them to get encoding and delivered. So that's a huge upfront expense that they have. Now, granted, they're recouping that from the revenue that comes in on the film.

Alex Ferrari 1:45:28
The filmmakers aren't making that money.

Linda Nelson 1:45:30
The filmmakers aren't making that money, but also, with this 8020 thing. Most of their films are losing money. So they're spending a lot of money that they're never going to even recoup themselves.

Alex Ferrari 1:45:42
Right. Right. And we still haven't seen it, we still haven't seen I feel we still have not hit the bottom of our economy. Slide the bottom we

Linda Nelson 1:45:49
have it so so now that we have our have all of our content residing in the cloud, if a new big, you know, channel comes to us and says, We want 300 films, we could literally send them an email with a list like say somebody comes and says, Okay, I want all your horror films, say 300 of them. All right, I can with an email deliver that, because I'm just sending them a link to a bunch of buckets on AWS that they're going to grab those films from. And if they're a tech, good high tech company, like we are. And it just goes bucket to bucket in the cloud,

Alex Ferrari 1:46:36
and never even

Linda Nelson 1:46:37
never use the internet,

Alex Ferrari 1:46:38
never download. It's all within the system over there. It's always

Linda Nelson 1:46:41
in the cloud. It's cloud to cloud, and a b2b. It's cloud to cloud.

Alex Ferrari 1:46:46
Right? Exactly. And a lot of these companies

Linda Nelson 1:46:49
like last year, whenever I think about it,

Alex Ferrari 1:46:51
last year, last year, when I went to AFM, you and I were both on a panel, we're going to be on panels this year, again, at the virtual AFM. I was walking around AFM it was I think it was 40 or 50% less people. I think it was down 60% as far as vendors are concerned. And I literally was walking over carcasses of dinosaurs, like you can, like you could see the old school distributors with the cigar. They look like they're 105 years old talking like it's 1985 I would see it and then you would see it. So those guys, they can't survive in this environment. They're barely were surviving pre COVID. So you just said something very interesting. You said 50%. of distributors. And that, by the way that also can include some very big distributors, big, big, big companies, that studios that can easily go down as well. Who do you think is going to go down with them? The films and the filmmakers that they have in their catalogs, the back money that has to come in, because when it goes down, the ship goes down, they're gonna take everybody with them, like just like one distributor went down. We're still waiting for money. We're still waiting for money on that. So it's gonna be very, very interesting time. And I think it's gonna be a very sad time for a lot of filmmakers, as well as the distribution company, but distributor companies going down. But do you have any hope that after Rome burns, because I've been yelling that Rome is burning for a long time, after Rome burns, the new system that will come up around it will be something that will hopefully be better and have more access and benefit filmmakers more than the currency because the current system that's been around since Chaplin's day, was never designed to help filmmakers was never designed to help make money for filmmakers. Do you think this new system would? Is there a chance that?

Linda Nelson 1:48:53
I don't know I think it's almost part of being a new filmmaker. It's

Alex Ferrari 1:48:59
you have to be abused. You have to be taken advantage of Got it. Got it.

Linda Nelson 1:49:03
It's like your apprenticeship, you know, wow. struggle in the beginning. Right? And it's like who is it a Malcolm Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours of an expert

Alex Ferrari 1:49:15
is good to beat. But to be fair, Linda, even professional filmmakers are having problems making money with their films, filmmakers have been around for 1015 years making money. So it's not just the newbie that's gonna get abused.

Linda Nelson 1:49:28
But the people that that are going to survive are the ones that educate themselves and stay you know, stay educated on where the market is and, and and stay up with new technology because that's that's what's happening. I I would not be shocked to see a couple of the major studios go down here whether it's paramount. So we've already seen Fox go away,

Alex Ferrari 1:49:55
so forth for and I've said this before, and I'll say it again the four companies that are vulnerable. are paramount. Lionsgate, Sony, MGM, they all have massive libraries, massive libraries, that someone like Facebook, apple, Amazon, or Google could come in. And buy. Netflix is also a studio that is vulnerable. It is vulnerable. I think it could be purchased by Apple could come in and buy Netflix. The only studios I think that will survive this without being touched is Disney Warner's and universal because they have the most diversified business plans. Right? They have the most of us. So those are the ones that feel good. I mean, there's no why hasn't MGM been purchased? Like just for their library? Sony? I mean, if you've read that book, the big picture, I mean, I mean, it's Sony's The only thing keeping Sony alive is their television department. And the occasional james bond that comes out every five freaking years. Yeah.

Linda Nelson 1:50:56
And it's, you know, the, the old studios, they let other tech companies just like came in until

Alex Ferrari 1:51:04
Netflix changed the game. And that's what I was saying. This is the day it took Disney 10 years to release Disney plus 10 years, Netflix had a head start because the Netflix streaming started in 2010. It sucked. But they started in 2010. It took 10 years and then now everybody now because of Disney plus and everyone started jumping on the bandwagon in 2019 and 2020. But it took them 10 years to get going. So all these are the company

Linda Nelson 1:51:32
universal picaxe the only I don't see a warner brothers. You know, channel. No, it's HBO

Alex Ferrari 1:51:41
HBO max. That's Warner Brothers chat with HBO max. And they're leveraging a very, very good brand. HBO is an amazing brand. It is

Linda Nelson 1:51:50
but Warner Brothers was a great brand.

Alex Ferrari 1:51:53
It was but you know and now 20 Century Fox, and 20 Century Fox is gone like that brand is gone. Disney erased it 20 Century Fox, there's now 20 I saw the logo for the latest. Ryan Reynolds movie called the good guy says 20 century studios and the logo, the old school 20 Century Fox logo. But at the beginning because it's a it was a it was kind of like leftover in their purchase. It's called 20th century studio style. Until it's gone completely into the all these films come in and go out. It is Who in their right mind would have thought that Disney could buy Fox and everything. I mean, that's an insane thing. And so it's not beyond someone like Apple who has, I don't know 400 billion cash, cash cash. They could they could buy Disney.

Linda Nelson 1:52:41
They really could do something because Apple, iTunes and Apple TV are just not there.

Alex Ferrari 1:52:47
No, they're not. But they're they're waiting. They're waiting in the wings. And they look AMC, Amazon was gonna buy MC, oh, someone's gonna buy regal, someone will buy regal, and someone will buy AMC. And a lot of people like, Well, why would they buy a movie theater chain? That's there's no money in that. I'm like, No, there's a difference if you've been to the El Capitan

Unknown Speaker 1:53:05
court, that is

Alex Ferrari 1:53:06
the model. That is the model that makes sense

Linda Nelson 1:53:08
theaters,

Alex Ferrari 1:53:10
not only premium theaters, but what do they have their film entrepreneurs, they've got an entire disney store next door. And they have it's an event going in there and they have answered so all of a sudden, and if they own the theater, guess what they own 100% of the revenue coming into the door, so they have to share it. That is a business model. And there's a lot it's the whole art landscape is gonna change dramatically in the next two to three years.

Linda Nelson 1:53:36
We shall see,

Alex Ferrari 1:53:37
we shall it is exciting, it is terrifying all at the same time, Linda,

Linda Nelson 1:53:41
and Linda feel very confident that we're gonna be around to enjoy it.

Alex Ferrari 1:53:45
You've positioned yourself, you've positioned your company in a way that is that you'll be able to survive and even if something comes there's going to be some things that you guys are not going to be prepared for your small enough of a company that you're just you could just box and weave you're not this big, giant bloated vest. That's gonna take forever and you have bureaucracies that go through and stuff like that. No, you just like, you know what, we're moving this way tomorrow. And that's and you move. And that's and that's the and that's the difference between a smaller company and these large conglomerates. But listen, listen, we could we can continue to talk for a while but I appreciate you taking the time because I know you are extremely busy right now I am with a ton of stuff AFM is coming up as of this recording and MIPCOM is started as well and all of that kind of stuff. So I truly appreciate you taking the time out to talk to us. And give us the latest updates on the realities of the film distribution business as it is today. So again, thank you so much. I will put links to everything to how to get in touch with Linda on the show notes. Linda, thank you again and give my best to Michael you guys do an amazing job over at Indy. Right. So thanks.

Linda Nelson 1:54:53
And I want to thank you very much for the opportunity. It's always great to have a chance to you know through you Talk to our filmmakers, you know our future filmmakers and, and be able to share some information that helps them to navigate these murky waters.

Alex Ferrari 1:55:09
shark infested as I like to call it shark infested. Thank you again, Linda,

Linda Nelson 1:55:13
I'll talk to you today Take care.

Alex Ferrari 1:55:16
I want to thank Linda for coming on the show and dropping those knowledge bombs on the tribe. Thank you very, very much. If you want to get links to anything we talked about in this episode, including how to reach out to Linda and indie writes head over to the show notes at indie film hustle comm forward slash 436. Now I always like to put a disclaimer anytime I have a distribution company, or someone representing a distribution company or aggregator on the show, please do all your homework and due diligence with anybody you're thinking about doing business with in the distribution space. I've had a really great experience with my films with Linda, but you should absolutely reach out to other filmmakers who have worked with indie rights and see if they are a good match for your film. And if you haven't already, please head over to filmmaking podcast.com and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot. Thank you so much for listening, guys. As always keep that also going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Alex Ferrari 2:23
So guys, today on the show, we have returning champion Kyle Prohaska. And Kyle was on a very popular episode, Episode Number 200 of the indie film hustle podcast talking about how to use Facebook in order to sell your movies. And that episode was very, very well received by the tribe and I wanted to talk to him. Now I wanted to bring him back on the show because he has been developing new techniques on how to get an actual ROI on Facebook ads getting a return on investment. The thing that always never really set right with me is spending $20 on a Facebook ad to promote a 290 $9 rental, or worse even a free watch on Amazon. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense. But Kyle has been able to crack the code, and has been using it with his clients now for a while and it is consistently bringing him a good return on investment. And not only is he able to get that ROI, but he's also able to bring awareness to your film, which will then spill over into other areas of your marketing. It was quite quite remarkable. So I cannot wait to share this episode with you. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Kyle Prohaska. I like to welcome back to the show returning champion, Kyle Prohaska. Man How you doing brother?

Kyle Prohaska 3:53
Good, how are you?

Alex Ferrari 3:55
I'm good man. I'm good. You know, it's I wanted to have back on the show because we were kind of going back and forth on Twitter a little bit. I think I think one of that old episode we did, which was number 200. about Facebook marketing for filmmakers, which we were just discussing was a few a couple years ago. So a couple things have changed since

Kyle Prohaska 4:13
Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 4:14
Pre even pre COVID a couple things have changed. But post COVID is even not post during COVID A lot has changed in us like Hey, man, we should talk again. There's a lot of stuff that's different. So um, that's why I wanted to have you back man. So let's just get into it. Man. How has the Facebook marketing game changed? In your opinion since last we spoke,

Kyle Prohaska 4:38
Oh, man. I mean it. Just like anything. The rules seem to change constantly. The performance goes up and down. It's like a big roller coaster every year throughout the year. You know, the the the difference in even how I would approach things you know years ago is now totally different just because of what you can do. The tools have improved You know, they've also pared back some things that got them in some trouble, I'm sure everybody's aware of some of that. But the whole ecosystem is, is constantly changing. And you have to stay on your, or you gotta, it keeps you on your toes, I guess is what I would say, you know, um, so it's, it has changed quite a bit. And it's an ongoing sort of thing. So I have to keep my finger on the pulse constantly to make sure I'm paying attention to what's happening or not, like everybody, I'm sure heard about the boycotting, that was happening with a lot of big companies and Facebook. And, you know, I wasn't sure what's that going to do? You know, I know, I know, at least for me, it's like, well, I can't pull back, I got all kinds of clients that are, you know, they have ongoing businesses, and Facebook's a big part of their success. So they're not going anywhere. You know, they're not Honda, you know, or whatever, the

Alex Ferrari 5:53
Honda and Starbucks

Kyle Prohaska 5:54
Yeah so they, you know, so so I wasn't sure what that was going to do. It's been, especially this year, you know, it has been a constant roller coaster. And what you can and can't do is never entirely clear. I feel like it's sort of the Wild West, and it has been all along. So so it's been interesting. It's like, I don't I don't just do stuff. Now. That's film related. Now, I'm like working with some online colleges, for instance, that's been interesting, because of COVID. Or, you know, there are nonprofits or there are. And then of course, you know, filmmakers. But, man, you got to be careful now, because they're cracking down on all kinds of things. And I'm not doing anything shady, but their whole automated system even will crawl around for stuff.

Alex Ferrari 6:37
It I find that Yeah, sometimes they'll flag stuff. I'm like, What are you talking about man, like, and but you'll let something else go that's, you know,hoarder

Kyle Prohaska 6:45
And it takes like a week for it to disappear. You know, like, recently with one unmentioned video that I want mentioned?

Alex Ferrari 6:53
Yes.

Kyle Prohaska 6:54
It's like, it's pretty safe.

Alex Ferrari 6:56
And then there's, and then there's Facebook Jail, and we could talk about Facebook Jail, which is a whole other a whole other thing. For people who don't know what Facebook Jail is, it's not a pleasant thing to be, if you do something that they don't like, not just advertising, period, if you're doing posting stuff, or you're doing something that's not acceptable, they will, they will block you for. Yeah, like for like, it depends. I you know, I've been in face I, I have been In Facebook Jail, in my day, haven't been in a while, but you kind of learn,you kind of learn.

Kyle Prohaska 7:30
To do and, and, you know, even for something as simple as, like commenting on your own posts too much and like responding to everything, you know, self promotion, it's like, they'll kind of take away your commenting ability temporarily, and then give it back to you, you know, stuff like that, because they just don't, they're trying to, they're trying to cut down on as much spam Enos as they can, you know, so if you go too hard, too fast responding and answering every question and saying thank you to 200 people in an hour.

Alex Ferrari 7:58
They don't like it.

