Monetizing your film

- [Narrator] One of the questions that I've heard asked a lot and also that I've asked myself a few times of people is how a short film can be used to generate money, at least to recuperate some of the expenses incurred in creating the film. And, you know, this is a tough one. I mean, how many times have you paid money to watch a short film? And beyond that how many short films have you watched on services that you pay for such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and so forth. Short films just aren't something that we consistently consume as a society and that makes it difficult to make money from them. However, there are a few options out there. Probably my favorite is the service IndieFlix. the streaming services kind of like Netflix but specifically for indie film there are some really great films here, including a lot of experimental and unusual and classic films. I submitted all of my short films to IndieFlix with the hopes of getting those films put on that site. But interestingly, only The Assurance was accepted. So far I haven't really made any money on The Assurance but I haven't really tried or advertised it. And even without me advertising, The Assurance has been watched a few dozen times. In my opinion, IndieFlix is really well run and it's doing a great thing. It's also an inexpensive service to subscribe to. So I feel good about pitching it to my friends and in the future, I definitely plan on submitting my films here. And there are also other similar services popping up, one of them discover.film was recently featured as a perk on T-Mobile Tuesdays. discover.film is dedicated solely to short form content which raises the visibility of short films. Another option for monetizing your film is YouTube. They do all the monetizing for you and as long as your film doesn't contain copyrighted content there's a potential for monetizing the film with ads. Keep in mind though that every platform that you try to put the movie on might cause some issues if some of your talents, some of your actors are in the Screen Actors Guild or some other unions. So make sure you check your agreements with them to make sure you're not breaking any rules there. Another thing that you can do of course is you could also sell the film digitally or rent it on services like Vimeo. I recently did the visual effects for the Jinx and Dela holiday special and before it was picked up by Hulu, it was exclusively available for rent and purchase on Vimeo and from what I understand, it did pretty well there. You can also try your hand at short film contests, I created a lot of my short films like Monday the 16th, An Empathy For The Devil as part of local short film contest and I won a few awards. It was only a few hundred dollars in each case but it helped to almost completely offset the costs of creating the films. There are also a host of online filmmaking contests, as well as local filmmaking challenges going on all the time. Most notably there's the 48 hour film project in which participants must write, shoot and deliver a short film start to finish in 48 hours. The top spots in some locales win prizes, which may include cash. And finally an indirect way to monetize your short film is to use it as a calling card to make a feature film. In the same way that you might not have paid to watch a short film before you probably have paid to watch a feature film. Most people pay to watch movies all the time, there's an audience for it, which means that there are established paths to make money. For a lot of people making short films, making a feature film is actually the ultimate goal and short films are perhaps the best commercial for your skills to do that. And I guess that's you know, kind of the slow burn way to monetize your short film but perhaps one with the biggest payoff. So whether you sell your short film to your audience directly, or whether you host it on a service or win awards with it or use it to catapult you to bigger and better things there are some ways to potentially make some cash with your movie.