Streets Behind
Yep, that’s right. We have made $268.18 streaming our movie since September of last year.
Well, we made $307.31, but minus FilmHub’s 20% and $268.18 is what we’re pocketing.
And, of course, that is Before Taxes.
The state of indie film distribution has changed drastically since we started making this movie. A viewing that used to pay 32¢ now pays a single penny. Or less. What would have made $110K a year when we started now coughs up less than $300, and like an abused spouse, I’m thankful they're not throwing me down the stairs for being a musician, where they pay between .0004¢ to .008¢ per song stream.
We made CTT for $88K. That’s for a completed, done, ready to watch movie. Tack on festival shit and this, that, and the other--and boy, have we suffered a helluva lot of the other--and our out of pocket to make this movie is $121,131.00 smackers. Of course, that number goes in and out like the tide. For example, we had to pony up $500 to get on YouTube and Google Play (and what a complete *waste* of money that was) or $600 in onboarding fees for the disc releases.
I know, you’re thinking ‘Disc release? Who the hell watches discs anymore?’
Surprisingly, a lot of people.
Because we’ve made more money selling DVDs and Blu-rays than we have streaming the movie. So far we’ve pocketed $960.38 off $2,541.50 in sales. And that’s on a movie nobody’s heard of. And they’re consistent sales every month; we average about 40 discs a month. While streaming comes and goes--last month, October, we’re reported to have made a whopping $20.37 off Tubi and Amazon Prime. Of that bounty, $1.09 is from 3,374 minutes of streams on Amazon (and Amazon Prime (Free With Ads) which is reporting .01¢ of that). Tubi either doesn’t report or I have to pay extra to see the data or I-Don’t-Know-What-The Fuck because of the digital moat Filmhub has created around itself in the last year. There is a lotta misdirecting and hand waving in front of your face and upselling to see the information in the distribution world. In any other business, it’s a sign you’re Getting Fucked™. In the film world, it’s Same Old, Same Ol’ BAU.
But let’s Break It Down with what little information we have: Amazon Prime is the frontrunner but Tubi is right on its tail. But they also licensed a month after each other, so they neck and neck throughout the year; one month one’s ahead, the next month the other. Bottomline: They both pay off similarly and have the best reach. JustWatch and Awesome licensed about six months ago, so I won’t really know what their average is until next March and April. The other services we’re licensed to, YouTube, Google Play, Stash, Popsy on Plex, Xumo, and Relay, have either just onboarded us recently, and have no logged plays, or have not streamed a minute in months on their service.
This is the performance chart for "Clocking The T" for its first year, Sept 2024 thru Sept 2025
Of course, that’s reported. Some of these streamers don’t pay out for months. All those white columns? That’s the reported viewing/profit I haven’t received yet. And that could be anywhere from 30 to 90 days before any moola is deposited in my account. So, if we do the math and punch the numbers into a 10-key, and carry the five, and multiply by twelve months, divided by distro percentages (in Hollywood Dollars, which are 17% larger around the edges than a standard dollar), you get: We are never breaking even on this movie.
And that’s just The New Reality.
If you’re not in the public consciousness through a publicity bombardment, you don’t exist. And if you don’t exist, nobody knows about your movie. Tootin' your horn on social media has become basically ineffective as the websites that would work for your movie have been slowly throttled by their sales departments to serve paid advertisements, ads that really don't do much good. And forums where you used to be able to peddle your film now tag you as a spammer and bin your posts. Or, like Facebook, algorithm your hyperlinks into the internet desert, hidden from your followers. It’s actually impressive that CTT has streamed north of 100K minutes, fully half of that as rentals, and selling 160 discs in six months without any footprint in the marketplace.
I’m not embarrassed by any of this. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it’s difficult to write about it. The conventional wisdom was that if you can make a movie for $150K, you can make you money back. Hey, we made ours for an about half that, we should be golden, right? But that was advice was in 2015. By the time we’d locked picture in 2016 the streamers were already taking a machete to the rates. But even at the discounted 16¢ a stream rate, we probably would’ve made our money back in a year or so. By the time we hit screens the rates were dismal and even that was a pipe dream. Every filmmaker, including me, bought into Mark Duplass’ famous "The Cavalry Is Not Coming” speech at SXSW. Of course The Cavalry was never coming. The massacre had already been algo’d.
I have a buddy who’s got an $80K film streaming and he’s in profit, but its taken him ten years to get there. His movie probably went into profit years ago but his old distributor Three Card Monte’d the profits in true Hollywood fashion. There are so many Goddamn middle-men in this distribution world. Once your movie is a deliverable there are a tsunami of people and companies that have no skin in the game but want Their Cut. For every DVD I sell, I see a third. For every stream, less than pennies. And so the Tech Bros devaluation of creative works, both in cinema and music, have destroyed both businesses and made them impossible to make a living off of anymore. A life in the arts is a bad, baaaaad scene nowadays and it ain’t gonna get better any time soon. Not when the internet is choked full of film-bros who delude themselves that if they eat lunch at Schwab’s they’ll be discovered. They’ll bleat, “Nah man, it ain’t The Game, it’s you,” oblivious to the fact they’re not making coin either. They’re the internet equivalent of abused workers who rationalize their exploitation by saying If We Don’t Unionize The Boss Won’t Beat Us Anymore.
When I moved to H’wood in ’83 it was difficult to get a studio meeting, but not impossible. The opportunity was there if you had The Goods. If you had a feature in 35mm they would watch it. If they liked it, they’d pick it up. Rare, but it happened. But the dark side of the technical revolution that’s lowered to cost of making a movie to being within reach of anybody means that, well, it’s in reach of everybody. And there are so many Goddamn indie films made every year that’s it’s created a glut of movies that have sunk the value of all movies. In house buying terms it’s a buyer’s market, and the distro buyers do not give one ratfuck about your movie. Unless it’s got name actors. Or is already making money. Real indie film with no-name cast and crew don’t stand a chance when there aren’t any nationally known critics to bona fide your film. It just gets lost in a digital sea and forgotten; who’s going to see a dinghy in an ocean? The reason a studio will spend half to seventy-five percent of their budget on top of the budget on publicity is exactly the reason you can’t on a micro-budget that barely affords making the damn thing in the first place.
*sigh*
One thing I’ll make crystal clear: I don’t regret making my movie at all. I’d do it again. The emotional, spiritual, and artistic benefits of The Journey were one of the greatest peaks I ever climbed. It’s the price you pay if you wanna climb the Mt. Everest Of Filmmaking and look down to see the curvature of the earth. So if there’s bow on this shit sandwich, that’s it. Pretty and satin and glowing.
Around a profit statement shaped like a turd.
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