My distribution plan for a $50k USD profit.

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gorillaonabike

So I decided to put my money where my mouth is, shoot something I can distribute and attempt to make money while keeping my day job. My business plan is modest and I believe a profit of around $50k USD is more than feasible, although I would split this with my co-conspirators, equally. As this is my first project shooting for the money, I may well fall flat on my face but thought I would put it on here.

In particular, I believe that 99% of what I have read about distribution on IT does not touch the possibilities of the 'new' distribution model and there is a different method of approaching this. There are experienced film makers on here who have clearly indicated I am wrong but rather than argue on an internet discussion board, I am simply going to put up money and try my 'new' model. A synopsis of my plan is:

- The most important element is the marketing plan and the start of the project and everything stems from this. This has been written conservatively and covers everything you would expect.

- Naturally, I have test-run the idea on friends and film makers. When told about it, they believe there is an untapped target audience which is desperate for this type of content. Am naturally being a little coy around title etc... but having run this by a couple of people, there is immediate interest.

- Part of the marketing plan is to meet key individuals with large audiences who will promote my little project free of charge. For example, I have a meeting with the presenter of a net channel with 18 million annual views who describes my project as 'fun' and will promote it on his channel. I believe he may be happy to promote me free of charge, meaning host my trailer, write about it, interview me. If this is the case, this is the second largest 'fish' I want to hook from a promotional perspective.

- Approaches have been made to other organisations which have not, yet returned my calls / emails but from the initial reaction of the channel host, I believe I am in with a shot of getting free promotion.

- Printed media: I have identified around 150 different 'minor' publications and forums which will want to discuss my little project. These are all focused on my target market. This means potential purchasers will be absolutely bombarded with my project. Everywhere they look, they will see adverts, interviews, posters etc...

- Initial costs have been budgeted for and money set aside for the entirety of the shoot.

- Equipment will be DSLR level and sound will be enough for my target audience and distribution. Ideally, I would have an Arri Alexa, mobile lighting truck and half a million bucks of sound equipment but I don't and will use the techniques I have painstakingly gleaned to drive this forward.

- Crew is on board. Can't afford to pay them but we will have an equal split as I genuinely want partners. Too often, I see musicians say 'looking for film making partners...' but if they make any money, they won't share it with the film maker. I'm different and want everyone to make money. H@ll, if this works, I will be sitting on a goldmine!

- Mainstream media will only be approached if this project is good enough.

Who knows if my crazy plan will work and no idea if anyone will be interested. Clearly, I believe it is in with a fighting chance and if someone generating 18 million views per year believes it is a good idea, then that is a hint I may be going in the right direction.

Next update after my meetings with the key players and the first part of the marketing plan has been executed. Stage 2 is to hone the project based on some of their input (to better appeal to the target market) and go into pre.
 
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kjones said:
"For example, I have a meeting with the presenter of a net channel with 18 million annual views who describes my project as 'fun' and will promote it on his channel. I believe he may be happy to promote me free of charge, meaning host my trailer, write about it, interview me. If this is the case, this is the second largest 'fish' I want to hook from a promotional perspective."

Is this the same person/company? What's your back-up plan? If you believe these individuals' opinion, there may be others out there for you to approach...
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No. Different organisations. However, my primary concern is around the appetite of the target market to buy. There may well be a market but the current title and story aren't quite hitting the spot. Needs work.
 
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sfoster said:
In my experience anything outside of the box and unproven will never be accepted by the establishment. But the show must go on.
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They're not excited by it. As they are very much part of my target market and their endorsement, locations and gear would have been incredibly useful, I have to understand why they are not excited. They also didn't tell me the 'why' and I had to go to other people and work out why.

So now I've worked out the 'why' I have to tweak the title, content and adapt it to what I believe the audience would want. This is all prior to my meeting the 18 million hits a year man. Interestingly, I do not know what the 18 million hits man wants - i.e. if he would want money, a piece of the pie etc...

Jeez - working out the audience demographic was easy as this is a function of the title. However, figuring out what will get them to buy is more interesting...
 
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Yeah, that quantitative "why" is infinitely more valuable than a primitive qualitative "yes/no."

I hope you can pry some useful intel out of "The 18 Million Hits Man." :yes:
 
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rayw said:
Yeah, that quantitative "why" is infinitely more valuable than a primitive qualitative "yes/no."

I hope you can pry some useful intel out of "The 18 Million Hits Man." :yes:
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OK, so potentially interesting and potentially not. Three elements:


1. He is probably 'the' expert in his field and believes my story and genre are pretty much on the money and will attract attention in the market I am aiming at. He described it as 'an open goal' and confirmed there is absolutely nothing else in this space.
2. The market is terrible. There are a small number of people who pay lots of money but in a market of 250,000 people, they are strangely reluctant to pay for content. This is, in part, a peculiarity of this demographic.
3. His channel will promote my project, free of charge, with a combination of 'shorts pieces' I will shoot in advance. Sort of promo pieces which he will do free of charge. It is his channel which he shares with a partner.

