IFH 258: Making Money with Documentaries & Sriracha with Griffin Hammond

Welcome to the indie film hustle podcast episode number 258 a hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself Joseph Campbell. Podcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It’s the indie film hustle podcast where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film business.

And here’s your host Alex Ferrari. Welcome to another episode of the indie film as a podcast. I am your humble host Alex fire. Today’s episode is brought to you by Black Box black box is a new platform and community. That is all about Financial Freedom for filmmakers like you if you join block box, you will be transformed from being a worker to being a maker of your own content and you’ll be making steady passive income from the global market Black Box currently allows you to upload your stock footage once get it too many Global agencies and then allows you to share that passive income stream with your collaborators whether you want to submit.

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Just go to Studio unknown now today on the show. We have an. In the DIY filmmaking movement on YouTube. His name is Griffin Hammond many of you guys who are listening to me. Probably already know him. He used to be the host on the YouTube channel in the Mughal where he was dishing out amazing, uh, tutorials and education on about how to make films, uh cheaply and do it yourself and he just really done a lot for the filmmaking community and I’ve followed him for many years even before I started indie film hustle, and I’ve always.

To talk to Griffin and I finally got an opportunity to bring him on the show and I had the pleasure of being on his show as well where he asked me a whole bunch of questions about on the corner of ego and desire. So that’s also in the show notes if you guys want to listen to our conversation about that, but Griffin is an amazing human being and he created a cool cool documentary called Sriracha, which is basically the origin story of the condiment that has a cult following around.

World and he made obscene amounts of money with it and we talked about how he did it. Uh, what kind of revenue streams did how he goes about making documentary films and even has a course on CreativeLive about how to make documentary films documentary short films and I’ll put a link about that in the show notes, but without any further Ado, please enjoy my conversation with Griffin Hammond.

I’d like to welcome to the show Griffin Hammond man. Thank you so so much for being on the show.  Of course, I’m happy to be here Alex. Thank you. I was on I had the pleasure of being on your show a few weeks ago. And I said, well you have to be on my show and Griffin’s like fine now. I’m sure it was an immediate

Yes. Happy to have you on my show and thank you for returning the favor. No, absolutely I followed your stuff for years, uh, even before indie film hostel. I always found you out. I kind of found you on YouTube, which we’ll get into in a minute, but first and foremost, how did you get into the film industry in the first place

I’ve been into video production ever since high school. That’s when I learned how to edit Premiere and then I was lucky enough to. Get into NYU Film School ice and I was immature enough to fail out of NYU film. Nice even nicer even though like that. Yeah, I mean turns out you have to go to class to the degree that early failed out of NYU

That’s that’s brilliant man. Seriously. I’m very proud of you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I mean part of it was like my own. Hubris, like I I think I got there in my freshman year. I wasn’t I didn’t feel very challenged. I felt like I already know how to edit. No. I shooed like I feel like we’re kind of going over the things I’ve already learned how to do and I think I’m sure if I just stuck with it and gone all my classes sophomore year

I would have learned all the advanced stuff that I was craving. You have Martin Scorsese as a teacher and Spike Lee Cryin and you know all those guys right but no, no, I don’t want to learn how to edit. I know that right. Well, I mean you come from your you’re the generation behind my generation so you kind of grew up with

Um with this technology and and at a much younger age, I mean by the time I got to the I was already in my 20s and nonlinear editing system was not only editing was just getting off the ground, right? Yeah. So I mean in high school would have killed I was I was cutting between vrs. Shooting on my high camp

Yeah. Yeah back in the day. So yeah I can imagine how it might be frustrating first year in film school going. This is a camera. This is editing technique I could imagine that might be a little bit be vexing on your on your on your psyche. So then what happened? So after you after you failed out what happened

Well, I I moved to San Diego for a little bit that’s for my parents were living and I didn’t really like it there. So I ended up going back to the Midwest or I went to high school. I went to the school at all. My friends were at Illinois State University, which is not a film school. It’s just a regular public four-year University

So I became a television major and I started doing live television news in Bloomington, Illinois. Actually the town that’s the Big Town the small town where the school is called Normal, Illinois. Nice. Brit named great name and uh, it turned out that was probably the skills that I needed more so than the commercial fiction film skills

I was learning at NYU because I think I hadn’t realized that yet, but I probably wasn’t into. Narrative filmmaking so much as nonfiction and so I met some professors at ISU that were really into documentary. I started learning a lot of news Gathering techniques and that became the skill set that I needed for what I now do which is documentary films

Yeah gravitate that and you do documentary films, uh do features as well or just short form. I haven’t done a feature. My longest film is sriracha, which is 33 minutes and I kind of consider that a feature for myself because I’m I’m a little bit when it comes to editing and like I mean that took me long enough to make any way to me eight months to make that and I just wouldn’t Bill stand watching it for much longer than 30 minutes

Like I was kind of a pace. I wanted to create it so I can’t really imagine. Making a 90-minute film. I think just for my editing style. I would try to cram too much in I wouldn’t let it breathe enough to be a future got it. Got it. So after you after um your time in the TV world do you you fell into this this world of YouTube

