BPS 409: How to Make Indie Films That Make REAL Money with J. Horton

Today on the show we have filmmaker and Filmtrepreneur J. Horton. Jason has been in the film industry for as long as I have and has been making movies ever since. What sets him apart from other filmmakers is that he actually makes a living making his films.Jason figured out the formula that would allow him to make a living doing what he loves to do. He produces low-budget feature films and uploads them to Amazon Prime.

He collects TVOD and SVOD revenue. His key is volume. This year alone he produced 14 feature films.We discuss how he chooses his niche audience, how he shifted from only narrative films to directing niche-focused documentaries, and how he's able to produce so much content.

Enjoy my conversation with J. Horton.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/bulletproof-screenwriting-podcast--2881148/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
ifagpodcastnetwork dot com.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four zero nine.
If you don't find a way to make money while
you sleep, you will work until you die.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Warren Buffett broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood
when we really should be working on that next draft.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
It's the Bulletproof.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting
while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script
Coverage actually focuses on the kind of product you are

(01:00):
and the goals of the project you are, so we
actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market,
and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from
a reader that's used to reading tempole movies when your
movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars,
and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage,
our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO, Disney,

(01:24):
Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more.
So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Now, Guys,
today on the show, we have filmmaker and film entrepreneur
Jay Horton. Now, Jason is a filmmaker who figured out

(01:48):
how to make a living making films. And I know
that is a weird concept, but he actually makes a
living and all he does is make feature films. And
in our conversation we go over his techniques, what he does,
how he does it, how he monetizes all of these films,

(02:08):
and what is this secret sauce to his success. Now,
he is not a billionaire or making millions of dollars
by any stretch of the imagination. He'll be the first
to tell you, but he has figured out how to
make a living. That means he only does this to
generate revenue to support him and his family, and that
to me is the dream as a filmmaker to be

(02:31):
able to just do what I love to do and
get paid to do it. So, without any further ado,
please enjoy my conversation with Jay Horton. I like to
welcome the show Jay Horton. Man, how you doing, brother?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Very good? Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Oh man, thanks for doing this. Man, I am I'm
a fan of what you do and how you do it. It's
rare to find filmmakers who get it and figure out
how to make a living as a filmmaker, which is
you are in the top one percent of one percent
of one percent and and and yeah. But like like

(03:10):
you say in your YouTube videos and a lot of
stuff your content, it's like, I'm not rich by any
stretch of imagination, but I make a living doing what
I love to do. And that's what we wanted to
kind of bring you on the show to explore about.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah. Yeah, and to be to be fair, it's taken
me a long time to get there, and a long
time to change my mentality from you know, I'm going
to be Quentin Tarantino to I'm going to make a
living as a filmmaker, right.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
And I think we all you know, you're you and
I are in similar vintages, as I'd like to say.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
So, you know, when Quentin came out, we were probably
in our in our youth, if you will, and everybody
of our generation wanted to be Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith,
Quentin Tarantino. You know, Rick, Richard Lincoletter, you know John Singleton,
Steven Soderberg, like they're all those guys. But Tarantino has
that rock start, you know, vibe to him when he

(04:01):
came out, and I think he as wonderful as he is,
he did hurt a generation of filmmakers because we all
figured out, like, we're just never gonna be Quinn Tarantino.
It's like it's it's it's hard pill as well for
a lot of filmmakers, we're just never and it's okay
because nobody's ever gonna be Quinn Tarantina. No, So tell

(04:23):
us a little bit about how you got into the business.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Okay, Well, I basically I got started doing movies because
I couldn't do anything else. I was small, I didn't
like sports, I watched movies all the time, so that
was I was always a major focus of mine. And
then you know, speaking of Tarantino, he you know Resolute
Dogs came out when I was eighteen, like coming out
of high school. So like that, like for the first time,

(04:49):
I was like, oh, so what a director does this is?
This is a director I could do this now. It
took me another, you know, four years to get into
college and you know kind of start studying film. But
you know, by the time I had finished there, like
I was chomping at the bit to make a movie. So,
you know, I did my first movie right out of college.
You know, we saved up a few thousand dollars, me

(05:09):
and a friend and just we had the Panasonic DVX
when it first came out TVX.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
What was it the A, sir? Or was it just
a straight up just do you have the A?

Speaker 3 (05:18):
I believe we had. I think it was before the A.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
So it was the first she had. First generation got it.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
I'm pretty sure it wasn't that a great little camera man,
I'd love that look it was, you know, I still
like like the look of it. Sure did A. I
did A. I mean I did a really one of
my not ladder movies, but like mid career movies, like
way after HD had kind of taken over. I think
it was like twenty ten. But I liked that look
so much. I actually shot one last feature on it.

(05:47):
You know that I still have called a trap, which
I did quite a bit. But yeah, I love that look.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
That look was awesome and it was just and for
people to just don't understand what that camera was. It
was the first twenty four P camera, so it was
the first time we could see a film look inherent
in the image. Before then, all we had was like
the cannon XL which was it's.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Just oh, it was horrible, disgusting.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
It was disgusting. And then you met and you mixed
that with final cut pro. I think it was four yep,
maybe four or five.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
I think I started on five, but I'm I'm again,
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
It's around yeah, it's around there. So you combined those
two and remember you had to plug in the cable
and then let the let the final cut like run
through the tapes to digitize high reds, which was standard
deaf and I know everyone listening to like, it's just
two old farts talking about the olden dings, but it
was you have no understanding how awesome that was, Like
it was insane.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
So I still had, you know, the mentality that you know,
I'm gonna be big, I'm gonna be a Spielberg, I'm
gonna be a Tarantino and be Rodriguez. But I'm making
this small movie. And I didn't realize it at the time,
but I was laying the groundwork for, you know, my
later career. So anyway, we finished this movie. It was
originally called Rise of the Undead. Many years later distributor

(07:04):
changed it to Rising Undead. But anyway, we sold it
to York Entertainment, like just write out the box. I
don't know if you know heard of York, but okay,
so York was like one of the first, like predatory distributors.
So I didn't know. I didn't know anything about distribution, marketing.

(07:25):
Nothing was the deal.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
What was the deal?

