Victoria Fratz, Actress/Producer/Writer: Wait we we'd be allowing you to take how much of
our first like year essentially years worth of royalty checks for
Film Courage: How did you get your movie Electric Love on Hulu?
Victoria: We went through a distributor Gravitas. If I can say and and we had a really great
experience with them this was a few years ago and we had a friend who was another producer and I
think he also does a little bit of distribution himself and he had made the offer to kind of
introduce us. Gravitas I believe is is pretty open to filmmakers submitting their work to them
I think this has been a little while I'm pretty sure their email is like up on their site and
they they kind of welcome filmmakers a sense their work in so we we had the deal with the Gravitas,
they were great. I was the first time film dirt film producer seeking distribution and so for
me I thought the experience was really really good you learn plenty you you I have always been
negotiating so for me I always knew I was going to like be trying to play hardball and retain as
much ownership and yada yada really protect your protect your your investment your your
project and but I really had no complaints with them like I thought that they were fantastic
I thought that they got the movie out there that they liked and we went with them globally
and so they got some great overseas licenses for us. We were out in the uk and a friend of
mine saw our movie on tv it was like playing on repeat on the tv all the time over there my
friend called me up he was like you're on tv and I was like oh my god yes I made it's happening
but that we got the news like probably within a few months of securing the deal with them
that they had negotiated to deal with Hulu and we were just over the moon over and now we're
huge Hulu fans like we're like Hulu everyone get Hulu watch it's on Hulu everybody watch
and we love it and I think Hulu is doing some really cool things with horror and in independent
films too and so yeah and documentaries and so I’m going to hopefully be trying to knock on that door
again for our distribution of val very cool did you also try to get it on other platforms like
Netflix and apple tv or HBO well so yeah Gravitas does all that this is something new that I'm
learning is you might try like I as the producer would want to sort of circumvent the distributor
because they certainly take their portion although they do a little bit of work there for you as well
but you you it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to go directly to Netflix or Apple TV
and I'm sure that that's possible but we didn't have the connections to go directly and I believe
now if you aren't already having a relationship with that company you do it's like required to go
through an intermediary like a distributor like Gravitas and like I said this is people have all
different types of experience I can only speak to my own but that's what our experience was
when did you sign with your distributor I want to say we sold we we signed with
Gravitas for Electric Love around the fall of 2018. and even then we we had the deal locked
but that doesn't necessarily mean that the the movie is going to be out for viewing and that was
something that we learned through doing is like you think you sign with the distributor that's
that like when's my movie's going to be out next week right but they didn't release it until the
spring of next year so we were just waiting all all winter like waiting excitedly for our movie
to come out and it was really exciting when it did we had this whole big happy dance at home
did you have a sales agent we did not I know there is a ton of value with sales agents
at this point for us especially with the budgets that we've been working with it really behooves us
to try our best to do everything ourselves because then we can retain ownership and sales agents
certainly come with fees and either percentage fees or they are tacked on with marketing expenses
as well we did have it as a long discussion we were really interested in a particular sales
agent but eventually once they talked to us about what the marketing fees were going to be we were
kind of thinking ourselves like wait we we'd be allowing you to take how much of our first like
year essentially years worth of royalty checks for you to like kind of wine and dine people over in
con and and I say that like just with my own my own perspective I think there's a lot of value
to sales agents and a lot of value to them having a marketing spend to go out there and really like
push your movie and he might have even been able to get us a little bit more but
at the end of the day it didn't it just didn't feel right it felt better to retain ownership
and and go with something that was maybe going to be a leaner marketing strategy but lower cost
did you receive any upfront money we were offered in advance but it was contingent upon them taking
an extra five percent of ownership and that for it just kind of depends on your situation you
might be like nope I have investors I need to be paying back straight away or I need this money now
and in that case you might be in a situation where you need to go ahead and accept that but for us we
were we were just able to go ahead and say we would rather retain more ownership of the movie
don't worry about the advance we'll wait for the first check and then you realize you still
have all these delivery costs so forget about the first check I'll see the second one maybe
because delivery fees I'm sure seasoned filmmakers understand delivery fees in a way better capacity
than I did but at the time I did not know that I did not know about delivery fees with distribution
and it really rocks your world in the indie space
you think like you're going to spend how much money delivering this and for me I negotiate
every little thing I make sure I get the best rate as a producer I stretch every dollar
and in these distribution or I'm sorry delivery fees delivery fees you're thinking like
did you negotiate that like I don't think I don't know if they are I'm not saying anything
anyone did anything wrong I'm just saying like I certainly I if I had the capacity to ever get into
that space god willing that would that would be fun but it's really not not where my heart's at
so I'll let the the distributors do what they they need I'll make sure to cap delivery fees in the
future and they were they they were like capped to a reasonable amount but I'm just saying like
as someone who was not aware that that was a thing to see that like bottom line price tag you're like
that's like twenty percent of the film and you like kind of freak out a little bit
yeah and then you just kind of get through it and hopefully lock some good licensing deals
how long did it take you to receive your first payment and how frequent are the payments
I want to say so to to like jump off of the delivery fees that kind of ate up the majority
of our first check if not the entire first check and then we received checks quarterly so you'll
it'll be once a quarter closes then it's about 30 days to let your distributor do their accounting
