Shifted

Linda Nelson 0:00
And then the other suggestion that can work. And we've been successful with this is to make two versions of your film, one for the regular streamers, and then another MP4 edited version for your YouTube channel. And sometimes it's just a matter of taking out too many F bombs.

Alex Ferrari 0:22
This episode is brought to you by the Best Selling Book Rise of the Filmtrepreneur how to turn your independent film into a money making business. Learn more at filmbizbook.com. I'd like to welcome back to the show returning champion, Linda Nelson. You're doing Linda?

Linda Nelson 0:39
I'm doing great, Alex, thanks so much for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to speak with you and your audience then yeah. Filmmakers say Oh, I heard you on Indie Film Hustle. It's great.

Alex Ferrari 0:56
I appreciate that. You were i? If I remember you were like episode 19. I think you were like, if I remember where you were in the teens first time. Yeah, the very first time which still gets listens, and still has great value in it, by the way. But now we're at episode was 620 something or other now. So it's been? And you've been on? I mean, you I mean, the record is still RB from stage 32. He's been on like 1314 times, well here, but you're up there. You're like I've been on four or five times at least. So we make it a yearly event at this point in the game. And it's always wonderful talking to you because you are in the in the trenches of indie distribution. And when I say indie distribution, I mean true indie distribution, not $5 million. And we've got Darren Aronofsky making your movie, we're talking about million dollar below half million dollar below kind of Indies, which is where the majority of independent film is, is right now. So my very first question to you is, what is the state of film distribution right now?

Linda Nelson 2:00
Well, I'm happy to say that I think it's the best it's ever been. And we are experiencing more and more people submitting films to us, you know, which I think means that more and more people are, you know, there's a constant new stream of filmmakers making independent films and interested in making films, which is fantastic. And I swear at least three times a week, I've got a new platform coming to me saying we want content from you, you know, and and part of that's because we have a very diverse catalogue. So if somebody, especially new channels that are launching, right, they can, you know, I have a pretty good choice of content that they want. So I you know, there have to be 2000 streaming channels out there now. So there's a huge opportunity, you know,

Alex Ferrari 2:56
So let me ask you about those other because I remember a couple of three years ago, four years ago, when I was little, I think the last fm before they went before the pandemic 20, I think was 2019 or 20. Yeah, 2019. What I was hearing OTT, OTT OTT, everyone was talking about OTT and these new streaming services coming over. What do you say? Do you see any major revenue coming in from those 2000? I mean, other than the majors, other than the big boys, like these independent streamers around the world, are you seeing any money coming in from them,

Linda Nelson 3:27
The one that we're seeing the most from, is actually YouTube. And we should, you know,

Alex Ferrari 3:38
I'm gonna tee you up on YouTube, don't worry, but I'm worried about this, independent ones,

Linda Nelson 3:43
Like YouTube, or Roku channels, you know, like, there's constant stream of, and not all, it used to be that Roku was the only option for these new channels, right? Roku box. And so there have been 1000 Roku channels for probably two years. But now all of a sudden, there's just as much activity going on with Amazon Fire, which is another little way to turn your regular television into a smart TV. And it's just like a USB stick that you stick into, you know, your TV, and it turns your TV into a smart TV. So all of these, you know, technological innovations are making it possible for a lot more people to enjoy streaming. And what's great about all of these channels is that there are now very specific channels for niche content, which you've always, you know, been a big proponent of understanding, you know, who your audience is, and, and understanding you know, that you need to find your audience, you know, for your needs. So, for example, like Deco is for LGBT, I mean, didn't exist a year ago a year ago. half ago, but now it's very popular. And so I'm getting whenever someone comes to me with an LGBT film, they said, Oh, can you get us on Deco. Right? So you know, so and there, we have a fishing channel, this become popular. So the channels that I think will succeed are ones that are very specific with their content, right, so that you can find them. And I think that what's going to happen is that there will be a huge consolidation of the generalized ones. And we're seeing that because like, you take, for example, Chicken Soup for the Soul. I don't know if you remember those books, they were so popular, there were about 20 Different chicken soup books, right? Well, they got into the video business and started buying up channels. And they now own screen media. With Jones crackle, and about, they've now got about 10 through MailChimp. So I think we're gonna see a big consolidation, you know, go on in the next two years, you know, and things will settle down right now. It's just like this crazy, you know? West? Yeah, Wild Wild West with tons of channels. And, and some of them, you know, occasionally one pops up, it's doing well, where Roku channel seems to be doing well. I think there's something very specific happening with like the major studios, because they were late getting into the game, they decided to buy or acquire existing successful channels, rather than start over and have to, you know, totally start from scratch. So you had first you had box by Tubi. Right. And so that was, you know, almost two years now. And but what we're seeing, and this makes can make it more difficult for independent films is that they are now loading up their star driven content onto to be and that is pushing down the indie content. So it just means that the indie filmmakers have got to work a little harder to make it into the carousels, the various carousels on the channel, you know, so that they can get discovered, or they have to do more direct marketing with links, you know, to their content. So it's getting a little bit harder, you know, to find some of our films to be, and I think the same thing is gonna happen with Vudu. So universal via Fandango, purchase Vudu from Walmart, and that same thing, and it's just because they want to have a bunch of bills, they know, the advertisers are, you know, are putting their ads, you know, on these channels, and it's a replacement for old fashioned television, except that you just get to watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. You don't need a TV guy, you just you know, are you gonna be swiping through, you know, all of the posters, and we'll talk about that.

Alex Ferrari 8:16
So, you know, right now, the thing I always tell people is that the main money for independent films, unless it's a certain budget range, and a certain caste is AVOD, AVOD is where most of the money is being made. Unless you can drive traffic, if you can drive traffic TVOD still, somewhat, and we'll talk about TVOD in a minute, as far as we'll talk about in a minute as well. But AVOD is the place where most independent filmmakers are making their money. Now, if you've got Bruce Willis in your movie, or Nicolas Cage in a movie that's in a different stratosphere, and that's a different conversation, based on certain budgets and certain cast a vote is the best. Is that what you're finding right now?

Linda Nelson 8:56
It is, we we are seeing very few films be successful on TV. We have two right now that have made like 20 30,000 in a month, but it's because they had it's, it's one it's not their first film. And, you know, and that's a discussion in and of itself about building a body of work, you know, so because they have that experience and and, and they're on their third or fourth film. They have an existing audience that's waiting for their next film. So they've been able to really capitalize on that and do well on TVOD, first, that run usually doesn't last more than I would say, three, four months at the most, and then they'll start to trickle down. So what we do is we really carefully monitor the TVOD. And if we see nothing in the first month, we're turning SVOD if we can and And AVOD, also, but if it's going if it's going well, we'll leave it just on Teavana until the revenue gets down to under five grand a month. So we want to, you know, kind of milk that for all we can while it lasts. Yeah, it doesn't happen often.

Alex Ferrari 10:22
Right! And it's it again, it's because those those filmmakers are driving traffic, they understand how to market how to drink. Even I hadn't. I had Mark Toya on the show, who made monsters of man. And he made I think he's at the six or $7 million mark at this point. But he understands. And he had a million dollar movie with no stars in it. But he understands how to market an action, an action movie about robots in the jungle. And he was able to, and he did it so well, that he's still making money every month. He's pulling 50 60,000 on a bot and he still does TVOD as well. But he knew how to drive that traffic with Facebook ads and YouTube ads, and that kind of stuff. But that's an anomaly. You know, it's not, it was I mean, I had I had Michael polish on years ago, in the first 100 episodes, and he made a half a million on TVOD, off of a movie called for lovers only. But it was 2010. Yeah, I mean, in iTunes was just starting. And he had a face of a of an actress who was you know, she was just starting out on a big show on castle and it just was this whirlwind. But it was a different time that movie comes out today. I don't think TV ads will make half. Yeah, it's just a different world. So really quick, because I know we're throwing around terms that a lot of people understand. For everybody understand TVOD is transactional video on demand. AVOD is advertising video on demand. And SVOD is subscription video on demand. And transactional means rental purchase, things like that. AVOD has ads and subscriptions, Netflix and Amazon, those kinds of Hulu and those kinds of packages. Which brings me to my next question in the AVOD space, because I know this has jumped back and forth a bunch, you know, Pluto to be. And YouTube, which was gonna talk about, where are you seeing the biggest? The biggest returns right now in the AVOD space? And where do you see it going? In the next year or two? If you have that, if you can look in a crystal ball?

Linda Nelson 12:22
Oh, sure. Sure. Well, right now, I have to say Tubi, but it is for kind of specific content. It's urban, it's crime, right? We do not have Doc's doing well, on Tubi, for example, you know, so that, you know, is providing the largest, you know, revenue.

Alex Ferrari 13:13
We're on Tubi. Yeah. So let me let me ask real quick, I mean, me ask you about Tubi and this is something so so filmmakers listen to can understand the mentality about Tubi Tubi is a free service. So the customer base on a free service is going to probably be lower to middle income, kind of people, generally speaking, is that because the kind of movies

Linda Nelson 13:38
But more and more people are saying, Oh, I watch movies on Tubi all the time. Me personally, I don't like to be interrupted with ads. But there are a lot of people that grew up with regular television, and they're used to getting up and going to the restroom or grabbing a snack and they don't, doesn't bother. So I initially thought that, but I'm not of that persuasion anymore. And also, I think the fact that they now have a lot of star driven content on the channel, right, that is also changing that.

Alex Ferrari 14:16
Well, isn't it but so so what happened to to be is exactly what happened in the VHS market. Because originally the VHS market, the studios were staying away from VHS, because they're like, no, no, no, we don't want to do it. And then the boys like Canon and trauma and new world came in to fill up the content space. But as soon as the studio said, Oh, well let's throw in our stuff. Their back catalogue stuff come in. And then as you know, the cannon boys went under new worlds kind of did the thing drama can but they all dropped because now they had competitions from Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and all these big stars. So that's what's happening now.

Linda Nelson 14:49
It is, and it's why I think that for indies, more niche channels are going to grow and become Um, you know, better providers, you know, revenue, as long as they can survive, I mean, we'll see in the next couple of years are going to be who which of these channels that are still truly indie, you know, are going to survive, and there will be, there'll be a number of them, maybe we'll have five, maybe we'll have 10. But also, what's happening with those is that some of them are going global. And that's really affecting the whole marketplace, too. And markets below market. So we can talk about that a little bit. But I mean, like, you take, for example, the Roku channel, they're planning on going global global, free V, which is Amazon's AVR channel is planning on going global. And that's going to change things, too, you know, and Europe is starting to catch up. One of our big goals at the market this year is to make sure we are connecting to the best streamer in every territory, so that we can get content, you know, in all of the foreign territories. So it's just happening now they're way behind the United States.

Alex Ferrari 16:15
So that's a good question, then if the if Oh, if, let's say free because no freebies in, I think the UK, they're started, they're launching in the UK soon. And they're starting to roll out. I've heard freebies a good place to right now for AVOD. It's like up there with with to be. But if these big channels start to go,

Linda Nelson 16:37
I'm wondering, just stick something in there because I don't want to forget about it. freebie is paying 10 cents an hour period.

Alex Ferrari 16:44
Yeah, that's good.

Linda Nelson 16:48
But it's not dependent on the number of ad impressions. Right, the way the way all the other avons pay you a specific rate based on 1000 ad impressions.

Alex Ferrari 17:00
So it's a different model, it's just a completely different model. So So if these these companies start going global, that that's going to affect the markets, that means you can't sell to Germany, because your film might already be in Germany, because you are able to place it in Germany. So you're going to get more money out of your own placement in Germany, or you're going to make more money selling it to the guy or gal who, you know, can put it in Germany, like how has that changed the dynamics of the markets and Jen being able to sell internationally,

Linda Nelson 17:31
It's really changing it, because we are we have now started turning down some all rights deals in territories. Because we feel we can make more revenue streaming. And as, as some of these bigger streamers, like Roku channel, freebie, become global, and accepted, you know, in the same way that it took Netflix a number of years, right? To go global and be global and all of these territories, you know, it's gonna take some time for the indie streamers to mature in the marketplace, too. But as that starts to happen, more and more, they will all right, deals are not going to be as valuable, I don't think and you know, so those deals have tended to go down in value anyway. Right? And so yeah,

Alex Ferrari 18:31
It's that the 50,000 or $100,000 buyer used to get it now

Linda Nelson 18:35
They're like 15 20 for is good. So, but also it means that we have to really watch, you know, what's happening in in these territories streaming was the thing that's really important for distributors now and this is it has been pivotal for us is that you have really great rights management software, you know, like for us, all of our content now lives in the cloud. And we have it all. Every time we make a sale, it's marked for that country so that when somebody comes to us and ask for a list of films that are available for their territory, we can do it just like that, and deliver just like that. Whereas before, it would take a lot of research and digging through contracts to figure out okay, what films are available for which territories right? It was a little done by hand and on spreadsheets for years. But now, you know, people are starting to the technology is good enough to be able to do that. So for distributors, those distributors that are going to survive are the ones that can really manage their rights effectively. So

Alex Ferrari 19:51
So so when, because I remember when we were doing our deals back in the day for my couple films. You were saying like yeah, we're not going to sell to Australia because because we already have it on Amazon and the Australian guys, unless it's a special deal, we'll make more money, just because they're going to do they're going to put it up on Amazon. So we'll we'll just keep that money. Would it make sense then would you be set? Would you be interested in selling other rights in those territories like cable things, that theatrical things like that

Linda Nelson 20:22
Broadcast airlines, ships, most, most of the films that we have are, you know, are not going to go theatrical, they're just not big enough budget, like you said, you know, but But it's rising, we're starting to now kind of our upper limit is like 3 million, where it used to be 1 million, were the hit, we're starting to get a little bit better quality films and start to see, you know, some people like we just got a fantastic doc, that features Colin Farrell, who made a football team out of homeless people in Ireland, and it's fantastic, you know, some of you know, the more we can do that the better relationships, we're gonna be able to build with, you know, broadcasters. So opening up more for us than it was in the past.

Alex Ferrari 21:20
So let me ask you this, though. And I want this few people to really pick up open up the ears with this. You know, star power is still star power. The only thing that trumps star power is niche. And the niche has to be executed almost perfectly. And there's a lot of work to do that boat. Right now. As you see that those those carousels, those, those thumbnails go by, you stopped generally, when there's a star that you recognize is that Is that still true at any budget range, almost

Linda Nelson 21:55
100%. And it's like, when we got that film with Colin Farrell, and there was no picture of Colin, on the post. It may have been his personal preference to say, No, I want spotlight on me, I want the spotlight on the team, you know, but we were able to, you know, change our landscape posters and have him, you know, good picture of his face with a couple of team members and stuff. And it makes a huge difference. It really, really does. And also, star star power is important. And the niche thing. Just the the matter. Is there a big niches and

Alex Ferrari 22:44
The basketball movies not that big of a deal.

