Filmhub update End of July 2021

 

This is the background graphic I'd used for "Bounty" on Amazon

So at this point, here's where I'm at. I have seven features PASSED on Filmhub. All of them have been picked up by various places from Tubi to Plex to Vuuzle to Xumo to Gruuvr and a bunch of other I've never heard of.

If you don't know that much about Filmhub, they give you a dashboard that's similar to Amazon's but it shows you what they call "Insights" that tries to give you an idea of how much you're making. However, there are warnings all over so you understand that these are NOT earnings, just estimates.

Since I'm still new to this and haven't gotten an earnings report yet, I can't testify as to how accurate they are, but I'll let you know. At this point, since many of my titles are recently placed and I only started with two movies, I can't draw any conclusions, but this is what my current trajectory looks like:

As you can see, there's now a sharp earnings trend up. You're probably like, "Hey, why'd you blur your earnings?" and I'll tell you--I'm not sure whether Filmhub cares whether I share this information. I have no problem sharing exactly how much money they're making(and the graph shows an approximation so you can guess), but I'm going to go through the pages and see whether there are any issues with sharing this information.

I can tell you that it's not a massive amount yet, but I'm very encouraged by the results, especially because I've done NO advertisements for my films yet other than my various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, of which I don't have that many followers--I'm a pretty bad social media guy because I just don't have time to spend there that often.

But it's also very encouraging to see how many countries Filmhub gets your titles into, as opposed to Amazon's four.

Another thing I'm trying that may be of interest to filmmakers who only have, say, one move in their belt is this:

If you've been following me for any length of time then you know I pride myself on making entertaining and lengthy "Making Of" segments for my DVD/Blu Ray releases. A while back I had even gotten three of them onto Amazon before the Great Indie Purge.

Well, I've now started submitting them as documentaries through Filmhub. Wasn't sure there would be any interest, so I only submitted one but it cleared and has now been picked up by a couple of platforms including one of my new favorites, Plex. (for me, Tubi and Plex seem to be bringing the most interest/money according to Insights)

So I intend to get some of my others ones up also. Only issue is that I have to make all the various graphic posters and then make trailers for them. (I only made a trailer for one of the three that went up on Amazon, because they weren't required there)

But if you have a feature film and you have a good long Making Of, perhaps consider submitting it for some extra revenue. (and also consider that perhaps someone will stumble upon the Making Of, and seek out your film, so it could be another avenue to discovery of your film)

Also, when I say "long", I suppose it could be short because they do take shorts. 

Anyway, at this point I'd recommend to anyone looking to place titles out there to consider Filmhub. It's definitely opened up some avenues, and I'll continue to update this, including making some educated guesses at exactly how much each view on certain platforms could earn you.

Another long gap / Some More Filmhub stuff

 

So...yeah, I'm the worst blogger in history. Things have been hectic over the past few months.

Here's what happened re: Filmhub

They gave me a bit of the runaround with Garden of Hedon, so I finally just told them to forget it. I just ignored that whole thing for a few months, and someone reached out to me and said "We're just wondering what you want to do with Garden of Hedon?"

I told them, not very nicely, "You failed it and I don't care, just delete it."

They said some things had changed, and that they thought they could work to get it to pass. I said in that case, go ahead. So then I figured, okay, I'll follow through on Bounty.

I got both of those up, and they started getting picked up by outlets. I was encouraged, so I worked double time on every single other one of my films to get them all over there. As of this moment, every film other than Fear of Clowns 2 and Terrortory 1 are available and being placed on platforms.

Those two films are currently pending. FOC2 failed due to duplicate frames because--and this goes way back into technical shit--we shot it in 2005ish on a Panasonic AG-DVX100B at 24 frames per second. At the time, you had to convert it to 30fps to edit it for video, and what that did was duplicate a frame every 4 frames--that's how you got 30 frames out of 24.

There's really only one true way to fix that, and that's to go pull out EVERY fifth frame, stitch it all back together, and then reexport at 24fps.

Am I going to do that? Not at this time. Filmhub's looking into seeing if they can fix it on their end. Weird thing is, we shot FOC1 on the same type of camera(it was an AG-DVX100A) so I'm not sure why they didn't fail that one. It was edited on the exact same computer, exact same edition of Premiere.

I just submitted the first Terrortory, so am waiting to see if it passes.