Kyle Prohaska 7:59
Yeah, they don't like that at all. So it's a it's a constantly changing environment. And, you know, I, I've been doing Facebook marketing now for more than 10 years. So, you know, when I look back, way back, you know, what feels like now to what it used to be like then and what it's like now, it's just not even the same universe. And I don't even spend or suggest to people that I spend their money the same way. You know, it's just, it's, it's just different now and on the filmmaking and, you know, there are tools now that you can utilize that you just couldn't, you know, five years ago, that are now available, like that, like the conversion based stuff that I mentioned, like that sort of stuff has been around but it hasn't been anywhere near as common as it is now. Everybody seems like they're selling something or creating a store now, using like Shopify or big commerce or Squarespace you know, everybody's willing to it's not the gig economy. I think I heard it called the hustle economy like everybody has like their their thing there's yeah.

Alex Ferrari 9:01
Sir everyone's just catching up with me sir. I've been here for quite some time at the hustle sir.

Kyle Prohaska 9:08
I know, I mean, we we both have our our stuff that we can point back to a decade ago where we were like selling physical you know, physical stuff physical mirch and and that and that is honestly I've swung back around where I don't do like theatrical much anymore. You know, I really kind of moved away from that and moved over to okay well, how do I help people sell something direct where they're gonna either ship it themselves and they're gonna have a fulfillment place do it. I can track the sales they can see the money's going in and going out.

Alex Ferrari 9:39
And or like a digital or digital,or digital products or something like.

Kyle Prohaska 9:42
Yeah,digital products and then there's their to me at least there's been like a surge in physical again, everybody left it alone and figured it was dead. But I think that was because the means of moving it. So like unreachable, like you could maybe Place your product somewhere but it was going to cost a lot of money to make And you didn't know if it was going to move, or now you can sell it direct, where if you can move it, and the ROI is there, you can justify kind of keeping the money in rotation.

Alex Ferrari 10:09
Alright, so So let's talk about a little bit about this. I'm going to ask you a question first, and then we're going to get into this and it might lead into that. And I've had a problem with this for a while, can filmmakers actually get an ROI return on investment with Facebook ads, if they're strictly just trying to get watches? Or getting people to try to buy or rent their films on iTunes? or Amazon? Is there a model that that still works in?

Kyle Prohaska 10:36
Yes, so so the prime streaming side of things where you're getting paid like an antibody. Now, you know, that's just really not a that's more of a thing where you place it, and you hope to kind of get into the right hole algorithmically, you know, where your movie will kind of seem to get suggested around via their platform. And then you see people's numbers blow up, and then they die. And like a month, you know, I've seen movies, it's a good, but it's a risk. It's like a gamble. It is it's a gamble. And it's told it seems totally random, as far as anybody's outside influence on and who seems like it's Amazon, you know, and I've seen that work for movies that have like name talent, where it's like their face on the cover. And all of a sudden, you'll see some of these older men of comedy do well, because they happen to have an actor in it that was recognizable. But, you know, you mentioned the word model. And people throw that word around. But like, the model that I use all the time now, for most people I'm doing stuff for is to have them sell something physical on a store, they control if they can fulfill it themselves. run all the advertising and a conversion based environment. So all the deliveries about triggering the the purchase itself, right? So it's not like video views first, and then link clicks to retarget, and all that sort of stuff, it's kind of top to bottom, all at the same time, funnel wise. And what that does, and this is kind of the thing that took me a while to really realize I didn't do it on enough movies is when you when you leave the kind of awareness base ad delivery alone, any pivot towards conversion, you're telling Facebook to go get a very different result, right? Like, it's easy for it to go get video views, Link clicks, post engagements, landing page views are better, right, but they're still not the same as somebody physically buying something. So telling it to optimize for that means that your delivery is narrower, and it costs more, right, less people per dollar, that sort of thing. But the quality of the people that's delivering to changes dramatically. So if you get yourself to a place where even those ads pay for themselves, and that's it, like see, the ROI is like one, you know, or 1.2 or something that doesn't feel like much the the bump that you see over on Amazon, for instance, rental and buy and the bump you see on an iTunes and things like that is tangible.

Alex Ferrari 12:55
How is it that how is it so if I'm selling a T shirt, Samson, I'm selling a T shirt for my horror movie. And and it's good, and then we set it up in Shopify. Alright, so we have a Shopify site, we put on some t shirts, and we're selling that T shirt that may have something to do with my movie may not have something to do with my movie might be a horror movie, but it might be worked into the movie, somehow. It's in the ecosystem of my movie, right? How does that convert to views on, let's say, an amazon prime or to be or rentals or sales?

Kyle Prohaska 13:27
Sure, and a shirt, a shirt would be different. I'm talking more about the movie itself. So like, I know your movie existed five minutes ago. And now hopefully, they're you know, some of them are checking out and getting it from you, you know, a download that you can track, you know.

Alex Ferrari 13:41
Oh, so you're putting this yourself distributing it through a digital file on like, either a Vimeo, x or VHS.

Kyle Prohaska 13:49
Or Shopify has like a free app. But but there's no DRM, things like that. Not everybody's going to care. But so so the model is basically sell it in a trackable way, run conversion based ads, if you can break even great if you do way better than that great, because now you're making money on what you move. But all of the spillover awareness from people who don't buy it from you. a much bigger portion of them seem to gravitate towards the digital platforms. That wasn't true when I was running. Why do you think retargeting only and I think that's because the, the makeup of the people within the group that you fed it, that it will deliver to is much more exclusive, it's far more expensive to get to them. And as the pixel that you install for the tracking learns more about the makeup of the buyer, that delivery will improve over time. So you end up getting way higher quality awareness than you used to if you just pick a lower intent thing like video views, like clicks, pose, you know, post engagement, all that stuff. You get a lot of people in the top of the funnel, but you get all kinds of sorts of various intent. You know, when you do a conversion based campaign, it's factoring in what it knows about the users already. What it knows about the makeup of the buyer based on like previous data you have from your pixel, hopefully, you know if it's a totally cold thing, and.

Alex Ferrari 15:05
Can you can you stop real quick? Can you explain it to everybody what a pixel is?

Kyle Prohaska 15:07
Sure, yeah, sorry. You know,

Alex Ferrari 15:09
I know what a pixel is I use pixels. But I want everyone to say, it's not that bad Adam Sandler movie,what is the pixel,

Kyle Prohaska 15:13
The facebook pixel is something you set up in your business manager, which anybody can start one, if you have a Facebook page, you can, you know, go and sign up for a business manager, it's sort of the, you know, bucket that all of your Instagram and Facebook pages and everything lives under. And then you have an area where you can create a pixel and the pixel is something that it gets installed on your website gets installed on your store gets installed anywhere that you want to track, the data of pageviews of purchase triggers of add to carts, you know, all that sort of stuff. And from that, you know, when you do like a purchase based campaign, so you have like, 100, previous purchases, or 10, or five, or whatever it is, Facebook goes, Okay, what's the makeup of the people who triggered this thing you're telling me to go get, and then it will deliver within the target, you fed it. So it was like people that like horror movies, people who like dramas of this store to that store, it will try and pivot all the delivery towards people like those people, you know, um, because it's conversion based, you get to a lot less people, and you pay a lot more per dollar for those people. But it's way higher quality traffic, higher intent traffic, so the people who don't want to buy it from you who are never going to buy it from you say it's like physical, right? Like lots of people don't buy physical, some people do. But it's a way to get to the person who is the digital renter and buyer.

Alex Ferrari 16:39
And because you have the pixel, Facebook knows that they have already purchased or rented films in general.

Kyle Prohaska 16:46
Well, they won't know that, based on the because that that's, that's really the problem. And why this model is still a roundabout way. But it's still the most direct way. Amazon, iTunes, any ubiquitous platform doesn't allow you to track the sale from the ad to the rental. So there is no way to know they saw this ad and they got this, you know, and I got this rental, the only thing you can track is I know they saw this ad and bought from me, or they rented it from because you're controlling the platform, right? So so what I'm describing is getting yourself into a place where your ads are paying for themselves, which is something we didn't have, if you're not in a conversion based environment, you're just kind of get you're paying for a lot of awareness. And it's all floating out there. And you don't know what's connecting to what and you're paying for for much lower intent people than you need to where if you do conversion based, and so you move enough DVDs to pay for the advertising. And that's it. What I'm saying is that you should see a tangible bump when you go and check your digital numbers, all that spillover from people who didn't buy it from you, but you still delivered ads to them. Not all of them, of course, gravitate to digital, but a much higher percentage every single time have ever tried to spend ads to bump someone's rental and digital numbers only, like in an awareness sort of campaign. Pick any other optimization link clicks, landing page views, which you can't track, by the way, if you're sending them to Amazon, because there's no pixel over there. So clicks only video views only, you can't get to enough people per dollar for the small percentage that does convert to make you money. There's just not enough money to go around, right? A trackable higher margin sale that pays for the ads for you. So that all the digital spillover is gravy, like.

Alex Ferrari 18:30
So. Okay. All right. So if so if I'm a filmmaker right now, and I have a movie, and let's say I have $100,000 movie and it you know, let's say genre, let's say it's a horror movie, you know, easy horror movie genre, it might have a B level horror star in it. Okay. Now, the way I would set up and I've got, I got five grand to start for advertising, specifically. Now I have gone with the distributor for all the platforms and going out to you know, Amazon, and tubi, and all these other places. But I've retained the right to sell it on my website or on my digital, a digital platform online somewhere, I've been able to carve that out. So now I open up a Spotify account or, you know, put it on, you know, wherever VHS, Vimeo, one of those kind of places. And we put the movie there for rental and for sale. So let's say for sale, it would be 999. We're going to throw in a whole bunch of special features and stuff like that. And 399 for a rental. What you're saying is as opposed to, which is what most filmmakers do is they'll take that five grand throw it at the Facebook ads and try to drive them to Amazon or drive them to iTunes, right use and even conversion even if you use the conversion algorithm in Facebook ads, you still have no way of really knowing it other than maybe the backend numbers.

Kyle Prohaska 19:54
And you can't you can't even do a conversion campaign in that instance because you don't have a way to track that Amazon sale. So the only way to run a conversion campaign is to sell it somewhere you control and it's trackable, and the options are really not. There's not a lot of them, right? Like you have the Shopify type places that you can use, you have VH x, which they sort of hid their more traditional, like, the old VHX is still there. But you kind of have to.

Alex Ferrari 20:19
Vimeo, yeah, Vimeo, yeah,

Kyle Prohaska 20:21
Like normal, Vimeo doesn't give you the pixel option. So I would tell people, like, don't just put it on Vimeo, can't track over there, fine, if you want to put it over there, but send people to where the pixel is available. Because then you can see, from this ad came the sales, and here's how much came through the sales, you know, you need that ability.

Alex Ferrari 20:40
So then Alright, so if we continue with that, that conversation, so then. So then I have it on VHX, and I have a pixel to it. And now I start putting in, we'll put in 1000 bucks to see what happens. And we push that in, and now we're driving people to buy or rent from me specifically. And the people who are buying and renting from me will hopefully or we could track it, start paying for the advertisers as

Kyle Prohaska 21:05
they roll through.

Alex Ferrari 21:06
And there might be an if we get 1.5 to double our money. Oh, my

Kyle Prohaska 21:11
You're making money on your money, which is great. Great. The key to the model is to answer your question directly is that plenty of people are going to have no interest in buying it from checks, right. So like, in the last number of years, what's been totally clear is that everyone wants to try and push everyone to like a particular place. When I know for me, if I'm renting anything, I'm going to iTunes first I'm an iTunes guy, I use like iTunes gift cards constantly to rent stuff that I want to see or to buy it. I think I rented something from Amazon once, right?

Alex Ferrari 21:43
Yeah, I'm an I'm an I have an Apple TV,

Kyle Prohaska 21:47
Right!

Alex Ferrari 21:47
Like, I personally, like I've never rented anything, I think I might have rented one or two things from Amazon. And but if I rent anything I buy it.

Kyle Prohaska 21:54
And the opposite exists, right? People that are just happily google assistant or Google, right. So ours, or people now especially if they skew younger and male, they're probably renting on youtube movies and things like that, you know, they're available over there. So everyone has their preferred thing. So it being available on like, VHS only is going to cut down on the people that are going to convert through. But if you can get yourself to a place where the ROI is, like you said, it's paying for itself, hopefully, right? Like that would be the point. or making money, obviously is the goal. But in the event, you were only breaking even all of that spillover awareness, if it's available on those big ubiquitous places should get it should get a pop,

Alex Ferrari 22:35
So on other words just because now there people are aware of your movie, like I don't want to rent it on VHX, I'll go hunting on iTunes or Amazon. And I've done that a million times. I want

Kyle Prohaska 22:45
I mean don't tell people that it's there for now. So that's what I mean. But um, but but pivot all the ad delivery towards a trackable thing, because this is what I want to make sure people understand it changes the people Facebook delivers to it changes the ad delivery, you know, it's going towards people that it knows are engaged buyers based on previous data, it's pivoting towards people who are more like the folks already triggering, hopefully the purchase event on your pixel. So it's a different makeup of people, if I fed it the same 2 million horror fans, and I did video views in one campaign and I did conversions on another, it's going to one's going to try and go after a much broader base of people and get you cheap video views, right that are like three seconds only. And depending on how good the content is maybe the watch deeper and all that sort of stuff. And then you'll have the other world take that 2 million, and it's probably going to focus on on a tiny little subset right within that 2 million based on what it knows already. And based on what it's learning as it goes. And that's who's going to hyper focus in on that everyone knows that 2 million are not going to be buyers, right like that's a much bigger group than are going to probably do anything, no matter what you spend the money on. So pivoting the delivery towards people more likely to be buyers means that on like a per dollar level, you're more likely to get in front of people who are going to convert somewhere. But if you can optimize all of the delivery and the campaign around something you can see, it's way easier to keep the money running. Right? Like I've dumped plenty of money into like theatrical campaigns awareness campaigns, and it's terrifying because even if you know that you're doing a good job as far as the metrics are concerned, you don't know what's happening on the other end. And it's way harder to ask people to continue spending when you can't really tell them what's happening. You know, it's it. I don't like being in that position. That's why I pivoted all my business away because like it starts to eat away at you. There's only so much you can do conversion wise right like some movies you just gonna have to do the traditional sort of campaign right like a big theatrical movie, you got to spend money like everywhere in order to have an even have a shot right? Um, but for somebody who has a movie to sell, maybe they have some older films that they Compact together, and maybe they have some other products around that movie, like you said emerge t shirts, right? Special exclusives that only you can sell, nobody else can sell them. Um, if you can run ads that will just pay for themselves, and that's as good as it gets. That's the best way to spend that five grand if it's available on iTunes and Amazon, because it changes the makeup of people that you deliver to with that five grand, and they're way more likely to be buyers.

