The indie film movement bypassing gatekeepers and building fandoms
Plus more on TV's unique position in the creator market, and be aware that how online views are counted has been changed.
This week’s newsletter covers the following:
How indie film is grabbing opportunities in the direct to consumer market
TV’s USP in the creator space: being trusted by audiences
Shorts: be aware that autoplayed videos now count as views.
And as always, send feedback - especially if there are particular things to want to know more about - to hello@businessoftv.com or send me a DM.
Before getting going…
—
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How indie filmmakers are grabbing opportunities in the direct to consumer market
All parts of our media world are being disrupted by the internet. And while this creates great challenges, it also presents opportunities for those who are able to grab them. For some, the upending of TV and film production has been a deeply stressful experience, especially for those freelancers who have found themselves out of work for prolonged periods. For others however, especially those who have focussed their careers in the independent film market, this is quite an exciting time to be alive.
And so this week, I thought I’d draw your attention to the movement that is growing right here on Substack. As a quick reminder, Substack has two main aspects: a platform for writers to host their newsletters - so readers can subscribe and then get an email newsletter into their inboxes, just like you’ve done here. But secondly, it has a whole other area, which is a social network that is quite similar to early days Twitter.
And in the social network part of Substack, you can find a hive of TV, film and online producers and film makers across the broad spectrum of the market from commercial TV, streamers and cinema through to the more auteur or independent film space. This is fast becoming a thriving and growing Substack/#FilmStack community; hugely energised by the potential of the direct to consumer market for their films. And why wouldn’t they be; after all, indie film and has long been a niche tribe, and what is the internet but a mechanism to find likeminded souls? As I’ve written before:
To succeed in this new direct to consumer space can involve hunting down and targeting a niche, a sub culture, an interest group or a hobby, a fandom or a tribe. So yes, of course there are still big broad successes out there, however increasingly where you’ll find your edge will be in hunting a niche and building an audience and community around whatever that may be.
As well as finding audiences, the direct to consumer route enables new film financing opportunities too. I’ve written before about the various interesting developments in this space: from Mark Duplass’ journey to self finance TV; Glitch Productions and Alan’s Universe (amongst other creators) having their YouTube shows acquired by streamers; PE funds moving into TV financing; Tubi and Kickstarter pairing up to finance creators. One I missed was recently highlighted by
, which he called ‘a sign that there’s life in this old indie world yet’. Pressman Films’ launched a crowd-funded development fund and it has now started paying out investors. Unlike Patreon or Kickstarter, this is an equity investment not just an opportunity for fans to support film makers or projects they like. As Richard said:The company raised $2 million from 300 investors, on which they will now earn a 20 percent boost in their investments, signaling health for the concept…
If there is a cheerleader for the indie film movement right now, then that honour belongs to producer and former co-head of movies at Amazon Studios,
. His Substack Hope for Film is a wonderfully optimistic and encouraging read that aims to inspire others to come together and build momentum in what he’s called the NonDē Cinema movement - meaning non-dependent on the usual routes to getting films financed, produced and distributed to audiences. Do explore his Substack, because as well as cri de cœur posts, there is also a wealth of practical information for producers and film makers of all stripes.As Ted wrote in advance of a panel session he took part in on this subject at Cannes last week:
We are entering the Era of The DisIntermediation of All Cultural Industries. That is the service providers in the middle are being recognized as unnecessary and they are be removed. Specialist for each component are entering the field. We’ve seen this in music. We’ve seen this in publishing. And we will see this across the cinema industries. This is the resulting Era Of Distribution As A Service (DaaS). I expect most of us will need to supplement their work conjuring culture and a direct and authentic relationship with those that care for your film will be one of the key ways that is done. This is what building your audience is all about.
And here is a write up about his Cannes panel:
He has been joined by so many others, including
founder of The Black List who signed up to much celebration recently. Here are a few others to start you off, but there are many more:- is creating the next thing in NonDē cinema, by and
Comedy writer Jon Stahl’s
- Greenlight Yourself Part 1: The New Rules of Breaking into Entertainment- on Making Movies in the Internet Age
- on NonDe - build your own sustainability
- - development sucks.
