I’m J. Horton. I make movies that make money. This is how.
Film Courage: J. why do you say you are a filmmaker who makes money?
J. Horton, Filmmaker/Youtuber/Podcaster: Well, I'm making a very specific style
of movie. I'm making low budget features, usually under a hundred thousand dollars and
the vast majority of filmmakers that I talk to that are making movies at this level,
a lot of them aren't making money, they're losing from the distributors or they're self-distributing
and not doing anything. They don't know how to make money. I myself I've directed
25 feature films at this point and the first probably 10 years of my career like I wasn't
making a lot of money on these movies like I didn't know how I didn't know how to navigate it
I learned how later on and I like to make it so that other filmmakers can maybe get to
that point sooner than I did and so I like to share some of that knowledge with them
it took it took me a long time before my movies were breaking even or making money and so
and and on top of that as I was starting my Youtube channel I was there's a couple of
growth experts that I'm following and they have their little catchphrases I was like I need some
catchphrase and it just like that just came out I was getting ready to do it and I was like I'm J.
Horton I make movies that make money this is how and it just it just felt like something that would
interest other filmmakers which was the whole goal of the channel in the first place right you do
that in your intro to the videos yeah it does work when did you become the filmmaker who makes money
so I've made money with my films from the beginning I did struggle at the beginning
but pretty much my first movie was distributed in 2003 by York entertainment now it didn't make
anything but from that and it getting distributed and out there I started landing other filmmaking
jobs and that's where I first started to make money but like when I say I'm J. Horton,
I make movies that make money I produce movies I direct movies and I make money off those movies
like I'm not necessarily talking about hey I got I get hired as a editor or a dp which I have done
but I'm specifically talking about making money off the ex exhibition of the movies and I would
say that started probably like on a study about five years ago about five years when like right
around the time that Amazon started opening up for streaming and that's where I first started getting
the rights back from some of my older films and finding that you actually could make a little bit
of money on your own and over the years I've just gotten better and better at marketing them
at picking the movies and making more money with them do you think that was a big contributor is
going back and getting those rights back or new movies going forward once Amazon Prime opened up
yeah there's a little bit of both it was the the old movies coming back up for license that made me
realize that I could be a like an entrepreneurial producer I had rise of the undead and edges of
darkness they were released in 2003 and 2008. around 2014 or 15 I got the rights back for
both of those within like a year and I honestly at the time I didn't know what to do with them
and there was a a service called Createspace it's owned by Amazon but it was basically created for
self publishers like authors but they were doing a thing where you could give them like your iso
video file from your movie for dvd and they would make videos on demand or dvds on demand and real
soon after that they started giving you the option to go on to Amazon Prime and so this was before
Prime video direct but it's still basically a similar process like you'd upload yourself and get
it up so I put these two movies up on Amazon Prime and they were making a few bucks a month like
like nothing big and then out of nowhere one of them popped up to like a thousand a month
and then it hit me I was like oh my gosh like what if this was a new movie
because this is like a 10 year old title at this point and it's it's doing all right so then I
started seriously considering producing movies and like hey here's somewhere where I could put them
even if I didn't do traditional distribution and so I it was always in the back of my mind and then
after I had a little sidetrack with gas money pictures where I was doing animation animation
studio and that took me off movies for about two years but then when I came back I was like hey I'm
going to do this like self-produce self-distribute thing and I started making documentaries and
that's that's where I really got immersed in like the streaming and Amazon and then later Filmhub
and then back into traditional distribution was that the point of no return when you saw that
email or whatever with a thousand dollars yes yes because like from from that point on I realized
that hey I can self-generate material I can make these movies on my own without answering to anyone
and I can make a a reasonable amount of money on it if I made a thousand on this older one
could I make five thousand or ten thousand with a newer one so I was like hey I didn't
I don't I don't need anybody to do this there's no gatekeeping it's like it's almost anyone could
put a movie up there so yeah it really really opened up the the doors to me being my own boss
and with this thousand dollars in one month were there rumblings online did you see more
was this a complete surprise complete surprise so I was doing absolutely no promotion for it like no
no social media had no social media presence the like I said the movie was 10 years old I
had pretty much written them off at that point it was totally just a fluke of the algorithm
it was on Amazon and a certain group of people started watching it and it just it just took off
it got a bunch of reviews after that and still not a ton like you'll hear people talking about
how critical user reviews on Amazon are but I've never really found that to be true I don't think
it hurts but I have plenty of movies that have made 5 000 a month 10 000 a month and they have
less than 200 reviews so I never thought that was a big thing but yeah it just it really opened up
from that point on I was just like hey this is what I want to do and I've always had a problem
working for people I just I always wanted to be my own boss so here here it was I can do it
did you quit a job after that or you were freelance so I was freelancing around this time
I was freelancing a lot so I was primarily making my living as an editor I worked for fox cutting
promos for a while I would cut other people's features I was hired to direct other people's
features like I directed about 10 feature films for a company called AMG film partners and they
were all between 25 and 50 000 after I saw the self distribution thing and it took a few years
now because I started making the docs and I’d do one here one there took about a year before
like my money was steady enough to where I say hey I don't have to do freelance anymore
and I did so I haven't done a freelance job in probably three years now well I directed
one documentary last year that was a for hire but it was based off my the stuff I'm doing now.