Can you tell because that’s kind of where you made your bones and kind of got your name out there if I’m not mistaken, right? Yeah. I. I’m friends with this guy. Justin Johnson who he’s made a bunch of really interesting websites over the years like online video contests and film fights. I was competing with people and learning

Uh, this is what I was doing when I wasn’t going to class. I was making videos on film other young college students around the country, right and Justin also created with his friend Eric that YouTube channel Indy mogul. And India Mogul been running for a few years and then Google decided to buy it YouTube actually bought next new networks the company that was running it

And so Justin America that point didn’t really like the prospect of working for a bigger company when they’ve been work as little tiny companies, so they decided it was time to leave and they recommended that I. Take over Indy Mogul and Justin have been looking for ways to collaborate and give me work over the years and I had a stable job at an insurance company producing videos

And finally I thought if I don’t take this job to Justin’s offering me, he’s gonna stop offering me jobs, right? So I decided to be brave enough to leave my 40 Hour Week, very stable job. I could have had a career there and decide to go work for YouTube and you weren’t were you happy in the other job

Yeah, I mean, I’m I’m a very optimistic person like I’ve had a lot of great jobs and I think I could be happy in a lot of kinds of jobs. I was very happy there. I mean it’s it’s the world where I was given a lot of opportunity. I was shooting videos that major events like a around the president and I worked on with William Shatner on a short film like the company really let me travel and do some exciting things but uh, I didn’t yet

Feel like I call myself a filmmaker. I was a videographer and then Indy Mogul you kind of did you were one of the what year was that by the way, I started it. I think any Mogul started in 2007 and I started there in 2011. Okay, and then and then you just started putting out how to videos basically on any Mogul educating film right A lot of people knew it for its for Beck’s show backyard effects and this really talented

Creator of a props and you know, he has all those artsy skills and I’ve never really felt like much of an artist. So I knew I couldn’t come in and do that. So I decided I would do you no talk about the things that I’ve learned but I also started to learn a lot myself and try to share those skills

So it was a lot of camera techniques and information about lenses and microphones and how to build your own lights and things like that and there wasn’t a lot of that going on back then if I’m not mistaken, right? Yeah, not too much. I mean, yeah, it was kind of a small group of people or I kind of knew everyone else that was doing that

And yeah, it was a great a great community that I was really fortunate to inherit from Indy Mogul it grew while I was there but like yeah arguably none of the audience I have today would exist if it weren’t for that kind of incubation period that I had and how long were you there? For two years for two years making YouTube videos that that’s insane

That’s awesome the great job to get paid to make YouTube videos. That’s a really good job of he get the if you can get it, but your heart is really in documentary filmmaking, correct? I mean, there’s a lot of things. I love I’m. It’s hard for me to focus on one thing. So I kind of like the balance right now that I have in my career of making tutorial videos doing a podcast doing work for clients doing documentary work for myself

I did a little bit of Journalism. I was a I was covering the presidential election or 2014 until election day. That must have been a heck of a run. It was insane that must have been I was around everyone he was running for president all the time my God, that must have been crazy. Yeah, so had Donald Trump’s election night Victory party

I went because I thought he was going to lose right? I thought to be trusting to be at the losing party. I mean he thought he was gonna lose everybody was early in the night. Oh were they were they really. Yeah, it’s 7 p.m. When we arrived no one was at the party like no one had really arrived at people were not like excited to get to this party and most people were there by about 9:00 p.m

And around like 9:30 10:00 is when the narrative started to change but yeah by 7 p.m. Like Boris Epstein one of his campaign advisors was like. Kind of laughing with us like yeah, we’re gonna do real well tonight. What and I’m are you doing anything with that footage over you want to Simon for somebody I was on assignment for Bloomberg television

So that stuff was being turned around real fast everything. I shot over two years was going on the air about two days later God that must have been awesome. That must have been a pretty good day my workflow. Yeah, yeah. That was it. That was an amazing job. And that was what brought me back to me or captor failing out of NYU like 10 years later

I moved back to New York because Bloomberg hired me to do this and it’s because they had seen my film Sriracha. Well before we get the Sriracha because we’re going to go deep down the rabbit hole on Sriracha in your opinion. What makes a good documentary what makes a good documentary short or documentary feature in your opinion

I mean, I just think I mean, I’m sure it’s the same with narrative. It’s just it’s good characters because I mean the things I like about documentary are the shooting. I like, you know, capturing beautiful shots and I like conveying facts. I like learning a lot. I mean, that’s probably what draws me the documentary on curious and I have a lot of questions and I want to answer those questions and I’m excited to share the answers to those questions in a film But ultimately I can make a film that’s

Full of great shots and really interesting facts and that would get me about halfway there. But I think unless you have a great character. It’s not going to be a compelling Story. I mean, it should be the character who needs something and we go on that journey to discover if they find it or not

Very cool. Now what kind of equipment do you generally use on your on your shoots? I these days I’m shooting with a Panasonic GH4 and I’ve been using the GH line of cameras ever since the first one. I had the GH 1 2 3 4 and 5 and just basically you just go out there with a lens the G H5 and what do you do for audio

