Party Pooper
Hey folks!
So my friend Mark over at Cassava Films put together a little shoot a couple months ago. The short film, entitled "Party Pooper," is on Funny or Die right now and just last week was #1 on the User Picks list! Go check it out. You might recognize a certain bearded film-blog-ateer.
Enjoy it, vote Funny. Didn't enjoy it? Well, let's be honest you probably didn't even watch it all the way through. You suck. Go back and rewatch it! It's funny! And then head on over to the GadZook Films page on Funnyordie and enjoy some of those, too!
T-Shirts
Hey everyone! So some exciting news just in time for the holiday season. As many of you know we here at GadZook Films have been collecting a slew of funny sayings and non-sequiturs. What better way to enjoy them than on a t-shirt? Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the GadZook T-shirt store!
T-shirts are now available from GadZook Films!
We're beginning a fundraising push here to raise some money for equipment upgrades and more. Stay tuned for the unveiling of our IndieGoGo fundraising site in the next couple of weeks.
Who wants to pay for internet video?
To stream or to subscribe. iTunes vs. Hulu. The immortal question that faces you, the end-user. How content will be accessed by the masses will effect you the filmmaker as well. As more and more distributors, content providers and studios are moving towards an online business models the landscape of developing content for the internet has exploded. But the concepts behind monetizing that content is still a matter of contention.
There are roughly two models - advertising and subscriber-based revenue.
Advertising is simple. There are the ads on the site and those that are embedded within the video itself. These are tallied on a CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per milli, aka cost per 1000 impressions). There's also flat-rate advertising, which is the most like traditional print advertising - someone buys web real estate for their ad to run for a specified amount of time. No click measurements to track.
With subscriber-based revenue the focus is on charging customers to view content. I guess that's more simple than ad-based revenue. Hmm. Anyway, moving on!
OK, so what are the pros and cons and what's right for you?
Let me answer that last question first. Both. There is no right or wrong method for finding a solid revenue stream right now. But there are considerations to be made.
With advertising, you provide your content to your audience for free. In return you need to toss ads up, around, in and on your video to reach the desired goal. If you've ever been to Hulu you've seen the most recent logical step in ad placement, which is basically laying commercials in the video where the commercials would go if you were watching it on TV. You usually cannot skip these ads but clicking them will only open a new window, allowing you to stick with the action and buy something later.
As an independent filmmaker ads are the most widely usable forms of revenue. You have a very limited audience and your content needs to be stellar for people to want to pay to view it. You can team up with Google and lay ads around your site or seek out advertisers and offer them play within your videos.
Without a large audience share your choice of advertisers (and the money they might bring) is small, but it could keep you in business. It all boils down to views. The larger your audience, the more money you make with advertising. If you can show you get 10,000+ views per video you'll have a good shot at making decent money.
The main drawback to advertising is that too much is a bad thing. You want your audience to be able to navigate away from it if they desire, or at least make its impact as small as possible. Look for CPC and Flat-rate ads mainly. Unless you're averaging 10,000+ website hits a day stay away from CPM.
For further reading, check out Google AdSense which will help you ad relevant ads to your website. And eMarketer tends to talk about the industry as a whole, including new advertising models if the current ones just don't float your boat. I now open the floor to any questions and comments.
Social Media Fundraising?
EDIT: Since I wrote this more research has revealed some specifics. I'm sharing that now. Thanks!
Lots of exciting things going on here at GadZook Films. First off I started a Twitter account. You can follow me and the GadZook crew by clicking the little icon in my sidebar.
GadZook Films is also on Myspace and Facebook, so add us to your friends and group lists! You'll feel so smug when all of your friends marvel at how GadZook Films was your friend months before we accepted their friend request. There's a link in the sidebar to the Facebook group as well, if, ya know, you just like to watch.
But here's the real issue: can independent filmmakers, like us here at GadZook Films, raise money using the internet's vast social networking resources? The folks at IndieGoGo believe we can. They have an interesting, albeit not new, business model. You, as Joe Filmmaker, set up a project on their site, establishing a specific fundraising goal. You e-mail friends, family, fans and let them know about what you're doing and how they can help. Theoretically the whole 6 degrees of separation should nab you more fans and more potential donors.
With regards to the fundraising aspect of IndieGoGo, it's a pledge system. Donors may pledge money to your cause using Amazon Payments (a filmmaker must setup an Amazon Merchant account). Money is not taken out of the donor's account, however, until the project meets its goal. IndieGoGo charges a 9% administration fee against all the money you end up actually raising. If you don't get any of the money then you don't pay. 9% is pretty high, more than some of the film-related non-profit umbrellas I've worked with in the past charge anyway.
