What Online Piracy Can Teach Independent Filmmakers

photo credit: Kevin Steele

What started out as a usual Friday afternoon quickly turned into the craziest 72 hours online that I can remember since I first fired up my 14.4k modem back in 1995. Over that period I have run pretty much the full gamut of emotions from despair to elation with every possible combination in between. I’ve cried, I’ve sworn and I’ve whooped with joy. My neighbours probably think I’m some kind of window licking mentalist.

Why?

Because on Friday afternoon, the film that I’ve put blood, sweat and tears into for over 4 years got pirated.

You want to know something? I couldn’t be happier.

Let’s clarify something right from the outset. Stag Night of the Dead isn’t my film. I didn’t direct it but I’ve been working closely with Neil Jones right from concept through to completion. My current role on the film is what the cool kids are labelling as PMD – Producer of Marketing and Distribution. So although it’s not my money on the table, I’m speaking of the film as “my film” because my investment in it is more than monetary.

Right. Back to the story.

I got an alert on Twitter some time early Friday afternoon that a site was promoting a torrent of Stag Night of the Dead. Nothing new there, I thought. These things have been going on ever since we first announced we were making the film, let alone finished making it. Besides, how can they have a DVD rip of the film when we haven’t even released the film on DVD yet? However, after two hours of non-stop tweet alerts, I started to get a bit twitchy and went off to check the source and, sure enough, there was our cover art along with a full description of the film, running time, IMDb data and everything.

Quite frankly, I nearly shit a brick.

We released the film online back in October last year via our good friends at Dynamo. We deliberately set the price point very low – $1.99 for 3 days rental – because we figured that people wouldn’t object to paying the price of a cup of coffee to see a full length feature film. My initial thought, knowing we hadn’t got a physical DVD out there yet, was that someone had used software to capture the film and this was what was being circulated. By this point, the tweets were coming in every 30 seconds.

To cut a long, and very emotional, story short, it wasn’t our film that had been pirated. It was another film called “Stag Night“.

When I realised this, I nearly cried with joy. I knew that somebody hadn’t made an illegal copy of our film and wasn’t distributing it for free. Pretty much everyone involved in the making of SNOTD did it with little or no payment (hello TV Watercooler folks :wave:) and the subsequent DVD, TV and online sales would ensure they got something back for the time they committed to the project. My immediate concerns that they wouldn’t get any reward were allayed. We hadn’t been ripped off and there was still a chance that my friends that I made making the film would still get some kind of recompense for all their hard work after all.

And then I took a step back and looked at the affects of having our film “pirated”:

• Over 30,000 views of our trailer on YouTube in 48 hours
• Over a quarter of a million new results in Google for the exact phrase [stag night of the dead]
• Twitter followers, Facebook fans, SNOTD newsletter subscribers all up
• Website traffic up by 2000%
• Sales of our online stream up

In short, having our film “pirated” was the best promotion that money can’t buy.

Now, obviously, we can afford to be a little pragmatic about this. We didn’t actually get “pirated” at all. It wasn’t our film that was being ripped but someone elses and we’re reaping the benefits – more sales in last 72 hours than the previous month. However, it’s something of a lesson to all independent filmmakers out there.

These guys are fucking good at what they do. Underestimate them at your peril.

The next chunk of text is a blog post I started writing back in November 2009. I revisited it when I began to write this blog post. Whilst the references maybe somewhat out of date, the sentiment still remains the same:

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In 2008 over 20,000 feature films were made worldwide but only 516 had a theatrical release in the UK of one week or more. (source: UK Film Council). As an independent filmmaker the chances of your film getting a theatrical release in the UK is pretty much zero. DVD sales have been dropping annually since 2002 and the number of UK distributors for indie films has dropped during the recession as firms go to the wall or merge.

The biggest shift for both studios and indies is, of course, what the music industry has been battling for some time now and that is the threat to its core business model presented by online piracy.

It’s a common misconception that illegal streaming or downloading is as a result of people wanting their content for free. Whilst there are obviously folks using torrent sites because they don’t want to or don’t see why they should pay, that’s not always the case.

The most common reason for downloading a film or TV show from a torrent site is because the user wants to watch it when they want to watch it and not when the TV channel or studio mogul decides to release it.

So what can UK independent filmmakers learn from the likes of Pirate Bay?

The simple fact is that the film industry has had its head stuck so firmly up its own arse for so long now that it’s lost track of what people want. They seem to have missed out on the fact that today’s consumer seeks out content rather than have it forced upon them. It’s gone from push to pull.

Generation Y (or is it Z? I blame the idiot who started it at X) has grown up with the Internet and sees the web as its source of content. It no longer accepts being drip fed information but actively seeks it out. When I first came online back in the mid 90′s the Internet was pretty much a walled garden. A select number of sources provided you with a select amount of information. Google, The Big G, came along and changed all that.

As a side note I have to apologise for my part in creating the beast that is The Big G. I was working in an IT support department for a large multinational corporate and, as a geek, I championed Google and changed the default search engine on new laptop and desktop builds from AltaVista or Hotbot or Lycos or whatever the heck we were using to Google. I created a monster and I am truly sorry.

