J. Horton, Filmmaker/Youtuber/Podcaster: If you are a filmmaker and you want to
upload directly to Amazon, you cannot do it for subscription based the SVOD.
Film Courage: What do you love about Amazon Prime?
J.: I love that Amazon, sometimes that people think I suffer from Stockholm syndrome defending
Amazon, but they opened up independent film distribution in a way that it had never in history
been done. Amazon Prime made it possible for an independent filmmaker in Indiana
making a six thousand dollar backyard horror movie to distribute their film and have it on the new
release wall right next to Fast and Furious that is cool and initially it was paying pretty good
I mean I don't remember what the what the first rates were but I think it was 15 or 20 cents an
hour which some people say that sounds low but you can make a lot of money at 20 cents an hour
on a streaming platform on a platform Amazon where there's whatever 90 million users watching I think
it was incredible I think they made mistakes and I think the biggest mistake Amazon made was there
was no curation now I keep talking about how great it is that there was no gatekeeping or
no curation but I think there needed to be a base level of curation they were taking anything and
things that weren't even movies they they were taking shorts there were people putting up
YouTube style videos and I think that all of that inappropriate content is what really started the
the downfall of it some people will say that it was always planned that they were always going to
get rid of indies and maybe they were but I think it at least would have held on longer had they
not been putting out YouTube videos and there's a filmmaker that I know that was putting his stuff
right from YouTube onto there and calling them documentaries but they were not they're vlogs I do
on there you and I would never put that on Amazon but I think that's what led to it but
I mean I owe a lot to Amazon it opened up my eyes to what independent filmmaking could
be financially and and now it's kind of gone but other things have popped in Tubi what are three
tips a filmmaker new to Amazon Prime should know about getting their movie up there well
so three things people should know about Amazon the first thing is that it's not what it was
so now if you are a filmmaker and you want to upload directly to Amazon
you cannot do it for subscription based the SVOD the only thing that you can do is TVOD
and I think now you can do documentaries again but for a while they weren't taking docs at all but I
think for TVOD now you can still submit narratives or documentaries and you'll make I think they pay
50 of the rental or the purchase price to you so it sounds pretty good and if you have if you have
a title that has some legs that that is good that might have some stars you might do good with TVOD
but the first thing to know though is that you can't you can't just upload and be free with prime
anymore you have to go through a distributor or an aggregator and and they're pickier than they were
so like some chintzy things are still getting up but not not it was before so it's harder
then now so let's say you're going through a distributed aggrigator you get and you
get up there so what are some things that you need to know in order to do well there
I think filmmakers need to wrap their heads around I'm trying to so what I where I learned this from
was doing YouTube so when I started growing my YouTube channel I started watching all
these YouTube growth experts right people with three four hundred thousand subscribers and
they're talking about this is how we grew our business and they start talking about looking
at analytics they start say thinking about hooking the audience early and keeping them
engaged and giving the audience what they need and I started thinking about my features that
so like now I would be much more hesitant to do a movie that had an opening slow burn 20 minutes
I would be hesitant to throw that up for something that's going to perform on a streaming platform
because in today's day and age they used to say with screenplays you have 10 pages to hook the
person not anymore you got you got 60 seconds if something is not happening that is going to engage
the audience early on they're out of there so you you front you going to front load some good stuff
so I think about that and then I've talked about engaging in the algorithm so
when you're typing out your description and even if you're going through a distributor
nine times out of ten filmmakers are still writing their own synopsis and stuff that
so start thinking about that that is your first thing to start thinking about SEO (search engine
optimization) so using keywords and you want it and you need to be able to blend those keywords
into your sentence and paragraph so it sounds organic and not clunky but you're thinking I'm
doing a I'm doing a horror movie with zombies and vampires right zombies versus vampires so you want
zombies in your description and in a couple different ways you want zombies undead
try to tank try to think of three different terms for zombies and then try to think of maybe three
terms for vampires and then try to find a way within that paragraph to work as many of those
in as you can and because these Amazon there when people search these keywords come up and they're
they're matching audiences with their keywords so it's it's important so think about that and then
think about where you're going to what what kind of movies do better on Amazon and Amazon isn't a
super like indie indie friendly thing now so if you are doing an indie film the indie films are
going to do better on Amazon are going to be stuff that have a little more of a like a mainstream
feel a little less nichey or they have and no no extreme violence or sex or drugs you really
going to it's all it's really weird because I remember when I started I used to always say
hey if you're going to make a ten thousand dollar movie you might as well just go balls to the
wall and throw it all out there and not worry about nothing this is the time to be punk rock
not necessarily if you want to if you want to make any money off of them because and then now
that AVODs are starting to take off a lot more than the subscription-based platforms stuff Tube
or IMDV TV or even YouTube now those you're getting paid from the advertisers
and the advertisers have to be matched with your stuff
so the advertisers that pay the best are usually more for quantity so on YouTube for example
if you have a documentary about Cannabis you're not going to make anything because you're going to
they're they're going to 18 restrict you and the you're going to have a really low cpm and
you won't make much money so you need to you think about those things too but if you have a
narrative about a dog that saves Christmas perfect perfect for Amazon Christmas dog movie oh man
a friend of mine is actually doing a Christmas pig movie right now okay and he's doing very well on
YouTube actually yeah very cool what about cover art most important thing for the marketing of the
film is the cover art a lot a lot of people will say trailer nope cover art because in
the streaming that is the thing that gets people to stop it's the art it is if you're
going to spend money on something for marketing spend it on your cover art if you're a decent
graphic artist but you can come up with a thousand or $5,000 or whatever pay the money and get a pro
one sheet done if you can I so I'm a decent graphic artist and for my first
probably year doing docs I was just doing all my own I was this is good enough this is good
enough this is good enough and then one day I was what I'm going to try I'm going to I'm
going to hire somebody out so I hired a graphic designer I think I paid 600 bucks for it and it
did way better than my average stuff so then from then on everyone I put the money into it.