Alex Ferrari 25:25
And then you can also use that. And this concept could also work on DVDs and blu rays or anything physical,

Kyle Prohaska 25:30
A huge part of what I've been doing, because everybody thinks that it's dead when I know I got like a zillion of them sitting over here. You know, I got a ton of blu rays and DVDs, I will buy physical as long as it's available. And yeah, of course, everyone's not me. But a lot of people are still me. You know, it's not just older people are plenty of younger people. I mean, vinyls had a comeback, for goodness sake, who would have thought that you know, a number of years ago, so selling something physical, similar to not assuming what platform people want to use, right? Like, let people buy it, the way that they're comfortable with, plenty of folks will see your ads and go right to Amazon, like anyone listening right now, I guarantee you've been in a Walmart, and you're like, I wonder how much this is on Amazon. And you go and check on your phone, because you want to find out if you're getting a good deal or not. And you're comfortable with Amazon, and you've probably used it a million times in your lifetime. So let people go where they're most comfortable. Because they're gonna do that anyway, if they're interested in the movie. And they really think it's compelling, they'll probably go check whatever their their most common kind of consumption platform is. And that's where they'll go first, they might check your site, they might even buy it from you. But odds are, they're going to go and see if it's available in that thing they use all the time. So let people go where they're comfortable. That's why I like don't deny physical, if you can afford to make even just a small amount of units just to see like don't bury yourself in copies if they're not going to move. But there are plenty of ways now to get stuff made cheaply and get a get only get some made don't make a ton without any proof yet. But give it a shot, make it available digitally, make it available physically do it in a trackable space. It's sort of a line I've repeated over and over again with people. But if I can't figure out a way to sell it directly to someone, it's really unlikely I can spend their money another way. And it work. Right like that. That's what I've seen.

Alex Ferrari 27:32
So right now, so right now you wouldn't take on a client that is going to you you need them to either sell it on VHS or somewhere trackable, or on a physical DVD or physical medium somehow that which they obviously are tracking because they're actually fulfilling it themselves.

Kyle Prohaska 27:50
It's always my first question, how is it going to be available if they say, Oh, it's only going to be over here, it's like, you know, it doesn't have to be available everywhere. But when I say you see a bump in other places, I'll even see a bump on eBay for some of these movies, some of these movies, they're all they came out 20 years ago, and they're selling better now than they've sold in years. And you can go to eBay and search them and go to completed listings and see a bump from people that see an ad. And they go and hunt around

Alex Ferrari 28:17
To see if they can find the DVD some ways

Kyle Prohaska 28:18
To find it. So so like people are listing their DVD via their own account, or they set up their own, you know, business account on eBay. And they're catching sales from people that decide think they're clever and go over their email, and they're still buying it from the filmmaker. So it's, it's a really interesting. Yeah, it's it's interesting. I mean, once I once I realized though the digital bump was real, then it was like, okay, because someone who comes to me and says, hey, it's gonna be on Amazon rental and buy only. What can you do with, you know, whatever amount of money and it's really hard for me to say yes to that. Now, I'm like, I would much prefer me spend it all on a conversion environment, I guarantee you're going to get more buys and rentals over here. If I do the ads this way, I know that you'll get more people over here, it doesn't mean that you're going to be a big winner, but it means the amount of money that's going to result from the spend is likely to be much higher, because it's too hard to get to enough people on a per dollar basis. When you do like video views link click retargeting landing page view retargeting like traditional funnel, it's really hard to run those kind of,

Alex Ferrari 29:25
But if you so look at it. So this is my film shoprunner mine working. So if we're going to a Shopify, a site that we've built, that we're selling the DVDs ourselves, we're fulfilling them ourselves. If we have T shirts, if we have ancillary products, if we package it with the movie, those are things we could track.

Kyle Prohaska 29:42
Yes!

Alex Ferrari 29:43
Those are things we can track and based off of that that's still going to deal with the digital bump. Because Because it's still going towards, there's still awareness and if you're just selling a T shirt by itself, I see what you're saying is different if you're selling them, right but if they're selling the movie, and while they're buying the movie, you can either buy the special Cooper super duper bloody edition with the with the fake x with the FX x and the bloody t shirt for, you know, 40 bucks. That's another that's another possibility because the people who are interested in that rented the movie there very well might be interested in buying that T shirt, if it's a cool design, and maybe a proper maybe inside of a tin lunchbox or something like that, as a special edition,

Kyle Prohaska 30:24
Raise your checkout value, you know, that's why for some of these folks that have come to me and said, Okay, well what else you got? You have this movie? Well, what upsells bumps, upsells bumps, and honestly, folks that have made a new movie, but they have all these previous ones that to them are like worthless now. Or that's how I see them. Yeah, you know, I'm like, like, I and I won't mention movie names, because I don't have permission for all that, sure. But I can talk about it anonymously in a sense, like, there's a guy that, you know, he he's made movies for decades. And he has one movie sort of dragging all the others along where that movie selling fantastic. The new ones great selling everywhere is getting bumps on digital, he's selling tons of units every month on his own store. But he packed it with like his for old products, some of which are very old. But the whole pack is like 25 bucks. Because those movies are so ancient, they haven't moved in years. And now he's selling more of them than he really hasn't

Alex Ferrari 31:19
Value proposition. To value proposition.

Kyle Prohaska 31:21
It's it's a, it is a really, really great way to give old products new life, right? And take the new one like whatever. I've even told folks like be agnostic in a sense about what movie you think is the winner. If you're someone who's made multiple things, forget what you think about your movie, put them all in there and let them fight. And then just pivot where the where the where the clear ROI is don't worry about you know, if it's your new one, I get it. That's a different story. But, you know, this, this model has worked in even giving those older movies of that guy, for instance, digital bumps were like they're getting rentals that they wouldn't, it wouldn't have thought and that's just because people are landing there. And they're seeing, oh, he has this other stuff, what's that one called and, you know, they might not even buy the pack, but they're over on Amazon now. You know, checking it out on DVD and things like that. So

Alex Ferrari 32:13
You can you can track the bumps just basically on the money that you're getting. From these platforms.

Kyle Prohaska 32:18
It's as close as you can get, right, that's what that's what I'm saying this is as close as you can get. Because I've, I've spent money everywhere I can think of to try and get a bump over on Amazon in a way that has an ROI. That makes sense. And it just doesn't, you can't get to enough people per dollar. And because there's no tracking ability, you have no idea what target is working, you don't know which demographic is buying, you can't say anything. So if you do conversion ads, at least those can pay for themselves, hopefully, right?

Alex Ferrari 32:48
And if it pays for them, it if it pays for itself, if you're winning, if you can, even if you're slightly losing, if it's 90 cents on the dollar, it's still you're paying 10 cents for an amazing amount of awareness that will hopefully bump elsewhere. And then the ROI turns out,

Kyle Prohaska 33:04
Yeah, it's way way better than what than what had what I've previously done, it's way better than what I did with my first movie way back, like this, this is this is the thing now for me.

Alex Ferrari 33:16
This video, though there was a video views are easy to get because they're gonna they're gonna focus on Oh, these guys watch videos, and we need three seconds and this guy and these all these people watch three seconds of this kind of video.

Kyle Prohaska 33:27
It's slow intent you know it Facebook kind of knows out of their whole user base, like what chunk of everybody is more likely to perform these actions who are click happy people who love watching videos, and who were people that have done a lot of buying, right, so when you feed it a certain target, it's going to factor in what it knows from the pixel. And it's going to factor in previously known data. And it's going to hyper focus on a chunk of that target. Because it knows they're more impulse buy happy sort of people. Um, you know, and I feel like what people miss is that you don't just deliver to people who buy, it's all the other people that are in the mix. So you still get video views. You still get storefront views, you still get engagement and comments and all that sort of stuff, but you're not optimizing around that. Right.

Alex Ferrari 34:13
So that's all still off stuff.

Kyle Prohaska 34:14
Yeah, it's what am I telling Facebook to do? If I'm telling it to go get video views, and that's what it's going to go get. And it's going to get me as many of them per dollar as it can afford in the bidding environment. You know, a Facebook just like on eBay, people are bidding for products will Facebook's bidding to put your video up instead of somebody else's video. And that's all it's doing. Because it's all you told it to do. Same with link clicks get me as many of these dollars you can get me and it'll go do that. Get me as many purchases per dollar as you can get me.

Alex Ferrari 34:46
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Now, if you had a funnel, let's say a sales funnel would link clicks make more sense if you if Your sales funnel is strong. And you know what converts? Does liquids know,

Kyle Prohaska 35:04
When you have a funnel and there's enough money coming in and going out and you like building a funnel like that takes time takes you to test a lot more money, a lot of testing, right? You have to be a lot of people just don't have the room to fail. You know what I mean? They don't have the room to to make those kind of mistakes, and they don't have the playroom to figure out if it's gonna work that way. There are plenty of businesses where Click Funnels and those sorts of things work great, right? But when you have like 510 grand to spend, you have a new movie, you really need to get moving, and you need to get moving quick. Um, I just don't suggest it for people because it is.

Alex Ferrari 35:44
No, it's it'sdefinitely much more advanced scenario.

Kyle Prohaska 35:46
And that's not to say there's no funnel, right, you do conversion, ads, top and bottom, you can still retarget video viewers, you can still retarget people that added to cart, but they didn't buy or landed on the store but didn't buy, like you still funnel these people right? down the funnel. It's just

Alex Ferrari 36:01
So real quick explain funnel to people because I know you and I are talking about funnels, a lot of people might not understand what a funnel is.

Kyle Prohaska 36:06
So like, you know, if you I mean, everybody knows what like a funnel looks like. And at the bottom would be whatever action you want people to do, which in this case is hopefully buy something or it might not maybe it's a lead, you know, putting your email sort of thing. Um, you know, at the top of the funnel, the if you break the funnel up into layers or stories, like in a building, like, first impression is at the top, right, whatever action to bottom, right? And and, um, you know, in an ad environment, you're trying to get people from the top to the bottom. So maybe that means they see a video first and then people are retargeted who saw the video? How do I get them to my site? Because they haven't visited yet. Okay, well, now they visited but they didn't buy it. So now I get hit them with a nother layer of ads that tries to seal the deal. Right? There are all kinds of ways to structure a funnel like that, you know, video views at the top, then link clicks or landing page views, then a conversion based campaign maybe at the bottom or it's all link click based all the way through there, there are a million ways to segment it out. Right? The traditional like conversion based one for me now would be like conversion at the top right? With totally cold audiences and retarget. Right, like say they released their trailer months ago. And there's video views there or they have web views they've been tracking for months, or they have everybody who bought from them in the past or visit visited their site for years. Get everybody in there. You know start retargeting while you get people at the top of the funnel, and, you know, work your way down. You know, it's like, you have to figure out a structure that works for what you're doing. Right? Like, it's not the same for everything. But most folks need something that simple. Because they can't get too complicated with it. They need it to be cost effective as quickly as possible, because they don't tend to have enough money to lose for very long if it's going to be difficult, right. And they need to be able to see what's happening. There's nothing worse for me now. Anyway, I can't see. Right. And I I told you I did that drive in based thing, you know, I was emailing you. And there was a driving sort of release and you know, lots of locations that sort of hopped around week to week. And it was really hard. I didn't miss spending money that way at all. Because it was so in the filmmaker was fine. He was like, I'm so glad that you care. You know, a lot of other people don't care. But I was just really bummed out that the results were spotty. Because I couldn't look at my campaigns and know what worked from this place that didn't work from that place.

Alex Ferrari 38:36
Yeah, you're a data guy, you You got it, you got to see the data. And yeah, that's the problem I've always had with advertising in general, as a general statement, before in the internet, before social media, advertising in general was always a roll of the dice, whether you were buying a magazine page out layout, an ad in the back of a newspaper or a billboard, to get an order to track that ROI, you would just kind of like well, I spent 10,000 on marketing, and I brought in an extra $15,000 in sales that wasn't there last month, I assume that there's a correlation. And that was what advertising was for decades. Then Then Facebook showed up and Google Ads showed up and all of a sudden now you could start tracking every little aspect of the business but like you so eloquently have put in this interview that you kind of like we're throwing money in the air yes there's trackable things but you really if you unless you have complete control of the whole ecosystem of the face will pick the pixel this and that to see what's converting what's not converting without that you're literally awareness. Awareness campaigns are essentially putting a billboard up

Kyle Prohaska 39:48
Yes, their billboards which like if you have a local coffee shop and a town of 1200 by all means running awareness based campaign to everyone who lives within 10 miles because it's cheap to deliver to them all like a million times. A week, that would be a good way to go in that instance, but not when you have a movie for sale and you're trying to find a buyer amongst a sea of people who have endless things to watch anytime that they want, what makes What makes you so special? Right? Like, it's hard to get people's attention. It's hard to get people to look at you and not at whatever, whatever other thing that can watch that night. So, you know, in our people

Alex Ferrari 40:24
window, and our people, our people, actually, you know, because I've been saying for a long time, TVOD is dead, you know, and transactional video on demand is dead. Unless you can drive traffic or unless you have an audience that is willing to pay for it. Those are the two what ifs, if you just throw it up on iTunes, Amazon and Google and go, let the money come in those days are thats 2010. Yes, that's that's when that happened.

