A Golden Age For Shorts?

On my other blog I have a post up about Docunomics looking at how penny-per-view and "long tail" models add up, or don't. It started me thinking, though, about how this might change the way we think about feature films and short films.

Basically, for online distributors, the model is to put a commercial at the beginning of the video. In a short film, that's very simple: you watch a 15 second (sometimes longer!) commercial then see the short film. In a sense, that's the most direct translation of the original free television model, with the added bonus for viewers of choosing what they see and when, and the added bonus for advertisers in that they can precisely target an audience.

In feature-length films, however, it gets a little trickier. Generally, there's an ad at the beginning, then sometimes 4 or 5 ads inserted into breaking points in the film. If someone doesn't watch the later ones, there's no payment for those.

Well, think that through: a feature film, unless made as a no-budget effort with everything deferred, has a huge production budget. For narrative film, that's in the millions, for big-budget documentary that's in the 100,000s, for small-budget documentary -- if you are honestly counting everyone's deferred salary -- in the 10,000s.

Still, to an advertiser, one view is one view. If a 3-minute short gets someone to watch one ad, and the feature length film only gets someone to watch 5 ads, there's an interesting advantage to the short. Someone who made 5 incredibly-popular shorts could in theory match the online advertising revenue of one feature film.

Of course, good features become juggernauts: they get written about in the media, gain fans, get reviews, get nominated for awards. They are marketed, and -- usually, but not always -- cycle through film festivals, DVD sales, broadcast and DVD rental before going online. So the online ad money is icing on the cake.

It's interesting, though, that some advantages appear in this model for short films: many people are comfortable watching a short online, but don't want to spend 90 minutes hunched over a computer or wearing headphones. Someone not specifically looking for a film would certainly be more likely to impulse-watch a short than a feature, as well.

So while traditionally short films have been seen as a "training" area of filmmaking -- lower production cost in time, money and other resources, but less interest in general and usually no DVD sales except in collections (where the revenue is then split many ways) -- an ad view is an ad view, and online that might mean making many shorts could be a viable production model.

These are interesting times, no question.

Docunomics, Part Three

Many years ago, I took an unexpected trip to Las Vegas. No big deal, since I lived in California and visited Vegas often. (I think we had a new friend who had never been, so we piled in the car around sunset and planned to stay overnight.)

In an effort to be cheap -- I was in college -- I decided to play a nickel video poker machine. I tried it a few times, and realized after a few hands that it was broken: it was paying back my bet on a tie, when it should have kept my nickel. That was the built in house advantage, and somehow the machine was broken and not taking that advantage. I stopped when I realized this, did some quick math and quickly understood there was a tiny but real angle there. I couldn't lose if I played a certain system.

At the same time, though, it was tiny advantage. If everything ran in a normal way, even betting five nickels each round, I could expect to win an extra nickel every few hands.

So I played for hours, and that's what happened: each hour, I made about $3. After a couple of hours, I realized it was ridiculous: this was less than minimum wage. Still, with five nickels in the machine, I was eligible for a huge jackpot if I happened to draw one of those extremely rare hands. So I played, realizing my earnings were small, but that I couldn't lose and had hope of hitting a big win.

My friends busy elsewhere, I played about 5 hours, and made about $15. Never hit a big jackpot.

I keep thinking of that night as I read people speculating on the future of documentary. Often, in discussions, my students tell me they want to see films on their computer, not on television. When I point out that online video distribution doesn't pay much per view -- one calculation on some venues is about 2-cents-per-view on short films, 10-cents per view on features -- and ask them how filmmakers will make money, they say that the films will just have to be very popular.

Fair enough. But 100,000 views -- kinda popular for a documentary -- at 2-cents-per view is $2,000. Not exactly vast riches, if that's over one year. One million views? Rare, but plausible, like a jackpot. $20,000. More substantial, a good addition to a day job, but not 10% of a realistic film budget for many documentary filmmakers.

So, who knows how this will all develop. I think, though, that it is important to run the numbers when people keep telling me the current collapsing distribution model will just move online. It will, of course, but if the scale is off -- the equivalent of $3-per-hour pay -- making a living from it might be rarer than it is now.

On that note, let's revisit the how the Doc Challenge DVD is doing at Amazon. (It includes one of our short films.)

In May, it was ranked #48,323 in sales in Movies and TV, moving up to #35,590 in June. Great. A "long-tail" dream come true, as it slowly climbs to the top of the list.

Maybe not. Just checked: it's down to #137,717.

With A Bullet, Kinda

I posted previously about Docunomics.

As a followup, I'm happy to report that the International Documentary Challenge DVD (which includes one of our short films) has moved from #48,323 in sales in Movies and TV to #35,590.

That's right. It's 12,733 better.

Which, I suppose, is not bad. (I'm a little afraid to compare it to other items, because I'm sure with some careful searching you could find it's being outsold by ... well, I'm sure there's a lot of embarrassing possibilities.)

Docunomics

I've been in a lot of discussions lately about the economics of documentary production. There's a lot of interest in online models, of course, but selling DVDs seems to still be resulting in bigger royalty checks. For the moment.

So I'm fascinated to watch (from semi-afar) how the Doc Challenge DVD is doing at Amazon. (It includes one of our short films.)

I just checked. It's ranked #48,323 in sales in Movies and TV. That seems a bit less than overwhelming, but I really don't know. I didn't make a note of where it was ranked when it was first released, but my impression was it's moved up a lot.

So, will it jump up the rankings when there's a new Doc Challenge screening at HotDocs? Is it a "long-tail" item that keeps going for years? What level of sales is enough for a product to turn a profit?