For the record, Fundable.org, another web-based fundraising tool for filmmakers, charges a 10% admin fee. They use PayPal instead of Amazon to delivery payments.
It's basically a method of leveraging any sort of social network you've constructed for yourself to help raise money for film projects. And I'm going to be a guinea pig and try it out. Head over to my IndieGoGo site, become a fan of GadZook Films and stay tuned. I'll be uploading a project in the next week and try to raise some financing for it. Help me out and you'll see first hand how it'll help! Questions, comments?
In next week's column I'll discuss paying for online video content.
How does this economic crisis affect you?
I've been talking with a couple filmmaking friends of mine about this bailout crap. OK, cutting through the mumbo-jumbo and what it means for your money, what does it mean for your future potential financier's money? More to the point, if you're looking for financing how is the disaster at Wall Street gonna affect your chances of finding it?
Well, let's try and lay it out. If you know or knew investors personally then you're going to have the best chance of convincing them to part with their hard-earned dollars. This was the case before the collapse of Wall Street and it'll be the same long after this hullabaloo is over. The most difficult piece of the puzzle has always been finding the investors - those people with enough money to drop into your production and not bankrupt themselves if they lost it all. If you know a person like this, now's the time to talk to them about diversifying their portfolio with non-stock market investments.
If you don't know a person like this, now's probably not the best time to approach an individual who may be wealthy but also may be undergoing cash flow problems due to the economy. They are looking for safe options and probably can't or won't take a chance on someone they don't know who can't (legally) guarantee them any return on their investment. Most financiers have their money tied up in the very things that are tanking right now. Many of these things are not insured due to their speculative nature. Even real estate is taking a hit. It won't be as easy for folks to draw out their assets or borrow against them.
So what do you do? My suggestion? Brush off those scripts you had that you know you could make for say $100k or less. Scripts with budgets that are modest enough that you could feasibly find a few accredited investors who have maybe $10-15k in liquid assets that can come together to finance the project.
But better yet, make videos for the 'net. Production values aren't as important, but story is. Hone your craft, focus on telling a good story and make it memorable. This will build your audience and help you find future investors down the road when the economy is back on its feet.
While the "rescue" (don't you dare call it a bailout!!) plan is very, very, very far from perfect, there are some aspects that are beneficial to filmmakers. Richard Verrier at the LA Times had a story on those pieces. To whit:
Specifically, the legislation would allow filmmakers who shoot in the U.S. to qualify for a tax deduction granted in 2004 to domestic manufacturers that capped the top tax rate at 32% instead of 35%. Additionally, the tax package lifts the budget cap on the existing tax deduction, which was limited to movies that cost less than $15 million to make -- in effect excluding most studio films, which cost a lot more.
Now producers would be able to immediately deduct all production costs up to $15 million, regardless of the movie's total budget. The change also extends the existing credit, which was due to expire this year, to December 2009.
Don't get excited yet, friends. The bill still has to pass the House who shut it down last time it came through. It's tough to support such a dastardly bill simply because it offers support for us filmmakers, but it is good to know there is some consideration being taken (although this has more to do with major studios than Jane Filmmaker).
What do you think?
Vote!
Hey folks. I can't stress the importance of registering to vote and then actually voting. So to help you out I've collected a couple links.
In California the deadline to register is October 20th, 2008 to vote in the next election!! You can find out how to register here.
In Washington the deadline to register is 30 days before an election... in this case, October 4th! You can go here to get information on how and when to register.
Now, how about a video? I didn't make this, but I wish I had.
Heroes
I'm kind of surprised I didn't have a post about this show before. Maybe I'm searching for the wrong thing. Anyway, wow. Talk about a show that had promise. Way back when Season One premiered I watched every episode. I wouldn't say I loved it. I thought it went through a lot of first season nerves, like many great shows. I thought they'd catch their stride eventually, especially with so much positive reaction from fans and the full support of the network. Well, season one ended on kind of a whimper. Meh, I thought, season two should be better now that we've got all this crap outta the way!