If you want to see all of the places my movies are currently placed at, check this web page I made in Notepad. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

https://bit.ly/kkfhorrors

So far I don't have any money to report, but I'll let you know. The movies first went up at the end of May, and I think you get quarterly reports. Stay tuned.

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I helped a buddy get his movie placed on Filmhub--he too is pretty sick of Amazon's bullshit. I whipped up his posters and cut him a teaser trailer. You can see that here:

He started getting placed on platforms now. Personally I really enjoy Plex. Found quite a few things I wanted to watch on there, and it streamed fine. Sure, there's commercials, but that doesn't bother me too much as I'm always working anyway. 

Anyway, when I have more to report about actual earnings, I'll let you know if I think it's worth your time to get your movies over there.

Been A While. Let's Talk Filmhub.

 

Okay, you're probably wondering what happened to me, if you've been following this blog at all. When last I posted, I was moving ahead to shoot a film set in an asylum, a balls-to-the-walls action horror.

I was barely two weeks out from filming when I had a major problem. The actor playing the "monster" bailed on me out of the blue. I had already had the outfit custom made to his size(he's like 6 foot 7). I scrambled and found a couple of backups to take his place since nobody could commit to every night I needed him. 

It was demoralizing to say the least. THEN I went to the asylum for last looks and to do some final tests, shoot some promo video/stills. Well, security busted us going in. They were nice but said "Don't come back", and that's when the whole thing died.

I was in a pretty deep funk. I haven't had to cancel a movie shoot that far in prep since BEFORE my first film, Hunting Humans. (we had cast two movies before that that never got off the ground)

For months I was pretty depressed, and not long after that, one of the actors I'd written a major part for died unexpectedly. (pre-Covid) I had been looking for other locations to maybe shoot for, but couldn't find any that were close.

I wheeled and wrote a new segment for Terrortory, figuring maybe I release it on Amazon and eventually it can go into Terrortory 3 if I make it. I cast the segment, started working on props, went out on a location scout back to the Terrortory woods...

and Covid hit. Nobody wanted to let us into their houses to shoot stuff. Actors were leery about coming out. We're on budgets so tiny that we can't possibly follow any protocols like getting people constantly tested.

So I dropped it all. Long story short, I have no plans right now to shoot anything.

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Remember my kinonation posts? How that didn't work out?

Well, they got bought out a while back and are now filmhub, and we've been discussing it on the FB forum that you MUST be a part of if you're a filmmaker. It's a wealth of knowledge and networking stuff.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/699825860525598

The movie I submitted to kinonation, "Bounty", is still in their system and is actually STILL live on FandangoNow even though I'd asked kino to remove it. Anyway, since Amazon pulled "Garden of Hedon" I figured I'd try to submit it to filmhub.

I uploaded the movie, plus like 8 different size one-sheets(seriously, there's some weird fucking aspect ratios they want), and submitted it. Got a QC rejection, asking if I had a higher-res mezzanine file. I did--I had submitted the video file I had used on Amazon--so I found the higher quality version and sent it, submitted it again.

Got a rejection, asking if I had key art with less nudity. This pissed me off, because they HAD the key art on my last submission. Why wasn't it rejected at the same time as the other? If I fix the new issues, will there be ANOTHER rejection for ANOTHER reason?

I'm used to QC's coming as a list of things to fix. You get the list, you fix, you send it in, done. 

So I just dropped the whole thing. I think that was back in early 2020. Recently I was contacted, as they wanted to know what I intended, so I replied back with the exact details about why I wasn't happy. Someone named Alan contacted me and wanted to set up a zoom meeting today.

Well, zoom didn't work for shit, so we just had an old-fashioned chat on the phone. Alan seemed pretty nice, pretty knowledgeable. He gets why I was frustrated, and made some suggestions. The salient points of our conversations were this:

-- I'm most interested in getting some of my flicks onto Tubi, as I've heard it's paying pretty decent as those things go. This goes to the fact that he suggests I provide them new key art for Garden of Hedon because a lot of channels won't pick it up with that poster. Tubi was one he said probably wouldn't bite, and he said imdb TV also wouldn't, and he seemed to think that's becoming a pretty good place to put your flick.

He said they have guys who can mock up a new poster for like $225 and it will get taken out of any future payments. That's a fair price for key art, but the quality isn't as high as my guy, so I'll probably just get him to do a new one if I can think up a decent concept. I mean, the hot chick on the poster obviously brings the views, so what's the next option? Not sure yet.

