Film Courage: Can you make money off short films? Victoria Fratz, Actress/Producer/Writer: You can
that was always my uh my curiosity back when i was still unsure what's the future of short
films i don't really understand where they can be distributed um the obvious answer was youtube
you can absolutely put them up on youtube now i think most many people understand the
parameters of youtube you have to have something like 4 000 watch hours on your channel and at
least a thousand subscribers i believe it is before you can monetize and then once you monetize
you can play ads you know ads in the beginning and middle um and so you can start monetizing now
i'm a a career in youtube i think if you're doing a certain type of content like let's say vlogging
or tutorial work or you know something like that um perhaps the hours and the uh
the expense and the production is a slightly more trimmed down output you know whereas
you can maybe start turning a more livable profit off of it for our channel you know i
certainly have grand designs for where it can go and what kind of income it can make for us it
makes a a respectable polite income for us right now it's not turning any heads but i i it you know
it's kind of it's nice to see something come in for short films that we just kind of crafted from
our own design and kind of threw up there i mean not just throughout we spend quite a bit of time
but you know it was nothing a month ago and now we put it up and it's gonna make us
it'll just keep making us money in perpetuity for as long as youtube exists and people watch
have any producers reached out to you because of the success of diet or your youtube channel
yes and that's that's really what i would say the value add for doing these short films is growing
your network and and growing your network into a a pool that you might not have otherwise had
access to because you're showing our youtube channel is now more of like a portfolio of
our work um as much as it's like our channel of fun it's also our work and this is we're
showing off like what we can create and we've had a few producers reach out to us and be very very
complimentary of the shorts and i you know i like to think that they get to know us a little bit in
the making of videos that we post after every short and that that goes a long way too people
kind of want to get to know the person they're working or might work with um and see that they're
nice i think we're nice uh people and and i think that that's been helpful both the
quality of work and then the making of to get to get to get to know us a little bit better
um has allowed us to have quite like a decent little bit of success of people reaching out to us
asking us what we have available what scripts do we have like what ideas do we have and it's been
a very different conversation you know whereas before the conversation might have been a teensy
bit more nerve-wracking where we're like my god i hope they like this idea please please i can't
believe we got the meeting thank goodness you know a little bit more like we're at the mercy of this
this meeting that we're taking now you know and i'm certainly not like trying to um say i'm like
being green lit any day tomorrow but we're having very different conversations with these producers
where they know our work and they're like we love what you're doing you know like why don't let's
start talking about something that's amazing what do you guys want to make it's a little bit more
open like that and i mean isn't that the dream to sit next to someone who can kind of greenlight
your project and they're saying what is it that you want to make you're like let me tell you you
know and then we have all our ideas and then we we then go into the pitch so it's pretty exciting
and these are people who approach you via email or they also approach you on social media
um no they they approach us via email so that's been that's been really great yeah
and yeah just still see what the future holds there what tips do you have for others on making
short films i think i i kind of uh i have like my at-home jargon that i use and so i kind of call
some of our shorts home brewed which does it kind of i think maybe sounds negative but it just means
you know what's something aaron and i can shoot at home very little money you know we don't need
to order any big set pieces we don't have to hire any big professionals to come do anything for us
he's got his camera i can be the actress what can we do like that so that's what i call like
our home brewed shorts and then i call the other ones like our tent poles like the ones that are
like okay we need to get a professional special effects artist over here we need to create this
giant set piece you know like those are like the bigger leads i see a lot of filmmakers living in
this world the tentpole shorts and that's great you know you do need several of them
try not my advice would be not to tie up all of your time and resources and money
only here in the tent polls cast more uh you know irons in the fire by doing some more smaller
stories you can still have a lot of quality you can tell great stories if horror is your game or
you know whatever your genre is you can tell great tight stories in shorts that are home brewed and
and you know put yourself in a box more of a creative box like okay i'm going to challenge
myself for this short to only spend a maximum of 20 you know and perhaps that's just going to
be your chipotle order for the day or whatever um but you can absolutely you can absolutely
do it and even if it means you only have your cell phone to shoot on put yourself in that box
okay that's my resource i only have my my phone so that means i'm probably going to be limited
probably to sort of found footage style okay let me write a tight little short that's in that box
what what's kind of new on a found footage that i can shoot in a home boot category and save
my resources for just maybe a few like a smaller amount of these tent pole shorts you know that way
you're constantly brewing things you have your big ones your your crowd pleasers you've got your
other ones that are so thrilling and exciting um but you're constantly putting out content you're
constantly crafting uh your your skills you're really sharpening that by working more frequently
you have a marketing background i do yes how has that helped with creating content on youtube
well my background come you know when i was in college i kind of went for pr and
advertising and then my first job i was able to just launch into branding and and branding
was everything that ended up being the you know wax on wax off of my of my career where
all of a sudden i think i'm just building brands for logos and little website you know smaller
websites for small companies and then you know one day you realize you know karate and you can launch
your own production company with your own slick cohesive branding because you've been doing this
for years with other people and now you get to follow your passion and like be a filmmaker so my
brand my brand background my marketing skills lean pretty heavily in both technical and i
would say in other area that's a little bit harder to quantify but it's confidence so because i feel