Kyle Prohaska 40:51
Yeah, one point when my movie went up on like VOD, via the cable box, you know, and yeah, 2010, or whatever it was, there were like a handful of movies available. So of course, he did sales because people were there and there was anything to watch. Right? You know, now there's a million things. So changing what you have to change how you look at this stuff. You know, it's like people are willing to be ruthless on the page. And then they're ruthless in the editing room. And then when it comes time to sell it, nobody wants to be ruthless. And if you stop, you know, it's right. Like that, you have to stop looking at it the way you always have. People are not just going to show up to watch your thing. There's just too many of them to watch.

Alex Ferrari 41:29
Are you telling me that my film is not genius? And and, and that everybody, my baby is not beautiful? And that everybody is not just going to show up?

Kyle Prohaska 41:39
Right? Like that's really the thing. They could be the most beautiful baby, you might be a genius, but not even movie. It's really a ton of people out there. And they just don't know that you exist. 3d movie exists is the same problem. If you have a good movie or movie, it's not so great, but you have no choice. And it's as good as you could make it at the time. It doesn't really matter between the two, you have the same problem. No one knows it's there.

Alex Ferrari 42:00
Can we can we can we dismiss a myth right now debunk a myth right now on this show. A lot of people have heard this 1000 times the cream rises to the top, meaning that if it's good enough, it will find an audience. I have to disagree nowadays. I mean, if yes, if you happen to get picked up by a tastemaker like Sundance south by a 24, neon vertical,

Kyle Prohaska 42:29
Not a sure thing either now.

Alex Ferrari 42:31
That and even then that's not a sure thing anymore. But they say if it's really good, it's going to find an audience. I disagree. 110%. I think that without understanding your audience without creating a product for your audience, without understanding the marketing and how to get to that audience, I don't care how good it is, unless you've got a tastemaker with some major power behind it, to come in and go, this guy's good, this girl's movie is great. And even then, even then, it doesn't guarantee anything. I don't wanna, I want people to know, I want I really want people to understand

Kyle Prohaska 43:10
What mattered more, you know, when the world was different, you know, it's like, we don't live in the Kevin Smith Sundance world anymore. We don't live in the, you know, it's not El Mariachi anymore. Like, if you have something and you have something that's good, I would say that what we're talking about is even more important, because this stuff matters even more, when you have something that's really good.

Alex Ferrari 43:33
Yeah, cuz it's easy, it's easier to sell good stuff than it is to sell bad stuff,

Kyle Prohaska 43:39
Yes ofcourse, so so and, you know, so that that has been a big factor. Like, I'll get an email from somebody and I, you know, I have a good gut for that sort of thing. At least I know whether or not I think it has like that impulse buy thing, because a lot of movies just don't even really good movies don't write. So there's categories of movies, there's like good movies that have that impulse, buy, appeal. And then there's movies that are good, that don't have that impulse buy below because they're liked by a smaller group of people. It's not obvious to someone that it's going to be like, it's hard to explain to somebody why they're like, drama that looks good is still hard to sell.

Alex Ferrari 44:17
Well, it's I'll use a perfect example. If I showed up tomorrow with Green Book, as that's my film, Green Book is my film. It doesn't particularly have the stars in it. Let's say we have lesser stars in it, but the same director, same script, but let's say quality acting like the acting is still stellar. Yeah, that's a tough movie to sell without major millions of dollars pushing it, and it won the Oscar. Right? You know, it's a parasite, parasite.

Kyle Prohaska 44:47
It does not work for everything. It's not, it's not magic. It's really, really not. You have to have the right movie. You have to have the right financial situation. For instance, if you're Movies buried in insane costs where the movie already costs like probably more than it should have, and all that sort of stuff, then it's tough. But I try and tell folks though, like, when it works, though, like when what we're specifically talking about works, it really works. And that's what's great is that

Alex Ferrari 45:19
It's a home run. It's not it's not a foul ball. It's a home run,

Kyle Prohaska 45:22
Oh, no, but you know it, when it works, it works really, really well. And, um, it's, it's actually not that crazy to try, right like there, it's crazy to spend $50,000 $100,000 on your your small theatrical campaign where you have no idea if people are going to show up or not, I would never do that. I mean, not to write, or I've worked on lots of limited releases, or fathom, you know, fathom events, things like that, where lots of money has to get dumped in, because you don't have a choice, you're gonna go that big, and you're gonna give that a real shot, you have spent a lot of money per theater, otherwise, you're not even giving it a fair shot.

Alex Ferrari 46:01
But is that even like, Well, obviously, that's not a business model now that we can talk about.

Kyle Prohaska 46:07
It's like, it works for some things, but most things, it's, it's not gonna be the right thing for your movie. So so you know, when this works, it works good. And it doesn't cost a lot to find out. Right? So that's important for you to

Alex Ferrari 46:22
You could test pretty quick, you could test pretty quickly,

Kyle Prohaska 46:24
It doesn't take very long to like set up a like I push everybody Shopify, like not paid by Shopify, there's no sponsorships here or anything. But they, they're simply have the best system I found where it's fast to set up, it works really good. It connects to all the different ways people might want to pay, you know, and, and the UI experience on a phone, where most of your sales you're gonna come from now, is fantastic. It's so easy, it gets out of the way, that's what you need. You don't need some fancy, you know, difficult to navigate website, you need people to just land there. So you should have is it you know, are the prices easy to see, you know, is it easy to navigate and check out? Like, it's the most efficient system I've been able to define, and I've tried a couple by now. So, you know, setting that up is not hard. And then I know the physical part scares people, because they're like, you know, I don't want to have a bunch of boxes sitting in my garage, you know, that's happened to happens all the time. But, you know, it doesn't take much now to get something like that offered, you know, and give it a shot. Setting up your own digital, your own digital transactional thing, like VHS is not hard to sign up for either. Like all this stuff doesn't cost a lot to sort of get it all in place. I mean, I realize if you've never run at your own advertising before, it can just seem like this insane. But it's, I would encourage people it is in your best interest to give it a real try, like, set up a business manager get in there. You know, if you have to save up some money just to see what the ecosystem ecosystem is, like, set up your own campaign. There are so many YouTube videos.

Alex Ferrari 48:04
Oh, no, there's and there's and there's a lot of paid courses you could take as well that are

Kyle Prohaska 48:08
Out there. There is a lot of crap, I say that, but there's no excuse for you to not give it a shot. I mean, I definitely say that

Alex Ferrari 48:17
Well. So look, and I'll give you my experience with it. I've been I've danced with with Facebook now for for years before I even open up Indie Film Hustle when I had my old business, I would use Facebook ads. And it's it's daunting, it's daunting, because it is a fairly big beast. I'm a fairly educated person in this space. You know, I can talk to you pretty clearly about things. And it's still intimidating for me, because there's so much unknown about the process there. Is this, like you were saying? Like, I don't know, is it working? Is it not? I see the conversion. But is it really converting? And I don't know. Like it's there's so much that it's intimidating to someone like me who's fairly educated in this, let alone someone who doesn't even understand any of it is a little bit, it could be a little bit overwhelming this model that you're talking about makes all the sense in the world. It just is the only way I can see moving forward with

Kyle Prohaska 49:16
I wish I had it 10 years ago, do you not I mean, if you

Alex Ferrari 49:20
Yeah if you have a way to track like what you're talking about for this film, specifically, not for other products, but for films specifically, that you that you have something paying for the advertising and the spill off is trackable, just purely on the numbers that you're getting on these other platforms. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you have you have data to back it up because you've done it with clients and is working. It makes sense. But even that is still a fairly complex system. Everything you've said I'm in my mind, I'm like yeah, I could do this. I could do this at that over here, set that over there. But I'm I'm well versed in this space and the digital world. A lot filmmaker's or not. So it is, it is, it's easy to start it up and open up a business management account. And, and put out some ads. If you want to try to do conversions first do that. If not just see if you could do some videos.

Kyle Prohaska 50:16
That's like, dude, I would say I would say if you're if you're if you're not hanging your whole campaign on right now, and you're simply looking at your trailer release, for instance, right, but your trailer out, you know, listen to our previous conversation from a couple years back where we spent, like, half the time discussing why a piece of content which I know makes a lot of filmmakers want to borrow from just using the word don't don't kill me, you know, what you cut and made that you're going to put money on? really think through, you know, how you put together your promo material and things like that. Because if you're going to put money on it to different environment than somebody who knows you who's seeing you share your own trailer on your wall, like if you're putting something in front of someone who didn't know your movie existed till two seconds ago, what do they see first? Does it give them context right away? If it's a horror film? Does a horror movie fan know it's a horror film? Or do they have to watch half of it before they find out? Not a good thing when you're paying on a per view basis? Right? Like, there's all kinds of factors there. But a video view campaign or something small like that would be the simplest thing for someone to set up who's never set up a campaign before? You know, put a few targets in that you think are obvious, just start somewhere, you know.

Alex Ferrari 51:25
So when you say targets, what would you say the aim at some targets? If I may translate? That means like, if you have a horror movie, you'll go, Hey, I have a slasher movie I made Why don't I focus on people who like slasher films, or like specifically movies

Kyle Prohaska 51:40
That are comparable? And see if they show up, you know, and see if they and then like, go do some research about possible demographics that are more obvious for something like that. I assume you know, some of that already, because you made the movie. But if you don't, that's fine. That's why the internet's there, Google and look it up, you know, do some research. But a simple campaign that's just like to launch a trailer, put a little money on it, find out who's in who's reacting the best. For instance, it's great info, you know, even if you never do what any of what we're talking about, um, it drives me crazy that people aren't willing to like test their test their content out, because they're so hyped up on putting out their trailer on this day, like everywhere, right? That they won't put it out kind of as a test or posts that will like disappear in 48 hours, and put a little money on it and find out we'll put all of this stuff about who's gonna buy this? What if, what if I put this out and spend some money on it for two days, and the results suck? You might want to know that before you go and spend the rest of your money.

Alex Ferrari 52:42
Or you could just like do like three or four versions of the trailer and do a test campaign. Yeah, do a test campaign and see which one works. And then pump money behind that one.

Kyle Prohaska 52:51
Yeah, if you upload it, in, which I know all of this is gonna get in the weeds for folks. But if you upload those test videos that you might have in ads manager only than the live is what's like a dark post. It's not like a public post out front on your page. Once those ads are off, those posts will disappear. They'll fade away. Right now they'll get buried by today's craziness and all the posts that are out there. And

Alex Ferrari 53:14
Is there stuff going on today? What are you talking about, sir?

Kyle Prohaska 53:17
Yeah. So like, don't be afraid of putting something out there. Right? You know, it's great to find out whether or not all of these assumptions you've made about who's gonna like what you spent all this time on. If they're right or not. Else, like tests, for goodness sake tests, you don't have to spend that much to find out, you know, like, this is as cheap as it gets. And that's the other part is like, I know, Facebook comes under fire for all kinds of things. And you know, so to all the other huge companies, but Facebook is by far, the best place to start for somebody who especially a smaller don't have a lot of money to spend enough if what you have to offer is really specific in your require, like niche audience interaction and stuff. There's just no better place to go what the you know, as far as the targeting is concerned, what's available. You can find articles upon articles about some of the stuff that people are angry about. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about typing in, you know, Friday the 13th for your horror movie and being able to, you know, go after folks that like those movies, not talking about using data you shouldn't be using, it's just sort of like the publicly available obvious stuff is honestly the best place to start. Like, I don't think people realize just how smart their ad system is where if you feed it, um, what kind of movie to movie but if you feed it a lot of obvious stuff, you'll be surprised how well it'll actually do. If you give it some time and space and you like you said, you have a good movie, it's much easier to sell it. You know, so this is good stuff. If you think you have something good and you can't get a you know a deal somewhere or if the deals are bad, right? This is a great thing to look into. I was really encouraged. When I emailed Jim, Jim Cummings, before Thunder Road came out, um, I emailed him and just said, Hey, like, this looks really great. Like, if you need any help with anything, like, I'd love to just like, you know, help with whatever. And he hit back and said, Thank you. But he was planning on running all of his own ads. And I was, I wasn't bummed out about that. I was like, great. That's awesome. Like that that case study is now available now. It's now downloadable, you know, where they talk about, there's a section about what they did on Facebook, you know, but like, that's what it should be like, it shouldn't be there. And so long as you so long as you don't do anything incredibly foolish, you should generally be just fine.

Alex Ferrari 55:43
So not $1,000 a day is not not not No.

Kyle Prohaska 55:46
It's like, don't spend too much money too fast. Don't try and sell masks on Facebook, probably not going to be a good idea.

Alex Ferrari 55:53
Damn it, I just lost my ad campaign today on that

Kyle Prohaska 55:57
Banned and kicked off constantly for selling, you know, all kinds of things they shouldn't be, you know, if you're a movie, it's just like, set up a simple store, make it trackable, doesn't take all that long. Make sure it's available like that your here's a big thing, I want to make sure I say this, because I'll tell people, I won't spend your money at all until this is done. If it's not available digitally, in line with what we were discussing. If it's not available digitally, I won't spend their money to move the physical units yet, I will do anything I can to convince them to let me to wait. Just let me wait until it's on Amazon, for instance, I don't want to try and move units on your store, because I know that they're leaving money on the table, you know, over here. So if it isn't published over here yet, wait, I don't want any ads for the physical units, because I know for sure that they're going to get a real bump over here. And there's money over there that they're not getting. So there's all kinds of factors here. I realize it's not about confusing people, but you can post your movie, and most of the big platforms easily now especially Amazon, right? Like, I know, everybody has their thoughts on that. And man, has it taken a long time for them to publish things lately. I don't know if you've gotten any Oh, no, no, that that's yet another thing for folks where I've told them I'm like, look at upload it, make sure all the settings are right, hit publish and forget about it. Don't worry about it. Being public on Amazon for a week before your movie release date is supposed to be just forget about it. Make sure it's there, before you're spending money. Don't worry about the fact that it's there. Because for somebody you're not knows it's there.