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh god, twelve year license. The sales fee was like
the cap was over fifty thousand or it was fifty
thousand something ridiculous. And I honestly don't remember the rev split.
I think it was like a sixty forty maybe.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Something like that. But you never made it.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
You never saw a time, not from them.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
No did you get the movie back ever.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Years years later, which I'll get into that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Later.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
That's how I discovered Amazon and started doing self distribution.
Let's do that. But so anyway, we finished it, we
sold it to York and I was like, and they
did release it, you know, like, you know, it was
in Blockbuster, it was in Hollywood Video. It was like,
and I didn't care so much about the money at
the time. I was like, hey, I have a movie out.
You know, maybe we'll see some momenty next.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Year that this can'd of stop you right there for
a second. That is the worst disease that we as
filmmakers have when we're first starting out, Like, oh, well,
I see it on the shelves or I see it
on Amazon, or I see it on iTunes, and I've arrived,
and oh, I don't care really about the money. You'll
never make it as a filmmaker if you don't change

(08:39):
that mentality.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Agreed, Oh, totally agreed. And what I was about to
find out was that no one else was going to
give a shit that my movie was in Blockbuster, you know. So,
like I get it out and we're living in New
Orleans at the time, and you know, we're planning to
make the move to La Katrina happened and we moved
right after Katrina. So I get to l A, and

(09:00):
I have this movie and it's I'm Blockbuster, and I'm like,
LA is going to just be like, welcome, come direct
our movies, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Here's twenty million, here's yeah, here's.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Twenty million, or even one. I mean, I wasn't quite
that you know, delusionalistic of it, but I was still delusional.
I mean, I was thinking a million or five hundred thousand.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
At least, that's like nothing at least yeah, at least
there's nothing they handles it. They just handles out to
anybody who walks in the door.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
So you know, I'm you know, I'm querying production companies
and studios, you know, and just you know, if I
ever do get responses, they're pretty much like, lol, you know,
send so but so so. Here I was, you know,
I directed this feature film. You know, I graduated college.
I'm in LA. Nobody will hire me for anything. I'm like, hey,

(09:51):
I directed this, I wrote it, I edited it. I
could you know I could do editing. I could you
know I could do I work the camera. I could
do camera work.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Could I mean I couldn't do work for free. I
mean like I couldn't get a job. So I was
back working at Starbucks. You know. It's like, you know,
six months goes by, still no job, and I finally
get an assistant editor job on this rinky dink horror movie.
I think it was called Butcher House. And the special

(10:30):
effects guy on that was getting ready to shoot his
first movie and I still had that DVX and his
DP had quit. I wasn't really a DP, but he
was like, oh, you have the camera. You know, we're
shooting tomorrow, Come shoot my movie. And that kind of
set me off on my path, you know. I worked
for that guy, and then his EP was a filmmaker
named Jean Claude Lamar. I started editing and directing for him.

(10:52):
Then I got noticed by the Garcia brothers, and I
started directing for them. You know, just every just beget everything.
And I kept moving and it just.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
It just kept rocking and rocking. All right. So then,
so you have a fairly long IMDb. I've noticed, Yes,
how many movies are you popping out a year? Now? Oh?

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Man? I mean at my height, I was probably doing
twelve a year.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
So one a month, one a month.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
One a month. So one of the companies I started,
actually both the companies I was directing. For their business model,
they were doing micro budget movies, like between ten thousand
dollars or like sixty thousand dollars. You know, they got
a little bit higher later on. But anyway, so they're
making these movies. They'd get like one, you know, B
level actor, they'd have him for a day. They had

(11:41):
had the movies pre sold, and they were just impressed
by my ability to be able to work within their timeframe,
you know, because we would shoot these movies in five
or six days, sometimes less, and then you know I
would have less than a month to edit them feature films,
you know, put them out like that date. That release
date would be that before we started shooting, you know,

(12:02):
like they had. Both of the companies had set deals
with different distributors and aggregators, so like they would we
would start shooting in April, in the movie would be
like on the shelf in June, just like Boom, and
they would do them, you know, at least one a month.
There was one month with the Garcias where I shot
four movies. We did one in uh, we did one

(12:24):
pretty much. And no, it was actually that period was concurrent,
like one after another. So we did we did one
movie and one day, I'm sorry, two movies in one day,
one movie in two days, a movie in five days,
and then another movie in four days.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
How do you do two movies in the day, Like, look,
I've shots not in one I'm sorry, not in one day.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh you're asking, I got you, I got you. Yes, Okay,
how do you shoot a movie in one day?

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean I mean you do? I know, how
did do it? You just put the camera up and
you let the actors act and it's basically masters shot theater.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Well it can be what what worked for me? And
now I'm not saying these are great movies. So we
still shot him in a day, but sure better than
you would think. So, like what we would do is,
you know we had we would go to sets like
stage sets, and you know we would so we have
so many scenes in the living room set, we'd set
up three cameras. We would run each scene twice, you know,

(13:19):
I mean, you know, unless somebody flopped or something, but
we'd run two times full through with two completely set
different sets of coverage. So I would end up with,
you know, six pieces of coverage per scene on average, okay,
and one of one of my ops was he was
he was really good, so we like we would set
him on the second take on a long lens and
be like, just fish, get my inserts. And I would

(13:42):
even always have them set. I would just be like, yeah,
get what you can get, and then everybody else would
have standard coverage. And my editing background helped me do
those as well.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, I mean, can you please tell the audience how
important understanding editorial helps you make these kind of films.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted
to edit anything. I edited my first movie out of necessity.
But you learned, like if you want to get into
directing or writing or any editor, it's one of the
best positions to move up, because, like, not only are
you learning the entire process, what works, what doesn't, how
shots fit together, how much you actually need, you're also

(14:23):
setting with the director and the producer, sometimes the financiers.
If you're lucky enough to be on set, you're you're
setting right there with the main producers and the visiting
the people that visit, you know, like the big wigs,
the guys with the money. I mean, I've got movies,
you know, small movies financed from being on that set
and talking to those people, you know. So I think

(14:45):
I think editing's probably the best. You know, maybe DP
on bigger things, but like in an India world, but even.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
DP as an editor as editorial allows you to figure
out what you need and how fast I need to
get it and what you absolutely need. And then also
it's one thing being on set, but it's another thing
being in a room with producers, directors, financiers for arguably
two three weeks at a time. Sometimes I mean in
your case a lot faster, but generally speaking, it could

(15:17):
be months that you're working together, you know, and those
relationships build up.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
One of my very first gigs after I started working,
besides the horror movie, I was operating camera on this
twenty four hour shoot. It was this weird ass comedy documentary.
I'll spare the details, but I was setting there with
the main producer because we were doing some live TV
editing on it, and you know, so I talked to
him for a few hours and you know, offhandedly mentioned

(15:45):
that I was a writer and he was looking for
a zombie script. I didn't have one, but I was like, dude,
I could write you one in two weeks. And you know,
a month later, we're shooting Edges of Darkness, which was,
you know, my first California you know directing.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Very cool. Sorry, So, so you're popping out a lot
of movies a month, what is your business model as
a filmmaker? So kind of explain that to to film
to the audience.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
So at the time when I was making all of those,
I was working for other people. So I was like
a hired gun. I'm watching their business model. So the
business model was basically, you you know, you have to
it's a quick release model, you know, like you have
to put out so much material a year. You know,
and most of them did, okay, but these aren't. You know,