Linda Nelson 22:46
No, or it's always like if you have a movie about baseball, that's huge. You know, we have a baseball film that just did tremendously well, because of that. And but, you know, for example, you know, LGBT, you get really specific niche there, and it's only about trans, it's, that niche is much smaller, right? So baseball, the baseball, so we'd have to really work a lot harder, you know, at connect. So, you know, yes, mission is important. But yeah, to be sure that, you know, you're gonna be able to connect to that audience. And then one of the crossovers, I mean, we've we've had some films that start out with a small niche, and because the film was so good, it expands. And it's interesting to a broader audience.

Alex Ferrari 23:39
And I know a lot a large part of your catalogue, you've really focused on urban films, and films that aim at that demographic, that niche audience, and they've done exceptionally well with no star power. And sometimes, you know, I've seen some of the trailers, I'm like, how much did they make this for? Like, what it's being watched? How much like it's not, you know, it's not like high end, you know, giant but big budget productions, but they understand their audience. So Well, I mean, it's what Tyler Perry. I mean, exactly. It's exactly what Tyler Perry did. He's like, he knows his audience. You know, the Madea movies when they were starting out. We're not huge budget films, and they don't look like they're huge budget films. But he does good money. He's done. Okay, that's Tyler Perry. He's done.

Linda Nelson 24:29
Some amazing studio in Atlanta.

Alex Ferrari 24:32
Oh, I know. It's stunning. But so you've noticed that in the urban space, that's, that's an example of a niche, which is very large and still underserved. Am I correct?

Linda Nelson 24:47
Um, it's becoming less so because it's incredible. How many people you know like in Detroit, Lana? I'm Michigan, la. It's a new way besides music to try and make a name for yourself. And so because the costs of making a film has come down so much, because I mean, we just got to film yesterday where the film was shot on an iPhone, because the new iPhone creates does Pro Res files. Yeah. Stunning. You know, so it just the cost has come down. And so like people would start young, and they can really create a name for themselves. I mean, we've got we have filmmakers from Detroit that started when they were, you know, like, I don't know, 1820 years old. Now. They got five jobs under their belt, and the productions look really good. Out there, we have a new series coming out that that the filmmaker feels is almost comparable to the wire. Okay, so we'll see. Right? I mean, a lot of times people think they're, you know,

Alex Ferrari 26:15
You been crazy, crazy filmmakers to think that they're the next Spielberg. No, that never happened. There's no egos in our business, Linda, come on.

Linda Nelson 26:24
So I just there's a lot more urban content, and we have more competition. There was a time when I think we were kinda like the pioneers in the beginning, you know, for that, and we helped a lot of companies grow. And so now it's interesting. There are several distributors that are focusing on every company.

Alex Ferrari 26:44
Now as there is as far a thing anymore because so many things that people young filmmakers, especially in these 500 million, or below, they're like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon by I've haven't even heard of Amazon buying an indie film anytime in recent years. What what are you seeing? Because I know you have like, I remember you did that. It was at the blockbuster, the Netflix documentary that got sold off. But that's such a specific thing. In the in the s VOD space, are you seeing s5 deals? And if you are, what kind of deals are you seeing?

Linda Nelson 27:18
What are you seeing? We're seeing as pod deals that are nice specific, like that fishing channel, right? There is a sports channel. That's, you know, so we're seeing some very niche specific as far channels. As far as the big guys go, Netflix, as far as we're concerned is not for indie films. Our level then develops, it just isn't they won't pay you enough. And they will require so much exclusivity that you blown it, everybody's seen it. And you pay no money. I mean, even you know, like, I mean, we had one filmmaker who had a font of $250,000 film waited almost a year for his offer from Netflix, they kept promising, promising, promising and they kept telling keeping us on hold for a year. Finally, the offer came through 35,000. Okay, so it was broken. What did you notice? You know, so I mean, it's just, it's just not worth it's a waste your time they want to. So that's the biggest VOD, that's still there. Hulu is, is add support now. You know, it's a combination, they have three different tiers. Right. But they're only doing original content now. When I buy but the same was Netflix saying, you know,

Alex Ferrari 28:45
What, I actually got I sold this as made before this has made came to you I sold this is Meg to Hulu and, and in 2017. That never would happen to them in a million years, because it

Linda Nelson 28:58
Delivered whistled, went to Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 29:01
It was just a different place back then. And it's just, it's just remarkable now. Yeah, cuz that's fine. It's just this big thing that everyone always talks about. And I just wanted to kind of debunk that you were gonna say,

Linda Nelson 29:12
Well, there's there's two other things Netflix is adding in November an AVOD.

Alex Ferrari 29:19
Of course, has to have to wrap an option. Yeah, of course, they have to.

Linda Nelson 29:24
And then prime. Ah, I still in my head. I'm thinking Amazon wants to move most of brought prime over to 3d. But still, we have a number of films that have good enough customer engagement. I mean, I'm, I even have people come to me say, Oh, don't put me on, you know, Amazon Prime because it's only a penny an hour. Well, no, it's at the penny an hour if you do nothing and don't promote the film. Yes. But for our filmmakers that work on promoting the films getting reviews, the way You know, we teach them, then they have a car in the 90s and 12 cents an hour. So which is, which is good.

Alex Ferrari 30:13
But isn't it sad Linda, though, like you've been in the game long enough to remember when you could actually make more than 12 cents. For one on one. I understand. But you remember when they were you were making 3.99? Oh, yeah, for a rental or 9.99 or, or God forbid a DVD at $20 per per purchase.

Linda Nelson 30:33
You know, it's, it's only four or five years since then, that iTunes was the top revenue producer for us. It was all paid transactional. And that's because there was the slow transition from the video store to streaming. Right. So the only advantage to like iTunes, and Amazon TVOD, was you didn't have to get in your car and go to Blockbuster. Right, that was the advantage. So you will still use the paying 3.99 4.99 to rent a DVD for the weekend, you know, and we used to all go to the, you know, the video store and pick up three or four movies for the weekend. I mean, it was you know,

Alex Ferrari 31:18
We're dating ourselves. We're dating ourselves.

Linda Nelson 31:23
So that, and slowly that has transitioned to the fact where people don't want to pay for it anymore. They just don't want to pay unless Tom Cruise's in it or,

Alex Ferrari 31:34
You know, but that's like one movie like Top Gun is an anomaly. Like, that's such an anomaly, because I actually paid for that movie. Like I watched in the theater. Yeah. And then when it came out, I was like, I'm buying it. Because it's such an amazing, I want to see it on my surround sound at all and all that stuff. But that's rare. You know, now minor movies come out. And unless it's a Marvel movie that I really, really want to go see. I'm like, Ah, it's gonna be on Disney plus in two months, I'll wait. And then I can see it at home. And my surround sound like it for me doesn't doesn't do it for me as much as it used to. And I think that kids Exactly.

Linda Nelson 32:11
Have to take kids to the theater now.

Alex Ferrari 32:14
It's yeah, it's still Yeah, I mean, you take take Top Gun and all the Marvel movies out of the theatrical experience last year? And what does it what is? What is what do they have? Really, it's gonna be a tough now, it's not what it used to be without any question. Now. You mentioned this little new company called YouTube. That's coming up. And I've, I've seen firsthand, I've had other people on the show talking about it. You mentioned that thing in our last conversation, and people, filmmakers, the filmmaking snobs, if you will, because we're all again, we're all geniuses. All of our work is Oscar worthy. I understand that. And when you hear the word YouTube, you're like, you want to put me up next to cat videos. That's ridiculous. Tell everybody the truth of what kind of revenue is being generated on YouTube right now?

Linda Nelson 33:11
Well, we have a comedy special that made $30,000 last month

Alex Ferrari 33:22
On your YouTube channel.

Linda Nelson 33:25
Okay. And, you know, it's interesting. Still, like you're talking about, almost, you know, almost all of our filmmakers, when they first come to us, they're like, oh, no, please don't put my movie on YouTube. It's too good to be way too good. And it's just that, I think for the most part, filmmakers don't stay on top of what's going on in the industry. Right. So which is why I think it's like, really important for filmmakers to allocate a little time, you know, like each week just to see what's going on in the industry, because it is constantly changing. And it seems to be changing more rapidly now than ever. There. This whole new concept of MCN, which are multi channel networks, has actually been around for probably about more than 10 years. Would you say, Michael? Because Disney was the first big MCN you know, pay yo lot of money for

Alex Ferrari 34:33
Maker maker, Maker

Linda Nelson 34:34
Studio. And so so they've been around for a long time, but it's kind of been under the radar because YouTube people don't see YouTube as being comparable to universal, or Paramount or Warner Brothers or even Netflix. But now,

Alex Ferrari 34:56
They're, they're bigger than all of them.

Linda Nelson 34:59
Bigger than all All together 2.6 billion active users. That's a lot of eyeballs. And we really think within not this year, but by the end of next year, that they will be the largest broadcaster of independent film. No question. I believe I believe that. And, and what's there's so many advantages of, you know, having your content there, 90, okay, we have a channel. And we really just started building our channel in January or February, right, really building it, we've always had one, we used to use it just to book trailers on it. And then the trailers would have a link to where you could rent to be or Amazon or eBay or Amazon or whatever. And then then we we realized that when the bigger MC ends, were coming to us asking us for content, whoa, what's going on here? Right? So we have a partnership with Valley arms, Valley arm is out of Australia. And they're one of the largest MCS and they were really smart, they set up all of these different specific niche channels. So they have movies, I think their main channel is called Movie Central. And then there's movie central horror movie central drama movie central sci fi, movie central Doc's. Right. And so if you look up movie Central, you'll see they have like, 11 channels. And so they market those channels. So there's very specific places for people to see, you know, the content. And not only that you to actually markets that are not their algorithm, push 95% of our views come from recommendations from Google, just naturally through the algorithm, not the filmmakers, only 5% comes from the filmmakers directly saying, I think there's still some resistance to people's watch my movie, I do, too. But I think they'll get over that quickly.

Alex Ferrari 37:21
That's a brand new, it's a brand new thing.

Linda Nelson 37:23
You get to see our reports. So when you see the next set of reports, you know, not so much this one, because we just started really in January, February, but we for four or five years, we had only 10,000 subscribers, right? Well, now we have a quarter of a million, right? Just just this year. And and it's and it's going really, really well. So we we start we're now starting our movies on our YouTube channel, and that's indie rights movies for free. And but we also work with three MC ns, we work with JUNGO TV, and they have a couple of channels. And the films are getting millions of views. And and it's it's amazing. They, the MC ends actually have a special relationship with Google where Google gives them more more information and features than just a regular individual YouTube user has.

Alex Ferrari 38:28
So and so everybody listening, thinking like okay, great. I'm just gonna put my movie up on YouTube, like, no, no, it hasn't worked out you need you need that you need to have a channel that's monetized. First of all, what should you need over 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch within a 12 month period.

Linda Nelson 38:44
A lot of subscribers,

Alex Ferrari 38:46
A lot of subscribers, isn't going to do it. So but I've been looking, I started doing a lot of research into these MCS and it was pretty interesting to see, I mean, some of these 345 7 million 10 million subscribers. So you're thinking about that you're like, Well, if you just put a movie up, you know, if a percent you know, or 5% or 10% Watch, you know right away and then that algorithm starts kicking in and if it's something that's niche, then it goes into the niche, all algorithms and if you know what you're doing on YouTube and how to optimize it, and also one thing that's really interesting to the CPMs are high much higher the highest much on Amazon much higher than to be even right yes, it's just volume right now. So it's just coming up. Now do you believe this is really interesting because the studios haven't done this yet. Studios have they're scared to to jump in they'll put their movies up for rental on YouTube. They what I've seen is the clips they do a lot of the clips of you know Famous Movies so you'll and that's been going on for a while. Do you think that they're going to open up?

Linda Nelson 39:53
They already are they already are there several studios that are putting their content up

Alex Ferrari 39:58
Like Lionsgate I'm sure Lionsgate will do the same.

Linda Nelson 40:01
I have to go back and look, but we research that too. And they're they're starting to do it, they realized, due to

Alex Ferrari 40:09
There's a lot of value, there's a lot of eyeballs there

Linda Nelson 40:11
6 Billion eyeballs, there's plenty of room for us there.

Alex Ferrari 40:18
But it's also what you've done is interesting because you're creating your own CPM. So that means that your audience, your subscribers of free of charge are going to your channel, so your content is going to be seen up there first.

Linda Nelson 40:31
And we're not splitting that revenue with anyone else, if we were put our movies up to an MCN they're automatically taking half of the revenue. And so then we are paying our filmmakers, 80% of half of the revenue, whereas the stuff that's on our channel, they're getting 80% Of all the revenue, which is great. And the other thing that is so incredible about YouTube, is the analytics are beyond belief. So tell you cities what cities are watching it. So you can focus your, your marketing, they tell you what city, they tell you what age what gender it's, the demographics are beyond like, nobody, nobody else does that. I mean, I can't tell you, how many finally to be now has a new portal for distributors. And we can see by territory, but up till, you know, a couple of months, July 1, they opened a new portal to us so we can see what you know, what's selling in Mexico with selling in the US with selling in Australia and New Zealand? So. So I think, like I said, as these channels go global, there's gonna be more and more opportunity and, and hopefully, we'll get more demographic information like for Amazon, we only know by country.

Alex Ferrari 41:57
Yeah, it's a slightly different mindset because YouTube is democratic. There's, I mean, YouTube is essentially a social media platform mixed with a video platform. So there, Alan analytics are crazy. And they want their creators to have as much information as possible so they can continue to create. So it's like a perfect storm. So you guys have essentially become your own platform. And you're an a distributor as well. So yeah, hopefully one day you have 10 million subscribers, and you just sit there and like, you know what, we're just putting it up on our channel, nobody else is gonna pay us enough. We're just doing that. And we'll just split that with you. And that might be Now one other thing, though. So if you obviously if you have an exclusive rights to the movie, nobody else can put it up on YouTube, other than you. So there's only one copy of that floating around. But if you're working with other MCs, how does that work? If there's two of the same movie going on?

Linda Nelson 42:48
No, no. They currently YouTube is allowing multiple copies. Movie, we, they whitelist us we have what's called Content ID and and so like we Valley arm, they whitelist us so we're allowed to put the same content that they have. We've heard you know, whispers that eventually, that YouTube's not going to want to have competing channels

Alex Ferrari 43:18
Competing.