Alex Ferrari 57:31
You're not the next Marvel movie.No one cares about the release date.

Kyle Prohaska 57:35
Don't get worried about that anymore. Make sure that it's available once it's time to spend the money. Right. That's all that's the most important thing.

Alex Ferrari 57:43
But can we can we agree on one thing though, the house always wins. Zuckerberg is the one who is winner is the house always wins when it comes to Facebook ads,like

Kyle Prohaska 57:52
Any any any of these ad platforms and things. It's like, Look, I get it, you know, sometimes it's really easy to hate the system, you know, but find the tools that are available to you work within the box that you're forced to work in and figure out how to win in it. And stop. Not stop complaining. Because there are plenty of legitimate arguments against some of the practices of some of these companies, right? I'm saying, look, no matter what today, tomorrow, a week from now, we got plenty of folks who have movies that they made to work really hard on that they want to continue to sell because they have bills to pay, and they have themselves take care of and they'd love to make another movie. So now a lot is we're not doing anything wrong. And we're just trying to find people who, who are hopefully going to like what we're putting in front of them. I have no problems. You know, it's like, this is the box, do you want to win or make movies or not? Right? Just like, I don't know what to tell folks. But I haven't found another system other than what we're talking about. That seems ideal for a lot of the indie filmmakers I know. And I'm actually trying to reach up a little bit higher towards folks that because of COVID, for instance, right? You got movies coming out that would traditionally have all of this ad money to spend, and they would do a traditionally big release, it's really hard to find someone who will spend a limited theatrical sized budget on a digital release, for instance, you just can't get anybody to do it. They can't wrap their head around why they should spend, you know, these big amounts of money on their physical digital release. When I'm like, why why why would you not? Why would you not lie? Why are the folks that spend a couple $1,000 a month or something, you know, making this amount when you have this big movie that now is getting dumped out there? Why would you not at least try you don't have to commit right? That's the difference with these theatrical campaigns is you sort of have this big number that you know for sure it's all going to get spent right across all these different ways is all going to get spent. Why not try and craft a campaign where if it's working You have an amount of a certain size that maybe you can roll through, right. But start with a smaller chunk. So long as the money's coming in and coming out, you can start to skill up. That's the beauty of some of this is that it's not about the day the movie comes out, right? It's the theatrical thing is like we have to hit this weekend. And that's going to set the tone for the rest of the release, right, you're sort of like peeking, and then you're going to roll off. And maybe you'll sort of hang around longer than usual, and that sort of thing. But it's all all the chips are put on that thing, you don't have to do that in this model, you can, certainly trying to focus where you think the urgency is going to be highest, because you have other stuff going on other PR things like that. But that's why this model is working for movies that are 20 years old, you know, there are more people who didn't know that these movies exist, and now they do and they still like to buy physical. So they are or they're renting it tonight, you know, so this can work for movies that are older, this can work for movies that are new, and you don't have to worry about all the focus being piled on that few weeks, you can chart out, you know, a much longer tail of focus for this sort of stuff. And if the right in, you can see it, right, like you can look at it and go, Okay, here's where we're at, here's our monthly average, so long as we hold within a certain zone, you can start to chart out what you what you think you need to do. And that's a whole new world, you know

Alex Ferrari 1:01:24
As opposed to putting all the pressure on the first 30 days or 60 days,

Kyle Prohaska 1:01:28
Right, you can be dead? You know, no, no, it's not, it's not dead. You know, if you have something that people want to buy, then why wouldn't you know, it's just like, it doesn't make any sense? Do you have a movie that people are gonna be interested in? Or not? Or is there something that maybe dates it that maybe hurts it or something, there are examples you can think of? But like otherwise? Um, do you have something that people, enough people that are out there are going to be interested in checking out? is it available? Where they're probably going to want to go get it? You know, can you run any advertising, or Can't you risk any money, some folks just can't risk anything, and they're already in a tough spot, right? So I can sympathize with that. Um, but this doesn't work, unless you're willing to really try, you know, and take a swing, you don't have to light money on fire, this is the opposite of that, right? Um, if there's money going in and money, money coming out, and you can see it, and it's trackable, it's way easier to spend more, that's the other thing, that's great, it's easier to justify, it's not hard to look to your investors, for instance, and say, I know, this isn't going the way that we hoped or we didn't get released that we wanted, and now it's out but spent this we got that maybe we can scale to a certain mark, and then there's a consistent amount of revenue coming in. That's, that's not that wasn't normal, you know, a while back, you would sort of billboard, right, you just have like your video continually sort of going out there. And you would sort of run any, any other, you know, link click ads, you could run or banner ads, right? I mean, you know, this is a different, a different world we're living in now. And there's nothing wrong with there's nothing wrong with doing pre orders for your movie, not saying that either saying a lot of folks just don't have the money to, to do it. Right. Like, there, I've suggested for plenty of people who don't have a lot of money to spend, don't worry about spending a dime until it's available, like on on release day, if need be, then start money, because you don't want someone to see the ad go look it up. But it's not there. You know, the more all that pre awareness is going to require you to get back to everyone a second time, which means Oh, and how we have to pay to get in front of them again, and again. And again. You know, that might be normal, in kind of your campaign as it rolls forward, where you got to continue to go after them. But you got to look at what you can risk, you know, and what and what kind of situation that you're in every movie is different. So I'm, I'm really encouraged that these tools exist, and I'm glad that they're available. And I think folks should try it. I mean, that's the thing. I know, it's scary, but what are what are the what are the alternatives right now? Right?

Alex Ferrari 1:04:13
Well, the alternative sir is to to sign with a film distributor and they're going to handle everything and they just send you a check on top on time, on time, and it never bounces. So that agenda that's generally the what is taught at school, is that not right? That is that was taught at film schools, like a distributor will take care of that for you Don't Don't worry yourself about the business of marketing that's let that lead to the other people. You could just be creative and be an artist.

Kyle Prohaska 1:04:40
I mean, it's certainly a factor. Even the deals now that you might sign that are good, you know, like, can you you know, or somebody who's gonna aggregate things for you, you know, it's like, can you like I would suggest for folks, carve out amazon for yourself. You know,

Alex Ferrari 1:04:58
It won't happen. It won't Yeah, they won't do

Kyle Prohaska 1:05:02
Start chopping it up, they won't do it at all. But, um

Alex Ferrari 1:05:06
You won't get you won't get Amazon but you might be able to get, being able to sell it on your own platform, you might be DVDs and physical that they don't touch those as much it doesn't affect their core business, but there's no way they're going to get rid of any of the SVOD TVOD

Kyle Prohaska 1:05:17
But all the more reason when you have to wait so long to find out if anything's happening. Other than like hearing from people seeing your views, maybe go up, you know, a couple of different things that that'll give you some kind of indicator, all the more reason to spend the money in a zone where $1 came in and dollar came out, or $1 came in and $3 came out, it least you know, because it happened, it happened to me, I did an experiment in January, or I had two of my old movies. And I contacted other people who I'd sold stuff for and I said, Okay, will you send me a certain amount of units to my house, I'm going to try something, I started a store out of the blue, like at the very end of the year to get it all ready. I bought bubble mailers, you know, did all that stuff that I hadn't done in a long time, because I was doing it for other people. But, um, and I and I and I decided what if I try and do this, like I'm encouraging other people to and do it with like much bigger numbers like I had they had the capital that I could burn, so long as it was profitable. Or it was breakeven, I could I could afford to give it a shot and see what some of the numbers might look like. If you didn't I mean, in this case, I only on to the movies that that turned out to be the problem, right? It's like the margins were there. So long as you got to own your stuff, you're selling a bunch of other stuff that costs way too much data hold it up. And all that sort of stuff, margins get getting eaten up, right. But it was like $45,000 of gross sales and like a two and a half month stretch. It wasn't it wasn't bad. And that was spending more money than I could get a lot of other people to spend per day like they just couldn't wrap their head around spending more. And I'm like, if the results are there, are there scale, scale,

Alex Ferrari 1:07:01
Spending my money

Kyle Prohaska 1:07:03
Way higher than I was prepared for. And it was like a problem. As far as the filming goes, I was like, packing with my wife down in the garage, you know,

Alex Ferrari 1:07:11
Oh, I've been there. I know exactly what it was.

Kyle Prohaska 1:07:13
It was an experiment. And what happens when you spend bigger numbers and these movies were older? Right? This is older stuff. So it was like it was it was to prove to certain other folks that I will not name that. Look, here's what happens if you forget for a second, whether the movies old or new, and you look at whether or not it's sellable. And you really commit, you know, what's possible, if I owned all of those movies, I mean, you could just clean up the whole year would have eaten up all my time, of course, but like if, if those were, if that was the point, right? If the point was to make an income and to sell my stuff, that would have been easy, it would it would have been a perfect thing to keep doing, you know, COVID hit because, you know, it was like, What am I gonna do go to the post office every day with a trunk full of boxes, you know, and walk, I just didn't want to do it. So I shut everything down. But I proven my point at that at that time, which was, look what happens when you spend what was like, honestly, I would have to go look at the numbers. I don't remember what they weren't. But they were, they were large on a daily spend sort of level in order to get that. And then I got, and this is in line with what we were just discussing, I had to wait forever. For my older films that had signed with an old aggregator that's been around forever, to like, send me my checks for the January, February, March, all that sort of stuff, right? I got much bigger checks than I was expecting. So bumps, real bumps, it took forever to find out if they were there. So that would be the situation quite a few people are in if they sign with somebody for all the platform placement, interesting, but like the bump was there. And that wasn't I'm not basing everything we're discussing on that experiment. Sure, of course, for people, but I just wanted to see, well let me do with my own stuff and spend more than everybody else's spending and see what happens, you know, the dream is always the same

Alex Ferrari 1:09:09
The dream is to be able to put $1 in and get $2 back. And if that's or $5 back and you just do that all day. Just keep like if it's a thought, you know, and then you just scale as big as you can till you run out of market.

Kyle Prohaska 1:09:22
And if you have and if you have problems you pivot, right, you know, cut a pull up, pull a different clip from the movie, cut a new trailer. It's all this stuff nobody wants. It's constantly put, you're constantly it's in flux. There's no it's not like, if this month, this week, I made five to one return on my dollar in three months. It doesn't mean that that same situation exists, you're gonna be pivoting or moving. It's important for people to know that it's like the Facebook ecosystem changes every month. You know, when the boycott said it changed all kinds of things that seemed we're like traffic went way up and it was way cheaper but the quality of the traffic seemed to go down and people that were making x every month. Also we're making less and I had to explain to people look, it doesn't matter what I'm trying, the normal is kind of evening out here for you. So but next month isn't necessarily going to be the same. And we have an election coming up, right? So costs and ad costs go up, everybody starts flooding all of the, you know, the inventory with junk, unfortunately. But it means that ads get more expensive, right? And holidays, right? How crazy are the holidays going to be? There's no black friday craziness going on this year and physical places. So he's all online. It's all online, it's gonna be a bombardment this year, when it comes time for the holiday. So it's gonna be nuts. But all this stuff is available for anybody that wants to go look, and any information I'm talking about is available to you just go look around,dig it up,

Alex Ferrari 1:10:51
Kyle man I know we could talk for at least another two or three hours about this stuff. We can geek out pretty hard on this, but I appreciate your time. And thank you for for enlightening the tribe a little bit about how to use Facebook ads in the current state and you've laid out a model. That is the best shot you've got, I think to being able to use Facebook ads in a way that actually turns into an ROI. And if anybody wants to reach out to you, where do they where do they go?

Kyle Prohaska 1:11:18
You can reach me on Twitter, or find me on Facebook, you know, you can just message me, you know, send me a DM. I'm happy to try and help with anything I can.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:28
And I'll put you up with all his information in the show notes. Thanks again. Call for being that men stay safe out there. Thank you so much, Carl, for coming on the show and dropping those Facebook knowledge bombs on the tribe today. Thank you so much, Kyle, if you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to get ahold of Kyle, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com /430. Thank you so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that also going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.

Alex Ferrari 2:19
Now guys, I've been getting a lot and I mean a lot of messages, comments posts about film festivals, and what should filmmakers do now during COVID? And is it worth submitting to film festivals? Even the big festival film festivals if there's no physical festival to go to if it's only online? Is it really worth it? What am I supposed to do? So I reached out to the film festival expert Christopher Holland over at Film Festival secrets.com and Chris is a returning champion has been on the show before and we teamed up to put together the film festival hack limited series podcast to help filmmakers understand the world of film festivals. Now in our conversation, we discussed the pros and cons of submitting to film festivals in today's crazy world. What value film festivals even have in the current marketplace in regards to distribution and getting a better deal. And if festivals can even bounce back from the brutal hit that they've taken from the COVID pandemic. If you're thinking of submitting to a film festival within the next year to two years. This is the episode for you. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Christopher Holland. I like to welcome back to the show returning champion Christopher Holland How you doing brother?

Christopher Holland 4:05
I'm hustling man.

Alex Ferrari 4:08
Every day you're hustling, hustling.

Christopher Holland 4:11
That's right.

Alex Ferrari 4:12
It is a weird and wacky world that we find ourselves in, isn't it? Sir?

Christopher Holland 4:18
It is. It isn't. It feels weird to keep saying that. But it's you know, it just gets weirder. Like, every, every week. I feel like the things we knew or thought we knew have changed and you know, gotta adjust. gotta figure out a game plan.

Alex Ferrari 4:34
I feel like we are in Back to the Future too. And we have taken a different timeline. And we're living in a different timeline.

Christopher Holland 4:41
You went for the dark one. You went for two.

Alex Ferrari 4:44
Oh, yeah. The dark diet a dark timeline. Yeah, like the one that everything just skewed until like all hell until dystopian.

