ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

1 year, 5 months ago - Ray Brady

Hi, No, FilmHub did not send a proof copy of their new artwork for me to approve. They asked me if I would like to put the film (and others) out on DVD in the States. They said how good the VOD (video-on-demand) market and, supermarket and store sell-through business in the US still was compared to the UK, where it died about ten years ago. Including disc authoring and new artwork, they charged seven hundred pounds for each film. After agreeing to their offer, Filmhub did not communicate any further whatsoever. Annoyingly Filmhub released some of my films to their YouTube Stash Movies channel, films that I had just paid them to put out in the USA, which would greatly undermine any potential DVD if they could easily be found for free on the world's biggest Video platform. Yes, I did contact them and point this out to them, they simply told me to start paying for their new subscription service to be able to do this. To be clear, to stop them from putting my films up on YouTube on their Channel for free they wanted me to subscribe to their premium subscription, in reality wanting me to pay my distributor/aggregator for not putting my features upto their YouTube Channel. It is worth noting that when thousands of filmmakers availed themselves of FilmHub services over the last few years found themselves in the same position, this was an option that you could request for free when I originally added my films to FilmHub, now with their policy changes to stop them from doing I would have to pay. After adding new paid tiers/levels recently the only way you could stop them from doing this was to pay them a monthly or yearly paid subscription. I decided to add my own titles to my UKFILM COMPANY YouTube Channel to watch there for free. Ironically I received a cease and desist from YouTube for a copyright issue for one of my films as the film was up already on FilmHub's Stash Movies YouTube Channel. Fortunately when I explained that I had written, directed, and produced the film in question Love Life a Rom-Com feature film, and referred them to the imdb.com to see who owned all the film's rights. YouTube in turn issued Stash Movies with a counter copyright issue order and after several strongly worded messages from FilmHub, they eventually took me films off their YouTube Channel. All of my back catalog of movies and short films can now be found on my YouTube Channel. As an advocate and promoter of FilmHub since their inception on dozens of film forums and throughout all our social media this has now ended. Needless to say, I will no longer be adding any new titles to Filmhub and I suggest filmmakers research extensively on film forums before letting FilmHub handle your film distribution.
Removing the filmmaker's name and the name of a film's production company only to replace them with their own company name I think is quite shocking and perhaps not even legal. I and several other filmmakers are looking into this and if there is anyone out there who feels the same please join the conversation, either here or on any of the filmmaker's forums out there.

11 months, 1 week ago - Ray Brady

Hi Bob,
Many thanks for that, I'm pretty sure we met several years ago at a Chris Jones event in Ealing. At the end of Jan this year I looked at our YouTube account and realised that after taking down most of our content, after YouTube announced their latest partner program advertising share information approx two years ago now, our account had after over twelve years plummeted to an all time low of three hundred and sixty subscribers. Having grown tired of the lack of information (none) from Amazon for any of our Amazon Prime sales we were making I had a rethink about YouTube. They provide access to their incredible analytics information, which when studied and researched I realised that was an incredible filmmakers resource which I hadn't apped into and was far more valuable than the tiny percentages of income that could be garnered from their partners program. So I decided to go all out, upload all my old feature films and our catalogue of new indie features and short films, then run some Google Ads for new releases and to really work the analytics information that I got back from YT after each new release. Today, eight months later, our YT Channel (UKFILM COMPANY) has 170K subscribers. Though income is incredibly low, for the first time I really feel that we have begun to build and identify a global audience. By responding to messages and feedback received, studying the analytics we've realised that we can improve our film's impact by enacting lessons learned, from mistakes made.
I wonder if any other Shooter would like to share their own experiences with the YouTube creators program, and offer any helpful insights to the Shooting People community.
Ragards

11 months ago - Ray Brady

Hi Don, good to hear from you again. Agreed re USA companies being difficult to deal with, any distribution contracts I have been offered are always at least ten pages longer than they need to be, cost too much ​in legal fees to negotiate into sensible deals, MG's are low and you have to usually threaten legal action before signed deals are actually honoured. Looking now for pick up deals, very hard to get nowadays but at least you know what you're going to get up front. National TV companies used to pay half a films budget for national broadcast rights now you'd be lucky to get a tenth, sales made through all big subscription entertainment services are literally pennies per view for a movie, payment is then nearly a year down the line of which you are taxed, minus twenty percent if you've gone through a sales agent, ten if through an aggregator. Personally trying to get myself into a first look Acquisition position would be my ideal, the most honest transparent business, you and any investors know exactly where you are and whether its worth doing the deal.​ I hope all your projects in development are moving forward at speed and to meet you in person some time in the not too distant future. Please check out some of my UKFILM COMPANY recent content on YT when you find the time as now making and posting proof of concept content on there to help develop furture projects. Raygards