Linda Nelson 43:21
Yeah, well, the channels are competing. But the same movie, the same exact movie. So so but that has not happened yet. You know, and if it does, they're going on our channel.

Alex Ferrari 43:34
Right! Because you control it, you control it. And you're, you're growing it at such a rapid rate. Because you're offering basically free movies to an international market. And then you could also do translations to other languages. If you want and target those, there's so many different things, but you're in complete control of it, you're not dealing.

Linda Nelson 43:51
And what's great is it's so simple just to geoblocked. So say we have a film and we've already sold it to Germany and Malaysia. And, and Taiwan. Then when we're setting that up on our YouTube channel, we just blocked blocked those territories. So, you know, so, again, it's that rights management issue is really, really important.

Alex Ferrari 44:15
I mean, I've been yelling it from the top of the mountain, that YouTube's the future, and people are like, You're crazy. I'm like, no, no, I've been a YouTuber for for over seven years as well. So I've seen what happened on my own YouTube channel. And then I started talking to other people who have MC M's that have done very, very well and are continuing to do very, very well. And so let me ask you, then what do you see around the corner? In your eyes? Do you see? I mean, obviously YouTube is going to be I think you I think you're right YouTube's going to take over, as far as independent films are concerned generate revenue generation for independent films, generally speaking. Do you see something else coming around the corner that that you're hearing whispers of?

Linda Nelson 44:59
Well, No one for the first time in in July, streaming surpassed broadcasts in revenue for the first time. You know, and it's it's actually taken longer than I thought, I 10 years ago, I would have said five years. And but it's taken 10 years, you know, for it to happen. But the rate of decline is getting faster now. So, I think you'll see very quickly that that traditional broadcast cable is just going to disappear,

Alex Ferrari 45:39
Or go into like HBO Max, or go into

Linda Nelson 45:43
Your streaming

Alex Ferrari 45:45
There's not going to be broadcast as much. I mean, we will come we will come to a time where broadcast is gone.

Linda Nelson 45:53
The things that may say although prop, maybe not because of the internet is, you know, like sports, live events.

Alex Ferrari 46:03
But that was that's an Amazon Prime.

Linda Nelson 46:05
Exactly. So there's no football. Yeah, I mean, I we watched the Formula One races on, you know, over the internet streaming on YouTube TV,

Alex Ferrari 46:17
ESPN plus, that's it that's streaming now to like, there's a lot of these, these channels are

Linda Nelson 46:24
For the foreseeable future, I see streaming. I'm, I'm not real hot. This virtual stuff that's going on. Like we actually, we actually have a movie streaming in a virtual theater in decentraland. Okay, right. Yeah. So there's virtual lands out there, where people are, oh, this isn't shops and stuff. And, you know, like, so you can meet people, you know, with your avatar and go together to a movie theater and watch one of our movies in a virtual thing. But I just, I don't see that.

Alex Ferrari 47:04
She said famously, on this episode, and then five years from now, I was so wrong. We're making millions off this virtual crap. You don't know. But you know what, like, if you would have told me about that whole virtual reality, like, look, it's you know, it's it's old, as old as is video games themselves. But it's turning into I mean, people are buying virtual real estate on certain platforms, like,

Linda Nelson 47:27
Oh, J Central, and that that's, there's land for sale there where you could build a building and you don't have a business and it's insane. It is. It's insane. It reminds the use of Sim was it sim city

Alex Ferrari 47:41
Sims. Yeah, it was SimCity. The Sims, The Sims? Yeah,

Linda Nelson 47:44
I did that back every time. And I tried to go back and think why did that not really catch on? Yeah. Maybe it was just the internet wasn't fast enough or good enough back then. So. So I don't see that happening. I just think we're going to be living in a streaming world, that there are going to be a number that there will be a mass consolidation. You know, so, but that the ones that survive will either be the big boys, or very specific, niche content, platforms streaming. And you know what, it's gonna settle down. And there's a million things bubbling up there right now, but it's gonna settle down. And then there's gonna be, you know, maybe there'll be two or 300 channels the same way. There was on cable. If you think back, you know, when cable

Alex Ferrari 48:40
Oh, my God, you're hundreds of cable channels.

Linda Nelson 48:43
Right. And then, you know, but it settled down to, you know, some reasonable amount that people said, Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 48:50
As opposed to like, 500. Yeah, it was. It was insane.

Linda Nelson 48:54
I think we'll see the same thing happened with streaming.

Alex Ferrari 48:58
So will you guys went to Cannes this year? What was it? What did you see there? And what did you see differently? And obviously, it was I think there was the first one since the pandemic, right. So what did you see?

Linda Nelson 49:10
We saw less people, less buyers, less exhibitors. And I think that the reason for that well, one, there was still some countries that couldn't participate. So I think the real Bill whether is going to be AFM this year, but already I can see that there are only about 200 exhibitors so far. Normally, there's

Alex Ferrari 49:43
Yeah, well, I mean, you can't compare compare it. You can't compare to pre pandemic times, but from what I'm hearing, because I'll be at AFM this year and I'm working closely with those guys and they're telling me the numbers and they are some big studios are showing up so that's that's nice. So that They say that's what they say that they've signed up and people are buying. But it is a shorter AFM, it is more condensed. They are focusing it more now from what I understand to the independent filmmaker, or independent producers showing up as opposed to distributors and buyers as much showing up. So they're doing a lot more education. They're trying to try to pivot a bit, because a lot of that business can be done, arguably online, because it was done for the last two years online. So it's weird. So I'm really curious to see what it's going to be like, at AFM this year.

Linda Nelson 50:36
Yes, and all and also AFM is doing what Ken did. And that is to allow exhibitors to not have an office in the venue, main venue. And I really think that's a bad idea and counter to their survival. So there are a number of companies and that are having their office in the condo they're renting. Right. Any, any presence in the actual building itself? And I think it's very bad for the market. But yeah, and so they're getting all the benefits, you know, we're we have to pay a lot of money to have an office in the in the hotel, right? Who else would have to pay the $3,500, you know, kind of registration for the company, they're getting away with just paying that. And they still get all the benefit of being in you know, and printed catalogs, being able to do screenings, and being able to walk around and, you know, meet everybody in the venue. So, I don't know, I just didn't think it was a very good idea. So I think, you know, I think in the end, it's gonna hurt them. Because I don't know, I don't, if they're going to be working towards, you know, producers going to visit people, if there's less people to visit, how do you promote that? Right? And we're not seeing a lot of pre sale. Activity,

Alex Ferrari 52:15
It's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be an interesting market, to say the least the first one that we're

Linda Nelson 52:21
Gonna have our normal wine and cheese party on Friday night. You're welcome.

Alex Ferrari 52:27
I'm not sure I'll be there on Friday night. But I will be there a little bit because I got kids, and there's Halloween coming up. So I'm not sure what the days are. But I'll be there.

Linda Nelson 52:37
Halloween is our setup day?

Alex Ferrari 52:39
So I'll be there. I think the second through the fourth, that's I'm going to be there during those times, because I'm speaking on the third there. So that'll be the night of the third, we will come we will we will we will definitely connect no question. Now. What else kind of debunk this because so many filmmakers still believe this as a truth. And it's not in my opinion. I'd love to hear yours. Film Festivals. What does it actually mean to you guys? What does it actually mean to a distributor and like, obviously, if you win Sundance and South by, it's great. It's nice. I'd like to win South by or Sundance, but it doesn't have the juice that it used to have. That in my opinion. So what's your opinion on film festivals? And how does that affect your acquisition? And how does it affect sales if any.

Linda Nelson 53:24
If you don't get in like one of the top 10 I would then only do maybe one or two local regional festivals, you know, so close to where you live, so that you don't spend a lot of money on it. It's, it's not worth it. The smaller ones, it's nice to, you know, again, have a couple of laurels. But now that everything is streaming platforms won't let us put laurels on the posters

Alex Ferrari 54:00
I haven't seen.

Linda Nelson 54:02
We I think it is Amazon loving us know, everyone knows stripping off. You know, we have to strip laurels off posters, that used to be the big advantage is it go put the laurels on your post, you can still know what we suggest to people to do is, you know, when you have your trailer have a screen one of the you know, screens so your laurels, you know so you know it can have a little value. But like I said if you don't get in the top 10 do one or two local. And that's it because what we've seen happen is filmmakers they get on this run and we have one film that went to like 25 festivals. Well by the time they got through it that the film's two years old because people have a very bad habit of saying they're premieres when they premiered a festival. Your film is not released It's not premiering till it's in release. Right? And so filmmakers have got to stop doing that on IMDb, because everybody there that looks at our films, looks at IMDb to see what year it was produced. And I've lost three sales.

Alex Ferrari 55:18
Because Because of that, yeah, and it's again, and I think that's a holdover from the 90s. And it's a holdover from that, that era of like, Oh, you've got to be in Sundance or South buyer, Tribeca, and all those are wonderful. But if you've got a movie with no stars in it, and if it's not the proper genre, and you happen to win one of those festivals, which I've been part of those movies, and I've seen those firsthand. It doesn't sell it just won't sell just because Sundance is aren't you won some award at Sundance, unless it's a proper niche, proper genre, or has some talent. Yeah, like, you know, oh, Palm Springs sold for 17 point 5 million. I'm like, yeah, it had Andy Samberg and JK Simmons. Are you kidding me? Like, come on, like that was done already. And that was a that was a, that was a deal beforehand, almost. But it's just I just wanted to kind of debunk that for filmmakers listening that don't waste your time. Waiting a year to funny.

Linda Nelson 56:17
Oh, marketing.

Alex Ferrari 56:20
I mean, it's but that's but and this is something that I know you deal with a lot you and Michael deal with a lot, Linda is emotion. Because you This is such an emotional product. It's not cookies, it's not stationery, it's not staplers. It's not printers. This is art that someone has put their heart and soul into. And now they give it to you to do the business with. But then they have these delusions in their head or misunderstandings about how the business is run, that they have expectations. Like I just talked to some some guy the other day. And he's like, Yeah, I have this horror movie I looked at the horror movie has no stars in it nicely produced, but nothing, you know, out of this world. And I said, Look, you know, go to Linda, go to give you two or three distributors that I recommend for this kind of budget. And it was done for like sub 100,000. And he you know, I sent them to a distributor distributor called me he's like the dude says he's he's expecting 600k because someone told them it was 600k. I'm like, Are you out of your ignore him? Ignore him. He's crazy. But that's the thing. And then that craziness will last about six months to a year, until they figure out oh, wait a minute, nobody's really going to give me 600k For this, no one's gonna give me 100k For this, hey, no one's gonna give me any k for this. I'm just gonna donate this to somebody. So essentially, where it gets, you know, and that's so do you, how do you deal with the emotions of the insanity that is being a filmmaker, because you guys are filmmakers yourself. So you guys are a little insane as well.

Linda Nelson 57:53
We are and we're getting ready to go into production on a film of our own. So, you know,

Alex Ferrari 58:00
You know a good distributor?

Linda Nelson 58:05
And, you know, it's very interesting, because I would say at least, at least half of the filmmakers that come to us that we decide to work with have over valued ideas of their film. And, and, you know, I mean, it's, it's like for, and they've done some things that have really almost kind of self sabotage them from the beginning. You know, like making a film in black and white, or an indie film with no names in it, you stay away from black and white. We've not been successful with one black and white film. And right now it's a reason for us to just not take a film. And that's it. That's a shame. The other thing is, for some reason, indie filmmakers think they have to be super edgy. Right? They have to have sex in it, and you know, and really extreme violence and show everything. You don't have to show everything you could be like Hitchcock, right hate, and you know, like, just see the blood going down the drain. And we know somebody's been stepped up. You know, and that's particularly true when it comes to Amr. And this is something that people don't think about when they're when they're shooting their film and figuring out their shots and what they're going to show on the screen and what they're not. It's critical that you don't have excessive drugs, sex, profanity, because YouTube view advertisers won't put their ads on your content. Probably half of our libraries unsuitable for ads, which is a shame. But we'd like everybody still to be able to go on our YouTube channel, but we just can't because they get denied. So, every filmmaker before they pick their shots and do their shot list, go on YouTube and look at their community guidelines. And read them, they're pretty clear, they are very, they give very specific examples of what you know, you know, what, what's acceptable and what's not. So really think about, you know, where's your drone going to wind up. And it's not, you know, I mean, artists don't usually, they're not trained to think that way, or they're not trained at all, they just don't normally think that way. But if you want, if you want success in the business, and you want to stay in the business, then you need to make films that have a chance of being successful. And that your films are really good, they're going to be successful. So it's not like you're doing it for the money, you're not doing it for the wrong reason. But but but you do, there are certain things that you have to keep in mind. You know, when you're writing, if you're a writer, or if you're the cinematographer, the director, you know, how you're going to shoot and stuff really, really. And then the other suggestion that can work. And we've been successful with this is to make two versions of your film, one for the regular streamers, and then another MP for edited version for YouTube channel. And, and sometimes it's just a matter of taking out 20 F bombs. Right. We had one movie that turned down for moaning. They didn't even show, you know, the simulated sex, but there was a lot of moaning

Alex Ferrari 1:01:45
Apparently a lot, a lot.

Linda Nelson 1:01:48
And so, they soon as I took the morning out, it passed. So anyway, so it's something to keep in mind when you're, you know, when you're shooting your own.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:05
And you know, you know what a lot of people are like, Oh, but I'm an artist, I don't have to do them. Like, look, Scorsese couldn't get taxi driver through the the boards to get an R rating. Because of obviously taxi drivers have been violent. Even even for the 70s it was a bit violent. And all he did was desaturate the blood in the color to in the color timing. Wow. And because he desaturated the blood, it passed. Everyone's got to deal with with censorship in that sense. Because look, this is just the world we live in. If you want to then build up your own channel, somewhere in OTT and have people pay you directly to watch your films. Good luck. But that's an option if you want to be an artist. But this is this is a business and you have to think about it as a business. It is a weirdest business, one of the weirdest businesses in the world because it is art and commerce together. And you got to kind of figure out that balance that make it work for you. Now, there's

Linda Nelson 1:03:08
Really important about YouTube, and that is music rights. We've had terrific amount of problems with people that a lot of people unfortunately, when they license music for their film, they just get festival rights. Right now, they don't go back. And you know, we suggest that you get perpetual rights right from the beginning. Always. And quite frankly, if your building is under 100 grand, I would say just do ask for Internet rights. It's a lot cheaper than trying to ask for the actual Right.