(16:30):
they make it for fifty They they might make seventy
five thousand in the first year, or they might make
a hundred, or it might break even. You know, they
had a pretty good track record for not losing. But
you know, it was a volume business for those guys.
And so I'm sitting there watching these guys, I'm like, Okay,
I get the business side of it. Now. If I
can if I can fine tune the creative and you know,

(16:54):
make these a little bit better, which you know, I
believe you can. It's like, that's that's a good that's
a good model. And then you know, I started working
for a larger company for a while, an animation company,
which kind of took me away from filmmaking for about
two years. And then last year, a year before last,
I started getting back, basically taking their business model but

(17:16):
creating it for myself. So like that that's what I'm
doing now. And I chose a slightly different path with
what I'm doing now. So like I had talked to
a producer because so three years ago I shot a
movie called Death Day or it was called The Campus.
The distributor changed it later.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I have that a lot, but they tend to do that.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, this but this movie, I think. I think our
hard budget was like I don't know, forty five thousand
and maybe another twenty or so post but so it
was decent for a micro budget, and you know, we
shot it anamorphic. You know, I was pretty happy with
how it turned out, and basing my past work, I
was like, oh man, I'm going to make one hundred

(18:01):
grand first year on this easy break even, you know.
So it comes out in like late twenty seventeen or
early twenty eighteen, and it just wasn't the case anymore.
It failed pretty spectacularly, Like I didn't make anything, and
I'm still like, you know, dealing with investors and whatnot
on it. So I was kind of in a spot
where I'm like this business model that I came in

(18:25):
professionally on, like it's not really working anymore because like
these guys they were making these movies so fast, put
out one a month, but you know, they weren't particularly
they weren't all great they and they weren't making money anymore.
But in you know, twenty ten, twenty.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Fourteen, money it was still flowing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, you could make a movie for fifty thousand dollars,
put Eric Roberts in it and still like make money,
you know, not anymore. Now now they're like Eric Roberts,
Oh shit, I got thirty of those, yeah exactly. I
mean I remember I was at can a few years ago.
One of the I overheard a producer or a distributors
somebody saying, if I see one more fucking movie with

(19:06):
Eric Roberts with a.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Screen I've mentioned Eric a couple of times because I
one year as a post as a post supervisor, worked
on three Eric Roberts movies just myself, and I'm like,
he must have done about twenty to twenty five movies
that year, and it's just he just diluted his whatever
value he might have had. You know, there's a and
there's a handful of those kind of actors who could

(19:28):
do that kind of stuff. But yeah, and for people
to understand, in twenty ten, twenty eleven, DVD.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Was still a thing that was huge.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
It was still a thing, and at that time, streaming
had just started to the idea started to Germany and
Netflix had just started to do it, and as the
technology got better and better. But so you could literally
put out a crap movie, for a fifty thousand dollars
crap movie with Eric Roberts, and you'll pull a hundred
grand off of it. Just oh yeah, comfortably, comfortably those

(19:58):
days are gone. We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor. And now back to the show's in
that sense. In that sense, so how did you switch
your business model? Currently?

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Okay, So the other thing that happened, and I think
it first happened around twenty ten Amazon unboxed, which became
Prime Video Direct. It was somewhere around that time. I
think we were still putting them up through Create space,
like it was a self book publishing thing. But she
had a DVD and when streaming first came out, you
could you could upload your movies through there, and hardly

(20:37):
anybody knew about it film right wise.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
And you and you, you were basically a big fish
in a very well a small pond because it was
a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
A lot of competition exactly. And that you know, that
first movie, the rights hadn't expired, but the company had
went under, so I got the rights back on that.
I still had the rights on Trap and I think
one other. So I put these three movies up and
I I just forgot about it. You know, they were
making five or six bucks a month something like that,
something small, but I think it was two thousand. A

(21:08):
year later, like twenty thirteen, one of these movies like
just out of nowhere, Like I wasn't promoting it nothing,
It just it just popped up like it was making
I think it was around I think at the height
it was making almost two thousand a month, but like
it was bouncing between one thousand and two thousand a
month for almost twelve months. Like I made I made

(21:28):
the budget on it. Then this movie was at least
six years old, maybe seven, and I was like, for
the very first time, I'm like, oh, I mean there's
something to this like self distribution thing. So I you know,
I finished my stint directing for the other guys, and
you know, I had the failure with Campus, and then
was like, I'm going to try to go back to
this self distribution model, you know. So and a producer

(21:52):
had told me that they were having a lot of
trouble you know with you know, narrative features you'll get lucky.
But he's like, you should try documentaries. And at the
time I had no interest in documentaries whatsoever. But I
was like, well, I mean I'd like to make stuff.
Let me let me make a few and see what happens.
So I just really as fast as I could make them,

(22:14):
I made I think it was like six documentaries and
I did these and like, I want to say, two months.
Why they're like full feature, Yeah, like between between sixty
and ninety minutes. Like so with streaming. With streaming documentaries
like if you hit over the sixty minute mark, you
can kind of you can sell it as a feature,
right anyway, So between sixty and ninety, So like I

(22:35):
would and I mean these are talking head kind of documentaries,
there would be you know, b roll but you know
most of its stock, you know, I do. I do
the interviews in like a day, you know, Like I
would set up five people, interview them for a couple
hours apiece, and just boom, knock it all out. So
and I was just basically throwing shit at the wall.
I was like, I had subjects I was interested in,

(22:57):
but I had no idea what the market would bear.
So I'm trying to figure that out. So I do
these six and and each one's in a completely different genre.
You know, one about a dog rescue, one about medical cannabis,
you know, one about Brexit. I forget the other three.
But so anyways, so I put them out really quick.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
And and so what and what made you choose those topics?
Were you actually going after hot topics or hot niches
or something like that, or what was your mentality behind you?

Speaker 3 (23:28):
I was, I was trying to figure it out, and
at the time, I was whatever I had access to,
like what was the what was the path of least resistance?
What am I interested in? What could I spend a
couple of weeks on and not want to puke? You know.
I had a friend that ran the dog rescue in Vegas,
so like I went down there and did that one,

(23:49):
the the Brexit one. I have a filmmaker friend that's
in the UK that wanted to shoot interviews for this.
So I was like, Okay, here's the interviews, here's questions.
You go out and do it and we'll do like
a red split on it. So he did that and
then I posted it and distribute it. So I do
these like six movies really quick, and again it's kind
of just like testing the market. There's another thing that

(24:12):
had happened is I had another documentary from way back
when about Katrina that a friend of mine had made,
and it had popped up out of nowhere and was
making money. There's another reason I decided on the documentaries.
So through those six I start to see, okay, like
the dog Rescue for one did well, Like I was

(24:32):
making around one thousand dollars a month on it, maybe
a little less.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
How much did it cost?