Indeed, Ted has recently published 15 guest posts, which is another route to explore the filmstack community:
In many ways, it is hardly surprising this is happening - after all, the internet at its heart is about the reduction if not removal of gatekeepers and enabling people to create relationships with others directly. Pretty much what the indie film market has long been about. As
wrote recently:There’s a whole movement being born among artists hungry for more than the stale nachos and nutrition-free candy Hollywood is cranking out. Once called independent film, it’s been rebranded as Non-Dē filmmaking (for non-dependent, as in “I’m not dependent on the studios or anyone else to do this”). It’s maverick territory, the place from which the next generation of David Lynches, Richard Linklaters, John Waters, Spike Lees, and Kelly Riechardts will emerge. It’s where filmmakers, armed with new technologies and traditional storytelling techniques, will make films that audiences will discuss, debate, and delight in. It’s a changing of the guard similar to what happened when Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda turned the industry upside down with Easy Rider.
Perhaps what is surprising is why it has taken so long to really get going in the manner it is. The focus of Substack on long form writing rather than short posts or video may have something to do with that.
Even if your work is fairly far removed from the maverick indie film world, I would suggest it is valuable to understand what is happening in this space. As we know, indie film has always had a strong entrepreneurial streak: after all, you have to be a bit of a scrappy hustler if you want to get your film made outside of the studios and the traditional financing and distribution model.
Therefore, when a whole bunch of creatives with these hustler instincts come together to explore how to take advantage of the direct to consumer opportunities, it is fair to assume their insights could have lessons that can be applied to other parts of the TV and film production market.
If you want a place to start finding out about #filmstack and the NonDē movement, then this is a good jumping off point:
Building trust in the direct to consumer market
For many TV producers, it is quite daunting to look out across the YouTube landscape and see so many creators building audiences and making money. How do you compete in this world, where so many are jostling for attention, and where some of the skills involved to get the attention feel a little foreign to those steeped in the B2B commissioning world of TV production?
(Although as written about before, I do think that the barriers for TV producers to learn the skills needed to succeed in YouTube are much lower than some realise).
Earlier this week, I wrote about one - perhaps the - key factor that gives TV producers an edge over others in the direct to consumer market. And that is, being able to create age appropriate broad appeal family friendly content that parents can trust.
For some in TV this could be the lightbulb moment for how you can build a YouTube strategy around the concept of being a trusted producer of reliable family friendly content. If my theory is right, then it wasn’t some sort of fluke that made MrBeast and Dude Perfect so much bigger than all the other YouTubers doing similar pranks and stunts: rather it was because they were trusted by parents to not expose kids to inappropriate content which meant their channels were prioritised while the others weren’t.
In the above piece, I also wrote this:
… there could be potential for brands, broadcasters and creators to work together to come up with our own set of principles with a kite mark that we all sign up to, with the goal of building a recognisable network of family friendly channels that can be trusted by audiences.
You could imagine it being something fairly simple and self-generated (i.e. an individual channel owner sticks ‘family friendly guaranteed’ or something similar in their channel description), all the way up to a set of written principles and a kite mark. Obviously I’m side stepping the fairly complex world of online kids media regulation, but I do wonder if others feel there is potential in this concept. So perhaps you could answer my question below:
wrote a timely and excellent post this week called ‘trust is the new oil’, and while it covers much wider terrain such as the growth of gen AI slop, advertising and more, it has real resonances for anyone in TV production who is looking for how they can differentiate and market themselves in the direct to consumer landscape.
He talks about ‘earned trust’ and how it can’t be gamed unlike other types of trust such as follower counts or positive reviews. He goes on to say how trust is earned through consistent effort, and can’t be bought. This has some real implications such as the growing value of quality curation as well as a desire to connect with trusted brands who have established their reputation over time. As Doug says:
Similarly, if open platforms get overwhelmed with synthetic content and algorithms become less reliable, consumers will lean more on institutions with trusted reputations built over time, both media outlets and consumer brands. That’s good news for traditional media companies in an environment short on it.