My audio is usually a shotgun mic and zoom recorder. I used to use a h4n back when I started with the gh1 eventually I switched to H5 because I like it more but yeah most of the time you know, when I was doing news, it was a simple as. Hand holding a camera in my left hand over my shoulder and holding a shotgun mic in front of my interview subject and just asking them to look at me and that I’d have a zoom recorder like hanging in a messenger bag off my shoulder

So I mean as opposed to dock you suppose a narrative documentary is really you can’t go out with basically a camera lens a recorder and a mic and you can go out and make something. Uh, oh, yeah, if you’re if you’re trying to tell a good story it’s not nearly as complex technically to do a documentary as to do a narrative

Well, I love one thing I love about newsgathering is sometimes I would go out and it would just be a mess, you know, everything’s handheld and I’m not getting exactly what I want. Maybe I have an idea that there’s a story but it turns into a completely different story. I like that in documentary

You can always save it. You can always tell the story of how it all fell apart. There’s always like a behind-the-scenes story you could tell to so you can always take the footage you have and find a way to turn it into a story. Where as you go out and try to shoot your narrative. I mean, I know you change it up a little bit as you go, but if you fail to get a theme now, you’re really in trouble your have to figure out a way to go shoot it where isn’t that counter

I think you kind of. You could kind of fudge it a little bit mix that makes perfect sense. Now, let’s get into Sriracha man. How did Sriracha come about tell me all about Sriracha? Well, it was at the end of I guess it was a year into doing any Mogul and I think I kind of realized I aspired to be a filmmaker but didn’t yet feel like I had earned that title for myself for me

The way I defined it. I just knew that I needed to go to a film festival and show something on a big screen and I realized I’d made thousands of pieces of art video art over the years but nothing that was intended for a theater audience. And so I felt like I needed to cross that barrier and so coming back from a film festival in 2013

I just felt especially inspired like, you know, I think I’m good enough now, I think I’ve honed my skills. I have all the equipment. I should just make something and. I thought about the category of that. I like in festivals which is short the short documentary sections and then just started thing about things I love because everyone says make films both the things you love and really high on my list of things with Sriracha hot sauce

Of course, obviously, obviously you want to make a documentary about a hot sauce. It’s an obvious topic for. What’s funny because like, you know, there’s I mean I’m a runner so I thought about like, you know, there’s something in there like a running category. Could I go to Greece and make a film about like the origin of the marathon

Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Why don’t you do that? I want to go to Greece right now, right? There’s a lot of things in my life. I could just look around and say I’m excited about that. I want to learn more but Sriracha started almost as a joke in my mind like. Well, that’s interesting. That is something that I do interact with every day

I’m kind of excited about it. But the more I thought about it. I realized I have a lot of questions and I think the same people that are passionate about this thing is a lot of people that consider themselves fans of this hot sauce who would probably go out wearing a t-shirt that says, I love sriracha and yet those same people might not necessarily know even basic facts about it, like what country it comes from or who makes it

I thought about it. I realized like that’s the perfect place for a documentary to live somewhere between passion and void of information. And then it is a very cultish audience of for Sriracha if I’m not mistaken

Yeah, I mean people have merchandise some choose bad handbags. It’s insane. And that’s kind of what I thought the film was gonna be. I thought I’ll make a film about how crazy the fans are. Like I kind of imagined when I was designing the film in my mind that I’ll find a wedding couple bride and groom that have like a Sriracha flavored wedding cake or something

Like that’s the kind of thing. This one was going to be about ultimately I never found that and David Tran the guy who makes Sriracha ended up being a really compelling story and it’s good because I think if I tried to make the film about. Philly fans and never really focused on one strong character

I would not been as good. So then you actually approach the company and you approached him and said hey I want to make a documentary about you and they just said sure come right on in. They did not say sure at first, right? I mean, I I started by connecting with like Foods didn’t even have a very strong

Well, they didn’t have any social media presence. It was kind of hard to even connect with them at first that’s even crazy like that. That product is built for social media. Yeah, this is it’s killing it in the I mean it was probably number two behind Tabasco maybe still is it’s like, you know, it’s dominating the US market of awesome

Yeah, they don’t have an up-to-date website. They didn’t have social media back then. So I went to this guy Randy Clemens, who’s the author of The Sriracha Cookbook and he was kind of my point person for everything Sriracha because he had been. Ever since he wrote a cookbook. He’d been blogging about everything Sriracha

So he was the guy that knew all the characters in this universe. You knew all the things. I might want to include in a film and so I kind of I think I maybe even scheduled an interview with him on the books before I even contacted David Tran and he didn’t he gave me the contact information for David Tran

Like I said David said no and then how did you convince him? Well, I went back to Randy and I said, so David said know, what do I do? And he helped me kind of understand a little bit more in his limited dealings with David Tran that he had helped me understand maybe what some of his motivations are like, you know, go back to him and say that you I mean, it’s true go back and tell them that you really love his product and you’re doing this because you have a love for his story

You’re not doing this for the money or something and trying to exploit him. You’re just doing it out of this like pure place of love and I also really heavily weighed on. The fact that I’m an independent filmmaker, it’ll just be me showing up with a small camera a tripod and a light and it’s not going to be a big production