--I said maybe I'd let them reopen "Bounty" and see if they can license it. He took a look at what I'd provided and let me know the bad news about THAT key art. You need about 5% of edge for your title in case it gets cut off by whatever channel or venue it shows on. You can see the problem in my "Bounty" poster:

See how it runs right to the edges? You need some room. Now, I don't have the original psd files of this from my guy and I don't wanna bother him to redo it, so I'm just gonna manually fix it. Will take some work but I can do it.

--I asked about Insights on their web site because I had seen someone else asking about them. They're sort of rough estimations on how much your flicks have earned, but someone online had said they were WAY higher than their actual earnings, so what use was the Insights if it were that far off. He more or less said it's their way of trying to be transparent, but it can definitely differ because it can't take into account refunds and other things that might happen. I don't have enough info yet to say much about it yet, but I'll let you know.

Hey, I'll try to get back to updating this blog on occasion. Did I mention that I shot a music video a couple months back for my buddy's band? You can see it here:

Distribber News + I Plow Forward

I'm gonna be seeing a lot of this come November...

First things first. I've heard a couple of reports about problems with Distribber. For those who don't know, they're an aggregator that helps place movies to different platforms(like Netflix, Itunes, etc) for filmmakers.

I've talked about them before in this blog. I've considered using them, but never really wanted to pony up the thousands of dollars to try it.

I've talked to one of the head guys there, Jason, and he's always seemed pretty straightforward and up front.

But my deal is that I'm always looking for a PARTNER for my movies, a partner being someone who benefits only when I benefit. That's how you know they believe in you.

And the problem at Distribber was that they'd profit even if my movie didn't. This is also why it's a little hard to understand how they're failing.

Anyway, it sounds like they aren't returning calls to filmmakers, and have missed payments. Also sounds like Jason doesn't work there any more. You can find the details at indiefilmhustle, which is a good web site in general for indie filmmakers.

https://indiefilmhustle.com/distribber-review-bankrupt/

It certainly appears this has been going on for a few months, so I'm surprised I'm just hearing about it now.

NEW regarding Netflix:
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/11/netflix-distribber-godigital-1202188326/?fbclid=IwAR0VTO14JE5M0fDVOpphWY_JFJ5Ge1tb00FnnDPpWEHmYaiFfugxNxewUl0

NEW Variety Article 11/1/2019
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/distribber-creditors-refunds-not-coming-2020-1203389718/

Indiewire Article (10/5/2019)
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/distribber-aggregator-independent-filmmakers-bankruptcy-1202176434/

ANOTHER UPDATE(10/2/2019) - A Warning
https://indiefilmhustle.com/film-aggregators/

VARIETY ARTICLE(10/1/2019)
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/independent-distribution-companies-distribber-close-down-1203354408/

MOST RECENT UPDATE(9/30/2019):
https://nofilmschool.com/why-distribber-died
(this one goes pretty in-depth behind-the-scenes)

UPDATE ARTICLE(9/20/2019) : A new article on nofilmschool also raises some points.
https://nofilmschool.com/is-distribber-really-bankrupt

ANOTHER UPDATED ARTICLE(9/23/2019)
https://stephenfollows.com/what-kinds-of-movies-did-distribber-attract/

I haven't looked into these yet, so do the diligence first before submitting.

A couple of other options to explore are:
https://www.themovieagency.com/submit-your-film
They claim to charge no fees upfront whatsoever, and take a small commission when they sell your flick. That sounds reasonable. In fact, one guy that works there named Phil Galliano posted this on FB:

Hi guys, I am not an aggregator but as a sales agent, I am willing to offer you a six month contract with no fees with my sales agency. If you aren't satisfied after 6 months, you are free to go. I am offering you to represent your movie, sell it wherever I can. If I get you an offer, I let you know and you make the decision. You may decline an offer, no pressure.

I don't sign any contracts for you or without your prior consent. You will be able to deal direct with the distributor, and even get any money transfer directly from them. Once you get paid, the only thing I am asking is to pay me 15% commission.

No hidden fees, no upfront fees, no deduction whatsoever! 

I mean, that sounds exactly like what you want. I'd still look into it first to see if I could find a filmmaker that would vouch for them. Some people are like "Why would you want to give a cut of your profits, instead of just paying money upfront?", and I'd point DIRECTLY at the Distribber debacle as proof that my way is better. My way, you don't need additional money, and there's no way you can lose any more money than you've spent on your film. The other way, you just paid $3K-$5K, and got NOTHING.