and then within like a few weeks after that you'll receive a check in the mail
and then they've been wonderful that's something I can't say highly enough for Gravitas they are like
a schedule with with the checks and it's been fantastic and they've locked us some wonderful
deals because what we've noticed and again just our experience the licensing deals are
where we see the bulk of our our money for smaller things like Amazon rentals kind of iTunes rentals
I think we'd have to be like a Keanu reeves to really move the needle financially there
for now we see the bulk of our our money coming back through all these licensing
deals via different countries and streaming deals like Hulu have you noticed one particular country
is very much into the film I think our best like international licensing deal was either the uk
or Germany because we got those deals and we were like oh Germany eh and then Germany was
great like they they liked it they had a decent deal over there the uk was a little bit bigger
and then our biggest deal was domestic it was and and I think that kind of speaks to to the genre
where it's a romantic comedy english speaking it kind of it's very I think it's just very much of
of America like it just kind of feels like the audience is here
not to say anything about internationally international audiences I just think that
like the concentration of people who would like the film were just us based what lessons have
you learned from distributing Electric Love that you're going to take forward with foul excellent
question it's something i've been thinking about lately because we're we're just on the cusp of
like getting some more serious conversations going for distribution of val I will absolutely be
looking for I'll be seeking like a global distributor so we really liked that we really
enjoyed working with one and one company to do the entire the entire package we'll be putting a lot
of focus on the licensing so we'll be talking to them about what their projections are for
different countries and and this is a horror genre film with val so that I think can translate to
many more like you don't need to know english to know how to be afraid you see they might obviously
there are subtitles as well but there's a little bit more give there with the story
and then of course like I was just talking about delivery fees really having a discussion with
whomever our distributor ends up being about what are these delivery costs going to be and
let's make sure we have a reasonable cap on them like I said I think that it was all fine with our
last deal I'm not saying anything bad about that it's just it's more of like a revelation like
okay now that I know that I also took that into consideration with this entire film's budget
I understand that there's going to be this tacked on amount which could be it can vary
I'll give out like a spectrum but to be something like in our Electric Love range the delivery fees
could have been anywhere from 10 to 30 thousand dollars we were kind of somewhere in the middle
there but and I'm sure on a bigger budget film perhaps more I can only like I can only speak to
what my experiences have been and with val I have kept that in mind what the delivery fees might run
and keeping that in mind when we were coming up with a budget for it and trying to make sure that
we kept that in mind that even though we've our production budget is this our post budget is this
don't forget about delivery fees they come out of your first check unless you have a
distributor where you have a different deal as of now I only know indie filmmakers who absorb the
cost of their own delivery fees what are some of the things that are included in the delivery fees
it's so Aaron [Fradkin] is definitely the better person to ask for this one but I do know
it's a lot of things where it's like you need to get subtitles for every different country that
you're going to be licensing around every export and delivery on all these different drives and
there's the m e track which is like these other files one day let me tell you a
horror story about Electric Love with the delivery fees because like I said
I'm a thrifty producer I'm constantly trying to stretch a dollar four ways from Sunday so we find
out that there's this fee that we can pay on top of what we were already paying to get the emini
something with like everywhere that every time there was a line like someone speaks in the film
you needed the time code the exact precise time code of the start of the line and the end of the
line and then like some other information for every single line and I think that the price
I don't even know what it was going to cost it's going to cost something like maybe a thousand
maybe a couple thousand who can remember this time but I was like i've got some time
I'll do it and I did it and I did it and it was the worst thing ever no it wasn't but I
sat down I had like some music blasting and I treated myself to some Chipotle and I like just
just bunkered down and did it and it blessed Aaron he would come by every now and then give
me like a little massage or something and I would I would complain but in the way that you complain
where you just want someone to be like oh yeah it sucks yes I would do that this sucks and he would
give me all the charity that I needed at that moment and I would soldier on and keep going
and I think it took me like two full massive days maybe even three and when I finished it I was like
I don't want to hear anything else about these delivery like this is my contribution
to saving money in the bottom line and I do aspire to be a producer that can afford to go ahead and
hire someone to do that for me that's tedious work it was it was tedious but at the same time not the
worst thing because your your brain kind of goes on that autopilot where you just get to relax
and you're just like it's very boring work but like you said tedious yeah so yeah not great but
I'm proud of it now I saved money for the project and that is one of the things as a producer that
I continue to be proud of myself for is I know how to really stretch the dollar really like be
very particular about the budget stay on target with the budget and if we have new expenses
well if I can learn how to do it I'll go ahead and I'll do it myself and submit the the correct
work that needs that's being needed that's good well that's that's really cool man I should have
made a video of behind the scenes of that like all three days or two days whatever I know right
it exists very clearly in my memory like I know that day I remember exactly where
I was sitting exact everything I'm like oh yeah and we had a filmmaker friend
who was almost paralleling us in distribution like he was going the same distributor and he was doing
the same thing and I would text him being like have you gotten this file prepared he's like
I think I'm just going to hire someone to do and I was like Shakespeare's friend friend Lily and my
friend like all right but I did it myself pat me on the back what that's a lot it was yeah.