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Spent nothing? I mean my time. You know, I spent
three days shooting it and probably maybe maybe five days
editing it.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
So it was all basically you used all the resources
you had was just camera and you're editing gear basically
that you already have paid for essentially.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yep. Yeah, I had my camera, a small light kit. Sound. Yeah,
so yeah, that's that's That's pretty much how he did all.
It was the only time, you know, and we never paid.
We always did it on a rev split situation. But
if I was working with another filmmaker that was shooting
the interviews, we would just work out a back and
split on it and then they would do the interviews.
But most of them was just me. And by the

(25:15):
time those because and again these things and at the time,
Amazon was still putting out movies pretty fast, so I
would self distribute on Amazon through your Prime Video direct.
I would take the US and the UK, and then
I would use a film hub to fill out you know,
any foreign or you know, different platforms that I couldn't
get to. And this was before tob had kind of

(25:36):
you know, sparked up, but later on that became a thing.
So I'm looking at these six I'm looking at the
dog rescue did well, the Brexit did okay. I did
one on filmmaking, which did abysmal, and so I was like, okay,
unless unless I'm going to tie the filmmaking into you know,

(25:56):
like you know, how how to or something is you know,
just stuff out filmmaking, not not so much that it
didn't work out. So anyway, I looked at the success
or failure of these sex and then I started being
a little more selective on my subjects, you know, like
I moved in. I did one on Bigfoot that did
like it did crazy, like I think, I think I

(26:17):
streamed ten No, I know I did. I streamed ten
million minutes for three months.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
In a row for Bigfoot documentary, for a Bigfoot documentary.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Like again, yeah, okay, So.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
I didn't mean interrupt you, but okay, because I'm fascinated
with this. Because so Bigfoot obviously is a very niche
audience that people who believe in Bigfoot want to follow Bigfoot,
want to learn about Bigfoot. But it's a fairly dense audience.
There's a lot of people who believe in Bigfoot listen
about this, and there's whole industries wrapped around Bigfoot. I

(26:52):
even found out I found out a friend of mine
told me that there was erotica, bigfoot erotica where I'm
not kidding you. I'm not kidding you. So for anybody
in the audience who wants to play a trick, this
is what my buddy and I did. My buddy had
a brother who was was, you know, the we're grown
ass man. So he's got a wife, he's got kids

(27:13):
and everything, so he wanted to make sure he wanted
to play a trick on his brother. I'm like, why
don't you do this next time you're over at his house,
Go on the on the on the compute on his
laptop and look up bigfoot erotica and just leave it
there and let his wife find it. And and it's
not like pornographic. It's just like people writing stories about

(27:37):
bigfoot erotica. Like you're like, and he I'm not even
gonna get to it because I read a couple of them,
and I was just like, oh my god, there's if
there's something for every freak in the world, and if
if there, if there are any bigfoot erotica's listeners out there,
forgive me, I just don't understand you. But but anyway,
so that just I'm sorry I had to tell you

(27:58):
that story. But so Bigfoot, that that niche is fairly
it's kind of like UFO or Locked This Monster or
any of these kind of nitches. So you basically just
interviewed a bunch of like bigfoot hunters or something like that.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean basically, like with the Bigfoot one.
I took a look at the marketplace, Like I looked
at probably twenty different documentaries on Bigfoot, and there are
a lot of them. Yeah, so I'm like, oh, so
there is going to be a lot of competition here.
But what I didn't see was there weren't a lot
of just like introductions into the subject, like just like

(28:35):
a general this is the thing, this is what cryptozoology is.
So like it seems like all the filmmakers are so
focused on I'm going to provide new information or I'm
going to show like this new picture of Bigfoot, and
you know, nine times out of ten it's complete like obvious,
you know, bullshit.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, but you're saying that tenth time it's real and
there's a real Bigfoot.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
No, I'm saying it's more believe a little like it
looks a little bit, be sure, so that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
So instead, so that's interesting for the audience to take
a note of that. If there is a lot of
competition in a documentary space about a subject, an introduction
to it might be a way in and apparently it
was for.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
You, yeah, or or it might be going more specific too.
It could be either way. But you know, at this
around the same time, I was also just like very
late to the game, starting to get into the YouTube stuff,
and I'm watching all these videos on YouTube, and some
of the best marketing advice I have ever heard comes
from these, like the people that have been successfully grown

(29:37):
their YouTube channels and do the videos about like how
to grow your YouTube channels. You follow the right people
and the information is like it's gold. And they're talking
about retention, they're talking about how to niche down, and
all of a sudden, I'm thinking about these movies because
you're also getting something on Amazon called CEER Customer Engagement Ranking.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
You know, which is this like nebulous thing that nobody
can figure out, But it's how they base their rate
of pay and it's it's based on things like, how
long are you retaining your audience? How are your reviews?
Are people clicking on your movie and watching, you know,
thirty seconds and clicking off? Or are they actually watching
it through? Are they rating it? Are they engaging with it?
You know what? One hundred different factors. But the retention

(30:30):
thing really that they kept talking about on YouTube really
like started seeping into my documentaries. I'm like, okay, So
then I started thinking about structure in a whole different way.
It's like, you know, it's not necessarily just this three
act structure, peaks and valleys. How do I keep people
for that? Especially that like critical fifteen, first fifteen or
twenty minutes. You know, I'm not saying the rest of

(30:52):
it's inconsequential, but you know, I start thinking, you know,
like you don't have you know, in this day and
age on streaming, you don't have ten minutes to get
the audience, you know, like the used to stay with screenplays.
You know you got you have ten minutes to set
up your store.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
You got the first five, you got five pages, and
if it's not done.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, and now with with the streaming stuff, I'd say
it's maybe even less. It's like if they're not into it.
In like ninety seconds, they're like, eh, click off, go
to something else. So anyway, the retention thing really like
it changed things for me the Bigfoot movie, like just
seeing how well that did and how the marketing worked,

(31:31):
like how you can you know, target a specific niche.
It just it just opened it up. And now when
I look for subjects, I look for things that, Okay,
what is something It doesn't have to be supernatural, but
what is something that has a group of people that
are into it? Like these people that were into Bigfoot?