Season Two turned out to be even worse. Poor plotting, bad acting and that annoying soundtrack. I'm not sure what was up with the costume and make-up depts. but whoever approved the look of EVERYONE needs to be shot. These are beautiful people and somehow they look awful. I watched about four episodes of the second season which was mercifully cut short by the writer's strike. Tim Kring, the executive producer on the show, sent out a press release telling the fans how sorry he was the second season sucked so hard. They'd do better. Meh, I thought, season three should finally get us back on track!
Now Season Three began last night and I can safely say that no... it really is that bad. Let's examine the technical aspects.
Pacing - laborious. It took two episodes (a two-hour event!) to muck through all the characters and re-introduce them. And we're told there are going to be even more new characters throughout the season. Wheee!
Photography - hi-def and ultra bland. Colors are gorgeous, but there's no soul behind the camerawork. It moves for no reason. Characters move into the light like it's going to be a clever subtext reveal but either they missed their mark or it was just bad lighting.
Make-up - people still look bad, though not as bad as the last two seasons. Ali Larter, beautiful woman, looks awful. As a side-note: Her reveal in the episode elicited almost no response from me... just a roll of the eyes. It was like "Hey! This governor dude you don't know? He's important. Hmm? Who's that? Oh... it's uh... Ali Larter. Do you guys even remember her? You do?! Huh. If we thought you were paying attention we would've done a better reveal for such a major character!" Anyway, back to how people look. It's like they took folks who had no idea about comic book history and set them in a room to determine how people should look. "Let's make the speedster wear red and have ratty hair!" "Four years in the future clothes should be so radically different that it won't make any sense for characters to wear them!"
Soundtrack - can it be like, muted or something?
Writing - showing a complete inability to properly present an homage (e.g. the Fly, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the myriad of other superhero origin stories Heroes has ripped off) and an utter lack of comic history (do these writers even READ X-Men?), it's like there is no goal for any of the characters other than to stay out of each other's way. We want to see these people fight TOGETHER. Why the eff would Noah refuse to bring Claire along - knowing she's indestructible and not even Sylar can kill her? Especially when she says the stuff about willing to shoot and saving the world and all that. She's battle tested and a formidable weapon. And Sylar... Sylar, Sylar, Sylar. Such a weak-ass supervillain. His writing is cliché ridden, not the fault of the actor, but his delivery is unable to make anything more of it. He's consistently unassuming. He's not scary at all. If the other actors didn't ACT so scared we as audience members wouldn't think he was bad at all.
Ugh. Will I watch episode three? Probably. I want to see Veronica Mars team up with Weevil one more time. But man, could they possibly get a writer from Veronica Mars to script it?? Bottom line here: know your audience, know your genre, and know your characters. If you have too many characters to properly focus on then it's time to kill people off.
Growing Up
A bit of departure for this blog. I wanted to talk a little about one of my best friends. We met in High School, dated briefly, and remained in touch through thick and thin over the interceding years. Rosie went on to great things and we eventually found a way to bring some passion projects together - she was knee deep in creating sustainable business models in the Middle East and I wanted to make some socially conscious documentaries. The product of a long IM conversation one night gave us the idea to do a documentary about Oil and Islam. We were excited and began setting the ground work.
I hadn't gotten far when I received word from a mutual friend that Rosie, that brilliant and beautiful girl I spoke with not but three weeks ago, had passed away in a car accident in Jordan. The news is still sinking in.
Anyone who followed the Seattle Mariners in the late 90s and early 21st century may remember her as a spectacular ballgirl for the club. She was much more than that, of course, but for a touching look on one aspect of her eventful yet short life, please read this article by Larry Stone at the Seattle Times remembering Rosie. She really was an inspirational person. And while our lives had taken different paths our friendship was the kind of thing that kept blossoming each time we caught up with each other. Hard to ask for more than that. I will truly miss her.
If you're interested in this documentary and helping me fulfill a small dream of Rosie's (she dreamt big!) shoot me a line off-blog. Thanks.
Snow Day on sale, and more
Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day is on sale NOW! Get the few remaining copies while you can at the reduced price of just $8! This is the Special Edition with extra features, Director & Crew commentary and it's widescreen for your viewing pleasure.
You may also notice that there are some books listed there too. This is our Amazon store and I hope you'll use it to find your filmmaking books (or anything you so desire). If you have suggestions for excellent filmmaking-related bookery, please leave a comment and I'll add it in. I expect that store will be getting new listings frequently as my personal filmmaking library is pretty extensive and I haven't even added half of the books I'd recommend.
Hope you're enjoying the redesign of this page, too. I was a little tired of the default theme and didn't like the other options out there so built my own. Let me know!