"I work in the film industry"
Now that's statement that feels like having a superpower, the ultimate
conversation starter.
It’s like you don’t have to explain it; red carpet premieres, visiting shoot
locations, attending film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Toronto,…
discussing storylines and even financing options with producers,
directors and sometimes A-list actors, that's all part of it, but...
it's actually a small part!
In this video and a couple of other ones, I am going to share with you
what this role and this business is about.
It was May of 2016, after it took me probably a year and a bit pursuing this
sort of role, I landed a dream job and became responsible for determining
what content would be included in the Prime Video subscription service
here in the UK. That is a different focus from films or TV series you would
buy or rent on your TV, for example.
And that distinction already points to several aspects of what it
means to monetize content.
Because there are some very specific rules and methods around how that
actually happens.
So, for any project or any product to
generate a return, you monetise it over
time.
And in most cases, you would aim to
charge each customer the highest price
they are willing to pay, a reflection of
how they value your product or service.
Those timely instances when you charge
different customers a different price, in
this case, are called “licensing
windows.”
And the traditional sequence of windows
a movie goes through is this:
Let’s say you’re a distributor, which is
like being a car rental company, and your
fancy new car is on offer.
You rent that vehicle out to different
people at different times, and charge
them accordingly.
The start of your first rental period, and
I’m going to bring this back to movies
now, is when it gets released in cinemas
on day X. We aptly call that the start of
the "theatrical release window."
You can do that in a select few theatres
or in many, which means you “go wide”
with big chains like AMC or Cinemaxx.
That is in part determined by how much
of your budget you have set aside for so-
called P&A, which is short for
Print & Advertising.
Print used to refer to the cost of actually
printing the film, the individual stills or
images on a roll of 35mm celluloid, kind
of like a fancy chemical tape; highly
flammable.
That would cost several thousand
dollars, or pounds or euros per theatre;
and just for reference, a printed 120-
minute film would weigh around 55 lbs
or 25 kgs, so that was literally a heavy
undertaking.
In a digital world, you now have hard
drives that get sent out, basically several
hundred gigabytes of JPGs which are
played in sequence.
For the people who run the theatre, the
“exhibitor” to even show your film, the
assumption is that enough customers
will show up to watch it. That would be
the point of the 'advertising'-part in
Print & Advertising, to drive awareness or
create enough buzz and press coverage.
That includes hosting reviewers, glitzy
red carpet premieres, the cast and
directors attending media events,
so-called press junkets, and exclusive
interviews on talk shows, and so on.
That theatrical window, and regardless
of whether the film plays in theatres the
entire time or not, that window usually
lasts around 4-6 months.
What comes next is your home
entertainment window and transactional
video on demand or Electronic Sell Through,
known as TVOD or EST - that's
when the film gets released on Blu-ray
and DVD, and then also becomes
accessible digitally on demand to rent or
buy a few days later after the DVD
release.
Your price now isn't per person anymore,
the 10-15 quid you pay for a ticket, but
per screen: you pay 3.50 to rent or £12 to
buy, for example, and everyone in your
household gets to see it.
You now also have wider reach, having
access to a greater audience that may
not have been able to go to a theatre
when your film was showing there.
Similar to your theatrical window, the
Home Entertainment window, as it is
called, or Home Ent, is somewhere
around 4-6 months.
And following that is where subscription
video on-demand, “SVOD” services, like
Netflix, Prime Video, Sky Entertainment,
mubi, etc. get their turn.
They now serve an audience that is not
keen on paying a specific fee per film,
like when renting or buying, and is fine
to wait a little longer to have it offered to
them as part of their monthly
subscription.
There are normally two sequential pay
windows, aptly-named Pay-1 and Pay-2,
both around 6-12 months in length;
sometimes there is even a third Pay
window, called, you guessed it: Pay-3.
For example, in the UK, Sky may have a
film from a studio in Pay-1, and then
Netflix or Prime Video or mubi license
that same film during the later Pay-2 or
potentially Pay-3 windows.
What's relevant here is that these
windows hold "exclusive" licensing
rights, so only one party has the content
on their service in a given window and
pays for that exclusivity; needless to
say, the later the window, the cheaper it
gets to license the content, but you also
lose a bit of the momentum of customers
wanting to see a film that was released in
theatres two years ago, as opposed a
fresh 8 months ago.
Following those Pay windows normally
is FreeTV - as a customer, you may not
pay any fee - no rent, buy or monthly
subscription, but you certainly pay old-
school, with your time watching ads.
And lastly, the retirement slot of window
licensing: the library window; that's
when anyone can license the title,
exclusively or non-exclusively, for a
fraction of what you would have paid for
in Pay-1 some three years earlier.