Christopher Holland 4:51
It's so precious. I mean, clearly modeled on Donald Trump.

Alex Ferrari 4:56
Well, you know, we we try not to be see we try to state we we stay a political on the show, sir. But, um, but just the general craziness of that is where we're at, in. In this world, it's it's insane if I would have if I would have told you in January, hey, I'm South by Southwest SXSW is going to get canceled completely a few weeks before it launches. You wouldn't just looked at me going, you're out of your mind.

Christopher Holland 5:28
That was shocking

Alex Ferrari 5:29
To everybody.

Christopher Holland 5:30
If for people who are tuned into indie film at all, much less people who work at a film festival, it's gonna be like, Where were you when you heard the shuttle exploded? Or were we right? JFK was shot, right? It's like, you remember where were you when you heard South by Southwest was canceled. And that feeling of just, it is shocking how suddenly that happened, and how long it took them to figure out what they were going to do next.

Alex Ferrari 6:00
Well, they got caught. They got caught in the bustle. They got caught in a buzzsaw poor things.

Christopher Holland 6:03
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they're gonna find their way back for sure. But, I mean, it's too big of a thing not to me, has changed its entire, it's like poured itself into a South by Southwest shaped mold. That's how many conference rooms and ballrooms and bars and restaurants they've built to support South by Southwest, but it was a blow for sure.

Alex Ferrari 6:28
To Austin and to and to me, and to the filmmakers that were accepted, and everybody to everybody, and they're not paying, they're not refunding anybody's money. So all that goes into next year, like it's just, it is an it's, it's an insane thing. It's like, it's insane. It's just that the whole world is is I wanted to bring you on the show against her. Because film festivals are, you know, taking an absolute beating with this. And it is, in my opinion changed the landscape for film festivals from this point on, I don't think film festivals will ever be the same again. And I think a lot of them will probably go away that what the smaller ones that were are not robust enough will probably end up going away, which I think is a tragic, a travesty, because there is a place for film festivals in the ecosystem of independent film, even with Netflix and streaming and all that kind of stuff. So from your point of view, what is the word on the street? from film festivals? What have you been hearing of like, how they're dealing? What's going on? All that kind of stuff?

Christopher Holland 7:39
Well, how they're dealing is highly dependent on when their festival was scheduled to be. ie how much time they had to figure their stuff out. What's your cursing policy on the show?

Alex Ferrari 7:53
Um, I generally like to keep it as clean as possible both an F bomb drops, and it drops.

Christopher Holland 7:58
I know I've converted over to the good place version of, you know, holy motherfucking shirt balls. That makes me happy even on my iPhone, my iPhone autocorrects. So if I type sh it, it types shirt.

Alex Ferrari 8:12
Yes, exactly.

Christopher Holland 8:13
It makes me happy. Anyway, so how to check in there. People are seeing how the sausage is made in this podcast game.

Alex Ferrari 8:21
Yes, exactly.

Christopher Holland 8:23
So what are we talking about?

Alex Ferrari 8:26
Film Festivals on the streets, Yes.

Christopher Holland 8:28
So yeah, how long they had to figure out their stuff. Like for me personally, I work at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, we closed our doors for our annual 2020 Festival on like, basically, March 1. And then two weeks later, the world exploded. We had no idea that we were probably, you know, a transmission vector. We may or may not have been depending on any belief, but still, you know, we got in right at the wire. So we've had, we have a year to figure out what our next festival looks like. And so for us, you know, we've done all our fundraising, all that kind of stuff, we've got that runway, things don't look so bad. But we're still sort of like figuring it out. And then there's what do we do in the meantime. And a lot of festivals who had year round programming in person has switched over to digital, not only they're holding screenings, digitally, but they're also doing more Skype q&a, where they might not have done any q&a, like they can't afford for one screening to fly filmmaker. And so they're doing more virtual stuff. They're they're exploring what the options are. They're copying ideas from other industries and from other events like mad and that's great, right? Everybody's trying to figure out how this works. And there's been this panoply of streaming services that sort of, you know, have swelled up and either figured out how to do virtual events real darn fast or already had it in the works. So they were ready. I went to the art house convergence, which is a gathering of art house theaters, other exhibitors, distributors and from festivals in Utah, about a week before Sundance, and I had a couple of virtual people come up to me and go, Hey, you know, like, if you ever want to run a virtual Film Festival, all of us being completely oblivious of COVID at that point, right. And I blew them off, mostly because it was like, I'd done my thing with virtual festivals in the past, it's great if you don't have access to the theater, for whatever reason, but you know, people like to go to events. So it wasn't taking it all that seriously. And you know, a month later, it's like, oh, crap, now I got to go back to all these people and say about that. So some, you know, these companies have done really, really well and are growing like mad. Because film festivals are now suddenly interested in virtual events, I think you're going to see most festivals, and this is, you know, come true, for the most part for those festivals that have happened or announced plans, since this all started. Most of them are going to go like at least half digital, if not entirely digital. A lot of them are going to try and figure out how to do something in person, you know, they're going to try driving movies, which have suddenly become a thing again, they're going to try especially distance stuff. There's a theater to in town here in Atlanta, that is actually letting people go to the movies. But since that seems like a good idea. Well, the problem is, they made those plans and made those decisions based on information from a month ago, when we thought that COVID was spread by surfaces, and by, you know, specks of the liquid that came out of your mouth, flew a few feet and then fell to the ground. And that's how COVID works. So we understand now that it's actually completely airborne, and can float in the air. And the more people infected people you put in a box, you know, with no ventilation or little ventilation, the more that viral load is going to build up in the air around you right to the point where anybody who's in that box is going to get infected.

Alex Ferrari 12:17
And you could just go back and look at that scene from outbreak when they're actually in a movie theater. And it's pretty much that.

Christopher Holland 12:24
Yep, exactly. So I'm not an expert on the virus.

Alex Ferrari 12:29
Sure

Christopher Holland 12:29
I same crap that everybody else does. But it's becoming very clear that the rules from a month ago, two months ago, are not the real rules. And so all of these restaurants that are claiming, you know, they wipe all the surfaces down and everything you know, but they're still inviting you to come in and be in an enclosed space with poor ventilation. You know, that's a really, really bad idea. And so movies are the same way. So when I see places like Sundance places like Toronto, whoever, who were like, we're gonna do some socially distance things like Well, okay, but that's based on information from a month ago. Are you really gonna do this still do that now? Cuz it seems like a really bad idea now.

Alex Ferrari 13:16
Yeah, exactly. In I mean, look, film festivals in general have been a cultural event for since since its inception. So it is about gathering people together to celebrate film, celebrate independent film, or, you know, whatever. But generally, it's about celebration and of independent film, in a in some sort of event of physical event. Is Cannes Film Festival survive without a theatrical component. I know the big boys will figure our way out. But I'm talking about that little festival down the street. I always say Moose Jaw, the Moose Jaw International Film Festival, which I hope doesn't exist. Or as in my movie, the Uptown downtown Film Festival. So, you know, so the Uptown downtown festival Film Festival that's been around for maybe four years. And you know, they rent out the local pub and, and they have, you know, maybe 40 or 50 people show up and they hand out a couple of certificates. And there's 1000s of those kinds of festivals. Oh,

Christopher Holland 14:18
Here's where I talk in sweeping generalities.

Alex Ferrari 14:20
Yes.

Christopher Holland 14:22
The uptown downtown Film Festival. Those guys probably weren't making any money anyway.

Alex Ferrari 14:27
Okay.

Christopher Holland 14:28
They were, you know, probably staffed by volunteers who just love putting on a film festival.

Alex Ferrari 14:34
Sure.

Christopher Holland 14:34
And if there was any money changing hands, it was to the venues that they had to pay or, you know, whatever travel they were paying for, or, you know, just operational stuff, you know, the people who are running that Film Festival, we're not making the money. And so those people are going to be there, they have a choice. They can cancel. They can go online, they can try to hold something in person. But you know, monetarily, that's not going to work out because most places have social distancing rules. And if you can't sell half of your house, then the rental fee is just going to put you under water, not to mention the distributors fee if you have to pay that. So that's the downside. The upside is it didn't cost them much to spin up in the first place. And they can probably with a Kickstarter campaign, or you know, some of their savings or credit card or whatever, spin back up again, film festivals are inherently volatile. When I look at a film festival for legitimacy, I generally don't look at anything younger than about six years. Because that's about the point that a festival matures and figures out whether it really wants to do what it's doing or not, and how to make it viable. Alright, so there's always been this churn of film festivals, little film festivals coming going all the time. COVID-19 may have accelerated that process, maybe a lot more, I'll go under. But you know, there's, there's always festivals popping up. As somebody gets the bright idea, well, we need a good film festival in this town, and the one that used to be here is gone, or there's never been one. And those will pop up. As you said, the big boys, I don't know if they're going to be fine. But

Alex Ferrari 16:26
They'll survive. they'll survive in one way, shape, or form. But

Christopher Holland 16:28
The one that seems to be in the most trouble, and I say this only based on the press is Toronto, because they've got this huge honking theater, the lightbox. Yeah, that was already costing them a ton of money to operate. If you look at their ticket pricing, especially for like their celebrity events, they were charging like 40,50 bucks a pop, because this thing costs a lot to maintain. And now, you know, they got no revenue whatsoever, you know, mostly speaking, and the lightbox has been shut since March or April, they've laid off a bunch of people, you know that it's tough to come back from that in the same way that you did before. Fortunately, it's not like this goes on forever and ever. There will be a vaccine someday, you know, My bet is on late 2021. But again, I'm not an expert, I'm sort of like intuiting reading between the lines. But you know, there's every possibility that they'll be back in business with a, you know, if not a fully fleshed out big as it ever was Film Festival, at least an event that sort of starts getting them back on their feet. I imagine there'll be a certain amount of state support. Right, our canonizations I mean, sure, Toronto has more film festivals, you know, in its city than I think any other city in the world. Partially, that's because of Toronto, because Toronto is such a big, you know, the the Toronto Film Festival is such a big deal. And so more of a good thing is a good thing. But also because, you know, Toronto, the city and the state and the state, but the province, province, thank you and the nation have put state funding behind its organization organizations. So I think that that'll be helpful. and to a lesser extent, the United States has done the same thing. Most of them festivals that have paid employees are eligible for you know, some of that support that PvP support. But it's, you know, it's not a ton of money, it'll help them get by, maybe we'll see. So that leaves now you got the big boys who probably have enough cash crunch or can raise enough money or the capital campaign to keep motoring forward, that their brand equity is going to keep them alive. It's the people in the middle. Right? Right, who are going to have the hardest time because maybe they did get just get to the point where they had, you know, they were able to start paying people and full time employee is more than just their salary, it's their the taxes you pay on their salary, it's their health insurance, all that other kind of overhead. And, you know, I can see some of these medium sized festivals really getting underwater in a hurry. And so they'll have to lay people off. And if you lay people off, you know, there goes some of the heart and soul of your festival and it's hard to get those people back. And, you know, it changes the character of your festival and so is it that made me start at the beginning of the end for some festivals, no medium to large festivals do go under, you know, especially as their founders move on or whatever. And this could accelerate that. But it's not. I haven't seen anyone who's other than telluride. There's a whole other beast. basically say, I'm not going to even try to do a virtual festival. You know, we're just going to cancel this year and we'll come back or cancel and never Come back. Now they're all trying to get on board with virtual screenings. And you know, that'll be good for some people and not good for others

Alex Ferrari 16:55
Now but I mean, for filmmakers, like, does it even make sense to submit to festivals this year?

Christopher Holland 20:17
So yeah, if anybody is really getting screwed in this whole thing, it's filmmakers shocking. us, right? Because they don't know what the truth is. They don't know what the truth is, is that festivals don't know what the truth is. exhibitors don't know what the truth is distributors don't know what the truth is. Everybody's just sort of, you know, winging it, and pretending that, you know, the old rules still apply. While the old rules don't still apply, and there's this, you know, period of time, where Ain't nobody going to the movies, even after a vaccine, whatever, like people's habits will change. And they'll be like, you know, what I like being in my lazy boy with the, you know, 80 inch TV that I bought during the pandemic, because I wasn't spending it on going out. Right. You know? And, you know, maybe I don't need to do that. And, you know, we saw the collapse of windows, I think it was universal. And AMC, I could be wrong about that.

Alex Ferrari 21:15
Yeah, yeah. Universal on AMC, they call out like,

Christopher Holland 21:19
a film only has to be in theaters for like nine weeks tops before they can put it out on video?

Alex Ferrari 21:24
And they'll, and they'll change it and it'll get in that window is gonna shrink even more because because movie theaters have no negotiating power. They don't did they at this point, they have no negotiating power. And I promise you the moment that a big studio is forced to go to a p VOD platform on on one of these films that they're just sitting on the shelf, because there's certain there's certain studios are going to be able to hold on to these for a year. Like I know, my buddy worked on Top Gun. They just pushed that to next summer. And Marvel's slate is being pushed and but studio like Sony. They need James Bond. Yeah. And they will release already started to happen. Like I mean, what was the troll? Seriously? Right? No, Scooby Scoob kind of went that way. But then we've only seen trolls to Scooby, the Scooby, the new Scooby movie. I want to see a temple I want to see a real studio movie. And that's going to be the litmus test. Because if I promise you right now, if they released bond, the new bond, no time to die right now. And go guides, it's going to be a premium. It's going to be 20 bucks. This weekend. I think you'll make a killing? I think it will, I think you'll do very well in this environment. Now. With that said, would it do better in a theatrical environment? Yes, I think it would. And there's still be money for t VOD. But that could be a year, maybe even longer, like you said, maybe end of 2021 before we even start remotely, going back to something that resembles what we had before. And even then we haven't even spoken about the economy, which is I still say, well, we still have we have not seen the bottom yet. It's we haven't unfortunately seen the bottom yet of that. So we're not even taking place into all of that. And then of course, the elections, and of course, all the other turmoil around the world that's happening. So all of these pressures are being put on it. I mean, I mean, how long can you keep $200 million movie sitting on a shelf as a company like if you paid $200 million for a product, you kind of got to unless you've got cash reserves, which Disney Warner's universal, they can hold. But some of the smaller like Lionsgate or Paramount, or even Sony. They need to release stuff theatrically. So they might just have to bite the bullet and go You know what? Let's just let's go to P VOD. And we'll see. theaters I think aren't going to have much anyway, Amazon's gonna buy AMC anyway. I mean, that's just someone's buy. I called me an RB from stasia. To add him on the show a little while ago. I called Amazon on that show. I'm like, and then what's happening Amazon's already circling and what happened to the Egyptian Netflix bought the Egyptian on on Hollywood Boulevard. It's happening somewhat some big conglomerates going to buy out AMC cinemark arclight did because they're just going to go under they can't not take no money coming.