Alex Ferrari 1:03:46
Or I'll tell you what, there's so many music services out there soundstripe film pack film like there's so many like I did for both of my movies. I use music from these the stock places that give you complete rights if you pay you know you if you're a member, and there's some really great songs on the on the corner of ego and desire all the music in there except for I think, two pieces of music which I bought outright rights to, or had my composer do were some songs with lyrics and they were perfect for the scenes and and they cost me nothing because it was just part of my membership of 180 bucks a year or something like that. So there are other options. And if you really go on down and down and dirty there is free YouTube music that you can download from YouTube itself to use for your for your content as well. You know, it all depends but yeah, I agree. So many movies. Now that's another thing with with posts. So like I know you'd like to use the term post post on your films, and filmmakers have to understand post post preparing for deliverables and preparing to get your movie into distribution. From when I was doing it back in the day, my post house was much more complicated than it is today where it seems that it's a lot easier, but still a lot of pitfalls to fall into. So can you kind of go a little bit over postpones of what you're looking for and movies,

Linda Nelson 1:05:13
So first I'll talk about, you know, making sure that you're preparing for distribution. Most of the premium platforms, their minimum requirement is 1920, by 1080, progress, or two to HQ, two channel stereo. So we always require that from our filmmakers, that's the basic format, and your and your trailer must match the feature. Okay, so same frame rate, right. And so it must, it must be the same. If you've also, you know, have a 4k or a 5.1, you can include include those optionally, to us, but you must have that, that one format, because that will work for us to put on every single channel. So, so that's, that's really critical. And, and there are some basic rules that you have to follow, for example, different distributors will be different. We have a bumper, you know, with our logo on it, that we require you to put on the front of your film, in the same way that universal or Warner Brothers or anybody else would have, you put that on there. And I guess, that has to be preceded by two frames of black in the beginning, and two frames of black at the end, no more tones, no more color bars, even for broadcasting, they're not requiring it anymore. So they don't, you know, it's not something that we want. And nobody, nobody will take it that has to be stripped off. And also you cannot, on the back end, you can put any URL, so don't put your website don't promise any of the people that donated stuff that you put their website on their or their Instagram handle, though, at handles no URLs, not allowed. I probably 20% of the bills that we get have that and they have to redo there. So So that's, that's really, really important. And if you don't have a still photographer, you can your editing system will produce very high res screen grabs, you know, we we always need at least five of those. And we also need closed captions, two formats, dot SCC and dot SRT. Right, so those, those are all of them. And the most important thing to think about is your poster. That was done and we when we require to we require a vertical a portrait, you know, aspect ratio poster and a landscape poster because some platforms use landscape and some use portrait and have really clear title art and as to really show up if you have some little skinny that you can't read it when you stand back. They'll reject it, you know, they want strong title art has to be Photoshop, and all all texts on separate layers and strong images. No little people on the beach looking out somewhere, you know, it's your faces if you have anybody that's of, you know, importance you want their face on the poster, but strong bold images because your poster needs to be clickbait when somebody's sitting with their remote control or their phone or their laptop and they're just flipping to posters. They've got to be grabbed by your poster.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:09
So obviously a puppy saving Christmas that's obviously going to sell all day.

Linda Nelson 1:09:14
Yes. If you have a Christmas tree and a little puppy

Alex Ferrari 1:09:20
And maybe there's like a helicopter and he's hanging with it like he's looking cool that done done on that and then put Dean Cain on it. Sold!

Linda Nelson 1:09:31
The posts are really important and the trailer. Also, I'm gonna say two things about, you know, shooting and editing. Your trailer is important for TVOD sites. It has to move quickly. A lot of fast cuts even if it's a drama, you still want it to move quickly. No dwelling moments, you know, in your artistic moments. Yeah, no. So so you don't want that so you want it To be very fast paced under two minutes has to be under two minutes. If it's over, they truncate it. And, you know, that messes up your trailer, keep it under two minutes. And then regarding the movie, it's more important than ever, to engage quickly with the audience. Especially on a lot. Because if somebody doesn't get engaged quickly, they're just let Brian out because they haven't paid for it. And they will just like, bounce off and try something else. On AVOD. Usually, they don't even watch trailers, they just start the movie and they get engaged, they stay, they don't get engaged, they're gone. So don't start with the slow moving, you know, building moments. No, you need something has to happen in the beginning. And don't put everyone's credit on the front of the movie. All you need is the directors in the cast. That's it. And then you can put everybody's credits on the back because we get movie sometimes. It gets 10 minutes, the credits on the front, is it all we have to thank everybody, we didn't pay them and do it. People just don't stay and especially with Avon, because you're getting paid based on how many ads people watch. And if they only watch five minutes and then leave. It doesn't make any money.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:28
It's a such a different way of looking at the process and and filmmakers need to people listening, guys, please listen to what Linda saying. Because it is. I mean, look, we've look what we've been talking about seven years at this point, Linda, I mean, you've been you've been coming on the show for seven years, many of the things that you're saying have not changed. Many things have as far as the business is concerned. But a lot of these core ideas have not changed. And to think about your movie as a business is different. If you want to make an arthouse film, then just make an arthouse film a backyard film, something that's art, then go to some museums, you have to play it, you know, put it up yourself somewhere and see what happens. But don't be upset when you don't want the Oscar. But now you have to think about like, Okay, you're almost changing, the filmmakers almost have to think like YouTubers, where they have to engage within the first five seconds, 10 seconds, if not, someone's going to click away. Where are the older filmmakers of the of the generation behind us, even in the 90s, you could take your time you could build because you were in a theater, or you just rented a VHS or DVD and you weren't going to you can't click away from that you're kind of locked in. So it had to be really bad for you to get up, eject the tape, or pop out the DVD or things like that. So you were it was a different environment and theatrical, you're pretty much locked in there for those two hours. So you, it was a much more artistic situation. But nowadays, you're just competing with too much media, from from social media to YouTube creators, who you know, some guy who makes a 20 minute video about what Mr. B's doing whatever he does, is more it's going to hold more people's attention when he does like the squid games. Redo with live people now. And he did it all that thing made millions of dollars millions of dollars. And it cost him millions to make but he I think he pulled in at the end of the whole thing. I think that the numbers were like, you know, 700,000 million dollars or plus take home off of that deal. And probably more so than now. But that's what you're competing with. And especially if you're on YouTube.

Linda Nelson 1:13:44
Right! And so then to answer the second half of your question about post post, we used to always think of you know, your film journey as you know, being in development and then pre production and production and post it and you're done boom, you give it to a distributor, Dennis. Well, now there is a new phase and we call it post post. And that's about posting after post production and it's critical to the success of your movie and you can prepare for post post throughout your production cycle. Everyone on your set has got a 4k camera in their pocket. Everyone can be doing you know small interviews with their classmates or their crew mates or you know what's going on. And if you would provide them with a folder on like say Google Drive, they can all upload to that and you're going to be collecting these assets the move will become very valuable to you during post post because the worst thing I see people do when they realize oh my god my films done and now I got to do some promotion is they post their trailer 500 times and people get sick and see and you know, you just can't just use your trailer. Right so we we have a lot of debris and strategies for, you know how and what to post and where the second thing I think that's really, really critical for people to understand is that your movie is not a brand. And we've been trying to pitch this for a long time and plan people still, you know, they want them, you know, they want to see the film as a brand. And it's not the filmmaker as a brand, I don't think any filmmaker makes a movie thinking, this is the only movie I'm gonna ever make no, they make a movie, because they want to make movies. And they want to do it long term. If they want that dream to come true, then they have to learn how to be successful. And part of that is learning about the business side of it. So you are the filmmakers the brand, it could be a production company, say you have two or three people that have got together and made a production company and you're going to planning on you know, making movies together for a long time, we have several, you know, companies like that. And then then so your YouTube channel, your Twitter account, your Instagram account should be the brand, which is you or your production company, so that you're slow, you're building, as you build your body of work, you're building an audience. And so if this is your first first film fine, and that's all it's going to be on those channels, when you do your next film, then you're going to push that down on the channel, and you're going to feature the new movie, but you're already going to have subscribers and followers and people waiting for that new movie. So you're constantly building bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's why like, I told you that one filmmaker had 600,000 emails, okay, from all the movies that it made and built up their, you know, their, their brand. And then on Facebook, you make a separate page for each project. That way, you're minimizing the number of profiles you have to maintain as well, if you start making a separate one for every single movie, next thing, you know, you're gonna have 40 or 50 profiles to maintain.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:55
Tell me about it. Yeah.

Linda Nelson 1:16:58
So you want it so you want to keep in mind, you are the brand, and you want to build up, you know, an audience or your body of work, so that people, you know, will look to you, it's you know, that's how people like Coppola, and you know, in in any of these big

Alex Ferrari 1:17:16
Scorsese

Linda Nelson 1:17:18
And I don't care how big they are, they all started building, you know, he started with Memento was a, it was an independent film, right? You know, and you build a body of work, and then people are waiting for your next movie, eventually. And, you know, it's movie making you get better and better as you go on, you know, it's just something that you learn and protect your craft. And, you know, so that's all really, really works.

Alex Ferrari 1:17:44
So Linda, where can people find out more about you and what you and Michael are doing over at Indie rights?

Linda Nelson 1:17:49
Well, our website is indierights.com. And there's a lot of information there a lot of testimonials you can actually see our contract, they're part of our reputation is that we're very, very transparent. We have a great YouTube channel now that's called indie rights movies for free. And that's where you'll find a lot of our movies, their full feature length films in HD and, and eventually that's where you know, our movies go, we of course, we take the time to exploit other avenues first, you know, you'll get to go to a market like its market we go to, we make a really nice catalog that features each film. And if you have done your work and gotten tomatoes, you'll have a tomato on your page. And you know, quote, and so everybody gets to be in this book four times, twice, once for each candidate if and you get a big page and then Then afterwards, you get a full page after 20 years buyers aren't interested in even looking so you need to make the most of those first two years. So that's, that's those are the two best places to find us. We're also of course on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:18
Linda, it has been a pleasure talking to you as always, you are a wealth of information and and I appreciate all the work that you've been doing to help filmmakers over the years and trying to get some money for free for them and hopefully educating them you do a lot of education as well and really kind of walk people through the process after they signed with you. So I do truly appreciate everything you've done and I'll see you at AFM as every year and and hopefully, we'll we'll talk about those virtual reality revenue streams that we're going to be making.

Linda Nelson 1:19:53
So much honor to be on your show and it's always a pleasure!

Alex Ferrari 2:40
Today's guest is returning champion Linda Nelson from indie writes. Now Linda was on episode 17. And she is hasn't been here for a while but things have changed dramatically since last time. We spoke to her about distribution, and the world of VOD s VOD t VOD, a VOD, and you know physical media and all sorts of stuff. But we really get into it. This is a master class no joking about distribution. And if you really want to know the differences between traditional distributor verse is a self distribution model. Linda really breaks it down for you very, very well. I love indie writes, I've sent a ton of the tribe to her for distribution. Not every movie is perfect for self distribution. Some movies need or demand, a traditional distribution distribution partner or a hybrid of the two. And indie REITs is by far the top of my list, and I'll put her links all her links in the show notes. But without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Linda Nelson from indie REITs. I'd like to welcome returning champion, Linda Nelson. How are you, Linda?

Linda Nelson 4:00
Good morning. I'm so thrilled to be back talking to indie film hustle.

Alex Ferrari 4:05
Yes, you were on episode number 15. If I remember correctly, so it's been a few. It's been a minute since you've been with us.

Linda Nelson 4:14
Yes. And and in distribution, that like a century

Alex Ferrari 4:18
In today's world, not in like the 70s and 80s it was pretty standard and didn't move very much. But in today's world, things are moving.

Linda Nelson 4:26
So I think for a good 30 years, you know, 20 to 30 years it was just all about DVD sales. And that was it and and now it's very much based in physical media and that has totally changed.

Alex Ferrari 4:38
So we'll get we'll definitely get into all of that good stuff. But so for those who don't remember, how did you get into the business and how did indie writes the company you work with outcome to be?

Linda Nelson 4:48
Well, my partner current partner Michael Madison, I made a had the opportunity to make a big budget film. It was a 5 million Dollar film was our first film. And we expected to get very wealthy off of that. And instead it wound up in a lawsuit. So he fell over the DVD sales. So

Alex Ferrari 5:12
In the biz, in Hollywood, I can't see that happening, people

Linda Nelson 5:19
And so we had to close our production office and start over again. And, and we did. So we decided that, you know, this time around, we're going to, you know, make our own films, and we made a very low budget feature. And we got into some film festivals and started to get a couple of offers, and we thought the offers were horrible. And we didn't, you know, see how you could, you know, be make a living in industry, if those were the only kind of deals that were out there. So, this was about 2007. And we decided that well, gee, how hard could it be to start a distribution company? I mean, little, little did we know, I mean, it was purely, you know, out of, you know, stupidity that we even, you know, if we knew more, we probably wouldn't even have tried it. But we, we said, Oh, you know, can't be that hard. So it is, it's so exactly true. And so we would often, and started a little company called indie rights. We started it, just with some other filmmakers that were on the festival circuit with us. We were at like dances with film. When we got five or six films gathered up, we figured Oh, well, you know, we've got enough to start a little company, and we've got a little catalog. And that's how we started. And now here we are, 10 years later. And we have 650 films in our catalog. That's nice, not bad. It's just grown exponentially, we really kind of doubled every year, we doubled. And when we we love that we don't have to go out and look for films. And that's the best part about what we do. Every all of our business is by word of mouth, and people that have been with us for a long time tell their friends and filmmakers, and that are filmmakers and they tell their friends and and then those filmmakers all bring their new films to us. So we have lots of films now that filmmakers where we have four or five, six films from the same filmmakers. And that's amazing. It's great. It's a rarity take care of your reputation. That's what happens.

Alex Ferrari 7:26
Yes, because distributors technically don't have a fairly good reputation.

Linda Nelson 7:30
No, they don't.

Alex Ferrari 7:32
There's, you know, I just did that image of that, you know, guy who's like 80 years old, sitting behind a desk with a cigar. Making some exploitation posters like kid All I need is a poster in a in a trailer, and I could sell it.

Linda Nelson 7:48
And I have to tell you, more than half the companies are still that. Yeah, I know. It's not a cliche. I mean, anyone who goes to AFM and walked around there, that's what they're gonna see primarily.

Alex Ferrari 8:00
Yeah, it is. It's

Linda Nelson 8:02
Starting to change. But there's still a lot of that.