It’s not going to interrupt your business and I think that was what he wanted to hear. Then he started have a lot of questions for me like okay now this sounds possible and it won’t be problematic. So let’s figure out if this we can do this so you basically shut that whole movie by yourself in the end

I ended up bringing a friend of mine, too. Operate the camera during my interviews like I would set up the shot on the tripod set of lighting and then I would be the one holding a microphone in front of data to interviewing him. So there was I did have an assistant for much of it. But you know, I think 90% of the b-roll

I just shot myself handheld one else around and you traveled as well you traveled around the world. Yeah, it started with a trip to California. That’s where the factory is and that’s where much of it shot. But then I also went to Chicago because that’s near where I was living and picked up a few things there went to some restaurants there

We did a Kickstarter eventually that was successful and I earned a little bit more money than I thought I would so then I added a trip to New York and a trip to Thailand where. Really The Story begins. I could have probably figured out a way to tell it without going to Thailand. But why why would you hear something but why I mean seriously because even from what I’ve seen of the trailer, I haven’t seen that haven’t gotten a chance to see the movie

Yeah, but from the trailer you’re on the boat you’re driving in the little boat. I’m like, you can’t get b-roll of that. That’s that’s probably there’s literally a town in Thailand called. Of course the name comes from of course it is of course it is. Yeah, so you work eight months putting this Beast together

Uh, now what was your marketing plan for the film? How did you how were you going to get the word out on this movie? I had zero marketing plan going aspic. Fantastic. Thank you. It was a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for being on the show Griffin. Uh, it’s been fantastic. Thank you. Well, don’t call I mean the original goal for this was to get into film festivals and maybe the auxilary goal was to have a film at the end of it

You know, I just I thought I’d I was I was confident that I could make something I’d be proud of and this would be a good investment in myself. Just having. Something that shows what I can do and along the way the goals changed a little bit, uh, eventually realized that there was an audience for this I maybe film festivals didn’t need to be my primary goal of just giving this in front of people on the internet was the primary goal but I got really lucky early on

I told you that I interviewed Randy Clemens early on in the film and he is a cookbook author. And a freelance writer in Los Angeles now, he lives in New Hampshire. But at the time he was so excited to be in the documentary that he just you know, he took a selfie of himself and posted on Facebook and said, hey, look I’m gonna be in a documentary about sriracha and a lot of his friends were LA area freelance writers

And so someone wrote an article in a small publication called OC Weekly. Okay, just based on the fact that they had seen this Facebook post from Randy. That got noticed by I think the LA Times and they wrote an article. Okay, then I’ll be host noticed it in LA times and then they wrote an article and once helping the post wrote an article then everyone wrote an article

I think it was in the Associated Press and I mean it was all over the country. Wow. And it was insane because the narrative it was all because of sriracha it was because Sriracha was attached that name was attached to this you leveraging the brand name. Absolutely, right? I mean I didn’t have to do anything

It was just the excitement of there’s going to be a Sriracha movie like that was literally half the headlines and I just thought it’s insane because you would never write the article. Independent documentary filmmaker from Illinois begins production on his short Doc generally, that’s not the way these things are written, right

There’s all because I picked a topic that people were excited about and maybe I mean I did it because I that’s what I was passionate about that. I also got lucky and happy to do it. Right probably its peak. Moment in pop culture and also I mean and I don’t want to kind of um Fly by this but that is was a you weren’t being strategic about it, but it was a strategic move because you were leveraging a brand that so many people know that the marketing will be done for you almost purely because of the subject matter is the same if I would make a Trader Joe’s documentary on the inside workings of Trader Joe’s which people are super

And about Trader Joe’s uh in California, but also around the country or other companies like Lego or whatever, um, you know, and and and if there hasn’t been anything about that topic or about that company or about that product people are starving because there’s a there’s a fanbase waiting for it

So you have an audience waiting to spend money on this so it is strategic what you did and I think it’s good advice for other filmmakers if you could find a topic. Or product or company that you want to kind of go into that. No one’s really touched yet because there is no other Sriracha dock right you are it right

Yeah, my only real competition these days and most of it came years later is like other news stories the people, you know, like CBS News eventually went into the factory in ABC News one the factory, right? But that’s not the same. It’s Griffin in it. Yeah, I’m still the only documentary right official documentary that’s been someone to come along and make a feature and that would you know, mine’s not a feature so you can kind of compete differently but you’ve already yeah, this is this is this was released in 2013

Yeah. Well, all right. So the movie has been released now, so now you went through festivals you won some awards. Um, how did you I’m assuming you own it. You didn’t sell it to distribute or anything like that you own all the rights though. I do. Yeah, I worked with a couple Distributors. One of them is completely shady and didn’t pay me money

What no, that’s what that that doesn’t sound like you at all. And the other one is a is a distributor in the New York area called Johnston again. I didn’t sell it to them. I worked at two different distributors and I let them sign non exclusive deals. I kind of just wanted to see if they could. Do anything for me and they did a little bit but I think the majority of the revenue generated was self distribution

