I don't buy into this break even on this film and hope for better results on the next.
Well, what exactly do you buy into? You seem to think that you can make a movie for peanuts, retain all the rights, place limitations/caps on distributors' costs, get fully itemised billing, pay next to nothing for distribution and what, make a good profit when there's a glut of similar products all competing for a share of what is a tiny market?
And what exactly is a distributor going to do to market a movie?
You're joking, right?
Giving up my copyrights is not an option. You LICENSE rights.
Having the copyright allows the distributor to market however they want, whenever they want and to whoever they want, in order to sell/syndicate the film and make a profit. With a license, the distributor would obviously be limited by the terms and duration of that license, which would provide far fewer options for turning a profit. It would also of course provide an unscrupulous distributor with more opportunity to abuse the filmmaker.
I've seen people sign deals where they never saw a dime because the distributor was racking up expenses that were merely itemized as for example "office". How convenient! Seems like a great way to keep your business afloat.
Yes, it is convenient. If you want fully itemised expenses, that would be less convenient, will take more accounting/bookkeeping time and therefore cost more money. Ultimately, distributors are businesses and the priority of any business is to stay afloat! This is obviously an axiom but not apparently some amateur filmmakers seem to think that distributors should effectively be philanthropic charities which exist solely to help the no/lo budget indie film industry (and of course them personally). The very title of this thread indicates this type of thinking.
A distributor offers their distribution service to an individual filmmaker based on their judgement of the probability of making a profit with that film and of how much profit. That probability is obviously affected by the terms of the contract with the filmmaker. It is of course entirely up to you whether or not you would consider surrendering your copyrights, demanding fully itemised expenses or demanding anything else you desire but of course the more you demand, the lower you're making "that probability". Most/Many amateur filmmakers value their films in terms of well they think they did with the time and effort they put in to overcome the difficulties of completing a film, rather than in terms of the actual market value of their film. With this in mind, the point at which any demands made by the filmmaker tips "that probability" into the red usually occurs far earlier than most amateur filmmakers seem to imagine. At that point, the only option left to the filmmaker is self distribution or a distributor with a business model which does not require a film to make any money for them to stay in business.
I haven't submitted Outcall to a QC test but there are a few scenes that may be too dark and I'm certain the sound probably has some issues. I think it looks better than Paranormal Activity, but people like APE and Alcove Audio have me paranoid that my sound isn't up to professional standards
. So it's technical issues rather than artistic ones.
Be careful with what Alcove and I say!
Or rather, what Alcove and I say needs to be put in context. Professional standards isn't a single thing, it's a very wide range of things. When I say "professional standards" I am referring to British/American network TV and commercial theatrical standards and even that definition is very wide because it covers everything from relatively tiny budget commercial TV documentaries all the way up to Hollywood blockbusters. Youtube has no standards, which means it contains everything from the crappiest home video sound quality all the way up to top pro quality. As we move up the food chain from Youtube, so that lower boundary increases, in order to differentiate the platform's content from Youtube. So while iTunes has a higher minimum standard than Youtube, it's not as high as the requirements for say network TV content. This minimum standard is a moving goal post however, as more players enter the VOD market they and the existing players have to reassess their positioning in that market.
In other words, you may not have to reach what I (or Alcove) consider to be professional commercial standards because iTunes does not exclusively host content of professional commercial standards, it also hosts a lot of content below that level. So really you should seek the advice of an aggregator familiar with iTunes current requirements/expectations, rather than judging whether you are likely to pass iTunes' QC based on what you have picked from my posts (which are relative to commercial content distribution).
G