Alex Ferrari 8:05
Yeah. Because in would you say it is because overseas is like, a little slower to catch up with everything else. Because there's, you still need those kinds of guys sometimes to get to those oversea markets, where you just can't get to them. Otherwise, is that true or not? Um, you could go with someone like you, obviously, but yes,

Linda Nelson 8:22
Right. on your own, it's very difficult, I think, I think still, for foreign sales, buyers would prefer to deal with a sales agent or us distributor, because they know that they can build a relationship and get more than one film. So it takes the same amount of energy to get a film from an individual as it does to get from a company yet, if you do it with a company, then you're building relationship where you can have future flow. Right? And so buyers tend not to deal with individual filmmakers area for sale. If you're an individual filmmaker, you really have to search. Yes, it said yet, it takes a huge amount of effort. So if you can find the right distributor, you're better off to use a distributor or a sales agent. And and there's a big distinction between the two. And that's something we can talk about later.

Alex Ferrari 9:18
So what what are your feelings on the world of distribution today, versus what we were talking about even just three years ago?

Linda Nelson 9:27
Well, you know, and the interesting thing is I I'm sure I said the same thing, then, because I keep saying the same thing. Every year. I don't believe there's ever been a better time for indie, indie filmmakers to make a movie. I really don't. I think there's, there's more and more opportunity as time goes by. You know, I think that there are skills that you have to acquire if you want to be able to take advantage of that and I'm sure we'll talk about that too.

Alex Ferrari 10:00
Yes, and, and I think it from your perspective, I think a lot of people, from your perspective, you see all the possibilities, because you're in, you're on the ground level, you are in the trenches of distribution every day, where I speak to filmmakers, almost on a daily basis and distribution is still such a clouded and in mystery. And who is going to screw me? And where can I actually make money when will actually get a check? That it's scary, the distribution is so scary for somebody who doesn't. And I've been in the game for a long time. And there's still aspects of distribution that I don't know, you have much more information about it than I do, because you do it on a daily basis. But I'm an educated person. And I'm still like, I don't know where what's going on over there.

Linda Nelson 10:46
Right? Well, and I think part of the reason for that is that this business has never been very transparent. It's always been quite secretive and old boys club, you know, type of environment where nobody shares any information. And that also is changing. You know, and that's a good thing. I mean, it's one of the tenants that we founded our company on. One was that we were, you know, going to pay filmmakers from dollar one. So we give our filmmakers 80%. And, and we don't charge any expenses. And we give very, very detailed quarterly reporting, and that that reporting is shared amongst our group. So that that it is the filmmakers that are doing great, get inspired, you know, our wind up inspiring ones that aren't doing so great, because then they want to know, how do you do that? And, you know, and then we can talk about that.

Alex Ferrari 11:46
So you actually share numbers with the other filmmakers in your,

Linda Nelson 11:51
Within our, our private group? Oh, that's amazing.

Alex Ferrari 11:54
I didn't know you did that. That's, well, no,

Linda Nelson 11:56
We do it. And, and, and it's very much appreciated, because when it comes time for you to do a new project, you have real numbers. Now, we don't let people share those numbers, with titles outside the group. But they can make General, you know, assumptions and projections based on genre, right, so you could look at all of the horror films, for example, you know, in our catalog, and, and, and draw some conclusions from that about what the realm of possibility is. And so it winds up, you know, being inspirational to those who aren't doing as well. And, and it makes the people that are doing well feel really, really good. So we really feel that's an important part. And it's been missing from our, you know, from our industry. And that's kind of why like on our website, we share our contracts and deliverables list, it's there for the world to see. We don't need to hide the terms of our contract. So does that fair?

Alex Ferrari 12:58
Right? No, exactly. And that's, that's amazing. You're extremely transparent. And I think that when filmmakers sign on with a distributor, what they're really signing on with for is one access and two relationships. Because you've been able to build up. So you know, just from your experience of doing this along and you know, the buyers that if you have a certain kind of horror movie, a horror movie that has doesn't even have to have stars in it, per se, but if you know the quality of the movie, then you go, Oh, I can estimate that that movie is gonna make us X amount of dollars, because we have a track record of what we've sold movies like that in the past for and current market shares and everything, and you just have relationships, where you could just pick up the phone and call up, you know, a market and go, hey, I've got this movie. What do you think you could give us for it? Is that a fair fairly accurate?

Linda Nelson 13:50
Well, you know, I because the the businesses and stuff such a state of flux right now, that is kind of changing, because it used to be that, you know, a buyer would want an all rights deal for a territory. So some some buyer would approach you for Germany and they want everything Seattle, broadcast VOD DVD. Well, now we've got lots of buyers that are looking to buy VOD only, or you know that. So it's it's become more complicated from that, that, that standpoint to try and project. And also, in our experience, we've found the projections aren't terribly relevant for on an individual film, but it certainly gives you the ability to give a range, right? So you could say, Oh, well, we have some that are making $2,000 a month, we have some that are making $6,000 a month, right. So, you know, it's, it certainly helps you to understand what's possible.

Alex Ferrari 14:58
Nothing

Linda Nelson 14:58
As opposed to how much Your film is going to make,

Alex Ferrari 15:01
Right it's it's almost impossible depending on that, even if you have Brad Pitt in it, like you have estimates, I know. But there's movies that Brad Pitt made that made hundreds of millions of dollars, and there are others that made right 10s of millions of dollars, which, by the way, I would be happy with either. This is very true. Um, now, how has the streaming game changed the landscape for distribution?

Linda Nelson 15:30
Um, I think, you know, obviously, it is the most dramatic change in the past 30 years. And I think that the major players way underestimated how quickly streaming would become the accepted way to watch movies. And also, a couple of years ago, the technology wasn't available to allow people to watch movies in so many different ways, right? I mean, it used to be if you, you know, you you've made a movie, it would come out on DVD, it will go into blockbuster, if you were really lucky, it would stay there for three months, and a bunch of people would rent it, and then that would be the end of it over it's

Alex Ferrari 16:21
Pretty much it's dead in the water for

Linda Nelson 16:23
Right. For Indies. I mean, you know, big blockbuster films that become classics, yes, you might be able to still be able to get a hold of those all the time. But Indies, really kind of cycled through these rental stores fairly quickly. But now, and also, there was very limited shelf space. So how you know how many movies could be available at any point in time was very limited, right. But now we have unlimited shelf space, we have so many different ways to watch movies, sometimes people watch on tablets, they watch on their laptops, they watch on their television, they watch on their phone. So you know, there's so many different ways for people to consume your movie now as well. And there's no shelf life. We have we have films that are 810 years old, that are still earning good money.

Alex Ferrari 17:18
That's amazing,

Linda Nelson 17:18
Which is unbelievable. And we have like n For example, we have a number of films, where people were with another distributor, and their contracts expired, and they never got paid any money at all. Maybe they got a small mg in the beginning, but that never saw any money after that. And as soon as the contract expired, they came to us and now they're earning money for the first time. And their film might be, I don't know, 10 years old, like we have this film called cherry, which is a terrific film, you know, and and they were with another distributor and the rights were, you know, tied up. It was originally released in 2010. Right, right. And so so as soon as the rights Well, what wound up happening is that they're there. Another film of theirs that came out much later, they came with us. So as soon as that, as cherry was available from the other distributor, they had us do it. And now that film is making money for the first time, you know that they're seeing money from that and it came out originally in 2010.

Alex Ferrari 18:34
That's amazing.

Linda Nelson 18:35
And I also i mean they're they're thrilled because they thought they'll never see any money from it. But now here it is. It's you know, it's 2018 and on the front end, and the film's doing really, really well.

Alex Ferrari 18:47
That's amazing. That's really

Linda Nelson 18:50
I'm Brett Robertson's in it. So she you know, was not a huge star back when that movie was made, but she is doing really well now. You know, she has a I don't know where IMDb score is 149

Alex Ferrari 19:02
She's doing all right. Now, can you tell? Can you tell the audience a little bit about the difference between s VOD t VOD, and a VOD.

Linda Nelson 19:12
Yes. Very, very important to understand all of these different VODs or video on demand, right. And, and it's important to understand that, that different demographics are served better by different types of VOD and that's something that we you know, recently figured out for our for our own company. Normally will release a film especially if we've done a limited theatrical on it. We can talk about that limited theatrical option a little bit later. We will put a film out like on Amazon paid transactional first right and see If we can get any traction actually selling it because that's where you're gonna make, if it actually gets traction and sells, you know, they pay half of that money comes to us whether it's rental or purchase. So that's called paid transactional. Sometimes it's called p VOD. Sometimes it's called t VOD, or transactional or paid transactional. And, and so we, we, we try to do that first. But if there's no names in it, and there's not huge buzz going on about it, you're, you're probably better off being on prime and then we'll move it to Amazon Prime. Now amazon prime, it looks to a user. The same as Netflix was, it looks like it's free. But it's not. And there's a huge difference between the two platforms, Amazon Prime, and Netflix and Hulu are all what's called s VOD, which is subscription video on demand, which means that people pay an annual fee to have access to that platform. Now, the problem, you know, for indie filmmakers, is that Netflix has a different payment scheme than amazon prime and some other platforms. So Netflix pays a flat, annual or 18 months fee. And they spread those payments over the term. Right. And so say, for example, they are going to give you $20,000 for your film, that means that you're going to get $5,000 a quarter, right? Now, they really want an exclusive window. While you're with Netflix, they don't want you out on any other platforms, which to me is horrible, because what happens is that then, because so many people have Netflix, almost almost your entire audience is gonna watch it on Amazon, and I mean on Netflix, and that's all the money you're ever going to see. So so they wouldn't really cannibalize your revenue.

Alex Ferrari 22:00
Now, are they buying a lot of indie movies, I hear that they're not doing a notch.

Linda Nelson 22:04
They're not buying a lot of independent films. Because their business model favors serialized content. Right. So more like TV shows that type of content. But But Amazon on the other hand plate pays by the minutes watched. So if you have a strong film, and you have good social media marketing, you could actually earn very, very well we have we have a film that's made close to half a million dollars this year on amazon prime.

Alex Ferrari 22:37
Now, what do they pay? What is what is their rate is?

Linda Nelson 22:42
The rate is extremely complicated. And, and it's impossible to tell somebody what that rate is going to be until it's released. So what happens is they have a tiered system. And what they will pay six cents a minute, up till 100,000. And from 100,000 to a half a million, they pay 10 cents and from a half a million to a million they pay

Alex Ferrari 23:12
15 cents. Well, that's that's not permitted. That's per hour watched. Isn't that crowd watched? Yeah.

Linda Nelson 23:18
Okay, so So, on our catalog for, for example, we have some earning 15 cents we have some are a lot earning 10 cents most that's predominant. One for us is 10 cents, and some earning six cents. You know, the six centers tend to be ones that have been out for a long time, and people have forgotten about them, and they're on to the next film and they don't bother nurturing them anymore. Right. So they're and and it's important to remember that you really do need to maintain at least a maintenance schedule of, you know, social media on your older films, and you can schedule that stuff. Sure. It doesn't become it's not doesn't have to be terribly time consuming. And, you know, I remind me to talk about post post, that's my my new buzzword

Alex Ferrari 24:11
Post post you mean deliverables?

Linda Nelson 24:14
No post posts is, is actually marketing. It's like a final phase of production. Got our after post.

Alex Ferrari 24:22
Okay, so I will I will

Linda Nelson 24:24
Make a note and we'll talk about I will post post guys, because it's critical. So anyway, so back to Amazon. Now, what I like about their new pay scheme is that there's no longer any kind of cap so your films don't stop earning. We had some films last year when they first announced that plan that we're gonna cap out well, they did cap out. And then so all of a sudden the film that's making 20,000 was making 20,000 a month, you know, capped out and couldn't earn any more for a whole calendar. Our year. So they removed that cap, which was great. So when you have strong films, you're going to just keep on earning. We like that. And also, because we're considered a studio by Amazon, we're in 120. territories.

Alex Ferrari 25:14
Oh, so you're so you have access much more than amazon video direct, let's say,

Linda Nelson 25:19
Right, exactly. So if you're just an individual filmmaker, and you go on Amazon, all you're getting is US and UK, because you can't even get Germany and Japan anymore, which was they were offering to individuals for a little while, but not anymore. So US and UK is all you can get if you're just an individual filmmaker, which is why that should be your last resort. If you can't find a good distribution partner, then do that. But if you can find a good one, then you can be in 120 territories. So that's what you want to do. Because every day more and more people in all these territories are adopting are adopting, streaming, just like it happened in the United States, Amazon didn't happen overnight, in the United States, we had the first downloadable film from Amazon in 2007. And we have about picture of that on our website. You know, and so here we are 10 years later, and it's firmly established here in the US. But you know, this, it's all new to a lot of the foreign territory. So it's gonna take a little time, I don't think it'll take that long. But it might take two years or three years, but you still want your film there and to have a presence so that you can take advantage of it when it really starts to grab because there won't be that much content there. You know, there's not won't be as much competition. So and, and it used to be on Amazon that foreign territories all earned six cents, no matter how much they were watch. So they changed that, too. So now we get the same opportunity for foreign territories that we do for the US as far as payment tiers. So the other advantage of being with a distributor relative to platforms is that they have they have algorithms that create recommendations for people. And and one of the one of the heaviest weighted out. algorithm element is the studio that you're with. So in other words, if you bring up one of our films, then the recommendation engine or algorithm is going to go out there and look for other indie writes films that might be in the same genre have some of the same actors,

Alex Ferrari 27:28
Because you're a studio according to

Linda Nelson 27:30
Our studio according. So. So that's really, that's really important too, because that really push that surfaces, all of our films, and that really helps.

Alex Ferrari 27:41
Wow, you cut through a lot of the of the you rise to the top.

Linda Nelson 27:45
That's right. That's right. So that's really good. So so then that's it. So now we've talked about s VOD, and TV, VOD. Avon is a very interesting option. And really what a VOD is it's ads. It's a the a part is for advertising. And that stands for that stands for advertising. And so so those channels that are a VOD channels, they're going to insert ads before, during, and after your movie. Now, you know, not too far back, we all watch movies on television. And there were always advertising. So there's a lot of people that are quite comfortable with having ads. My personal preference is to not have ads and be able to watch a movie straight. So but but there's a huge part of the demographic, it really can't afford to spend $120 on cable, or whatever it takes to get all of these subscription charges, you know, so, you know, they don't want to have to pay money to be on prime and pay more money to have Netflix and pay more money for this or that. And so they're quite comfortable. You having a Roku box and watching ads supported channels.