And then what are the revenue streams that you were able to create for the film the first one and still biggest one I think is Vimeo. Okay Vimeo on demand had just started when I when I came out. I think it only been out for a couple months. So you jumped in at the right time. Yeah, and it was great because not only I picked it because I like them, you know, I was uploading my film to a couple different platforms and just found that I liked the quality at that point in time and I like the feature Set

Uh, I was a little bit worried that people would have to create accounts, you know, just like more step to stop people from purchasing but it seemed like a good platform and they were also willing to do a lot to help me because it was such a new platform they were willing to. They did a little bit of promotion

They put it they translated it into a few different languages. We got subtitles in other languages. They did some nice things like that even might put it in a trailer during South by Southwest. I didn’t get into the South by which was the whole point of making film played part of my film before another

Oh, yeah. I know the feeling of not getting it to Big festivals man. I think we’ve all gone through that everyone listening has gone through that. I want point or another I’m assuming you submitted to Sundance as well. I I only finished the film in. November oh, I think I only hit like the late South by deadline

I definitely flew past the sun dance dance deadline. Yeah. Um, okay. So with Vimeo, um, you also mentioned in one of your articles you wrote that Vimeo has the best profit margin in the business in regards to um, like sharing revenues with with the platform. Can you explain you explain that a little bit

Yeah. I mean that was really one of the primary drivers for why chosen in the first place is that. I think they only take ten percent as their commission. Whereas I think iTunes isn’t that like 50 iTunes is like 30% right Amazon’s like almost 50, right? Yeah. I mean that’s pretty common for these shares to be almost, you know close to 50% Right

And so they take 10% then there’s also a little transaction fee in there. So in the end it works out to I currently sell it for $2.99 and when someone buys it I get two dollars and thirty cents. Okay, which is awesome. Yeah, and how many did you how many views did you sell on that? Last time I counted it which was at the end of 2017

Right? No end of 2016. I think actually uh is I had sold 7200 sales. Okay, so that worked out to be. A profit of $23,000. That’s not bad. I’ll take it. I’ll take it now did you that was where I really focused my sales at the beginning like I had done a Kickstarter campaign. There were 1,300 people who backed it

So I also made Revenue that way as well, but those people saw it first about two weeks before I released it to the public. And so I I kind of did a big launch, you know, I let these 13 people know it’s gonna come out to the public and two weeks on Vimeo go tell all your friends. I went back to all the reporters that had ever written about it

And I you know, I made them be responsible by writing that again. It’s kind of like if you cared. About hey, there’s gonna be a Sriracha movie so many months ago. Surely. You want to write the article now it’s available. Right? Most of them dead. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And then so you focused all your so all your marketing efforts was focused on one platform at the beginning, right

Yeah. It was just having a big Premiere and I think in that first, I think the first two months. I did maybe $15,000 worth of sales. I think most of the money that I’ve made on Vimeo happened pretty early on is generally the way it works with with those kind of platforms. Um, and then you’d then ventured out into iTunes and other places as far as the transactional

Yeah. I just when I got around to it after I was you know done it was like a full-time job during the kickstarter campaign job. Releasing a nun and then a full-time job just doing kind of customer service for a few months and answering people’s questions and doing press I mean that was lucky for me

I was getting a lot of press afterward to for a while. I just became like the go-to Sriracha expert and they were in the news a little bit here and there. So again PR would call me up and interview me. That’s not that’s not a bad place to be right that’s not a bad place to be so then all right, so then but you did eventually go out to iTunes and other places like that and you made some Revenue out of those

Yeah, eventually I realized I could go to an aggregator. I went to Premier digital sure. I paid them. I think it was $250 for each platform to put my short film on there. So it was 250 together on iTunes. It was 250 to get on Amazon. And so we did both at once I didn’t do Prime at first. I just did Amazon video on demand thinking I don’t want to cannibalize all my Vimeo sales give it away for free

Was that a foolish thing to think? It was logical sense. It makes white. Yeah, there’s a lot of people who listen to the podcast that I’ve heard them. Tell me the like, oh, I’m afraid of putting it on prime or or or free subscription-based model based on an Advertiser or you get an avod model. Um, because you like it’s gonna cannibalize your transactional

Will you make more money? Right, but in the in the lifestyle in the life cycle of a movie don’t do that on the month one. You could do that a month three or four because a lot of your money transactionally has already been made, correct? Yeah, exactly. So then so then what did so how how did it do the second you put it up on Amazon for prime before I put on prime it was you know, it’s just getting a few sales

It wasn’t very many. I think in total. Let’s see. What do I have in total ever? It’s sold 3000 copies on Amazon. Actually, that sounds pretty good. But it actually compared to some of the other platforms and it wasn’t very quick at first either. In fact, my Amazon Instant Video has probably gone up since I opened it up on Prime, but I just I thought about how I I’m a prime user and I don’t ever buy movies when there’s all these free movies on there

And so it just made me realize you know, I always have to put myself in my audience as shoes. How could I why would I expect anyone to buy it there? So I asked Premiere digital to flip the switch for Prime. I mean, it’s already on Amazon to make it available for Prime. And as soon as they did it, it’s just like the floodgates opened and I told you I had 1,300 sales on Amazon Instant Video since I opened it up on Prime