Christopher Holland 24:38
Look, there's going to be a fire sale on a lot of this stuff. Yeah, AMC owns a lot of real estate for the developers who brought AMC own a lot of real estate. And you know that there used to be back in the 90s there was this big push to put theatres out on the booty outskirts of town. Yep. With you know, a big ass parking lot and like a steak can shake and the chilies and whatever like sure. The the movie theater wasn't the thing making money, the movie theater was the thing bringing the money to all the other businesses. So there's a lot of those still around. And, you know, don't forget the malls and have that real estate for the malls. You know, if I had to, like lay some money down, I would say there's going to be fewer movie theaters,

Alex Ferrari 25:23
Fewer screens, fear screens in the country.

Christopher Holland 25:25
Right. And this will, you know, as with so many things, this will accelerate that. But to bring it back to what does this mean for filmmakers? filmmakers don't know whether they should be looking at film festivals and saying I should submit because this is, you know, my films ready and I want to get it out there. Or, you know, is this going to invalidate my films premiere in the eyes of a distributor? Who sees that as lost revenue? Two months ago, in May, three months ago, whatever it is, Brian Newman, who runs a consulting company called sub genre, where he helps brands make sort of documentary and indie films and get them out there.

Alex Ferrari 26:15
Oh, yeah, I think there's nothing I haven't heard. Yeah,

Christopher Holland 26:17
Brian spends a great guy. And he made this big argument that you should not be submitting to film festivals. And at the time, I completely agreed with him, because, you know, distributors had not gotten on board with the idea that you know, that having your film premiere online, was a good thing at all. In just the paltry, you know, six, eight weeks since then, that thinking has evolved. And you're hearing more and more distributors say things like, well, so long as it's, you know, so long as you only sell 1000 views, right, so long as you limit the number of people who can see it, so long as you only make it available for three days, so long as you can geo block it so that only people in the city of New York can watch it, then, you know, will view that as just a regular old festival screening, and that's fine. So the rules are changing. My argument for a filmmaker who is maybe new to the game or doesn't have a whole lot of money sunk into, you know, we need to go find a distribution deal for this right now. My advice for them is, hold on, because the one thing that you know, a virtual festival can almost never offer you unless it's like one of the really big ones, and I'll talk about that in a second is networking opportunities. Correct. hotbox did a really good job to hotdocs, his documentary festival in Toronto, that is sort of like the documentary answer to TIFF, it's in the spring yada, yada. But they do a lot of you know, sales, they do a lot of like cooking distributors up with the filmmakers. And they did all of that online this year. And apparently did really well as just as many film sold just as many meetings taken from the reading I've been doing. And you know, it was a rousing success, but they had already been going down that road. Because fewer distributors came to hotbox. Because it was, you know, in the spring with up with a bunch of other stuff. Every other film festival that you might go to, especially the medium and small ones, they can't afford to make those kinds of connections, or don't think to make those kinds of connections between filmmakers, and each other between filmmakers and distributors between filmmakers, and executives or whatever. They're like, we put a film online, maybe we have a q&a on Skype. And that's what we can do. And that eliminates all of that Halo activity, all that stuff that takes place around where the filmmakers meet each other and decide to go to the bar next door and really get to know each other and you know, that form, you know, some sort of partnership or Alliance, all that kind of good stuff that makes film festivals worth submitting to in the first place.

Alex Ferrari 29:11
Now, but can can still can can. filmmakers get the same kind of exposure online as they got from Luxor? Let's say you got into South by and you premiered on that Amazon p VOD thing that they did. Did that tell did they get more attention? Did they not? What do you feeling?

Christopher Holland 29:33
What I noticed and what I have seen in some of the press since is that a lot of the features that were selected and asked narrative features and dock features chose not to participate.

Alex Ferrari 29:46
Right I yeah, I know that from inside.

Christopher Holland 29:50
So whether that was because of the financial terms or whether that was because they you know, it was that was early days. That was what

Alex Ferrari 29:58
I was wild, wild west man. Yeah, it was wild, wild west at that point. And I know I know what it was, it was like, You got paid like, I don't know, like, like 500 bucks or something like that. It was something really insulting. Yeah. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Christopher Holland 30:23
But it's a whole different animal. Right? It's an entirely different thing, business model, our distributors, you know, sitting down in their living rooms and going through the slate. And you know, like, there's a reason that distributors like going to film festivals. It's not just about getting access to the films, they can do that on their own, they pick up the phone, they call the filmmaker, they say, Hey, I can't make this up by Southwest. Kevin, you can't give me a screening link. And the filmmakers will course, right, they can see the movies. It's about the social interactions. It's about the deal making. It's about seeing what the audience thought of the film when they saw it. And that sort of atmosphere of collegial ism, and, you know, getting to know the new kids and no talent spotting. And very little of that takes place online. Unless your festival can make a really concerted effort to to make those connections. Are there things that are better about virtual film festivals? Yeah, I mean, a distributor can only afford to send so many people to South by Southwest. But if everything's happening online, they can put three four people on it and take that many more meetings. So as a filmmaker, your decision should be based on factors like how likely is my film, quote, unquote, expired? Right? If this is a film about the upcoming election, you need to get it out there. All right, it's not going to be any good to anybody after that. If yours is a coming of age comedy that will play out pretty much the same in 2022, as it will in 2021, then my advice is Wait, you know, unless there's extenuating circumstances, but you know, everything's highly personal. There are going to be a lot of films that get out there on the festival circuit, my feeling is that a lot of them will have already have achieved distribution, before they hit the festival circuit. And that playing festivals means that they're kind of a niche film that maybe needs some festival play to generate word of mouth. So maybe an LGBT film or an African American film that, you know, they need a way to reach audiences. But you know, it's gonna be really difficult for indies with no distribution to take that chance. And then, you know, the worry is that a distributor? Let him go, Oh, yeah. Well, you played for online film festivals. And, you know, now the online market for that is played out. What are the extenuating circumstances? It's all it's all on economy, the more scarce films become finished produced films, right? Because that, you know, there's not a lot of production going on right now. The more of those, the more need for that content there is, the more valuable, the more willing, those distributors are going to be to overlook the fact that you played to 4000 online viewers,

Alex Ferrari 33:35
Right!

Christopher Holland 33:36
It's a calculus for sure.

Alex Ferrari 33:37
And but again, nobody knows anything at this point. Like, nobody knows when it's

Christopher Holland 33:44
At this very moment, what we know is that it's unlikely that anybody's going to be doing any production or holding any festivals of any kind. Write something that already has distribution. And we're gonna see the same slate of films across a bunch of festivals for the next six to 12 months.

Alex Ferrari 34:08
Right. And we'll have to

Christopher Holland 34:11
Rehearse and say, I need to get my film out there. Now. I don't care. Right, right. And that happens. People don't make no logical decisions all the time.

Alex Ferrari 34:19
No, exactly. It's like, imagine if you've been working a year and a half on a movie and it's already in now this happens, dude. Like, I don't want to wait another year, year and a half, but and my investors want their money back or something like that work? Well, there's just you know, you could be you could just be, you know, instinctual and just release it now and see what happens. Or you could be more strategic and wait and see what happens. Now, I have to ask you, though, you know, to talk about the elephant in the room Sundance, is it going to happen in 2021, in your opinion?

Christopher Holland 34:49
Well, they've already announced a plan. Do you see this?

Alex Ferrari 34:53
No, I I've heard I didn't hear the details. So if you could, please tell me okay.

Christopher Holland 34:57
So the plan is and this plan is now a couple of Sold before the real, you know, even anecdotal studies of the airborne qualities of this virus came out is to hold a limited number of in theater screenings at 20 different cities around the country around the US. I don't think they announced any international but I could be wrong about that. In addition to a slate of films at Utah, the slate of films, there'll be like a core, as I understand it, and then programmers in other cities will help curate for local audiences. And they'll all be socially distancing, whatever, and there will be an online component to it as well.

Alex Ferrari 35:42
I mean, it's just by discipline. I mean, that's all with a lot of assumptions.

Christopher Holland 35:48
Right? And that's not till after the inauguration in January, they push their dates back. And that's not for months and months, or, you know, it's what, four months at this point? Five if you count the full January. So they got lots of time to change their mind. And they probably Yeah, me. Yeah. Yeah. But their plan based on all that old information is, well, we can do this socially distanced, and we're going to try if anybody can try to do it, we're going to try. So they're in talks with theatres, and whoever else around the world, and they're going to try and make it happen. Do I think it's going to happen? I'd put it at about 6040 against at this point. Just Just because we know things now we didn't know before. And it seems like a really, really bad idea to put no matter. I mean, I just don't understand how the economics of it work.

Alex Ferrari 36:43
If you would, if you're going to tell me that they're going to do drive ins, then maybe, yeah, maybe drive ins like if they want to do 20 cities driving pop ups that they'll do in like a Walmart, you know, parking lot or or mall parking lot, or something like that. That might make sense to me. And if some if someone could do it, Sundance can because out of everybody in the US, Sundance has the biggest cache, and arguably one of the biggest cache in the world as far as film festivals are concerned. So they might be able to draw an audience.

Christopher Holland 37:16
Drive ins are an interesting problem. Because they accomplish the social separation, but they have other problems, including line of sight, including carbon monoxide, you know, including weather, which is where carbon monoxide becomes a problem.

Alex Ferrari 37:36
Oh, yeah. And if it's gonna be in the wintertime, it's going to be in the winter, depending on the year in those cars are gonna have to be running.

Christopher Holland 37:42
Uh huh. Well, they don't have to be. There's a there's a drive in in Michigan, that actually has electric heaters that are, you know, powered by extension cords. So they bring an extension cord in this thing, and they put the heater down on the floorboards. And that's how they do it in the winter.

Alex Ferrari 38:02
It's 1952.

Christopher Holland 38:04
Thanks, thanks. There's a whole bunch of logistical challenges. And the only thing that Sundance would have going for it in January, is that they can probably get two, maybe three screenings a night, since sundown, is one seven o'clock or whatever, right? You know, whereas in the summer and Sunday, it's not till 8:30 , 9 o'clock, you're in trouble. So yeah, drivings are an interesting problem. You've got bathrooms to consider, like, I know, I now know how much it costs to rent of the Lux Porta Potty setup for the city of Atlanta. Because we're doing the research on you know, how do we make drivings a thing? So yeah, it's all very interesting.

Alex Ferrari 38:48
So do you see, I mean, after this passes, and hopefully will pass in the next few years, and some and we will revamp back up to where we were, I'm hoping or is this you know, or COVID could be with us for many, many years to come in one way shape or form like the flu or a whatever, after the vaccines and all that kind of stuff, whatever the future might lie. Do you believe that film festivals will now either have to, or will now always have an online component, even if they have a physical event?

Christopher Holland 39:26
What I think is going to happen. And this is based on my many, many decades of down kidding. What I think is going to happen is that this will open festivals, eyes to the power of reaching out to your audience digitally in a way that they have just not tried to do before. Right? They're gonna figure out hey, we can produce video, we can produce remote, interviews, Q and A's and you know, even in a big in person theater setting, we can make it work and we can make it valuable. So I think that part's gonna stick I don't know from a distribution and online revenue kind of thing, like, even if even if movie theaters were to go away tomorrow, right, and the only people showing in movie theaters or film festivals, the distribution is still there. And they're still going to view any sort of online screening sort of widely available as cutting into their possible sales. So I don't see, like, I don't see film festivals going entirely virtual in a big way, or even like majority virtual, it's going to be an add on, right? The value is still in the in person, experience, the value is in seeing your friends at the theater, and that kind of reactions that you have in the parking lot in the filmmaker you got to meet and all of that that's not going away. And one of the reasons we know it's not going away is because, you know, hardly anybody pays for music anymore. Right? Like, when's the last time you bought an album? Right digital distribution killed, you know, a lot of the revenue for recordings for musicians, but now, you know, they make their living, schlepping around the country or

Alex Ferrari 41:13
Not now, but now but yes, in theory,

Christopher Holland 41:17
Right. Okay, now, now they're online, right. And some of them are charging, you know, money, or doing whatever, you know, to, they're on Patreon. And they do a nightly concert or whatever. They're finding ways to interact with their audience, and get value out of that. Winter festivals will continue and perhaps have to up the ante in terms of interaction and making that in person experience valuable. But I mean, I think everybody's anxious to get back to, you know, butts in seats in the dark watching a movie together.

Alex Ferrari 41:47
Now, wouldn't it make sense, though, for for film festivals, which have on an educational aspect to them with panels and talks and things like that, to offer those digitally? Where they you could charge? Like, if you had Mark duplass doing that amazing South by Southwest? Talk, you know, about filmmaking? Couldn't you charge 15 bucks ahead for 25 bucks for a pass for the day or whatever it is, to see that as a revenue generator and open that open that stuff up to to a worldwide audience that might not be able to come to the festival?