Speaker 1 (31:50):
So okay, so yeah, can you? Yeah, so how to
explain the process of you picking your niche and how
you like, what are the checklist things that you need
to kind of look for in order for you to
spend at least two weeks on a project? Yeah, at
least I mean at least two yeah, two weeks.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Yeah, I mean, and it's like now it's around two months.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
But okay, but yeah, I love you, like I can't
I stand in this project for two weeks without losing
my mind? And I'm thinking to myself, are you kidding me?
Most of the filmmakers listening are like a year to
two in like two weeks even two months is is
a vacation, very very short.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah. So I start with my interests or something that
I'm interested in learning more about. For example, I like,
I'm not into Bigfoot, but I was. I was really
interested to see why other people were, you know, like
and that was that was kind of my focus. And
I did a UFO one, like in a similar manner,
you know, the dog rescue. I'm a dog lover, you know,

(32:50):
so I moved into that. But so the first thing
I do, so I say, okay, I'm gonna do a
Bigfoot one. I google Bigfoot, you know, and I start
looking at what's popping up first, you know, and if
if like I can find the audience fairly easily, like
where they're congregating. You know, there's a lot of like Bigfoot,
for example, you go to Facebook and type in Bigfoot

(33:12):
and you'll get like groups, yeah, a thousand groups, you know,
with and and there's hundreds of thousands of members in
some of these yeah. Like so so I was like,
oh my gosh, that like just on these Facebook groups alone,
I can I can push this movie. So I mean
that that was a no brainer. The Alien one was
a no brainer. Animal rescue stuff's a no brainer, you know.

(33:36):
It's like, but then you get into some like I
hear people pitching stuff all the time, and it's like
maybe a little esoteric or it's a little looser, like
you know, like we're doing one and you know it
it's you know, it's a it's a coming of age
story about you know, growing up, you know, a little
too broadest little way yeah, way too way too rod,
way too ride, you know, and or maybe the guy

(33:58):
does have an incredible story, but like he's started as
a football player and then and then he became a
scientist and then you know, it's just like two segmented
and there's not enough in the one area. So I
try to find something where it's you know, pretty laser
focused in terms of audience and where I find them.
So those are my main things why I'm interested in.

(34:19):
Can I sell it now?

Speaker 1 (34:21):
When you when you So let's go back to Bigfoot
for a second. So when you were marketing it, how
did you how do you go about marketing your your
films to the niche? Once you've identified the niche audience,
how do you go about marketing to that audience and
what the cost is involved?

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Okay. So most most of it, at least to start,
was social media, like free stuff you know, on Facebook.
I targeted the groups, you know, I would I created
a page for it, but the only thing I would
do with that page is occasionally boost you know, a
post or a video to that target audience. I don't
do a lot with paid ads, maybe a one hundred

(35:01):
two hundred bucks a month probably total across the board,
so I would mostly just find these the audiences online.
So I do the Facebook groups and somebody had mentioned
Reddit and I was like, you never see people promoting
on Reddit, And I was like, oh, fuck Reddit. Okay,
but you have to be a lot more clever on
Reddit because it's a it's a discussion based platform. So

(35:23):
it's like, if you're just throwing up a link to
your thing, nobody's going to look at it. But if
you establish you know, a line of communication, then you
can do it. You know, but it's hard. I've been
banned from a couple of groups for you know, throwing
up some links. But for the most part is it
works good. And then the other one. I discovered that
no filmmakers are talking about the sill like a bonus

(35:45):
TEP Pinterest, Like I didn't even know what pinterest was.
I don't remember who recommended it, but I was like, okay,
I looked it up, signed up, and I was like, oh,
this looks like recipes. I don't know, but just just
for ships and giggles. I put up. Somebody had told
me to do short videos, so I created a business account,

(36:06):
which is free, and I put in like, I don't know,
maybe a dozen like thirty to forty five second video
clips from I think two movies, you know, and you
can put the URLs to where you know you want
to send them in there, and you can create your
thumbnails all that. So anyway, I do that, put them up,
and then just walk away. I'm like, okay, this isn't
going to be nothing. The next day I look at

(36:28):
it and my Pinterest page had like thirty five thousand
page views, like in less than a day.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
And what was but what was the topic? What was
the niche?

Speaker 3 (36:39):
One of them and it was so I did too.
One was the Bigfoot one, you know, okay, okay, Bigfoot,
I see it. The other one was oh man, was
it brexit or it was either Brexit or the animal Rescue.
I can't remember which.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
All three, all three have very passionate groups.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Yeah, but they they they just they. I was like wow,
and they were actually watching the videos, like the like
the average video watch length was like I don't know,
twenty seconds, and these were you know, thirty to forty
five second videos, and like i'd say, ten percent, we're
clicking on the link. So I was like, oh, because
they they huge give you all those that's huge. Yeah,

(37:16):
they give you all those metrics. So I was like,
holy shit. So like twice a week I would put
up like thirty clips. Within I want to say, the
first three weeks, I had over three hundred thousand page views.
That's about as high as I've gotten a month now.
But that's every month. That's about what I do, somewhere
between two and three hundred thousand.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
So you're using interest as a marketing machine for your
projects and it's free and now it's free.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, totally free. I do a little bit of paid
promotion just I'm being experimenting with it.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
How is it? How is that? How is it paid? Paid?
On Pinterest?

Speaker 3 (37:53):
I mean it's kind of like Facebook, but you can
do lower amounts, so like I'll boost something for like
five bucks for you know whatever, five days or something,
just to just to see because every now and then,
because I put a lot of clips up there, So
I'll put ten up there, six six or seven of
them will do like the thousand views in the first day,
and then like three of them will do like one,

(38:14):
you know. So like I'll take the ones that do one,
and I might give them a little push, you know,
get up there around you know, yeah, just just to
push it. And then there's a social media scheduler called
Tailwind that works specifically with Pinterest, and it does all
this like scheduled reposting because if you have multiple boards,

(38:34):
you can take those pins and then repost them to
other boards and it opens up the audience. So like
I'll do that once a month, and then I just
set them up on a repeating basis, so like once
every month or two and that post will come back up.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
And how many boards do you have on Pinterest?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
I don't know, maybe twenty, Like I mean, I have
a lot of projects, and I don't do them. I
started doing them specific to just like one project, and
then I started grouping them into projects because the more
boards you have, the more you can share between the
boards and I noticed, And again I've only been doing
this for through four months now, so it's fairly new.

(39:14):
But you know, and it's also coincides with COVID, so
it's it's hard to tell where the bumps come from.
I have had, like on my library titles like maybe
a fifteen percent bump and overall sales, you know, since
I started implementing some of these things, and you know,
like I said, it's hard to tell.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, So what is your distribution model right now? Is
strictly Amazon only? And then we're going to talk about
Amazon and A but do you do tvo svod Ava?
Do you go anywhere else other than Amazon for your
to generate revenue. We'll be right back after a word

(39:57):
from our sponsor and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
So this has all changed for me dramatically in the
past three months. So prior to February, my model was
to do Amazon US and UK on my own, put
put it up, directly, uploaded to Prime Video, direct to
film Hub for the rest that that's pretty much what
I do. Maybe maybe do some physical media myself, either

(40:27):
through my website or do the media on demand thing.
I personally never had a lot of luck with physical media.
But it's something that I want to like get a
little more into in the coming months, even though it's
it feels like it's going out. But I'm sorry, I
lost my train of thought.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
The I lost my train of thought to revenue.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah, okay, so that was that. So I would launch
a movie in TVOD and I would keep it on
TVOD as long as it was making more then I
think three hundred dollars a month was my cutoff on
that and if it was falling below that, you know,
then I was just like, okay, let me switch over
to ASPOD. So it's you know, start out at tv