I’ve had two hundred thirty thousand views on Amazon Prime. That’s a lot of use. Yeah. And how much yeah don’t yeah, they don’t give you as much but you get like 10 cents per view. I imagine it’s just a share of the Amazon Prime subscription cost which sounds terrible compared to Vimeo or I’m making to 30 per purchase, but the audience size is just huge on Amazon in a way that Vimeo isn’t and so

20, you know 230,000 people watching it translates $23,000. That’s not bad. That’s not bad at all. That’s insane. And that’s a little bit more than you get on uh on YouTube. Oh, yeah more I think the funny thing is when I first came out with the film, I think my Kickstarter campaign I charged $5 for it and

I think a few months later. I dropped the price to 3, but when I first launched it on Vimeo it was a five dollar film because I didn’t want to I felt like I’d be really unfair to have people pre-ordered 4 5 and then lower the price right away release it right. So I charge $5 for it and a lot of people on Reddit

I remember there was some some article that someone had written about my film and people in the Reddit comments were saying like five dollars. That’s ridiculous. Why would you ever spend that much on a film? I’m short film especially and I agreed in some sense. Like you’re going to go to the movie theater and spend $10 on a big-budget feature

I understand why you don’t want to spend five dollars on my short film but it’s weird how on Kickstarter $5 was really cheap because other people are charging awake ridiculous like $30 for their short film and on, you know on Vimeo. Maybe that’s too much for some people. But the same people were saying like why don’t you just put on YouTube you’ll make a ton of Revenue kidding me

Like I think I did put it on YouTube. I put my um directors commentary version on YouTube and I think I make a fifth of a penny every time someone watches it so ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. And then you also got it on Hulu. Tell me the story about that. Yeah, I think at the time in retrospect, I realize I could have just also asked

From your digital aggregator put it on Hulu as well and I could have it would have been smarter because I could have paid them a one time fee and I would have made all of the revenue from who but I think who was a similar model to Amazon. It’s like 10 cents per view. It’s at based right was the time at the time

Yeah. Yeah now it’s more subscriber base. And so but I didn’t put it on Hulu. It was actually jansen’s idea one of my Distributors to put out here and their fee jansen’s fee is 30% of course. So I made a fair amount of Revenue on who looks like an earned 21,000 on Hulu and then I got 15,000 of that still not bad man still not bad

So so then overall although by the way, how about DVDs and Blu-rays? Because I know you did that. Yeah, I did a lot of those because I let’s see it started as I think Blu-rays were a or a Kickstarter reward. So I must have started with like 400 of those and sold a bunch of those to the kickstarter and I think I bought another 200

I think it totally sold about 200 or 600 Blu-rays and Camera how many actually in people were actually buying those at like 15 bucks a pop? Yeah, let’s see. I think it was like $10 for the DVDs and something like 15 or 20 for the Blu-rays and yeah, there are people that want physical media. I was not one of them at the time

I was kind of like I’m only doing this because people are asking me for them because it’s a pain in the butt. Yeah total pain in the butt. I mean in a way it’s kind of fun to have this physical object that represents your film. It’s kind of a nice souvenir. The profit margin is really low, I think

I calculate in the end after all my you know shipping costs. I’m printing the discs and then eventually one of my big fees was once I put my film on Amazon Prime there was kind of an incentive to sell my film on Amazon the physical media because it all is this one unified page people can watch it digitally or they can buy it

And I wanted it to be available as a prime purchase you get in two days and that requires that you actually send your inventory to write but they charge you like storage fees storage fees and then sales fees and all that. So in the end, I’m barely making a dollar on these things. But and with a lot of headache as opposed to the digital release, which is a lot easier

Yeah, I mean digital you can sell a thousand or five thousand and there’s really no difference now, um did film festivals actually help or hurt your film in any way like because it’s expensive to go to these things. Yeah, super expensive just to enter even and then. I went to a lot of film festivals early on because again that was kind of a goal of making the film that was really rewarding to see it on screens and here people react to it

I mean, I wouldn’t undo that but it was definitely expensive and it’s hard to quantify what that did if anyting for the film. I mean it won a couple of awards and you know, I could put all the Laurels on my DVD cover and maybe some more people buy it because they see The Laurels next to it on Vimeo

It’s hard to say maybe maybe it doesn’t matter at all. Now overall. Are you happy with your final experience of making the documentary releasing the documentary was it financially rewarding? I mean sure you didn’t retire off of it, but overall, you know, was it a positive experience? Yeah. I’ve been teaching a lot of filmmaking workshops around the world the last couple years and I keep telling people that

This was the smartest career decision I’ve ever made. I didn’t know it at the time. I mean, I knew I had confidence that it would lead to good things and would show people what I was capable of but almost everything that’s happened to me since is has a direct line back to Sriracha. I mean the film made a profit, you know in the end

It’s it’s made around 85,000 dollars in profit. It’s a short film. Let’s remind everybody. It’s a short film which in one way sounds like a really awesome number. I mean because you don’t expect especially short films, especially independent documentary to make any money to be profitable at all