Alex Ferrari 29:05
So so and that's a part of VOD is like Roku, who are some of the services. Well,

Linda Nelson 29:09
The the the top ad supported channel is called tubi. tv. Are you familiar with this? I've

Alex Ferrari 29:17
Seen it on my I seen it as I scan through my apps

Linda Nelson 29:19
Night so so tubi TV is what is the most popular right now. Now, I'm about two years ago, we wanted to get in on this so called Ott market, which is the streaming channels. They're called the Ott for over the top. And they mean it means that they're they're they they're not linear, their streaming channels that are not linear. They're like their apps basically. And and so it means that you can watch what you want when you want to watch it on any device. Right. So it's people are moving away from the old linear model of broadcasting We'll talk about broadcasts in a few minutes, too, because that's important to see what's happening with that. But people no longer want to have a TV Guide and have to look up something and say, Oh, I gotta be home on Tuesday night at three, you know? Right. I mean, I think those days are pretty much over.

Alex Ferrari 30:17
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Linda Nelson 30:28
But so, so there is a huge demographic that is maybe a little bit lower income, right, or maybe less educated, or whatever, they they aren't going to spend the money on prime and Netflix and those expensive subscription channels. And they're quite happy to have ad supported channels. And so tubi is doing huge. And we have films that are if you go to a to b TV right now, you'll see like our top earning film is sitting. It's, it's, it's sometimes its first, sometimes its second, but it's always in the top three or four films on tubi.

Alex Ferrari 31:07
Oh, yeah. And you can you expect to make a decent revenue if your

Linda Nelson 31:12
Films making 20 grand a month?

Alex Ferrari 31:14
Just off to be or? Yes, no, Toby? Wow.

Linda Nelson 31:19
That's what you gotta have, you gotta have a hit, you know, you can't, you know, it's, it's, and you have to really, really work at what you're doing. So it's really important that people understand that, that everybody's not going to make that kind of money that you really have to commit to learning how to use social media and use it well, to engage with your audience.

Alex Ferrari 31:44
I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. I'm, I'm a recent cable cutter. And I cut and I cut my cable for the first time because I discovered YouTube TV.

Linda Nelson 31:53
I love you to

Alex Ferrari 31:54
YouTube TV for 40 bucks a month. I mean, you can't beat it. And the way it allows you to like if you liked the show, let's say the Big Bang Theory, yeah, and you add it to your library automatically, wherever it plays on the in the world that it controls, it will record it for you in order with episodes and by season. So you basically where you used to have to go out and buy DVDs for seasons, you have access to sure with ads, but sometimes you can skip through those ads without even even stopping. It's it's fascinating how the world is changing. Now it's, and let's talk about broadcast. And let's talk about broadcast. Because Is there any 100 left? Well,

Linda Nelson 32:34
I'm gonna just mention that I'm gonna do a plug for us. So two years ago, we thought, Oh, we've got to get in on this Ott model. So we had a subscription channel built called indie rights movies. Okay. Right. And we found it so difficult to get subscribers, because and then we realized, you know, what, we're trying to compete with Netflix. Right? You know, and, and why somebody's gonna pay $5 a month, you know, just to see any rights movies when they can be on Netflix and have access to 1000s and 1000s and 1000s. So we kind of just let it lapse. I mean, it's still there. But we might get one or two new subscribers a month, you know, you know, just, you know, we thought ridiculous. So then, but then, about six months ago, a company approached us that had millions of dollars worth of advertising that they needed to place on a channel, and they built us a beautiful ad supported channel, and that channel is going to launch on September 17. Oh, congratulations. So our goal is to compete with TV TV, and I think we have a good chance at it because I can see that our films are earning well on TV. So, um, you know, I think that, you know, so that is a it's a Roku channel, and you'll see it in the, you know, Roku lineup, and it's indie rights movies for free. And so I think that it's going to be, you know, very good revenue earner for our filmmakers. So, so we're, we're, that's something that we're gonna do.

Alex Ferrari 34:11
That's, um, that's a really see I haven't really not heard of, I mean, I know about Avon, but I did not know, like the inner workings like you've just discussed. So that's a really interesting business model, because you're basically giving it away for you're basically turning into an old school broadcast channel.

Linda Nelson 34:28
That's right. You're basically people can watch what they want when they want to watch it.

Alex Ferrari 34:32
Right and it'll pause. Right so it is the best of both worlds except for that kind of consumer who doesn't want to pay 10 bucks a month for Netflix or 20 bucks a month for HBO or whatever it is. Right? That's really all they have to do is buy a Roku box. That's right, and plug it into their TV and you're out and you're ready to sell and

Linda Nelson 34:53
Even no TVs have those channels built in. Your channel is going to be built into TV.

Alex Ferrari 35:00
Right, right. That's insane. That's insane. So let's talk about broadcast is it? Is there money left?

Linda Nelson 35:08
There, there is some, but it is dwindling and it and linear broadcast is dwindling, the fastest being for the reasons that we just spoke about, people don't want to have to commit to a certain time on a certain date to watch something. So what you're seeing happen is that the big time players in broadcast are now all streaming. So there's HBO now they're stars now there so time now are shifting, they have realized that they've got to shift, you know, into so um, there still will be opportunities for those networks to purchase or license independent content. And and we licensed some of our content to like Starz and Showtime and stuff like that. So it's still there. But it is certainly turning into all streaming. You know, so basically, it's all becoming digital. And Ott, and I think that the regular you know, network aspect of it is just really doomed.

Alex Ferrari 36:23
Do you? Yeah, I was gonna ask you, do you think that network, I mean, there's obviously the three big or the four big networks, but like, the CN ns of the world, the the news networks, the discovery channels, all of those kind of neural streaming. They're all out there as streaming, but but it's cable. I mean, cable is still a thing, it will be a thing for a while.

Linda Nelson 36:46
Did I say? I don't I don't know about that. I think that I think that what's gonna happen is that it's really they're just going to become cable providers. I mean, internet providers. You know, I'm, that's all I use. I have you know, we have at&t. Right, and we am for our business. Obviously, we have to have fast internet. So we have 1000 megabytes per second up and down. Nice. Which is great. But we must have that because we have to download a livery. Yeah, we're delivering electronically. So. So we need that but, but it's a that's all we have. You know, we have we haven't had cable for

Alex Ferrari 37:26
Five years. I think you see you're much more ahead of the game than I was. I literally just cut off my DirecTV. Now, so um, so is there any money left in limited theatrical?

Linda Nelson 37:38
mindset, no money, no prestige and buzz for your film? super important. So

Alex Ferrari 37:45
tell me about limited? Michael.

Linda Nelson 37:47
We we do we do one every week? Okay, so, you know, Friday night, we're always releasing, you know, one film. And we're booked now until early December.

Alex Ferrari 38:01
Here locally in Los Angeles.

Linda Nelson 38:02
Yes, we use right now we use a theater called arena, Sena lounge. It's a 53 seat theater. It's, it's, it's beautiful. It has DC great DCP and great sound, you know, projector and stuff. So we do a one week release for a number of reasons. One, all, just about every one of our films gets an LA Times review, we can't guarantee it. But 95% of them do get an LA Times review, which is very valuable. Many get a Hollywood Reporter review. But what's most important about it is that when you do that one week release, you're getting a Rotten Tomato page. So we get and we get that we order that Rotten Tomato page like two weeks before the film releases. And you also get a Fandango page, though, because that's where tickets are sold. And so those two things are very, very important. People really underestimate how important Rotten Tomatoes is. You know, so if you go on Rotten Tomatoes, and you look up like one of our films like everlasting or stray, and they have all of these fresh tomatoes, Rotten Tomatoes is the first place that buyers look after they watch a trailer for a film. They immediately go there and look at that. And we noticed that starting about a year and a half, two years ago at our office at AFM we'd be sitting on the couch, you know, they would you know, they watch a trailer go Yeah, that looks interesting. And then say Hold on a minute. And then he goes our phone and they're on Rotten Tomatoes, looking to see what the tomato scores are.

Alex Ferrari 39:42
Because they don't want to have to watch the movie.

Linda Nelson 39:44
Well, they want to know they want to know what the critics think and they but and they also want to know what the audience thinks. So when we train, we train and educate our filmmakers how to understand what's important, you know, for billing Buzz for their films. So we train them how to get reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Because it's really, really important. And, and and the public uses it to people look up,

Alex Ferrari 40:12
I look it up all the time. Yeah, it's it has become the, for better or worse it can sink a movie or it can make a movie studios hated studios, absolute

Linda Nelson 40:22
Studios hate it because they don't bother to work it. All right. But if you could you can really research critics and write to critics that are approved by rotten tomatoes and, and get good reviews for your film. You know, if you get enough, you know, unless your real film is really horrible. Right? You know, then you won't, but but if you've got a decent film, some are gonna like it, some aren't. Right? I mean, and I find I could never guess like, what's the LA Times reviews? ones I think are going to get a great review don't want it. I think all this one, they'll never think much of this. And they'll get a great review. So I give up and if you know, if someone like me with experience with 500 films, films, can't guess which ones are going to get a decent review the rest of us.

Alex Ferrari 41:10
Yeah, the rest of us aren't gonna be a good producer.

Linda Nelson 41:13
You know, so. So that's important in Fandango. We have films that, you know, the Fandango trailer has gotten over a million reviews. And I can't tell you that really helps on YouTube, because they have all those. Fandango has all those channels on YouTube was trailers.

Alex Ferrari 41:30
Yeah. Is that how that works? Because I always wondered why those channels on YouTube are allowed to play these trailers and not get dinged for the copyright.

Linda Nelson 41:37
Now, because we're they're sent to them by the distributors, like we send those to them, they have our permission. Got it. And you just have to be that if you have a large enough audience on YouTube, then you become Okay. Well, we're, we're a partner with Google. So we have all of our movies go on YouTube movie rentals, of course. So you know, so so when, you know, when we give the trailer to somebody, then it's not gonna, it comes up in a list that somebody got it, and then we just dismiss it. Got it. And if it's somebody, we don't want to have it, then we make them take it down.

Alex Ferrari 42:21
Now, now I'm going to talk about something that you and I had disagreements about the past. I know you I know why, you know what I'm going to talk about

Linda Nelson 42:32
Self versus traditional.

Alex Ferrari 42:33
Yes, there's this issue, because I remember when I was about to release this as Meg, my first feature, I got a message on Facebook, and you're like, please tell me you're not self distributing your movie? I remember you said like, Yes, I am. Why would you do that? What's wrong with you? And I said, and I said, Well, I have an audience, and I think it's gonna be okay. She's like, and then it was a pause. And then you're like, yeah, I'll probably work for you. Because you already have an audience and you can sell it to them. Okay, fine. And that was that that was the exchange, everybody. And was it fine. It was wonderful. No, we made a we made I mean that retirement money, but we made money, and I still get checks every quarter. My partner, I are very happy with the way it went. We sold it to Hulu. We sold it internationally, through through an international distributor who just picked up International.

Linda Nelson 43:24
So you did get a

Alex Ferrari 43:25
Sales agent for international not for domestic. And then now we just found a domestic partner for wraparound rights. But I still maintain s VOD. And I think Amazon and iTunes, those are we control those but everything else they would control for Apple.

Linda Nelson 43:43
But Amazon, are you only in two countries?

Alex Ferrari 43:46
Ah, no, no, we could because we went through the stripper. We had access not to 120. I forgot. It's probably like eight or nine. Yeah, they got a bunch of them. But we pulled all of them off internationally. And because because of the International deals that were going on. So we just literally just control the US, which is where the bulk of our money came from. I'm curious to see what would have happened if we would have gone with someone like yourself. But also that movie was a proof of concept. I wanted to prove to my audience that it could be done. The movie's budget was ridiculously low. So I did not have to recoup a lot of money. Actually, I was in the black when I started shooting because it was crowdfunded. It was an experiment. So it worked out perfectly for what I wanted to do. Will I do that on my next movie coming up? I don't know. We'll see. Right?

Linda Nelson 44:40
So if you if you have a film that you believe has no global opportunity, you might be fine just doing us on Amazon. You know, but if you do a film that has any kind of goal Audience you're always going to be better off with someone to handle worldwide rights. These days, we won't sign a film unless we get global VOD. And the reason we want and then on top of that we actually have two contracts. Now we have a three year contract for domestic distribution, plus global VOD. Alright, so that so that we can, we can do DVD if you want. It's not mandatory, but we have a great DVD blu ray deals. So there's, there's no reason for anybody not to do that. There's no cost. And it's very expensive, then, and we keep our contract term short, because we know that people will love us and stay with us. So we don't worry, we don't have to ask somebody for seven years, or 10 years or 15 years, like most companies still do, right. And we do that because we know you're going to stay because you're going to get paid and more honest, and you're going to get good reports. And we can't guarantee you how much you're going to make. But you will know exactly what's going on with not only us, but other, you know, filmmakers like yourself. And so then, on top of that, we have a one year contract for foreign sales. And that allows that allows us to take your film to Cannes and AFM because we exhibit at both, right. And you don't want to be with a sales rep that's just walking around. You want somebody who's an actual exhibitor. And if the member if possible, let's if does, if does the International Film and Television Alliance, and it's a global organization, they are the ones that put on the American Film market, got it. And that gives you a level of credibility with buyers that you can't get without, you know, you don't have it without that. So you'll notice when you walk around AFM on the door sign, it'll say if the member if they're a member of VISTA, and so instills a level of trust, right. And believe me, they kick out people that that, you know, don't pay and stuff. So it's a good assurance to foreign buyers, that you know, you're going to get their money. So and it's a good assurance to us if we buy from people that are certified. So it's it's like a kind of a verification certification situation. But that one year, and both of those contracts renew automatically unless you decide you want to leave. And out of 650 filmmaker films, we've only ever had three people leave. And that was because they thought they could do better. And we've actually got apologies from if I'm still waiting on the third. So all right, so So anyway, so the reason we like so we want to foreign without the domestic. And the The reason we like to have both, and we prefer to have both, but we will do just domestic and what's the global VOD without the forum. The reason we like to have both is that we then control turning on turning off channels, you know, I mean, territories, you know, where you wouldn't have that if he had two different companies. So what how you had to take down Amazon,

Alex Ferrari 48:40
Right? That was it. That was a little bit of a combo, every time a foreign distributor called me. He's like, Hey, we have a deal in the UK, pull it off.

Linda Nelson 48:48
So so so that way, it's easy for us, we just have a checkbox. So you know, so if we have a buyer for any territory, it's simple enough for us to manage those rights. So so we like that. And that's, you know, so that that makes it very helpful.