(41:10):
I move to as FOD and.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
All Amazon with all Amazon, all.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Amazon, And sometimes that would happen very quickly. You like,
say I put a movie up and you know, in
the first week I've rented, you know whatever, three units,
I'm like, Okay, this isn't working. Move over to as FOD.
And in my experience, and it's I know it's not
a popular opinion, but when you're dealing with movies this small,

(41:34):
like and I still feel even with the changes that
as FOD is still overall for small movies superior, like
the discoverability is just it's it beats the raids, you know,
like if you if you do this little movie, it's
so hard to get people to rent an independent feature.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
You know it let alone by let alone buy buy.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah. So and maybe this is something they'll change. And
I know some other filmmakers that have had better luck
with the t VOD, but me personally, I never had
the amount of marketing work that you need to push
this To make the same amount of money on tv
I that you make on s FOD is it's astronomical.
I mean, I can put a movie out on s FOD,
even at the one cent an hour, and turn over

(42:20):
one thousand dollars in a month fairly easily, like not
every time, but fairly easily. But on ti VO, you know,
I'd be lucky to crack like two hundred bucks, you know,
on those particular titles.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's interesting because I've been trying to I've been yelling
that from the top of the mountain for a long
time as well, that TVOD is essentially dead for independent filmmaking.
It only works if you have an audience that is
passionate about your film or you or the subject matter
or something like that that you can drive them, and

(42:55):
that's going to be a short window of maybe two
three four months if that, that's the only time that
for an independent. And again for the budgets we're talking about,
we're talking about you know, fifty thousand, seventy five thousand
and below kind of projects. TI VOT is and and
I'd argue even a million in below t vot is
still a tough still a tough sell unless you're unless

(43:17):
you're pumping it through a lot of marketing, or you
have recognizable talent, like really recognizable talent.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't until I actually started like
networking more with other filmmakers that were putting out movies
and selling them where you realized how little some of
these movies were making. You know, like some of these movies, man,
you know, I just you know, I just signed a
couple of movies with Indie, right, So I've been looking
at a lot of their other movies and like there's
some X there's some excellent stuff there made, you know, say,

(43:46):
but between seventy five thousand and say one hundred and
fifty thousand and that are making twenty nothing, And.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Oh yeah, there's some that are making nothing and they're
just some there making yeah, you know, fifty one hundred bucks. Yeah,
a couple bucks up. Yeah. Man, it was sobering, No,
it is, it's in And you know, I think that's
one of the things I love about indie rights, because
they have both of my films as well, is that
they allow filmmakers to see the truth of what films
are really worth and if you don't market them and

(44:14):
if you don't do them, this is what it's going
to happen. And it's sobering. It is sobering for filmmakers
to kind of understand the like, oh, I don't have
the prettiest baby. No you don't. You know, there are
ugly babies. Unfortunately an independent film there, you know, it's like, no,
there's no other.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
Babies, possibly more than cute babies.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Exactly, but everyone thinks that their baby is gorgeous. Yeah,
and I understand that, but it's just the cruel reality.
And then now let's talk a little bit about Amazon
and how brutal they have been with independent filmmakers. I mean,
so to my experience, early on, they were you were

(44:58):
you can make a lot of money through Spot like
twelve cent oh my god, fifteen cent and you sound
like it doesn't sound like a lot, but you.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Can made fifty fifteen cents, I mean, interrupt just for
a second. So at fifteen cents an hour my Bigfoot movie,
but so on Amazon, I made I think sixteen hundred
dollars on it in July, right or I'm sorry June,
but this last sack same least this lesson Yeah, yeah,

(45:28):
just last month. Okay, So that exact same movie at
fifteen cents an hour would have been like twenty five
thousand dollars something like that my math think right, but
I know it's over twenty or around two.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
So yeah, you could have been making.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yeah, so it and you can count on a new
release like kind of maintaining that basic ballpark for about
ninety days. Sure, so you know, like I mean, I
could have cleared you know, fifty to sixty thousand in
three months on that movie that I I made for
you know, less than five hundred dollars that when I
paid for a couple of interviews. But you know, you

(46:05):
know what I say that is, oh my gosh. When
I think about that, I get like, I mean, I
get emotional. I get a clip because I mean, now
fifty percent of titles are going to make a cent,
are going to make one penny because anything any movie
with a CR of under fifty percent is one penny.
The sliding scale stops at fifty percent. Like wha, I

(46:28):
mean the The Bigfoot, for example, at the CR was
forty three percent, forty three percent one penny, fifty percent
five five pennies.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
So like, so you would have made as you would
have made six thousand it was six seven eight thousand
bucks something like that.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Yeah, exactly, exactly with just a with a five percent differential,
which is and then try to figure out why your CR.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Is what it is.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
There's no figuring it out. I used to think there was.
I was like, if you have enough data, you could
crunch it. You can this stuff out. But there's so
many unseen factors. I heard from another filmmaker that has
a relationship with someone that works in Amazon, and they
wouldn't tell them what the factors were, but they said
there's well over one hundred factors that go into CER.

(47:16):
You know, it's not just your rating, it's not just
how many minutes you stream, like it could come down
to they put more weight if somebody watches your movie
in New York City as opposed to watches it and
you know, bumfuck Indiana like that, there's a there's a difference.
Or this person that watches the movie purchases more other stuff,

(47:37):
so your CR is high.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
So you no, you have no.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
No control, no control, there's no And there's people that
just say, well if I just if I just do
the advertising right, and I was one of these people,
I would, I'd preach it. When I first started doing
YouTube videos, I was like, just you know, you do
your marketing right, you do this, you do this, you
do that, your your CR will be higher. You can
still do it. And I was still defending Amazon. I
was like, oh, you know, they're they're they're toughening up

(48:02):
standards because they got a lot of crap on there.
They but like it's gotten ridiculous now and now they're
purging even more movies. I just I lost the movie
two days ago.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
They just decided just it's just like come out, we're done.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Just pulled it. And it had a ceer of over
fifty percent.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
So why did they pull it? And they don't tell you.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
They won't tell you. I mean now it was not
doing good numbers, so maybe it was that, but who knows?

Speaker 1 (48:31):
So, so now what do you do?

Speaker 3 (48:34):
So what I do now? I no longer do direct
to Amazon. I still use Amazon because it's still it's
still a thing. I still make one thousand dollars a
project there, but I don't put them up myself any longer.
Like if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna do or release,
I'll either I go to Indie Rights first and I'll
see if they want to pick it up, and if

(48:56):
it's something that they're not interested in, or if it's
something that maybe I'm not so proud of, I'll just
I'll go straight to film Hub and I'll give it
all the film Hub I give.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
And how it's and how is and how's film Hub
working out for you? Is that is? Are they paying?
Are they getting you?