But then you have to ask yourself is that money really worth the eight months of production the freelance projects I turned down because I was busy working on the film The. Year of marketing and all that. Yeah, this is that 85,000 in one year. This is over the course of the last three or four years, right

Yeah. Yeah, and for years it made 85,000 did most much of that in the first year but uh, but yeah, it’s not necessarily sustainable model like I couldn’t make $85,000 every two years and live in New York City, you know. But if I were to somehow stack a bunch of films this could potentially be a model that that’s lucrative but if you could turn them around faster, yeah exactly

I mean I wouldn’t do this for the money and I wasn’t doing this for the money to start and I think the better return on investment has been that six months after I made the film it led to me getting a job in New York, which I mean a lot more. Doing that job covering the election that I did making a film you got that Jeff specifically because of sriracha

Yeah, they called me up because they saw it. They were like we like this film. Would you like to do this kind of thing for us? Would you like to cover the presidential election the same way that you’ve covered hot sauce for two years? Yeah, that’s insane. And then you know it helped Panasonic notice me

I’m now a brand ambassador Panasonic because I’ve been using their cameras and they liked that I use their camera on my film. The state department found me and now sends me around the world to teach filmmaking in different countries because they like they like the the moral of the of the film they like that it’s a self distributed film

They liked my story and they also like that’s a film about an entrepreneur succeeding in America. Genius, I mean, it’s remarkable. I mean one and I think that’s a message that we all have to kind of put out. There is that you know, you could talk about doing stuff but when you actually get off your ass and do something you never know who’s gonna see it

What it’s going to lead to what opportunities are going to come with doors are going to open because it happened to me with indie film household. It happened with me with my first film. It’s even happening with my second film and that hasn’t even been released yet. Just yeah just people knowing about it has opened up doors

Um, and you never know but you just have to get up and go do it. Yeah. I keep telling people that are just getting into this. You just have to make a lot of work. Because one you’ll get a lot better with each project. But to I found that I don’t it’s not even always the things that I’m proudest of that have an impact on people like you kind of need to have a diverse set of work out there because one of your projects is going to inspire someone or you know, get someone to hire you and it may not be the thing that you’re proud is tough now

Can you tell me a little bit about your um, CreativeLive course shooting documentary short films, which sounds like an awesome course. Oh, yeah, that was probably another opportunity to came along because I made you think Roger. Yeah. Yeah, because I don’t think I contacted them. I think they saw the film and said hey be cool to have that guy teach a class

And so yeah CreativeLive is company in San Francisco one of many online learning, uh websites and they helped me develop a seven-hour course on producing short documentary films. We tried to get everything that. I wanted to share things that I had learned in the class and it was great because I think if I had just done on my own it would have been as good but they had like, you know, they had a jib sounds like really great production value

I’d like that like audio they had a jib. I think they helped me design some uh, we shot some stuff the day before the class to show during the class. It was kind of this multimedia experience. So yeah, I have this. Like master class on shooting short documentary films bailable. Well, I will put that in the show notes for everybody to go check out if they’re interested in learning about more about shooting documentary short films

Now, I’m gonna ask you of course, of course man. Now I’m gonna ask you a few questions. I ask all of my guests. Um, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today? Definitely make a lot of work like I said and. You know, I I think we even talked about this on my podcast that this industry is really forgiving for friendly people

I mean you could be the best cinematographer. But if you’re terrible to work with your eventually stop getting calls to to work on projects, so. I think just do your best work and do a lot of work make sure people see it and just be really nice to everyone and people will be excited to work with you you by the way, I’ve had over 250 episodes now in this on the show and you are one of by far the nicest human beings I’ve ever met

I don’t know if it’s all BS or not. But from what you put out from our interactions me being on your show and you being on mind and the talking that we’ve done off air. You’re very very nice guy. I could only imagine working with you. You should hey man, let’s go. Let’s go. Shoot some cool be fine

Is that good? Impression of you? Yeah. I mean, it’s a weakness to because I’m not a very adamant. Strong-willed passionate person. I don’t always know exactly what I want in my films, but hopefully I make up for it is people feel pretty good about it. I know the movie sucks, but I’m really nice

Uh, so exactly don’t underestimate how important it is that no, no and that is a very serious message. I want to put out there and like being nice far outweighs Talent. And in this business, you know, if you’re Hustler you work and you will in your humble and you’re willing to learn and you’re nice to work with people will give you a shot as opposed to The Talented prick

Um, yeah that we’ve all worked with at one point or another and the connection to that is that. I keep finding that, you know, especially when you’re younger you assume that like HR departments and the hiring methods of company companies are these really well-oiled machines are gonna go out and find all the best candidates and they really don’t I mean people just hire the people they know that are conveniently available

So if you happen to be, you know, it’s about who you know, and if you’re a nice person to work with but not necessarily gonna find you just because you’re the best out there and you need to do the work. Networking and meeting people and being on their radar or make a project that puts put you on their radar

Yeah. Um now, can you tell me a book? What book had the biggest impact on your life or career? Probably Robert McKee story interesting interesting, which is interesting coming from a documentarian. Right. Uh, well probably the reason that one isn’t Robert McKee portrayed by Brian Cox. Yes