Anyway, getting back on topic, it’s my belief that the concept of release windows will soon become a thing of the past once Hollywood wakes up and smells the coffee and realises it is fighting a battle it cannot win. The TV studio execs will fall into line shortly afterwards.

Why, for example, are Top Gear torrents in the US so popular? It’s because our American cousins are so far behind us that a pre-pubescent Jeremy Clarkson is reviewing a Triumph Toledo on US prime time TV as a season exclusive.

Revolver, a film distribution company I have massive respect for, got slated for having the audacity to release Mum & Dad simultaneously on theatrical, DVD and online platforms. There were calls to boycott the release.

…any attempt to break the 17-week window between theatrical and other releases which remains at the moment the norm, was taken very seriously and called on members not to show the film.
Source: Screen Daily.com

WTF?!? The film industry seems to have buried its head so far in the sand that even the most scared ostrich would extricate its head and say “dude, it ain’t gonna go away”. The simple fact is that as soon as your film hits the streets that it will get ripped and be on a torrent site within 90 minutes. If you believe otherwise your name is Aaron A. Aadvark – i.e. first in the stupid queue.

The bottom line is that regardless of useless legislation by the UK government or DRM or any of the other archaic methods suggested by the film industry, torrent sites are here and they’re here to stay.

More Depressing Stuff

Illegal downloading has impacted on revenues and, as a result, MG’s (minimum guarantees) have pretty much gone the way of the dodo and any sales estimates broken down by territory that you might have aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

Miramax have just slashed staff and slate by 60%. MGM are teetering on the edge. Pinewood Studio had a 55% drop in first half profits this year. 100,000 people have lost their job in the US entertainment industry.

The whole business is in a state of flux. It’s a combination of the recession and a shift in the way the customer wants to watch film. Everyone knows the old ways of doing things are dead but nobody is coming up with any answers.

Making money from independent film has always been tough but if this shift in the balance of power to the consumer is threatening the big Hollywood studios, what chance the indie?

Sell The Sizzle, Not The Steak

Research has suggested that many people who download a film from a torrent site will then go on to buy the physical product. This is borne out by my own, often heated, discussions with torrent site users. It’s a combination of “I want it now” and a try-before-you-buy mentality.

However, if you provide a range of “value added services” to your proposal then you have yourself an advantage. Something the pirates can’t replicate.

I’m talking about user interaction.

The Online Revolution

The Internet offers filmmakers an alternative distribution model and revenue stream.

By going online you remove the traditional gatekeepers who all want a slice of your pie (sales agents, distributors) as well as the cost of getting your product to market (P&A, DVD manufacture). Unlike the traditional methods, there is no limited shelf or screen space.

Shoot something for the online market and you are guaranteed distribution.

Unlike the old distribution model, the second your film is released you can start to make money. No waiting 18 months for the first cheque to come in from your sales agent.

You have the option to completely self distribute or use a third party to do it for you. Either way you make your money from the first sale.

Services like Amazons CreateSpace allow you to distribute your film online either as a physical DVD or as a video download – rent or buy. They charge a commission but the advantages are no overheads – server space, inventory, bandwidth.

You can go it alone and sell your film directly from your own website. Amazon once more come up trumps with their S3 server storage where you only pay for the amount of storage or bandwidth that you actually use.

It’s my opinion that we are moving away from a business model that relies on physical product in much the same way as the music industry has adapted.

The Problems For UK Filmmakers Online

Now before I go on let me clarify that I do not think UK independent feature films are dead. However I think that, at the moment, the outdated business model employed by the film industry is not sympathetic towards the independent.

Until there is an online solution for delivering feature length productions that is accessible to all filmmakers and, crucially, all audiences, my belief is that UK independent filmmakers are going to stuggle.

The majority of current online services (Hulu, Joost, iTunes, Netflix, etc.) cater almost exclusively to the major studios and, for feature length productions, to the US only. They are run by the US studios and networks and unless you know how to use a proxy server, there’s no way of accessing the content so unless your target audience is sufficiently savvy enough to know even what a proxy server is, you’re screwed.

LOVEFiLM caters to a UK audience but is essentially no different from the current model in as much as it serves predominately mainstream studio films.

The barriers to entry for some of these sites are dropping slowly and new ones are appearing but, at the moment, online distribution for UK feature length productions is limited to the traditional sales agent route or self distribution as previously outlined.

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I never quite finshed the blog post but, as you can see, my views haven’t changed a great deal since then. The big difference is that I have faced the “threat” of online piracy first hand. And you know what? I have found it to be good.

Sheri Candler recently posted an article on her Facebook page about piracy and it evoked a shit ton of responses from people. What folks are missing is that it ain’t gonna go away. This is where we’re at. As I mentioned in my old blog post, the second you release your film, you’re going to be hit.

Conclusion

In short, you have to accept that anything you release – film, music, books, poetry – is going to end up somewhere on the Internet within seconds of you releasing it and – guess what – these folks ain’t gonna pay for it.

However, rather than wake up your gin sozzled media lawyer from his afternoon sleep, embrace these guys. Find a way to work with them. We’ve reached out to some of the major players and I’ll let you know how we get on but I still stand by my statement of earlier:

It’s the best publicity that money can’t buy.

Tagged as: Film Stuff, Internet, social media, twitter, youtube