Film Courage: We posted a poll on our Youtube community tab and the
question was do you trust film distributors so the poll received about 8,000 or so votes
and 85 percent of those polled said they do not trust distributors. Now, we didn't ask them in
what capacity they've dealt with them. Where do you think this negative reputation stems from?
Glen Reynolds, Founder of Circus Road Films: It all goes to the the failure rate
of films and I think that
some distributors oversell what will happen to films in order to get them, not all but some do,
I think it goes to expectations of just getting a distribution deal and thinking hey I'm done
it's going to make make money I think that's part of it I think it's frustrating to have gatekeepers
to the public there's there there's so many things coming out of a dollar before it gets to you
as the filmmaker because someone buys the film on iTunes iTunes is taking 30 percent right that's 70
is going to your distributor your distributor is taking 25 and costs so when they get by costs
then they're paying you at that point right so there's there's a lot of international sales your
international sales company is taking 20 percent they're putting it with a distributor overseas is
going to take their percentage that distributor is putting on a digital platform that's gonna
put it and make money in Germany or wherever so there's three steps before it gets gets to you
so if it were the case that and it is the case that people could go and put film
you do have the ability to go put the film on digital platforms yourself
so there are labs that have kind of aggregator kind of call themselves aggregators although
I think the word aggregator is kind of a strange word for it but
all they really do is facilitating placing the film on Amazon iTunes google play etc
and there you're paying them the cost of encoding the film for the platform
but they're not taking the percentage at all so you're iTunes is taking 30 and you're getting 70
the reason why and now maybe some films should do that because
they could just it's a small film and they can push people to
watch on iTunes and then they get what they they reap what they sew the reason people go to
distributors as opposed to doing it themselves is distributors can get to more platforms than these
labs can there are some platforms that require a pitch so to get a film on in demand Directv,
Dish etc you need someone to go and pitch the movie to them and then when it comes out on iTunes
and Amazon cetera it's going to be the release date is going to be the same for those platforms
in addition these distributors have relationships with streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu
and HBO so once they have the film in the transactional VOD world they're then going
to go try to make that sell if you go put your film on iTunes you can't there's just no way
to get into Netflix at that point even I can't go to Netflix I can go to Netflix originals division
as a producer rep but I can't go to them in a distributor position of where it is after it's
been on transactional for a while so if we lived in a world where all these platforms were open to
filmmakers going there that's what we would do and I would I would become a marketing expert
instead I would help people with marketing and just say hey let's just go put in these platforms
but there are gatekeepers to those platforms where people have those relationships and that's
the reason we have to use them and then there are some people that treat that space honorably and
are respectful of the fact they got lucky enough to be in such a position to be the
gateway for other people's content and treat their filmmakers well and explain everything to them and
try to do the best and then there are some that really just take it and never call you back and
that's that's for I think it kind of goes back to communication I think at the end of the day
there's just if if distributors did a better job of communicating on the front end what's
going to happen what the what what's likely what's realistically the a medium outcome
or the best outcome and in addition we're a little bit more open as filmmakers came back to them
with questions about how it's going and explain what why they were doing what they were doing I
think if they were better at that in general that poll number would be a little bit better
although I think the the main reason for it is just most films fail and and therefore who
we're gonna blame I'm not gonna blame my movie my movie is perfect right like I it's my baby
and the person who adopted my baby is not raising it properly and but but yeah I think
but that's hard that's hard for them to do it's it's in the deal you're dealing with corporations
and distributors are not individuals and so you've got the director of acquisitions the
director of sales the director of delivery the CFO the accounting department and they all have their
own lanes of what they kind of deal with and as the filmmaker like oh so who do I talk to about
the fact that this doesn't look right or I want I don't Amazon my poster on Amazon looks a little
weird or whatever and sometimes it's hard to navigate because not all companies have
a front person it's just like kind of the the go-to for the client to say okay you got
this problem talk to this person I think part of this is like economics like they just don't have
the bandwidth to have that many employees at the end of the day and take the they they do the math
of like we need to take this number of films we can make this amount of money and so we've got to
stretch our employees to do this number of jobs and they're just not going to get royal treatment
like they want and then there's also the the sort of thought of that filmmakers are artists
and their work is kind of never done so they're probably tweaking the poster art maybe the log
line different things and then they're making all these changes and submitting it and then you're
dealing with business people who don't have the time maybe to to handhold all these subsequent
I mean I'm sure that probably happens a little bit and then they feel like they're being ignored
and maybe in some cases they are being ignored and others it's just their demands are so high yeah
yeah I don't know if I don't see a lot of people still tinkering after the fact it's usually
the t it's usually the case that they have to at some point they have to okay I'm done and let it
and let it go creatively at least in terms of log line or trailer or things like that
I don't see a lot of people where I see it breaking down is much more
in terms of like well what's happening you're like are you trying to sell Netflix like I haven't
heard anything and most distributors just don't care about communicating that they don't really
they feel like we're doing our job we're going to pay you what you do but we don't need to explain
to you what we're saying to Netflix or when we're going to talk to Netflix or or any of that
I just feel like distributors probably don't feel like they have the time in a
day to talk to all their filmmakers about all the intricacies of everything they do is my best guess
best guess from being on the outside looking in a lot but never really being in at the same time
what type of accounting practices should a filmmaker expect
when working with a distributor so overwhelmingly most distributors offer quarterly accountings
and that's that's pretty standard to at least get two or three years of quarterly
and then and then turns to biannual after that or annual sometimes and that's when your most of your
revenue is gonna that's what it really counts the most the frustrating thing with accounting
is that distributors are on accounting terms as well with the platforms
so a lot of times people get their first quarter statement and they're ready okay let's see how we
did and it's not there's not much there and that's partly because when I go and buy a film on Amazon
Amazon keeps that money for 90 days before it hits the bank account of your distributor
and so if it's March and I paid for it in march it's not going to hit the distributor until
June and that's the second quarter so even though someone paid for something in the first quarter
the streamer didn't get it until the second quarter and so that's
when they're going to account for it usually anywhere from 30 to 90 days after the quarter
so it takes a long time for stuff to come in and that's frustrating
I wish it was more I wish it was unfortunately that's what makes it hard to do anything in
social media to try and help the cause because you can if you buy ads and stuff
for lots of products out there you can kind of see what it does for you right and if you spend
ten thousand dollars on facebook ads you can see what the return is on whatever you're selling
pretty quickly because you're the one selling it but in film you you do the advertising and
you're waiting six months to find out whether Amazon anybody bought the film on Amazon
and then you're past really the period so that's makes the whole business so hard because you
just don't the companies that dominate the space in terms of where people buy movies
can can dictate the terms of how they account even to the distributors so you're saying that
a filmmaker reasonably most contracts would say every quarter you're getting a statement for two
years and then after that it's bi-annually and then annually yeah okay so then if they have nine
years then toward the latter end of it they're going to be getting yearly statements correct
and some it depends on the distributor because some distributors
are more amenable to changing their basic terms than others so it kind of depends but
some distributors will say well eventually if we if we don't collect anything we're
not going to account so there's zero coming in there's no reason to send you a piece of paper
that says zero came in sometimes we try to add language that says you're going to counterbus
regardless because I want you to be accountable per se so it can depend on the distributor.