so confident i've been doing this for so long i've pitched i've made press releases i've done it all
i'm like oh our channel no problem i'll email anyone like i have this confidence to me because
i know the metrics i know exactly what to read i know exactly what if i want to secure a brand deal
what the cost per milli should be you know it's like that information is constantly up here and
it's always present in my mind and so i do think that that branding transcends to our features our
production company and our youtube channel it's it's is omnipresent the right word if no omni
is only for god but you understand i was like i shouldn't say omnipresent for marketing marketing
is not god when you were in maryland and you were you were i think that's where your first job was
after you attended college did you ever envision that you would be in la doing oh my god film no
i didn't i mean i i could have only dreamt to do that like uh the so when i was in college i re i
you know your passion you know you you kind of know secretly what your passion
is even if you're too afraid to pursue it i didn't have any idea how i could make a
financial like a living a sound living in filmmaking i don't even know i wouldn't maybe
to even be an actress then like how am i going to break through all the noise and become an actress
who can actually pay her bills complete unknown there so in college i thought well i can still
be kind of creative in advertising advertising i might be lucky enough to work at an ad agency
and craft commercials you know and maybe i can uh you know storyboard some commercials maybe
i can like script some of them that would have been at the time my highest possible
thought that i could have achieved which i think now kind of sounds a little sad because i should
have always believed in myself and believed that anything was possible but there's just the hard
truth of reality like no one else is going to pay my rent i need i need to pay these bills like and
i need to have savings that's life that's the truth of life it's how am i going to make this
living um and so anyways it was kind of like a series of unfortunate events that
allowed me to even come out to california the biggest blessing in my entire life i happened
to get that the company was downsized so my almost entire department was downsized and eventually i
was let go or i guess downsized was the right word um and then it was right around like thanksgiving
i've lived in baltimore so like their homes are like they're called row homes because they're
all kind of like squished together um a neighbor had fallen asleep and like while their kit like
something was cooking in their kitchen so their house went up in flames no one's hurt thank god
but my home my i rented uh was completely destroyed it was like complete smoke damage like
i basically lost everything and then uh my car had been completely totaled by the the company
that comes to you know get all the smoke damage out of houses so within the span of like two or
three months i had lost my job uh lost my home and lost my car my transportation and i'd been doing
gig jobs at the time so i absolutely needed my car to get around and you know you kind of just look
at something like that and you think like this might be a good time for a fresh start something's
telling me it might be time to go higher like go follow some passions here because what's
the worst that can happen i'm already looking at some some rough times and also keep in mind i was
you know a bit younger then so you're a little bit more footloose and fancy free so i thought
new york is pretty close to maryland i could take a train up there miami okay i have some family in
florida that's interesting and then there was california i didn't know anyone in california
california if someone even told me that they visited california i thought they were the
coolest person in the entire universe the idea that i could live in california that would have
been that was the brave move i was like i must do it you must follow do it it's scary but do it
so you know i packed up what whatever i had it wasn't like smelled like campfire in my cat
and flew across the country and and that's that was it and it was the best happiest just
oh i'm so great i'm so grateful i'm grateful every single day that that happened because
that allowed me to get into filmmaking and meet some incredible people and have just really like
life-changing experiences in creativity and newness and openness and of course meet aaron
who is my partner in all things and really like my godsend when it comes to filmmaking because what i
don't know about filmmaking he knows and and that's been fantastic and your instagram hadn't
you hadn't grown it at that point oh no i think i had like a picture of a hot chocolate in my
cat on my instagram at the time that was about it yeah but i at the time i was able to take
you know my marketing skills and be like okay i think i can be a marketing consultant i've been
doing this for this company for a while so let me go ahead and offer this skill and and so i was
able to find a client or two to like kind of get some some you know foothold in a business world
and that's kind of what i started pursuing when it came out to california i didn't want to be
i didn't even know how to to do anything else i was just like let's just try um and then along
the way you know obviously i met jake and logan paul and they showed me what social media business
could be and i thought i can do that i can try at least to do that and i started taking that very
seriously and and just i mean it is a hustle like but it's a happy hustle you know you're you're
trying things you're exploring you're figuring out your own self throughout the process and
and you know it's wild and it's fun and and then you you kind of land at this beautiful
precipice of filmmaking for me something that was my childhood dream that i had tucked away because
i didn't think i could ever make a living doing it and it's still a struggle today but it's like
a happy struggle because i'm i'm figuring it out and i can see exactly what i need to do and just
keep doing it and over time you'll get where you want to go and so that would be feedback
or i'm sorry that's like advice i would give to anyone else is just you know follow that
gut take it take a chance and just kind of let let experiences inform your next choice you know
try and roll with it and learn what you can filter out what you don't need just keep moving forward
wow what a story what a story thank you yeah because those are all like major things that
are that could make people go you know get very depressed but you decided to just say you know
what i'm gonna oh yeah yeah and that's a little bit why i say i was a slightly younger age at the
time because i think if you're maybe older i don't i don't want to generalize everything's different
for other people but it can the world can start to feel a little bit scarier as you go either
more bravery to do things like that when you're a little bit younger you're like whatever if i
fall on my feet or follow my butt i'll just i don't know
knock on mom's door hopefully she'll let me you know something like that um but you know it does
take a little bit of bravery and and it's a really phenomenal payoff very cool thank
you