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Like?

Speaker 1 (49:09):
What I'm curious to see. I haven't heard of a
lot of success stories with film Hub, so I would
love to hear what your experience is.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
So I've had good experiences with film Hub. I still
don't make as much collectively off film Hub as I
was making off Amazon, but it grows, it grows every month.
So what I like about film Hub is that you
know the first like two movies that I ever got
on to BTV were you know, through film Hub, you know,

(49:36):
and I do pretty good on to B through film Hub. Uh,
it's not it's it's it's good. They pay quarterly and
they pay out. I think it's like they's flee but
like quarterly in one so they're always like a quarter behind,
which I don't think people under understand that, so they'll
they'll bitch about it. And the numbers aren't astronomical.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Like, unless you get on like a hit out on
two B, ninety percent of those channels are making you know,
pennies or a few dollars, but it does it gives
you a little more visibility, and then if you get
onto a good platform, you know, it can Like I'm
just now getting to the point where, like my titles
on two B are making more than what they're making

(50:30):
on Amazon. But it took me almost a year to get.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
There, right, And there's also not all your projects are
on two B's just a handful.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, because like out of two B,
I think I've I think I've uploaded fifteen movies onto
two B. And out of the fifteen, I think six
are on two B. I mean on Film Club and
six are on two B.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
So what I'm what I'm hearing is and well, first
of all, what they have to ask you, like, what
do you do if you have one hundred and fifty
one thousand dollars indie film with no talent attached and
it's a narrative film.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Well, my first thing, I probably would make one hundred
thousand dollars right, right.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
But there's a lot of but there's a lot of
like a lot of filmmakers out there have that mentality
like it's only one hundred and fifty thousand, it's only
a quarter of a million, it's only one hundred thousand,
and it's a it's a drama, and I have no
stars in it, and they expect that. Like in today's marketplace,
as we're recording this, what are your what are the options?

(51:31):
Because your business model works because your overhead is extremely low,
Like when you make a movie for five hundred bucks
and you're generating consistently one thousand to two thousand to
three thousand bucks a month, or let's say for the
first let's say you you generate off that movie ten
grand over the course of its lifetime. That's a business

(51:56):
like you make a product for five hundred, you make
ten grand off of it. And it's a volume business
as well. You can't do one of those, You need
to do twelve.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
In order to keep them going.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
And you got to keep them going and keep something.
But you also have a library as well. So how
many films do you have in your library that you
own and are generating revenue with, even if it's a
few bet of dollars a month?

Speaker 3 (52:17):
I think twenty right right now?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I think twenty all right, so you have twenty features
that you're generating revenue with. Yeah, that's in This basically
is the film entrepreneur method. Is what I've been preaching
with my book, like overhead really low, find a niche audience,
market to that niche audience, rinse, repeat, and just and
just keep doing it and build that library that you

(52:40):
own and control to continuously generate revenue for you. And
when there's a new platform boom have a new revenue streaming,
you could just jump in twenty.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Films and I think what I'd say about the one
hundred thousand dollars, Yeah, thing, yeah, is because I still
like my passion is to still like do narrative film,
like I believe me. I just I love making movies.
So I get a lot of pleasure out of the documentaries.
But I still want to make narrative stuff. But to
be one hundred percent honest, and you know, nobody wants

(53:10):
to hear this, but I don't know how to make
money on one hundred thousand dollars narrative feature without a star, Like,
I don't know, you might get lucky, you know, I could.
I have kind of an idea about what to do,
but I don't know that it'll work. So risk now, yeah,
it's a risk. It's a it's a huge risk. So
what I do now is I treat the documentaries has

(53:34):
this is my day job. This is like my this
is my more fun day job. And then once a year,
you know, I take some of that, raise a little
bit more money and make a narrative movie. And if
the narrative fails, oh well, you know, like I still
have my income from the documentaries, you know, because I

(53:55):
just don't see like how at that level to have
a sustainable business model making narrative features. I I know,
there's people that do, but I don't see it not
without without stars or without really understanding your niche and
really understanding the business about it and creating ancillary product

(54:16):
lines and creating like all these other things that.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
You can do. It's just you've got to be so perfect,
like you can't. You can't be sloppy at all, like
your your business model. You can be as a little sloppy.
You know, you're because your budget's really low. Like when
I made my my last feature, it was about three grand. Yep,
you know, I I shot it in four days. Okay,

(54:39):
It's like, I'm not it's not that big of a deal.
I'm just I'm just making something that's fun and it's narrative,
and it was you know, it's so it's a it
was for my audience and all that kind of good stuff.
But if I would have made that movie for one
hundred grand, forget it.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, if I wouldn't even know it Just it's just
just so it's so difficult.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Then that's why I wanted to have you on as
an example as a case study for filmmakers to understand,
like this is better or worse. It is the new normal.
You have to figure out how to generate revenue. And
I applaud you because you've been able to create a
day job for yourself that you control, you own, and

(55:20):
to continue to give you passive income, like once the
work is done, that will continue to pay you something
for a while.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yeah, I mean I have you know, I have almost
fifty I have an almost fifteen year old movie that
I still make a couple hundred bucks a month off of,
you know. So, I mean I get pushback from people.
Sometimes they are like, oh, well, it's easy for you
to say because you have whatever so many projects or
you just throw them at or you don't care about them,
and it's not true. Like I care deeply about everything

(55:52):
I do, but like this is what I need to
do to make a living, Like I am not you know,
I graduate, I graduated college, but I didn't finish law school.
I didn't do any of that. So like at this
point in my life, like I can't afford to make
a hundred thousand dollars movie and have it fail, Like I.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
That's done, you're done, that's you're done. It will crush you,
it would crush you. I get it. I get it,
And that's what filmmakers don't understand because they'll take that
risk and then they'll get crushed and they'll never come back.
They'll never they'll never come back into the business because
they can't. And you've been able to establish yourself making
these films, and look at it at the end of

(56:35):
the day. I always filmmakers always have this issue with
art versus commerce, and it drives me. It drives me nuts.
It drives me nuts. Look, we all want to be Scorsese,
we all want to be Nolan, we all want to
be Fincher, we all want to be Kubrick. And that's fantastic.
And these guys are, you know, on the Mount Hollywood
and they're like they're they're they're gods on Mount Hollywood,

(56:56):
there's no question. But they come from a different world,
different existence than the rest of us. Like this is
like if I've spoken to directors of that caliber and
when I tell them that I made a three thousand
dollars movies, they're they're they just you can see things
just it's like they don't. It's like malfunction, like short

(57:18):
circuit Magne, Johnny five, Malfunch, Like it's like freaking out,
like it doesn't compute. They can't wrap their heads around that,
and because they just come from a completely different existence.
It's like an NFL player talking to a high school player,
like it's just we both do arguably the same thing.

