The Invisible Filmmakers
By Roger Paradiso
When the writers, actors and directors unions led a strike against the streamers, I often thought of the independent artists. They were not represented. After months of reading and talking to other independent artists, I have come to believe there is a desire not to deal with their issues because they are not supported by a union—and because they make films that are out of the mainstream. This usually means they are not commercial or carry a message that the corporate oligarchs don’t want to hear. This range of artists includes the fine arts, the performing arts and the visual arts.
And, there is a horrible position that it may be better if “they just go away.” We don’t really want them on our streaming platforms. And the so called “art theaters,” which for years was the only platform for filmmakers, now really don’t want them either. They want “independents” from other countries especially if they have international stars and marketing budgets. And by the way, a real independent historically has a low budget with a minimal marketing budget. When you hear of indies think of John Cassavetes, Orson Welles and hundreds of great filmmakers.
So, now the theater market is being closed off to our “invisible filmmakers.” They are not seen by the public. They are not seen by the mainstream distribution system. They are now homeless without theaters. They cannot succeed financially on the streaming networks which reward famous people with millions of fans.
Streaming is paying the filmmaker 11 cents on the dollar. How do you make that system work in an equitable way? Here’s insight from media consultant JB Adkins. “Let’s say, for example, that your production budget is $1 million. Typically, Advertising Video on Demand (AVOD) is paying around $0.08 to $0.15 per stream so let’s assume that we’re getting paid $0.11 per stream.
“If we divide the $0.11 we’re making per stream by the $1 million budget we spent for production, we anticipate having to about acquire nine million streams just to break even. And that’s not factoring in any promotional or marketing costs.
“The problem with going direct-to-streaming is that the number of units (i.e., the number of viewers who need to watch it on AVOD in order for you to generate income or the number of rental or purchase units you need to sell via Transactional VOD) needs to be astronomically high in order for it to make sense.
“And that’s if you’re able to stand out from the 50,000 plus titles on a platform like Tubi alone, not to mention all of the other AVOD and TVOD platforms out there like Amazon Prime. Let’s put that into perspective. The average human lifespan is about 38 million minutes. If you spent every waking minute of your life doing nothing but watching films on Tubi alone (not eating, drinking, peeing, enjoying friends, or working/making films), you would spend roughly 1/8th of your life…”
Please go see an indie film online or in a theater if you can.
You will be surprised by the quality, passion, and subject matter.
Filmmaker Magazine, “The Magazine of Independent Films” also shares the reality of indie filmmaking in the streaming age. According to them, films with budgets less than $50,000 did not break even 60% of the time. Of those films that were made for $50,000 to $200,000 dollars, 81.8 % did not break even. Indie films that cost $2000,000 to $900,000 did not break even 94.4% of the time.
Michael Jacobsohn, an independent filmmaker, spoke about his profession’s painful truth. “Unfortunately, I believe we have been sold a poor bill of goods. We are led to believe that we have only the film festival circuit for possible success. Large film festivals such as Sundance and Tribeca get more than 10,000 film submissions each year, with lottery odds for acceptance.
“I believe that all over this country filmmakers must work within their communities to establish a screening venue that will champion their works. That all filmmakers who have worked so hard to complete their films deserve respect and we deserve the opportunity to screen our films to paying audiences.
“We must insist that the large multimedia companies support our efforts by subsidizing this screening venues. If not, then let’s stop buying Apple, Microsoft, Netflix… products. These trillion-dollar corporations must be responsive to our needs, they must give back to sustain our struggling independent film community.”
Michael’s latest film Street Cafe In Exile documentary: cafeinexile.com