These people below say they're completely legit, and basically dare you to go ahead and ask any filmmaker they've worked with. (which is sound policy with ANY distributor)
https://www.indierights.com/distribution

Here's another company that's thrown its hat into the ring, but they sound suspiciously like Distribber in their model. Would need to look into it more, and I just don't have time.
https://www.bitmax.net/

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I've decided to go full steam forward with this new film. I'm not sure exactly HOW it's all gonna get done. The script was finished a couple of weeks ago and I sent it to most of the people I've already cast. They all liked it a lot.

I've created a schedule--an 8 day schedule--that will be tight, but doable. I'm working on the shooting script now. That's reverse of how I usually do it.

Usually I do the shooting script first, then you allocate enough time to each scene depending on how many shots you have to get done.

This time I've given myself some time, and then I have to figure out how few shots we can do in that time.

I've got to cast some of the roles that are open, find some locations that I don't have right now, gather props, figure out how to do some special effects that I wrote into the script, and some other stuff.

I may not talk too much about it, because there's a good chance I'm going to have to crowd source a small amount of money to finish the film, and I figure I'll make a $1 tier where people will have access to a private blog with not just the details on the making of this film, but some other crazy stuff I haven't shown publicly before.

Also, did you know that I did a limited run of TERRORTORY 2 and GARDEN OF HEDON on dvd for that convention I did last month? Only 100 copies of each exist.

I didn't quite sell out, so if you want a copy you can paypal $19 to cs@kangaskahnfilms.com with the name of which one you want, and I'll ship it to you anywhere in the US. Or, if you want both, send $34.

If I refund your money, it's because they sold out before you ordered.

If you'd rather buy it from our square store, leave me a comment and I'll add them there. The store is here, in case you were wondering.
https://squareup.com/store/kkfilms

Will I Go Gently Into That Good Night?

 A screen cap from one of the videos we shot.

I'm still not sure.

I've been working on a script now for about 6 months. If you're just writing a screenplay then you have only to worry about things like character and plot and structure, and how to be entertaining. You can write whatever your imagination tells you to write.

Now, if you're planning on actually MAKING a movie of your screenplay, then your process is about 1000 times harder. Everything you write needs to be something you can shoot.

EVERY location has to be one you know you have access to. EVERY prop has to be something you can get for cheap, or make. EVERY action that a character takes has to be something your actors can do.

It's a nightmare.

Anyway, I've set most of this movie in an abandoned asylum. I've been to one such abandoned asylum a few times just to shoot pictures and explore.

My brother and I went back last month to do some tests.  This time we went during the evening, and stayed into the night. This asylum has guards that drive around on carts on occasion. I was curious what they'd do if they saw lights on in a building. I brought my lights.

We had only been there in the fall/winter months before. You have to walk about half a mile through the woods to get to the asylum. The trail is normally pretty clear. This time...it was not.

This is the trail. We had to crawl under this, dragging my camera bag, my slider, and a bag full of lights. Not fun.

It's downhill to the asylum. We get there and start doing some tests. We get some interesting shots, and some promising results to what I was looking at. (no details yet)

One of the tests involved a road flare. I have a shot of a guy lighting one, and then throwing it down the hall to light the hallway. I wanted to see how it would look.

Well, the flare being lit looks cool. Walking with in slo mo looks good.

The toss? Well...not so good. When a road flare hits the ground, it goes out immediately. We tried it twice--same exact result.

And road flares aren't cheap, considering they only last about 15-30 minutes each.

I lit up some of the hallway to see how much it would take to work. It's easily doable with two big lights, plus either a flashlight the actors will use or the road flare(which is only in two scenes).

We heard a chopper at one point flying pretty near the building, but no spotlight ever hit us. No guards ever came to see what was up. It'll be stressful as hell to shoot there, but I've done worse.

The tough part is the in/out of the place. Parking is non-existent. There used to be a parking lot across the street to park in, but they've blocked it off now. Most of the other places near there say they will tow you if you park there.

The walk in is long. The walk out is worse, as it's uphill. So after working some grueling hours, we gotta carry the equipment uphill and out every morning. (we'll be shooting mostly nights)

We won't be dragging in a cooler, I can tell you that. So everyone's gonna have to carry in their own food/drink. That's not fun.