Christopher Holland 42:27
Possibly. A lot of them do that already. A lot of the bigger ones anyway, right? They're taking their talks that were recorded, and they parcel them out over the course of the year on YouTube or whatever. Some of them generating revenue from ads, some of them, but I'm talking about live like doing a lie. Well, I'm getting there. Some of them is just as a tentpole to draw more attention. So they've they're already selling their garbage, so to speak, the quest the year the question you're asking is, what can they grab some of those people? And my answer to that is, number one. There's a bunch of logistics issues there. Right. And it's a lot harder to sell a $600 pass for something that you get sitting on your button, you're in living room?

Alex Ferrari 43:16
Oh, no, you're not going to be listed. It's a completely different business model. There's no question you can charge that. But let's say if you charge 50 bucks for the day, per day, and you get, you know, 20 panels that you have access to on the day that shut down the next day, like you won't have access to them again. So for that window, and then at the end, if you want to get access to all of the interviews, all of the panels, all the things, you sell a package for like two 300 bucks, and you have it for life. I mean, I'm just thinking outside the box here,

Christopher Holland 43:46
I think the fear would be that they would be cannibalizing their own sales. Because you know, companies spend a lot of money outside of the price of the badge, send somebody to South by Southwest, hotels are nearly impossible to get flights are impossible to get it's a lot of money to get somebody physical Adam based but out to, you know, Austin, Texas for that. But they know that a, the person that is going is really excited about it. And it's going to like really get a lot out of it. And so that's why they do that. But if you said the same thing, well, you can get all the informational content at the same time for you know, a fraction of the cost, then there's a lot of companies that are going to do that. So I think there's there's a fear based element there. There's a political element of if we do that, and our attendance starts to go down. How does that look for us and for our city that now depends on us to bring in a bunch of revenue, yada, yada, yada. I mean, there's a lot of economic and emotional reasons not to do that. But I think you're right that this will open their eyes to the possibility of charging for that. content and I think filmmakers should you know, there was a time when just being on the panel was enough, you're getting the exposure and you're being highlighted. Yeah, but they're selling tickets based on your ass too. So maybe ask for a little bit of that and ask for a free hotel room, whatever.

Alex Ferrari 45:15
Yeah, that's, that's a whole other. That's another question I've always had a problem with film festivals are is they're making a ton of money off of our films. And they're, well, they're not arguably I know, they're not they're not,

Christopher Holland 45:27
they're not making a ton of money off of the film, certainly not off of ticket sales.

Alex Ferrari 45:31
So they're making it off the sponsors,

Christopher Holland 45:34
Right of film festivals job is to get its audience to show up in happy enthusiastic alcoholic droves. Right? That is their job.

Alex Ferrari 45:46
That's the most honest definition of a film ever.

Christopher Holland 45:50
That's what we do. Yeah. We do this for two reasons. Number one, sponsors who pay way more than an audience member, her, you know, per head that shows up there, you know, like to be part of something successful. Right? They like this is why tickets for festivals are still down around 1520 bucks per show, when it costs way more than that, right? I think we did the calculations at the Atlanta Film Festival one time and throwing in like sponsorship and volunteer labor. You know, if we'd had to pay all those people, if we didn't have the sponsorship money, in order to break even we would have had to charge? I think it was like, around $100 a ticket to break even. Wow. So you know, and most festivals, you know, are only breaking even, you know, they're just barely surviving. There are those lucky few who are you know, and 99% of them are nonprofits. But even the big ones like South by Southwest, it ain't the film festival that's making, you know, the big money there. It's the tech conference,

Alex Ferrari 47:03
and they use a conference. And it's

Christopher Holland 47:05
Yeah, and you know, but it's the movies and the celebrities and the whatnot, that help convince the tech workers that they want to come out for that, right. And that that's why they request a ticket to South by Southwest instead of some other more boring conference. Right? Because they know it's going to be a good time. So when you when you look at some big film festivals, and you go, oh, they're making a lot of money, it's usually something else going on there. And you know, the other one, I mentioned the alcohol that is partially about sponsors, but also about tax revenue. Bars pay a lot in tax revenue. And if you got people coming to party in your town, that makes the city really happy. And then they give you grant money to keep doing what you're doing.

Alex Ferrari 47:48
Kind of like the the San Diego Comic Con when it takes over San Diego. I mean, it's it's the South by Southwest of its of its town. And I mean, we're talking about 150,000 people shop for five days. You got it. And and this year, I was on a virtual panel for Santa for the for the Comic Con and I did a virtual panel because I would have loved to go. But yeah, yeah, that's not happening. Yep. I mean, the one thing I also I keep telling people is like the hangover effect of COVID, the COVID hangover effect, which is, even if tomorrow Fauci comes on and says, Hey, we have a vaccine, it's worked. It's 100%. You take it, you'll never get this thing. We've defeated. If that in a magical world would happen tomorrow. I still say take six months, a year, possibly longer before most of the population feels comfortable being around other people again, in a way we were in January of 2019. That's 2020. Would you agree?

Christopher Holland 49:01
See, I see. And maybe this is just my perspective, from deep red George, although not so much deep red anymore, but I see a lot of people still out and about even without the vaccine. No, no, we're just I said most I said most, I don't think it's even most. I think if it were most, you know, we wouldn't, and this is getting political and scientific and whatever. And I'm basing this just on the fact that, you know, I go out and pick up my groceries curbside, or whatever, in the limited amount of time that I'm outdoors. You know, my family took a completely isolated road trip or we just drove for five hours just because we could not stand being in the house. Yes, longer. Yes. And you know, we're driving through both the city of Atlanta and the outskirts and out into rural Georgia and I see people out and about hanging in outdoor venues, drinking eaten and just having a grand old time, I'm not convinced that it's most people who are staying indoors and isolating and that it's probably different in California. Sure, you've got some pretty draconian, you know, but is it most people, again, made maybe regional as well.

Alex Ferrari 50:18
So it's all, it's all relative,

Christopher Holland 50:20
I think there are going to be two things, there's going to be those people who didn't give a crap in the first place. And there are going to be those who have been going stir crazy. And once they get that shot, they're out there, it's going to come roaring back for them. Will there be people in the meantime who have discovered that they can live a perfectly content life working at home and not going out and not eating out and just doing their thing? And their lifestyle is better that way? Sure. But my my worry about the hangover is less about personal behavior, and whether we feel like being together or not, and more about the availability of the vaccine, and the willingness of people to take it. Yeah. Well, who don't? Anyway,

Alex Ferrari 51:04
That a whole other conversation, a whole other conversation got, I got you. Anyway, the reason I said that the hangover is because, you know, I personally don't know when I'll be able to sit down in a movie theater with a group of people again, like it's gonna be a while before I feel comfortable doing that. And I love common sense, Alex. Just, you know, so I feel that there is a there's definitely we let's say it's 30% of the population, that's a substantial amount of revenue, that the industry will lose. So there's going to be a hangover effect. Regardless, whatever that percentage is, it's still going to be a bigger a bigger, it's going to be a chunk of what normal what normally was in January of 2020. And again, we're not factoring in the economy. With spending habits change. Alright, no question. People like maybe I don't have to go out so much. Yeah.

Christopher Holland 51:57
Well, a lot of the people who lost their income, probably were not the people who were spending tons of money on entertainment in the first place. Right. So entertainments a luxury. And, you know, it's not one of those things that is as susceptible to an economic downturn, because the people who had the cushion to afford that stuff in the first place, probably still have enough of a cushion to do some spending there. And their spending habits change the past spending habits of the truly wealthy who don't worry about this stuff. There's dumping more money into at home entertainment. They're spending more money on video games, they're subscribing to more streaming services, right? If anything, this is just going to bolster the position of streaming services. Because before it was like, so fractured, and you didn't want to spend $100 $200 a month on all these different streaming services. Now, it seems like a bargain.

Alex Ferrari 52:53
Right? Yeah. Because you're not going out as much. So it makes sense. Well, I mean, Chris, the whole world's coming. The whole world's burning. Oh, it's all go into shirt. It's all gone. It's all going to shirt in a handbasket, sir. Right. All right, I'm going to ask you to I'm going to ask you a couple rapid fire questions in regards to film festivals. And I want to hear what you think. Do you submit it to a film festival right now?

Christopher Holland 53:15
Well, the very long winded answer that I gave earlier is it depends. And if you want to shoot me an email at Chris at Film Festival secrets calm and tell me your situation. And I'll give you a rapid fire answer of my gut based on having not seen your film at all, and you haven't described it to me. You're welcome to do that. I don't promise I'll get back to you soon. Get back to you.

Alex Ferrari 53:37
Alright, and my next question was? If If not now, when? So when in what in what the environment that makes sense to start submitting back to film festivals if you're waiting.

Christopher Holland 53:50
I think when film festivals announced that they're holding their next events 100% in person or you know, as close to it as they will ever get again, right? Like if they're like, we're showing 100 films, and each of them twice. And you know, it's all going to be in theaters. And oh, by the way, we're doing this virtual thing over here. That to me is fully back until we see that from film festivals, because you know, they don't want to get sued. No, they don't want to come or have a bad reputation of being a spread vector. Then that's, you know, they're not going to hold an in person event. As an aside. There's a lot of Film Festival and event organizers, who are now armchair biologists, these people have more about, you know how to keep themselves out of trouble with their insurance companies and their lawyers and whatever else might be coming. Medical experts think they ever thought what's going to happen.

Alex Ferrari 54:47
And if you are accepted into an online festival or a festival that has an online component now, what can you do to make the most out of it as a filmmaker,

Christopher Holland 54:56
Participate in any virtual events that they have to offer? You know, make yourself available for all of that. Make sure that you read the fine print on exactly who's going to be able to see your film and when and where and how and all that you do not want to get run afoul of, you know, oh, well, it turned out it was available worldwide. And that's going to screw her distribution chances. And then, you know, ask them what opportunities they have for you to connect with other filmmakers and with the industry. Even before all this happened. One of my favorite things to do for film festivals that I worked with was just start a private Facebook group, for all the filmmakers who were accepted that year, and just let them get to know each other, and they would partner up on hotel rooms, they would, you know, compare the schedules and see like what films they wanted to see, you know, it was just a good way to build connections even before you put boots on the ground at the festival. So for online, that may be the only interaction you have with another filmmaker. And those are the connections that are really worth making at film festivals.

Alex Ferrari 56:01
And where can people find you a window? First of all, don't you have an updated book version? Sir, of your other best selling book from festival secrets?

Christopher Holland 56:08
Oh, man, you're such a good show. I'm going to keep you. Yes. So right before the pandemic started, I released the second edition of Film Festival secrets, a handbook for independent filmmakers. The book is very much changed since it was first published in 2008. It does not mention my space anymore. It no longer

Alex Ferrari 56:33
What are you talking about? That's the secret. That's the secret decision replacing like filmmakers social, absolutely man. And that's where everyone's shy. Don't tell anybody that. And if we go there, if you go there, and we're not there, just wait.

Christopher Holland 56:44
Right? Exactly. Yeah, so it's updated with all the new stuff that it does not mention DVDs as a submission format or that. And by popular demand, I have added a directory of 1400 notable film festivals around the world that I have personally put my eyes on our website or know them by reputation or have talked to their directors or whatever that I think are legit. So if you're one of those filmmakers who's worried that they're going to get scammed, the person's not going to watch their film, and you know, it's not worth it. This list basically tells you Yeah, these festivals are legit. I make no promises beyond that. I don't call them the best. I don't call them the coolest. I don't call them the ultimate. They're just notable, you know, good deal from festivals. And where can people get the book? Yeah. Well, secrets calm or on Amazon. And it'll be it's in paperback. It's an E book. It isn't paperback. It's a bit more expensive in paperback, because those are atoms that have to be physically shipped somewhere. But yeah, I wanted to make it as accessible and affordable as possible. And still prove to my wife that, you know, it was working spending all that time doing what I was doing. But yeah, please, I mean, take take a look. Because I feel like there's I mean, the genesis of the book was I was working at the Austin Film Festival, I was listening to the programmers answer phone calls from filmmakers. And they kept answering the same questions over and over again. And so I thought somebody ought to like write all this stuff down and put it in a book. And it turned out a few years later, that person was me. And so I think it's, you know, I hope it's really helpful to people who are coming on the circuit.

Alex Ferrari 58:29
And where and where can people find you?

Christopher Holland 58:32
I am primarily at filmfestivalsecretscom. I'm on Twitter at Film Fest secrets. I'm not there a ton. Facebook is not really my thing. There is an Instagram, but that's not really my thing either.

Alex Ferrari 58:46
Do you have a thing? Sir? Do you have a thing?

Christopher Holland 58:48
Do I have a thing? Well, I'll tell you about a thing I've been working on is a new podcast. For the first film festival. I work for the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. It's called AJ FF in conversation and it is about all things film with a Jewish spin on it. So if you're Jewish or just curious about Jewish film festivals and Jewish film, I'm, you know, I'm producing it that to other staff members are hosting it, but I'm pretty proud of what we've done. It's one of those things that I, you know, I don't think we would have done without the pandemic coming along. Its way of connecting to our audiences. I think it's things something that filmmakers should consider, in light of the fact that they may not get a theatrical run or festival run in the utricle way. It's like what other digital content can you put out there to connect with your audience? Cuz all the cool kids are doing it.

Alex Ferrari 59:42
And again, if we've learned anything, my space that's

Christopher Holland 59:46
Yeah, my space. I'm pretty sure I still have a MySpace account. Tom is still my friend.

Alex Ferrari 59:51
He never let us down.

Christopher Holland 59:55
Right? It's always there. So I was in my top eight.

Alex Ferrari 59:57
It's Jesus just took Way back. There the top eight. Oh my god anyway, Chris, man, thank you so much for being on the show again. And helping us guide us through the treacherous world of film festivals in the COVID landscape and I it is an ever changing world, it'll probably change. And it will change again in in the next week or two. After this thing it's going to change. But But I appreciate you taking the time and stay safe out there.

Christopher Holland 1:00:34
My pleasure, you too.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:36
Want to thank Chris for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the tribe today. Thank you so much, Chris. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to get ahold of Chris, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com/428. Thank you again for listening guys. As always, keep that also going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.