ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

5 years, 8 months ago - davina brown

I'd be interested to know what you're doing to drive traffic to your streaming site?

5 years, 7 months ago - James Esposito

Hi Davina, I'm just using the usual social media sites at the moment.

5 years, 7 months ago - Michael Lebor

Hi James,

I'm guessing the revenue is very low for adding your content to Amazon Video Direct? What deal have you signed up to?

5 years, 7 months ago - davina brown

@James. Sorry for not responding sooner. I didn't get notification of your response. I'm guessing that you're not spending any money to drive traffic. Also, I recently discovered the Amazon royalty for UK filmmakers is now 1c. So, it's probably a waste to dsped money driving traffic at this new royalty rate. Do you follow Rob Hardy and his blog about indie filmmaking as a business?

5 years, 7 months ago - Al Carretta

Hi Shooters,

Firstly, in recent days IMDb has updated it's 'Watch on Prime Video' links. These had disappeared for quite some time but if you've got films on Prime, these links take
people straight to your film.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3428843/

Secondly, if you go bit deeper in the SP message boards you can see my previous - more detailed - posts on distribution. I've made 14 multi genre features since 2010 and I've seen almost every streaming route there is and I'm happy to share what is an ongoing experience for me.

I also run the Nightpiece Film Festival in the Edinburgh Fringe and am always keeping tabs on tales of distribution woes and the general expenditure of filmmakers.

I've never spent a single penny on marketing. The response to the films has been entirely organic.

I've got 5 films up on Amazon Prime at them moment and everything is up on Vimeo bar 'Princess in the Castle'.
Thanks to FilmHub.com my films are also out in all matter of magical places that I know little about. I've also got content out with HODTV.net in Italy.

Since 2017 my films have been pirated and on the torrent sites within hours but I've also had the unique situation of an American 'studio' (Echelon Studio's) passing off my first 5 feature films as their own to one of YouTube's video behemoths...

I've seen a few cents, sometimes dollars here and there from Amazon and I've got $125.22 (ish) on account (e.g.waiting to be paid) with Filmhub but this involves
3 or 4 titles and tails back to Autumn 2018! As an aside, you'll find that not many indie filmmakers are open about what they actually spend and recoup...

Vimeo is transparent all the way - again a few dollars here and there - but it's got an odd stigma around it and it's near impossible to find your video without a direct link.

If you can, hold private screenings of your film; at £5 a ticket you will make money here on a single night than you will streaming for years. Use these funds to orchestrate your online release and see if your film bites and then be prepared for trolls if it gets popular.

Amazon is now an awful, awful, awful, awful deal and from Jan 2020, the royalty drops to £0.02p per hour for indies that don't play much. It does payout monthly if people are watching your content but it buries your films and early 2019 quietly performed a purge of hundreds of thousands of indie titles with no reasoning, however, it's a necessary evil to be part of it.

My 15th feature 'Cocaine Gangster Talk' comes out in the coming weeks. The problem with this is it runs at 3h 17m and that's gonna be $197 on the Closed Captions alone....

keep filming!

Al Carretta
Director, Nightpiece Film Festival

Twitter: @alcarretta

5 years, 7 months ago - Ray Brady

Fair and explotitive distribution revenues available to indie filmmakers
3 months ago · 72 responses