Alex Ferrari 49:03
So but there is a but I mean, and I believe I thought with my movie, this is Meg had absolutely no international appeal. It was a drama at about a comedian in Hollywood. It did have recognizable faces. Some faces that, you know, Krista Allen, who was in Baywatch and a bunch of other movies. So we had a few faces, but no stars, you know, our, you know, bankable stars. We thought we had absolutely no appeal, but I was mistaken because we sold China, South Africa, the UK, you know, China for God's sakes. And we I was like, what, how, why? So you'd be amazed.

Linda Nelson 49:44
We sell around 20 films, a market to China. And there are ones that you would not, you know, think you know, had international opportunity. But they do so and we get very, very good revenue for China. Do you? Can you share what you got for China? Or do you not want to do that?

Alex Ferrari 50:11
Um, we got under under 10k.

Linda Nelson 50:15
Okay, so, um, we get we regularly get between 10 and 15. So, you know, so I mean, it's good, because we see, I mean, we have filmmakers that come to us and say, oh, everything's available except for China. We already sell that. And I'll say, Well, how much did you sell for? And I'll go, Oh, we got $1,000 for it. You know, so, so there's tons of people running around out there trying to get rights for China. Don't fall for it. Right. Okay. There be and and this has to do a lot with this all VOD stuff, because there's a huge hunger out there for VOD deals.

Alex Ferrari 50:57
There's a billion people over there.

Linda Nelson 50:59
Right. And so so there's a lot of a lot of brokers running around. They're not really distributors, they're not even really sales agents. They're like brokers. Now, can

Alex Ferrari 51:10
You talk a little bit about DVD and Blu Ray? Is there a market still for that?

Linda Nelson 51:13
Yes. Absolutely. And, uh, specifically, you know, genre. films like horror, horror, fans love to have physical media in their hands, they collect the boxes and all of that stuff. They're collectors. I so but But definitely, you know, there's some DVD sales and you know, like, in all genres, even, you know, like, dramas and Doc's do pretty well, we what we do, we, we had a very bad experience with one of our films, with a DVD company that went bankrupt in the middle of a sale. So in other words, it was all old school, DVD distribution, you had a guess? How many that your, you know, copies, you were going to make them and print them, replicate them and have them all sitting in a warehouse. And then they get shipped out to places and the ones that sell you get paid for. And sometimes they return the ones that don't sell and don't forget to damage and in the end, hopefully, you make a little money. Well, we did this great deal for Walmart 20,000 copies, we had them all made, shipped them off to Walmart A week later, the distributor filed bankruptcy, and we've never seen a penny, guess who had to pay for them? Oh, we did. Right. So that was it. I said that is the last traditional old school DVD blu ray we're ever going to do. So now we want now we work with a manufacturer on demand partner. They're the largest one out there. And they place all of our DVDs and blu rays on about 100 webs, online stores. No charge to the filmmaker, we leave it up to the filmmaker to author the boss of the DVD and blu ray, give us a nice, you know, they give give us artwork, we give them a template. And they give us the ISO file and the artwork and fill in a metadata sheet cost them nothing. They send it to us, we give it to the manufacturer and they make sure it gets distributed on all those websites. If it gets any traction at all. They might get orders for brick and mortar. So like if it's on Walmart's website. And a lot of people are buying it, they might say Okay, give us 10,000 copies, you know, but there's no returns involved at all right? So it's a great opportunity to take advantage of whatever DVD opportunities are still, you know, strong and and I have to tell you, streaming does not work great all over the country. We have a lot of areas and especially in the middle of the countries that don't have internet that's good enough for streaming. Yeah, right or not?

Alex Ferrari 53:59
Oh, yeah. And people end there's a lot of people who are still, I mean, there's generations and people that still want to own or touch, feel their media and they're not I mean, that will change eventually when they die Oh, when my generation dies off. Alright.

Linda Nelson 54:15
But also I have to say that you know, like when you're giving a gift if you want to give a movie as a gift, you know, it's a lot nicer to have it in the box.

Alex Ferrari 54:24
No, no without question without question and it does come with all the special features and the commentary tracks and all that kind of cool stuff. So I buy the occasional DVD blu ray that I won't buy a DVD but occasional blu ray I'll buy will more likely be a Criterion Collection or so that's

Linda Nelson 54:39
Right it's a classic and it's got interviews with everybody and

Alex Ferrari 54:43
In the in the transfers bits been remastered or something like that. If I ever buy one but but it is going down there but it's still going down. I mean the trend is downwards as far as sales are correct. Oh yeah, way. Yeah. It is. It is going away.

Linda Nelson 55:02
Do you think all the DVD stores are closing? There's, I don't know, if there's any left, there's,

Alex Ferrari 55:08
There's, there's one, there's one or two blockbusters left in the country.

Linda Nelson 55:12
And you know, and and and if you keep an eye on the amount of shelf space that's available at like Target or Walmart or Barnes and Noble, that there just is shrinking and shrinking. All

Alex Ferrari 55:24
Right, and there are there are still video stores. I actually live not too far away from two video stores. I can't believe I'm in Burbank. And I will and they've been there for a decade that I've been here. And I'm like, how do they stay in? But apparently, especially for different type of demographics of people that are not that technically, technology is they're not technically inclined. Right? They still want old school blu rays and DVDs. Yeah. So it's a thing. It's still a thing. Now, what is the biggest mistake you see filmmakers make in distribution?

Linda Nelson 56:01
Not doing a proper job during production so that they can facilitate distribution.

Alex Ferrari 56:08
You're talking about deliverables? That's right. I am. So let's talk. Let's talk about deliverables, because that's one of my favorite topics. Because I'm, I got I've made my bones in post. So please, please preach?

Linda Nelson 56:23
Well, unfortunately, if you don't pay very close attention to what you need as a finished product to deliver to distributors, you're not going to be able to distribute your film to the max. And, and we see so many people shoot at frame rates that aren't right. They don't spray Wait, don't forget, next next frame rates, you know, can cause a lot of problems they have poor audio, I think is the most common problem that we have. And you really no matter how cheap a film you're going to do. Make sure that you get somebody that does the sound that knows what they're doing. Very few people that are making new films get clean sound, so they can't make an m&e track, which is what you must have if you're going to really have good foreign sales. We have about a 70% failure rate, first time somebody distributed. So it sends us their deliverables, the most common problem that we get is that they deliver dual mono instead of real stereo. And I swear about, you know, more than half of the films that we get have dual mono, and it's really it's just not doing the settings right, you know, on their editing system.

Alex Ferrari 58:00
And how about five one

Linda Nelson 58:05
Right now, what's absolutely required for if you want to be on the premium channels, like say iTunes and VUDU and Xbox and Amazon and Google Play, Fandango is that you have to have 1980 by 19 9020 by 1080. progress for two to HQ, stereo, that's the minimum if you have that we can get you on anywhere. However, if you want the best quality and I would assume at some time in the future, it may be a requirement, you will want to do 5.1 the 5.1 that's required by premium channels though is not just the 5.6 5.1 channels, it's eight channel 5.1 and that means that you're also adding for Channel seven and eight a stereo left and right stereo so that way they prepare files so that that the system is d determined by the platform and and if you just have stereo they'll play stereo if you have five point if you have a surround sound system they'll play surround sound so that's why they need to have it all available. And then the some of the other problems that we see with deliverables and we no matter how many times we tell people no color bars or tones on the beginning no countdowns we still get those few flames of black and then straight to the movie. That's the way it's got to be and same on the end a few frames about black and no to pop. Right no to pops. That was for broadcast,

Alex Ferrari 59:58
Right it's it's it's a holdover It's a

Linda Nelson 1:00:00
Holdover from broadcast, so people have to learn to get rid of that. So color

Alex Ferrari 1:00:03
Bars is I haven't delivered anything with color bars and years,

Linda Nelson 1:00:07
We still get them. And it's usually from filmmakers that are older that originally, you know, that delivered their previous films to broadcast.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:17
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Linda Nelson 1:00:28
Alright, so so so there's that. And then also, platforms are very strict. You're not allowed to have any URLs or website information on the back end.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:38
Yeah, I heard about Yeah, I came across that,

Linda Nelson 1:00:41
He still get that. And so you, you have to remove all of those. And then the next thing that causes a lot of problems is that we tell people, you must have a G rated trailer. And that means no profanity, no nudity, no extreme violence. And yet, we still keep sometimes you have to go back three or four times with people about, you know, what is a G rated trailer? I mean, you can't show slashing someone's throat. Can so someone shooting someone? Right? Right, right. You can have there can be a gun in it, but you can't show them shooting someone,

Alex Ferrari 1:01:22
But you but you can do some like red band trailers or something like that. Yeah.

Linda Nelson 1:01:27
And everybody should do those, but use those strictly for promotion. Sure. But when you do your deliverables, you must have a G rated trailer and under two minutes. The other thing that is, you know, has been an issue is closed captions. It's a requirement now Bye, everybody, everybody. Ah, and I'm more we we actually asked people to have two types of captions, we asked them for SRT, and SCC. Now, the important thing is that while we use a company and recommend a company called rev Doc,

Alex Ferrari 1:02:07
Yeah, I was about to say rev is,

Linda Nelson 1:02:09
They're they're great. We help them get started. We were one of their first customers.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:13
They're amazing. I've used them.

Linda Nelson 1:02:14
They're great. I promoted heavily. And they now do subtitles for three bucks a minute, which is great. That's insane.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:21
Remember those, the cost like

Linda Nelson 1:02:23
20 920, you know, a couple $1,000. God was the $8 a minute to $10 a minute for captioning. That's right. And so so now they have a really good option for both. Now the important thing is that you must get the FCC first. When you go to read just just order the SEC, do not order SRT first, because most people don't understand the difference between those two formats. The SCC format actually has two important things about it that SRT captions do not necessarily have. One is called placement information. And so especially for docs, or any films that have kind of any burned in information on them, you're not allowed for the captions to overwrite that. So you have to be able to move those conditions to OPERS. Elsewhere, you know, within the frame for that. So if you order SCC first, right, and you get your sec file, then it will have that placement information. The second information that's really important is that closed captions actually were devised for the Deaf. So there are what are called atmospherics. So in other words, anything that's important for a deaf person to know is happening, like a door slams a phone rings, when we're saying Right, right, that's in the SCC file. It will if you order s if you order SRT file, it's really just like a subtitle file in this in the sense that is only spoken dialogue. And you will not get that those two pieces of information and it will fail. Okay, it will fail certain platforms like iTunes and Google Play. Amazon's more lenient, they'll take. They'll take either. But so it's really important to get your sec files first. And then if you do it from ramp, once you have the SEC file, you can hit the edit button and save it in any other format. And it'll discard all that.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:23
No, no, I want to ask you a question about 4k because I get filmmakers just constantly I need a master in 4k. I need to master in 6k I'm like you guys are ridiculous.

Linda Nelson 1:04:35
Stop. Yeah, what? Well, 4k. I wouldn't say stop. No, no,

Alex Ferrari 1:04:39
no, no, no, but like 6k is, you know, I don't 4k is great, but it's not like you said it's not absolutely needed right now.

Linda Nelson 1:04:47
I mean, it's optional right now, but you you should have it. Sure. It's always wonderful to work. But we take it because like we have like on Fandango. We have like 10 4k Films there. It's not the common thing right now but it will be see like right now even on Amazon, they won't even take 4k through Amazon Video.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:06
But it's coming. I mean, look, I mastered $8 million series for Hulu on Hulu original. And they asked for your attend ADP attend ADP for two to HQ stereo, right? That was that was what was going to Hulu I was that, well, if an $8 million shows doing this, I don't know how much this $50,000 indie feature really needs to master in 4k at this point.

Linda Nelson 1:05:28
It doesn't. It's just that it can give give you additional revenue. And and for us, we say, okay, it's optional. We must have that HD,

Alex Ferrari 1:05:38
How much but is it worth spending the money in post and a production to get that 4k? Master in regards to the revenue that that 4k will bring?

Linda Nelson 1:05:50
Okay, depending on your workflow, there might not be any extra cost? Sure. Okay. Nine years ago, we shot delivered in 4k on a red camera and did everything all the editing and mastering everything ourselves, you know, on Adobe Premiere? Sure, it didn't, there was not one penny of extra cost. Okay. All right. Now, if you are on Apple, or you don't have a powerful computer, you're going to have problems. You know, with the workflow and stuff. I mean,

Alex Ferrari 1:06:25
That's what I mean. That's what I mean. Because if you have the the ability to master and 4k, by all means do it. Right. But if it's going to incur extra harddrive cost because the file sizes are larger, that you can't you can't literally push it through your system,

Linda Nelson 1:06:39
Or Yeah, it's not worth

Alex Ferrari 1:06:41
It's just not worth it. No, no, no, of course, you'd

Linda Nelson 1:06:43
Better have a you know, I mean, we had a big tower with 32 gig of RAM and a six terabyte raid attached to it. So, you know, so we could do it. You know,

Alex Ferrari 1:06:56
Right? It was a different Yeah. But if you can do it great. If you don't, don't go Don't kill killing yourself to try to do it. It's not worth it. Absolutely

Linda Nelson 1:07:03
Not. Now, I will say we're not taking any more SD hopes. Up surprise there. People say Oh, but I have this whole film in my library. Can you do that? No, that the exception is a classic horror from the 80s.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:23
Of course, because there's always a market for that, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. There's always a market for that. That's it's an it's a that's a sub genre that that always sells and always will probably sell. Now, can you discuss a sales agent versus a traditional distributor? So if we don't understand,

Linda Nelson 1:07:41
Right? Okay. A sales agent is really just a broker. They don't have any direct relationships with any anyone who has an actual outlet for your film. They are looking for other people. They are actually looking for distributors for your film for you. That's all. And they might take 25 30% for doing that. And then they're going to give it to a distributor who's going to take another 20 30% for actually distributing it. So all of a sudden, you've doubled what you got to pay out.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:18
Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense.

Linda Nelson 1:08:21
So for example, so for the you for us. For the for VOD, we are a distributor, we have a direct relationship with Amazon, we have a direct relationship with Google Play. There's no middlemen in between. We don't have to go to you know, an outside company to encode your film and dilute and our game you don't know aggregator That's right. We we actually do all of that in house.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:50
Got it? So you're the

Linda Nelson 1:08:52
We're the we're the actual distributor. So we're distributing your film. And in fact, we have many sales agents that bring us films. And you're like, Okay, yes. And unfortunately, sometimes their films that we wanted to get, but they weren't with the sales agent instead. And that still winds up with us.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:13
So the filmmakers is

Linda Nelson 1:09:15
That we're paying all we don't even pay the filmmaker, we pay the sales agent. Oh, God, Okay, got it. Now then. Now there are producers reps that are I say gos agent. sales agents call themselves producers reps because that's really what they are. You take someone there are reputable producers reps out there like circus Road Films. And they send a lot of films to us. Right, you know, so,

Alex Ferrari 1:09:42
You know Sebastian and Glen.