Since we're filming this so cheap--I mean, 80% cheaper than ANY movie I've ever made--nobody's getting paid. I'm relying on actors who are willing to do me a favor here, but I'm at the mercy of their schedule. I'm trying to keep it to 8 shooting days, which is nuts, but even that's hard to get everyone's schedules in line.

Will it happen? I'm not sure. I'm starting to get a little more serious about it though.

Been A While

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thing is, I don't like being the doom and gloom guy. I wanna have some good news on occasion; I can't help it that things aren't turning out that way.

On the Amazon front, not much has changed. I pulled a couple of my movies from free play. They don't make it easy.

Easy would be simply unchecking the Free on Prime tab and clicking DONE, and they change that.

However, they make you republish the entire title and they recheck it all. Why is that a problem, you say?

Because Amazon keeps changing their policies. At one time, you could put CAPS words in your title. Like, the word TERRORTORY is capitalized in the description. Well, I tried to change its status but they responded--two days after I tried to republish without it being free--to tell me that NO CAPS.

Other movies that have been on there for years now need actual GERMAN subtitles, or they won't go through in Germany. Shit like that.

The odd thing is that I don't seem to be losing much money with this new policy of theirs. I'm not sure why. I can't even figure the new policy out, because they TOLD US in print that our movies would ranked--in a way we can see--on whether we'd get penalized or rewarded depending on how popular it was on Amazon.

I have seen no such thing. I've looked.

So I dunno. I have no suggestions on how to proceed if you want to put your movie on Amazon. Perhaps that's their purpose--they don't want you to be able to make informed decisions.

Clearly if your movie has a very small budget but a good trailer and poster, you CAN make money. How much is a crap shoot.

----------

On the personal front, I'm still writing something I may try to shoot in October or November for the tiny amount of $2K. (and maybe I'll kickstart another $2K to finish it)

But if you know me, you know it's not gonna be a talky thing. I plan on doing the same crazy shit, plus some. Can I do it? I don't know.

Right now I feel old and tired. Most of my friends are like "Come on, man, you can do it!" I appreciate the sentiment and their encouragement, but I wanna say "Get back to me when you've spent literally 20 years chasing a dream, and pretty much have nothing to show for it."

And sure, I've got seven feature films to show for it. However, I also have bills, a family, no vacations, a small house and no savings.

That's why I tell wannabe filmmakers to be cautious. There was a saying I'd heard that I used to tell myself was good advice: "Those who have something to fall back on, inevitably do."

Well I lived my life on that, and at the beginning it DID seem like it would work. Then the internet hit and it all went away.

So by all means when you're young, go for it. But perhaps keep SOME other job in your back pocket. Some back-up plan, because the road ahead is hard, and getting harder.

Maybe find yourself a rich wife. That would work.

Amazon Oddness

So if you read my last blog, you know it's looking bleak for us indies.

As for me personally, our numbers have gone down pretty dramatically after January, like a switch was turned off.  With the new pay reduction, I'm all ready to turn my titles to pay-only...

...and then on March 2nd our numbers spiked big time on Terrortory 2. (and slightly on the other movies)

This is the current graph on Terrortory 2. You can see the spike--it's around 3 times the previous numbers, and then as you can see at the end, it REALLY spikes to about 10 times what we were previous doing on average.

It's going to lead to my best month since December, which leaves me with the question...should I leave one of my movies up just to see what happens? And which one?

The obvious seems to be Terrortory 2, but I have to ask myself...how many of these people who are streaming it for free would have paid $2 to rent it?

What if the graph KEEPS going up? I'm not sure what's driving it all of a sudden--we got a good review at the end of February, which triggered a small bump, but that was weeks ago--so I don't know what to expect.

It's a tough call, and I have to make it soon.

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Sudden thought: What if, instead of premiering my next flick for free on Amazon Prime, I went ahead and launched it on Amazon only, pay only? Would be an interesting experience, but could fail mightily.

If I put it up for pay at first(figuring I'd make it free later), and it doesn't do well, and then I make it free, it may have fallen too far on the charts to ever get back to the top.

But if I do this next flick, it may be the perfect film to try it on, being SUPER no-budget.

------------

FB buddy Rob Hagans has started a Vlog titled "How To Make A Movie For $1000".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQM7G2tu4bE

I don't agree with some of what he says, but what do I know? I'm a dinosaur. But either way I'm interested to watch and see what he comes up with.