Being wary of how video views are counted
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently announced at Cannes that there are 200bn average daily views of YouTube Shorts - so that’s every man, woman and child in the world watching 25 shorts each per day.
While these numbers sound impressively enormous, it is important to be aware that back in March, it was announced that YouTube was changing how they count a Shorts view. This involved removing the minimum watch time so that a view would include any video that starts to play (where previously, a view counted only after a certain duration - how long something had to be watched before it was counted was never made clear).
Some wise people predicted we’d start seeing big Shorts numbers that might skirt over this change - so do keep it in mind anytime view numbers in isolation are thrown around.
If you’d like a rundown of why this matters, then this from Claire Brossard is a great summary which includes further recommendations for content businesses:
This change in how views are counted brought YouTube Shorts in line with their competitors of Instagram and TikTok (and Facebook Reels have also gone down the same path), so in one way it makes comparisons between platform performance easier. However, having grown audiences on all of these platforms, the shift to a view being registered whenever a video starts autoplaying means that view counts without other engagement metrics are somewhat meaningless.
Nick Cicero of Mondo Metrics shared this graphic online, so you can see how views are counted across all social platforms, making the point that ‘Views are cheap. Attention is expensive.’
And here is
outlining real examples of the differences between ‘views’ and ‘engaged views’ for some of the content brands he’s worked on:
Meanwhile, there is a good point in this Engadget piece about how Google is adding the Veo 3 video generator to Shorts.
In a nutshell, Shorts revenues are distributed by a different methodology to the rest of YouTube; they are put in a pot and then divided up by share of views. Consider 25% of the YouTube Partner Program make money from Shorts, the Engadget piece asks:
…will current successful creators that actually make stuff want to share the wealth with people who spit a few words into a chat field?
Data point on direct to consumer revenues
As most creators are private businesses, to gain insights into how their revenues work usually involves looking at the available traffic information, keeping an eye out for any intel plus a fair bit of guesswork. With this in mind, Jordan Schwarzenberger recently posted about his approach to managing The Sidemen’s business, which included this sentence:
A membership that now out-earns ads, merch, and brand deals
Based on their YouTube traffic alone, we can estimate that The Sidemen’s channel over the past year has earned more than £2.1m from ads (so if they can access a higher price for ads then could be more than this). Therefore, their membership programme Side+ is generating northwards of this sum. Based on the annual sub being £69.99 (although there also are discounts and monthly subs too), this suggests they have around 25,000 subscribers.
This is another great example of how multiple revenue streams across ads, brand deals, merch, subs and (increasingly) streaming deals are the norm for creators. So for any TV producer looking to get into this space, it isn’t just about YouTube but how you build together a mix of revenues to make a profitable operation.
Indeed, despite being the biggest ad supported video platform, YouTube is focussing on growing its subscriptions business via creators offering their own subs option as well as YouTubeTV, music and premium. I wrote previously about YouTube’s profitability, and in those numbers you can see the significant growth in income in subscriptions. Here is a table I made of analysts MoffettNathanson’s estimates on YouTube’s financials:
As Sahil Patel wrote in The Information’s creator economy newsletter:
Subscriptions come with their own set of challenges. It is hard to convince users to pay for a service that’s long been free. And similar to its arrangements with creators who run videos and receive a slice of the revenue from ads that run before or during the videos, YouTube has to share subscription revenue with creators, media companies and sports leagues and music labels that distribute their videos on its service.
But as one former YouTube executive recently told me, YouTube wants users to come to its service and never leave, whether they’re interested in videos from their favorite creator, songs from their favorite artists or live sports and cable TV.
That’s it for this week - please do share if you feel it might be useful to your colleagues.
Find out more about me and the purpose of this newsletter, say hi via email hello@businessoftv.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Really interesting stuff in here! Thanks so much for sharing. And I have lots of new Substack to check out now, so thanks for all those recommendations.
Thx for the mention, Jen!! 🙏🙏