The Plan
The Core Business of Pissweak Productions is to produce a slate of super-low-budget, super-high-concept films inspired by films like: the Blair Witch Project, Mad Max, Clerks, El Mariachi and Paranormal Activity. These films are all characterised by their incredible price to earnings ratio. They were shot on low budgets and achieved wide release which resulted in a huge return on initial expenditure. Naturally these are successful examples and there are tens of thousands of unsuccessful examples and with low budget production comes high risk of failure. However, this risk is in part mitigated by the low budget. If a film like Waterworld or Tron Legacy flops, the losses are massive. If a film shot for fifty thousand dollars flops and the risk has been spread across a range of high net worth investors then the losses are negligible.
The creative and executive team behind Pissweak Productions have already produced and released a prototype super-low-budget film project
I am Bish was shot for a budget of ten thousand dollars and marketed for an additional ten thousand dollars. In film terms that is practically nothing and yet the film has achieved the following milestones;
Screened as an Official Selection of 7 International Film Festivals;
- Charlotte Film Festival (North Carolina)
- Detroit Windsor International Film Festival (Michigan)
- Jacksonville Film Festival (Florida)
- Riverside International Film Festival (California)
- Edmonton International Film Festival (Canada)
- Sacramento Horror Film Festival (California)
- Southern Winds Film Festival (Oklahoma)
Won 7 Awards;
- Honolulu International Film Festival – Silver Lei Award
- The Indie Fest Film Awards – Winner
- Los Angeles Reel Film Festival – Honourable Mention
- Mexico International Film Festival – Golden Palm Award
- Twin Rivers Media Festival – Award of Merit
- Yosemite Film Festival – John Muir Award
- Maverick Movie Awards – Best Screenplay
It is important to note that the film has not, as yet, produced a significant financial return. However, DVD’s continue to sell at a steady trickle (even after the film has been made available to view online for free) and, as it has won some critical acclaim and has been reviewed well on IMDB as well as on several independent movie sites and blogs, it should continue to generate modest sales for many years into the future. What is more, if any future projects prove successful there should be a flow-on effect as new viewers use tools like IMDB and Amazon to find out what other projects have been produced by the same creative team.
Advantages of Super-Low-Budget Film Production
The two key advantages of the production model we propose are Risk Minimisation and ROI Maximisation.
Risk Minimisation:
Film is a ridiculously high-risk investment for a number of reasons such as;
- Anything can and will go wrong on a film shoot;
- Competition is fierce;
- For the first time ever DVD sales have contracted – although this may be partially offset by new digital distribution platforms; and
Perhaps the main reason film is such a ridiculously risky investment is that a million dollars is considered a low budget for a traditional feature film and, for any new business (and every film could be considered a new business) a million dollars is a huge break-even point to reach.
The traditional distribution model, whereby producers are lucky to get 10% of the proceeds of theatrical distribution, exacerbates the problem by cutting producers out of the majority of the profits.
Typical Box Office Split
(under a traditional distribution model)
- Exhibitor –45-50%
- Distributor – 45-50%
- Producer – 5-10%
Super-Low-Budget production reduces the risk by;
Lightening the load on investors:
Rather than asking private investors to contribute large, lump-sum investments, we can offer much smaller investment packages to a much wider range of investors.
Increasing the potential for break-even & profit:
A film produced and marketed for $50,000 only has to sell ten thousand (10,000) units at an average profit of five dollars ($5) in order to break even.
Utilising production facilities & equipment for multiple projects:
I am Bish was shot on pro-sumer grade camera equipment worth $6,000 and edited, completed and burned on a ten year old Power-Mac using Final Cut and Adobe Creative Suite for post production. All the equipment needs a refresh but that will cost less than $15,000 if it was purchased outright and could be a lot cheaper if financed under a hire-purchase type arrangement. What is more, that equipment can be used for multiple films on the slate.
ROI Maximisation:
Our key strategy is to change the economics of film production and distribution by leveraging the following;
- Low cost of production
- Low cost marketing; grass roots, social networking and viral campaigns
- Long tail – long term product lifecycle
We’ve already discussed low cost of production.
Low Cost / Social / Viral Marketing: Attempting to use traditional marketing for a super-low-budget film would be both incongruous and unwise; posters, billboards, radio, print and TV advertising are all the domain of big budget films and are also prohibitively expensive.
Having said that, if we ever make anything that a distributor is genuinely interested in, there’s no reason that kind of marketing wouldn’t work for the kind of films we’re aiming to produce. In fact, in terms of having something genuinely different to sell, it could work particularly well and in the hands of a good distributor that kind of campaign would be administered with far more experience than we could bring to the table. Our area of strength is new, low-cost, viral and social network based marketing and the potential there is hugely exciting.
The I am Bish website is generating 5,000 hits a month and the only active expenditure is three dollars a day spent on Google Adwords to help give us search engine presence and the vast majority of our unique visitors are finding the site through search or through word of mouth on the internet. A Google search for “I am Bish” brings up more than 20 pages of results including news, reviews and festival pages.
Since putting up a free version of the film on Vimeo it is averaging between 30 and 50 plays a day. Our YouTube channel has been seriously neglected and needs an update and some new content but even so it has still amassed nearly 24,000 download views.
All of the above has been achieved with very little maintenance and could easily be massively improved with regular content updates, tweeting, blogging and generally leveraging social networks to their best advantage. We also have some ideas for some viral videos that can be hit and miss but can have massive results and there are some fantastic examples that have got massive traction with something very simple. Such as;
The John West Bear Fight
This simple, yet awesome viral ad has reportedly been viewed over 300 million times, making it the sixth most viewed video online.
Long Tail / Long Product Life Cycle: Long tail is a statistical property whereby a larger share of the population lies within the tail of a probability distribution than under a normal distribution. The theory has been applied to a retail strategy of selling a large number of unique items in small quantities, as exemplified by Amazon and Netflix by Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine.
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Amazon actually makes more from products that are not available in retail stores (who can not afford to carry anything but the big selling items) than those products that sell in large quantities. The proportion for Netflicks is smaller but it does illustrate that there is a demand for low-budget independent content even in a market dominated by big-budget blockbusters.
We believe the long tail can also be applied in terms of the lifecycle of an independent film. If the film is successful at festivals and well marketed there will be an initial period of high sales – even if those sales are for self produced DVDs or self-financed screenings. This was certainly the case with I am Bish, the film made the majority of its revenue from the initial screening and DVD sales. However DVD’s continue to sell even now that the film has been made available for free online.
What is more, if the creative team continues to make high quality product that is successful on an independent level then subsequent projects will have a flow-through effect that will result in sales of I am Bish even though that project is being given away as a means of promoting the rest of the slate.
I am Bish is now forever part of a number of reasonably exclusive clubs it is;
- A completed feature film listed on IMDB with credits
- A zombie feature film
- A multi-award winning festival selection
The film has been reviewed (favourably) by a number of independent review sites including ZMBD and Apocalypse Later;
The film will be part of the feature and zombie film landscape for all time and with a little help from Google Adwords and marketing / press associated with other projects on the slate it will continue to generate hits, downloads and, to a smaller degree, sales.
The Slate
1) Pissweak Superheroes
Kind of obvious and we're already kind of making it.
2) Case