Linda Nelson 1:09:43
I know Sebastian and Glenn very well. In fact, I'm doing I'm doing a panel at downtown Film Festival in October and I always have Glenn come and speak. We live for a long time. Glenn's

Alex Ferrari 1:09:56
Actually in my movie. As an actor Glenn and Sebastian are Both movies,

Linda Nelson 1:10:01
You know, and and, and, and he's terrific and you know, wonderful I think a lot of new film makers especially it's their first film, or and they're not they live in Ohio or whatever. And they've gotten in a good festival and they made a great film and they are lost, they have no idea. Also, who's good, who's bad, who they should be working with, and and he is great working with, you know, people that need their handheld for a bit, you know, that are because, you know, like you said distribution is it's daunting.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:35
It is absolutely, and circus Ron, and Sebastian and Glenn are both awesome.

Linda Nelson 1:10:40
And so they they, you know, they send a lot of great films our way and we really appreciate it. Now, Glen also has a social media marketing company called media circus. Yes.

So, you know, because there are still a lot of filmmakers who don't know about post post. And I always make this comparison of that, you know, like, when you make a film, you know, you you're develop, develop your development. And then pre production is like your pregnancy. And then when you get, then you're in production. And at the end, when you have your festival premiere, that's like giving birth. And then you have to nurture your film after post, you've got to do post post, which is nurturing,

Alex Ferrari 1:11:23
You got to raise that baby

Linda Nelson 1:11:25
Gotta raise the baby. Because if you abandon the baby, there's no telling what's gonna happen. Go down the wrong alley. All right, good. So, post post is my new favorite phase. And that's why we educate our filmmaker. That's a great analogy, by the way, the

Alex Ferrari 1:11:42
Baby I did, like, once the baby's born and like, oh, okay, I'm good. And like, No, it's just getting started. Exactly. That's great. And I'm gonna steal that one from you, Linda.

Linda Nelson 1:11:52
Yeah, no, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very true. And, and, and they are films, you know, do consumers and take up our so much of our life while we're making them, and then we just dropped the ball, you know, I mean, it's, you can't do it. So. So education for filmmakers is very important to us, we give all our filmmakers like a 50 page marketing plan, that's only you know, they can't print it. You know, it's, it's strictly in house. And, and it really teaches all the basics, and really good techniques for optimizing all of your social media efforts. When it's really, really important. Plus, we have the private group of all of our filmmakers, and we, you know, share resources and support each other,

Alex Ferrari 1:12:39
You're kind of like an unlock. You're like the unicorn of distributors, honestly. I mean, I think as I speak to you, and I've known about you for obviously for years now, but now but kind of getting back into your inner workings You are so opposite of every other distributor that I've that I deal with like a Facebook group. Could you imagine a Facebook group for some of these distribution companies, they would be flames coming out

Linda Nelson 1:13:05
They couldn't do it. They absolutely couldn't do it.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:10
You know, it's insane. Now, we spoke a little bit about AFM. Can you explain to the audience the importance of AFM to distributors and what exactly you do at AFM. Just a little quick overview of AFM.

Linda Nelson 1:13:22
Okay. AFM is the largest gathering of people in the industry. That happens every year in Santa Monica, they take a big huge hotel Loews hotel, they take all the beds out of the rooms, and they put tables and chairs in there. And all of the people that have content to license rent, basically those rooms and you live there for nine days, and you sit in the room. And what happens is before the event takes place, we get a list of all of the buyers that are registered from the American Film market. And we send what are called avails, which means pertinent information about any films that you're going to be selling at the market. So in other words, we'll have a poster or a trailer or a synopsis description of the genre, you know, information if they've been won any festival awards, cast and crew and and we send those out to all the buyers now because there's a couple of 1000 of them. A lot of them just ignore the those things but others, you know, will actually write back to you and say, I'm interested in this one, this one, this one, I will I'd like to set an appointment. So probably by the time the market starts, our we are booked about half of our time with appointments from people that have responded to those avails that we sent out to the buyers and then then the rest of the time in between The other buyers that come to the market, they walk the hallways. So that there's a book published with every single exhibitor listed in it with a list of the films that they have. And then the buyers actually will walk, there's eight stories of there's eight floors. And so they will actually walk the hallways, and we all have displays of our posters out in the hallway. And if they see something that grabs their mind, or they have sat down with the book and go, Oh, this looks interesting, this looks interesting. And they stop at your office and either set up an appointment, or if you're free, then they'll sit down and talk with you on the spot. And the process is pretty simple. If someone comes in cold, and you say, Hi, how you doing, you know, what do you what kind of films are you interested in? They'll tell you, maybe they'll say, Oh, I just want romance for Korea, or Oh, I just want a horror for Japan, etc. Or they might say, Oh, you know, I'm looking for VOD rights for you know, six different territories or whatever. And so you sit down, and you start to show them what you have. So we bring with there's a couple of different ways for people to see our films. There's two important buyer databases that go along with canon AFM. One is called sin Ando and the exhibitors every time you're exhibiting one of those two markets, your films are on there for a year. So we've been on there for four years now. So our catalogs pretty extensive. And so those online databases have trailers, so that people can actually watch your trailers ahead of time. And that brings in a lot of buyers to the office. And then the other one is called the film catalogs the film catalog, anyone can see, you don't have to be a member. Anyone could go on to film catalog and look up indie rights and see what you could

Alex Ferrari 1:16:56
Sign up. You can sign up for the email list i get i get i get constant emails about all the movies that they have. And you're there all the time.

Linda Nelson 1:17:04
Yeah, we are constantly having new films on that carousel. Because we're if the members, only the films that are uploaded by if the members get to go on that carousel, only about 100 of us 100 150 maybe. So there's a limited number of if the members and people whose films get on there, and you can look, you can look up who's a member and if to online so you can see who you're dealing with. So so that's the process now. Now, sometimes you will actually sit like in Cannes this year at AFM last year in Canada. The very first meeting we had was a company from China called hawala. They sat down with us and they had a list with them already. They said we're interested, we want to see the trailer for this, this, this, this and this. they wound up signing a deal memo before the undercard can for 13 days first meeting first day. That's under 13 films. That's terrific. So now they're regular buyers must have bought from us AFM last year they bought from us and can and there we've already have a meeting set up for them for AFM this year. So what happens? There's still a lot of this business that depends on relationships. I mean, a lot of people think, oh, pretty soon it'll all it'll be done online. And I don't know, I think I like to meet people that I'm doing business with face to face. And I you know, like and my partner is great at sussing out people, somebody walk out, no, go we're not doing business with that. And he has a real really good instincts about that better than me. And so, you know, it's I like meeting people in person. And so those markets, that's where you build those relationships, you know, you might have drinks with someone you might have lunch with someone you know, or, you know, yeah, and, and also they have a buyers lounge. That's great. That's only for if the members where you can go back with the buyers to these very big comfortable gowns with couches and, and they have, you know, players so that they can watch movies, watch your movies, and you can talk about them. So it's a, it's a terrific opportunity just to have to build face to face relationships with buyers. And then, you know, like, people that have been doing that for a long time. They have all the same buyers come back every year and buy content from them. So it's very much a relationship business. And so that takes a while I mean, it's we're on it were our fourth in our fourth year of doing that. And, you know, every year we we build better and better relationships with buyer. That's the process and then and then sometimes people will take they'll say, Okay, I email me a screener for this one or that one and then they go back and they watch the movie in their hotel room. At night, and then they might come back the next day and say, Yes, I want to do a deal memo on that. Otherwise, you go back home after the markets over with and then you have to have follow up emails to all of the people that you send screeners to. And so it can take three, six months to actually finalize some of these deals. So it'll go anywhere from doing a deal memo on the spot, you know, to six months, you know, down the road before you actually combinate a deal with somebody. So it's quite a time it can be a time consuming process.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:36
Now how should look so and I know a lot of filmmakers listening right now they're like, Okay, I'm gonna have a movie I just finished it. I'm gonna go to AFM to see if I can get it sold. And how how should a filmmaker prepare to go to AFM and what they should should they be doing to approach a distributor like yourself, and at what point at AFM, because I know a lot of people make the mistake of trying to do it at the beginning, which you're pretty much packed on.

Linda Nelson 1:21:01
Yeah, I mean, I think a good idea you can do what's called a half market pass, which is the last half of the market. The first half of the market, most of the exhibitors are very busy selling, you know, at meetings that they have already established to had preset, so the half market is is good. And what you should do is do your homework, all you got to do is you can go on to the film catalog, and you can research and find companies, you know that acquire films like your films, like if you if you have a doc, you don't want to go to a company that only does dramas, or you don't want to go to somebody that only does horror film. So you can do all of that research ahead of time and you can actually email any of the companies and try to set an appointment. So that before you get to AFM that way you can cram all the beatings you want into, you know,

Alex Ferrari 1:21:58
Those last days.

Linda Nelson 1:21:59
Yeah, those last days. And you guys are interested in Korea? It's Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So it's crazy to go, there was no preparation. I'll just show up. A waste of time. Right? It? Yeah, I would never just show up because, you know, you Where do you start? No, there's, there's, you know, there's 100 offices there. Where do you Where do you start? You know, you need to at least have an idea of what companies might be interested in your type of project. And the same thing if you're looking for financing, because there are a lot of companies there that will finance but you need to set those you should try to set all of those meetings at a time.

Alex Ferrari 1:22:39
So I'm going to ask you a few questions. I asked all of my, my guests. I think I've added a few since last time we spoke What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today?

Linda Nelson 1:22:52
A filmmaker, make the movie that you want to make research heavily before you start production so that you can understand what you need to create. If you want to be able to have your film distributed.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:12
Can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or career?

Linda Nelson 1:23:18
The 4 agreements?

Alex Ferrari 1:23:20
Oh, really? Who wrote that?

Linda Nelson 1:23:23
It is written by a tall tech Shaman Oh, and it is very, very basic way of life.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:41
It's called the Four Agreements, the

Linda Nelson 1:23:43
The Four Agreements, interest and it's something that I give people as gifts if I think they're kinda, you know, like, ready? Yeah. Well, or just, you know, need some good advice about, you know, how to live life and it's a lot about being honest.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:02
No, stop it.

Linda Nelson 1:24:04
It's a lot about always doing your best. And then being okay with that every day, you know, you may not, you know, feel like you've accomplished everything you should accomplish, but just try your best every day. It's about not taking things personally because anyone you interact with, right is filtering everything through their own brain and their own experiences. And it's very easy to get discouraged in our business.

Alex Ferrari 1:24:33
Oh, god, yes.

Linda Nelson 1:24:35
So, to learn that skill, of not taking things, criticism personally from other people, you know, is is really, really important. You know, and you have to look inside and you know, drive your passion, you know, from your insides, not from other people's opinions about what you're doing. And good Those things are really, really important.

Alex Ferrari 1:25:01
I'm gonna look up look up. Now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry or in life?

Linda Nelson 1:25:14
I would say, living in the present moment to totally stay out of the past. We can learn from the past. But if you live in the past, you wind up feeling a lot of feelings that are not necessarily like regret, and guilt. And they can really get in the way of today. And you really shouldn't spend too much time in the future. because it keeps you from doing stuff today. So it's not even a vision. That's right. And yeah, and there you'll there's so many possibilities. How could you ever really have any real grasp of what it's gonna be? I'll tell you. I my life is so different than

Alex Ferrari 1:26:03
I think everybody's is honestly it's just you'd never

Linda Nelson 1:26:07
Staying in the present is just, you know, really, really important life skill. Learning to stay there.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:14
Now, what are three of your favorite films of all time?

Linda Nelson 1:26:16
Oh, my God,

Alex Ferrari 1:26:17
Just as of today as of right now in the present moment.

Linda Nelson 1:26:22
Blade Runner.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:23
Oh, yes. Thank you.

Linda Nelson 1:26:25
Casablanca classic. And current soldato, the new Who? Benicio del Toro movie.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:39
Oh, really?

Linda Nelson 1:26:40
I Sakario

Alex Ferrari 1:26:41
Oh, you mean Sakario, yes.

Linda Nelson 1:26:43
That was I think it was terrific.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:46
Wonderful. I didn't see the sequel. I heard it was pretty good.

Linda Nelson 1:26:48
Oh, this is the sequel.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:49
Oh, you're talking about the sequel? One? Oh, yeah. No one better than the first?

Linda Nelson 1:26:54
Oh, yeah. If that's possible? Yes. Absolutely.

Alex Ferrari 1:26:59
And and where does

Linda Nelson 1:27:00
That that's an old one, a new one and one in between?

Alex Ferrari 1:27:04
Now, where can people find more about you, and indie REITs. And what you guys are doing?

Linda Nelson 1:27:10
indierights.com is our website. And there's all kinds of historical information on there. What we're doing now movies, we're distributing a place where you can submit your film to us for distribution. And then as of September 17, our new Roku channel indie writes movies for free, will be available on the 17th of September. So we're really excited about that. And of course, we're also on Facebook, and we didn't really talk much about social media marketing, we should do another one, because that's really, really important. But we're we're on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter,

Alex Ferrari 1:27:50
I will, I will, I will come back and do another one with you. If you're so generous with your time again, I might do another because we this has become an epic conversation as I knew it would when I asked you to come back on this, I'm like, this is gonna we're gonna be here for a while. So thank you so much for being so generous with your time and dropping and dropping some knowledge bombs on the on the tribe today. So I really appreciate it. Linda, thank you so much.

Linda Nelson 1:28:12
You're very very welcome.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:14
That was epic. I want to thank Linda, so much for dropping an immense amount of knowledge bombs on the tribe today. If you want to get any of her links or how to contact Linda, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com/274. And guys, I will be at AFM this year. So I'm going to be flying around I'm going to be there about three or four days. So if you're going to be at AFM, a please message me, email me, let me know we'll grab a coffee, we'll sit down we'll talk and we'll try to schedule a time so we can all you know get together and and just talk shop and see if see if I can help you or be of service to you in any other way I can. So definitely check it out. And if you are in LA, and you have a film that you want to sell or even thinking about making a movie, if you can head over to AFM and even get a day pass just to see how movies are sold. It is very, very, very educational. I went for the first time last year and it blew my mind back this year and I plan to go every year that I can because you always meet people you always learn things there. So definitely check out AFM and I'll put a link to all their information as well in the show notes. And that does it for another episode of the indie film hustle podcast. I hope you have a scary and safe Halloween today guys. So as always, keep that also going. Keep that dream alive. And I'll talk to you soon.