He gets his funding through advertising / promotions. He has high end advertisers with expensive products who want to continually appeal to his market.

His belief is a YouTube channel getting a million hits per month is a better means of generating advertising revenue than a paying model. This is his route and he is encouraging me in this direction.

The other way is to shoot this and then get sponsorship / commissioning for further projects as the demographic contains a significant number of wealthy benefactors who regularly promote this.

A further note is he gets half his hits from China and they go crazy for this kind of product. This is a little strange as I am a British Born Chinese but am very British and not very Chinese. However, I have been naturally attracted to a genre where there is huge demand out in China!

The question is therefore, is he doing this just to increase content on his site?
 
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gorillaonabike said:
A further note is he gets half his hits from China and they go crazy for this kind of product. This is a little strange as I am a British Born Chinese but am very British and not very Chinese. However, I have been naturally attracted to a genre where there is huge demand out in China!
Yeah, well...
My surname and ancestry may be European but I'm about as American as they come, so...

Nurture over nature, and then throw in some dumb luck for good measure and you got an explanation for that seemingly Chinese nature over British nurture. ;)

The question is therefore, is he doing this just to increase content on his site?
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Film piracy via torrents is pretty rampant, even for very low budget films, so... Whether your contact is just trying to increase content on his site or someone else is just gonna rip it off his site and spread it around on their own is sorta academic.

You gotta look farther than this project.

I advocate planning your films three deep: First film promotes the upcoming second film, second film promotes the upcoming third film, by the time the third film comes out I hope you're already planning on films four, five and six.

Honestly, this makes selling a film series box set album MUCH easier, anyway.
Most of the value comes not from the film itself (get over yourselves) but from the included DVD/BR extras such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.
You seriously gotta plan ahead waaaaaay further than you'd normally think.

The filmmaking environment has changed with the advent of film piracy.
We must adapt to exploit the change, or die
jurassic-park.gif]
.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Advanced project planning's a giant PITA.
But it exploits this annoying practice of pirate douche bags.

Does your project have that potential?
Can it be strung out to:
#1 Story
#2 Sequel/Return/Revenge of
#3 Origin/Genesis/Beginings
#4 Rebirth
#5 Beyond...
#6 Jump the Shark!

Again, the idea is exploit torrent film piracy by planning any first film (written/directed by ourselves) to be a tent pole starter of a series.
>> First film promotes the second film, which promotes the third, etc. x 6.
When your ripped-off film gets illegally distributed it promotes your next work!
(Take THAT, you f#ckin' f#ckers!)

This allows an eventual box-set series to be sold and your residuals to possibly keep rolling in long after that first payout.
 
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rayw said:
Film piracy via torrents is pretty rampant, even for very low budget films, so... Whether your contact is just trying to increase content on his site or someone else is just gonna rip it off his site and spread it around on their own is sorta academic.

You gotta look farther than this project.

I advocate planning your films three deep: First film promotes the upcoming second film, second film promotes the upcoming third film, by the time the third film comes out I hope you're already planning on films four, five and six.

Honestly, this makes selling a film series box set album MUCH easier, anyway.
Most of the value comes not from the film itself (get over yourselves) but from the included DVD/BR extras such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.
You seriously gotta plan ahead waaaaaay further than you'd normally think.

The filmmaking environment has changed with the advent of film piracy.
We must adapt to exploit the change, or die
jurassic-park.gif]
.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Advanced project planning's a giant PITA.
But it exploits this annoying practice of pirate douche bags.

Does your project have that potential?
Can it be strung out to:
#1 Story
#2 Sequel/Return/Revenge of
#3 Origin/Genesis/Beginings
#4 Rebirth
#5 Beyond...
#6 Jump the Shark!

Again, the idea is exploit torrent film piracy by planning any first film (written/directed by ourselves) to be a tent pole starter of a series.
>> First film promotes the second film, which promotes the third, etc. x 6.
When your ripped-off film gets illegally distributed it promotes your next work!
(Take THAT, you f#ckin' f#ckers!)

This allows an eventual box-set series to be sold and your residuals to possibly keep rolling in long after that first payout.
Click to expand...

I have 6 very short films designed to pique the interest of the target market. These will be seen by small segments of the target market with the idea of warming them up to buy and at the same time gauging if I am going in the right direction.

These shorts mean I will have an opportunity to provide his channel with content which he is happy to show to his market which has a lot of crossover with mine.