Brilliant. We had a patient. Oh, that’s so I had not heard of him. I must I must have heard of him, but that was he came to life in that movie. It’s one of my favorite movies. I love Ed updation. Um, but yes, Brian Cox played him brilliantly. Right and it’s funny because it was only after I left NYU and I was getting my finishing my bachelor’s degree at Illinois State University

But I took a media writing class. It’s kind of the intro course for all the journalism and TV and public relations majors and the textbook for that class was actually Story by Robert McKee and. I mean, it’s important that uh, you know, it’s a great book story have a solid narrative it is it is the book that I think every screenwriter reads and his course is one of the his workshops or lectures

There’s one of those lectures that everybody goes through at one point or another in Hollywood. Yeah. It’s just it’s one of those pieces but yes, it’s an amazing book. Um now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life? See, I probably still learning it

That is the most common answer by the way is the most common answer when I ask that question. I think I’m still learning it. I feel like I still no less like I know less than than I did yesterday still so many things I need to learn about this industry, uh something that took me a long time to learn

I mean maybe. I think it was especially after failing out of NYU. I think it was kind of understanding that there are definitely things that I’m bad at and I just have to accept those things and kind of recognize them and move past them. Like I shouldn’t try to be a screenwriter because I think over the years

I’ve thought I’m a good writer. I’m a good journalistic writer, but I can only write for really one voice. I can write for my own from my own perspective and I’m not great at creating characters and stepping into someone else’s mind. I feel like I’m an empathetic person but I just can’t really talk in a way

That’s not my own voice. And so yeah, I gravitate towards documentary because I don’t want to write a script but you want to go but you want to tell a story. I like telling other people’s stories, but I kind of need to just have a real person in front of me doing that, uh on camera. I can’t really create a person nothing just recognizing what you’re bad at and exploiting the things you’re good at

That’s a great lesson to learn now. What are three of your favorite films of all time? Let’s see. Uh, I should Throw Back to the Future 2 in there. So straight so you so you may have specific choice of Baxter’s future to yes, which is arguably and now we’re gonna geek out a bit arguably many people believe it to be the lesser of the three I don’t but because it’s the connective tissue

So why do you pick that movie? I have to find out why? I think I’ve loved it ever since I was kid, uh, because it I mean, I think it has you know, they go back to 1955. It has the future as well. I especially love the ending where you’re playing on top of the climax of the previous movie. So I love all the different worlds it travels to maybe even teases the third movie

Yes and from a technical standpoint. I love that. That was the movie where. They invented that technique of the computerized Dolly with repeatable movements. Oh, yeah motion capture. Yeah, so they could have 45 Fox 45 Michael different performances in the same moving shot. It’s pretty insane. It was pretty insane

They definitely did used it very well. Um, I went to of the other favorite films. Uh, well the other two I should pick documentaries. I really like Grizzly Man by Verna hertzog. Oh God. I was such an amazing film. Yeah. I mean, I love it because it’s not even a film same in the kind of film. I like making it’s like a found footage film but I just love kind of is it’s a kind of with a voiceover

Mostly someone else’s footage. Yeah. And what’s and what’s the last one? And then I’m also um a big fan of Errol Morris and The Thin Blue Line, that’s a good movie. Very very very good also a style of documentary that I don’t really do. It’s very stylized kind of Errol Morris seems to do a lot of like mixing narrative style with documentary storytelling and I don’t do that, but I appreciate how he does that and where can people find you online

At Griffin Hammond videos and tutorials and my podcasts all that and wasn’t and what’s the name of your podcast? It’s called Hey, Indie filmmakers, like right in your face right in your face similar to your title. I realize even like almost the same acronym hif. Here’s I FH. Well Sharon, it’s a great podcast a lot of great information on it as well

So I’ll put I put links to all of your stuff in the show notes Griffin. Thank you again so much for being on the show man. It was absolute pleasure having you. That’s great to talk to you again. Thanks for having me. I really want to thank Griffin for being on the show and dropping some knowledge bombs on the tribe

We’ve never had a documentary filmmaker on the show. So I really am very grateful for him, uh giving us all that great information. And if you guys have not seen Sriracha, uh and want to take a look at it. It’s a great little film and it really really is well done. And it’s not that expensive only a few bucks

So if you want to check it out just head over to India. 2:58 to get access to the short as well as links to anything– we talked about in this episode and also links on how to contact Griffin see all the things he has to offer and a link to his created live online course about how to shoot documentary short films

So guys, I know this summer has been a little weird. Uh, we’ve been doing a lot of Throwbacks instead of two episodes just one. I’ve been really working hard on this special project that I’m working on for you guys. And again, it is not a feature film, but I will be announcing it sometime in late August early September, which I’ll be announcing this major project, which will hopefully

Change the world. No, but hopefully we’ll uh, we’ll find you guys will find some value in and uh, and you’ll understand why I’ve been so, uh so busy, so thanks again for listening guys. I hope you got something out of it. And as always keep that whole going keep that dream alive, and I’ll talk to you soon

Thanks for listening to the indie film hustle podcast at indie film Hustle.