The other element is I need to gain the trust of my target market. Part of the reason this can be done so cheaply is this is focused at a special interest group which meets in specific locations, has particular resources etc... and I would need these for the final product.
 
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It's almost been a month since your last post Gorilla, do you have any updates at where you currently stand?

All this talk has got me interested in what your shorts are going to be about and I would very much like to see them when they are completed and there's a link you can provide to them.
 
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PhantomScreenwriter said:
It's almost been a month since your last post Gorilla, do you have any updates at where you currently stand?

All this talk has got me interested in what your shorts are going to be about and I would very much like to see them when they are completed and there's a link you can provide to them.
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Am delighted you are interested. The next part of the marketing plan is tomorrow. The idea is to connect with a small, part of my potential audience by shooting some footage of them (after asking their permission) and supplying them with this to start getting them interested. I want to create a level of interest and this is part of the equation.

You will have to excuse me if I do not post direct footage on here as I believe I am the only person with the idea of targeting this particular market. However, how about a nice music vid instead? Not fantastic, but 'passable.': https://vimeo.com/paulrwalker/review/81056456/69df2b8874
 
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Wow... just shot some terrible footage - really bad run 'n' gun stuff. Not good enough for anything, really. It looks horrendously amateurish, incredibly poor although I learned a lot. I really need a second, less obtrusive camera and do things differently.

My experience has given me an idea of the size of the marketing problem I am dealing with. This marketing headache is enormous and I will need help on that front. And I will need somewhere in the region of 15 months as this is more realistic given the size of the marketing issues.

That being said, I had 'casual' contact with my target audience and this has confirmed there is definitely an entirely untapped market and there is money there. Marketing to them is a significantly bigger job than expected and will take more hours than shooting the movie. Now I understand why marketing takes more of the budget - it simply takes more time.
 
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WalterB said:
Are you inspired by the lean startup method?
First talking to the audience to see whether there is a demand, is one of the key elements of that method.
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I have been talking to the audience and a YouTube channel with 18 million views per year. The dude with the channel believes I have a fantastic idea if I can get 'into' the audience, hence the marketing plan, part of which is to engage with the audience (and is on the first page of this thread).

However, I would never directly ask an audience what they want. Henry Ford always said that if he'd asked his market what they would've wanted, their response would have been 'a faster horse.' Ditto when I started my own business, no-one wanted what I was offering, until I (and about a zillion other people who had the same idea at the same time), offered it.
 
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Wow, this marketing business is tricky. There is an audience, but engaging with them is extremely time consuming. I can absolutely understand why no-one has hit this market before as it is extremely painful engaging with them. They don't have a natural online 'community' presence so will need to bring together disparate strands into a single, commercially viable unit.

The professionals I have spoken with have all told me the same. I have an idea which is outstanding and there is an obvious market. However, engaging with the market is the difficulty and they weren't wrong. I am never going to denigrate a marketing effort ever again. Those people seriously earn their money.

Initial test shoots were poor but at least I have the beginning of an understanding of what is necessary.
 
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gorillaonabike said:
Wow, this marketing business is tricky. There is an audience, but engaging with them is extremely time consuming. I can absolutely understand why no-one has hit this market before as it is extremely painful engaging with them. They don't have a natural online 'community' presence so will need to bring together disparate strands into a single, commercially viable unit.

The professionals I have spoken with have all told me the same. I have an idea which is outstanding and there is an obvious market. However, engaging with the market is the difficulty and they weren't wrong. I am never going to denigrate a marketing effort ever again. Those people seriously earn their money.

Initial test shoots were poor but at least I have the beginning of an understanding of what is necessary.
Click to expand...
Keep at it, and continue moving forward :)
 
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As a relevant aside, when "people" grieve over how liberal "mass media" is especially newspapers and broadcast news, which I'll concede it often is, it all comes back to the most lucrative audience market: emotionally driven people who are able to be more EASILY manipulated out of their cash.

Advertisers don't want to service the tight-fisted stingy conservatives when it's so much easier to get emotionally liberated liberals to buy their products and services.

And that's why CNN is such watered down cr@p today. Fox "news" stole their advertising base a decade ago.

Identifying a market and having a fiscally exploitable market are two different things.
Consider the global market for AIDS drugs: big market, not much income/economic output = not much pharmaceutical interest in researching new drugs.
Whereas addressing obesity in the U.S. and U.K. with pills or 30min fat burner exercise DVDs and silly "ab" crunchers presents a huge market of potential customers with obvious resources to purchase their products.

So, "yeah!", some niche audiences are more or less difficult to financially market to, thus EXACTLY WHY they are not being served. :)
 
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