(57:40):
We're both playing the game, but at completely different levels.
And there's nothing wrong with either of them. It's just
it's just different. But filmmakers so much get caught up
with the art and the dream that they look down
upon what I like to call the blue collar filmmaker.
Someone like that comes in as building a business around

(58:02):
what they love to do, and you go. I had
another I had another director on who does Michael uh
five And he does lifetime movies.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Lifetime movies. And all he did is like he pops
out like four or five of these a year, and
he's gotten built up to the relationship that he can
just he just gets financing from the companies and he
just works and he's just always working. He's flying to grease,
he's flying all over the place. He's made and people
are like, oh, you make lifetime movies and I and
I told him that, I'm like anyone who says that,

(58:39):
screw you, because this man is living the dream that
most filmmakers would kill to do. He's getting to do
his art for a living.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Yeah, And how and how dare you judge what my
art is or my art isn't and what you feel
that it should be. I don't care. It's irrelevant, you know.
I mean people don't like Tyler Perry movies. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
as a lot of people despise Tyler Perry and the
films he makes. He's laughing all the way to the.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Bank, all the way, all the way.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Now, but real quick, do you use email lists at all?
Or do you do?

Speaker 3 (59:14):
You?

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yes, build that I do so.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
And then again, this is this is something I mean,
you know, a lot of my business really has like
blown up and changed so much over the last year.
So I would say, actually, even prior to like twenty eighteen,
I was still pretty firmly in the like I just
want to make I just want to make movies. I
don't care about the business. You know. It took a

(59:38):
good ten years of me getting kicked around before I'm like, okay,
wait ante, I do need to make I need to
make some fucking buddy, But so yes, I do use them.
My email list isn't huge now, I think it's like
maybe five thousand. I run it through my website and
now through Patreon.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
We'll be right back after a word from our spon
and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
And you know, I'm collecting them, and I like, I
send out, you know, for uh, well, once a month
newsletter and then I'll send out like kind of a
project specific one once a month and I'll kind of
maybe I'll lay some other titles in there as well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
And you're now and now you have a podcast, you
have a YouTube channel that you're building up. Is that
part of Are you trying to build yourself up as
a brand in the filmmaking space to attract filmmakers to
what you're doing as another potential revenue stream or things
like that? Can you explain what you're doing?

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Yeah, So the YouTube thing started out honestly, it started
just I was looking for I was I was because
I get questions online all the time about my business
model and about how I make movies. So I was like, oh,
like people seem really interested in this information. So I
was just like, I'm just going to share some of
that information, and you know, I did a few videos

(01:01:02):
and the response for it was so good, and I
start looking at other people like yourself that were working
in the filmmaking space, and I'm like, oh, maybe this
is a thing. Like I wasn't thinking about immediately monetizing
it or anything. I was like, I'm enjoying doing it,
but let me let's let's see where it takes me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
So I started.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
I started doing it and get taking it a little
more seriously and watching the YouTube videos and you know,
building the channel. I mean, I'm still probably a year
away from making any real money from it, you know,
but it's it's something you got to build. You can't
just you don't just start and you're making Bundy. I
enjoy doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
And that's the other thing I want people to understand
is like a lot of people look at what I've
done with indie film Hustle and my other companies and
they're like, oh, well, you know you've been like I've
been doing this five years. It took me two and
a half to three years to start really getting traction
and to quit my day job and to you know,
not do post production anymore, only direct when I want

(01:02:01):
to direct. And it took time. And that's and like
even with what your business model is one film at
a time to build up.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Elaborate it all takes time. I mean the the documentary stuff,
you know, it took it took six or seven months
before I was making like enough money on the documentaries
that it supplemented my income.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
But that's that's fast. That's fast.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
But that is that is fast. But it wasn't automatic
inst what I said. But then like the YouTube and
thing and all that, those are those are like long
those are long games, you know, and you know you
get it. You do get a few more eyeballs on
your projects from that as well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Yeah, exactly, So that's hopefully helping. Yeah, you're you're using
the model like I'm gonna show you how I made
the Bigfoot documentary. And oh, by the way, if you
want to watch it Fit Book Fook Documentary, it's over
here for yeah, go watch it for free on two
b or on Amazon Prime or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Totally.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
And by the way, once Amazon kicks you off, it's done, right,
You can't put that movie back.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
On it is. Yeah, it is done. Now. I know
you guys didn't hear this from me, but there are
filmmakers that will retitle do new art and then they'll
upload through film Hub. Like if you do it through
your same account, they're going to catch you. But like
say you go to film Hub or somewhere else and
have it put up or create a new account with

(01:03:24):
a new title, you might get lucky, but most likely
the same thing that got it kicked off the first
time is going to get it kicked off again. So
the official rule is, once it's done, it's done. There's
a few ways to get around it. But even if
you do, is it worth the risk? I don't do it,

(01:03:44):
and you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Don't use aggregators. You don't use like an aggregator to
put it up on iTunes or on Google Play or
in fandango or any of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Right, No, No, I did. I did an aggregator once
for iTunes, and I did it on a campus that day,
and uh, I think I made seventy five dollars with it,
Like iTunes is really hard to push too, yeah, uh
but yeah, so no I don't. I don't again, Like

(01:04:13):
you know, I'm making these movies like so fast and
so cheap if I'm paying one thousand dollars per platform,
like the movie might not even make that much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
So it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
I don't do it. I'll give up that twenty percent
from film Hub, you know, because it's nothing up front.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
But or indie rights or indie rights or or.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
Indie rights, it's the same thing. But I wouldn't, I
wouldn't pay to be placed.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Very cool. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I
ask all of my quests. What advice would you give
a filmmaker trying to break into the business today.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
If you can do anything else, if you enjoy doing
anything else, do it. I'm not saying, look I am,
I don't regret it. I've lived a great life. I
like I do something I enjoy for a living. But
it is not it looks a lot cooler in the brochure.
It's it's not awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
And you mean it's not like it's not like watching
the making of Raiders of the Lost Arc. It's not
like that at all.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
No, it's and it's it's nothing like Entourage. But uh.
And then my second part to that would be study, Like, like,
if you know you're young, you're just getting started, whether
it's in school or on YouTube or in books, study
business and marketing, lees be consider that to be sixty

(01:05:33):
percent of a movie success. It's probably more than that,
but I'm gonna say sixty like it's like, it's it's
more that's more important than the movie being good as
far as it's selling. You know, absolutely, there's business and marketing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
There's a lot of good movies out there that no
one watches, and there's a lot of bad movies out
there that make a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, yeah. What is the lesson that took you the
longest to learn, whether in the film business or life.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Probably to especially on my narrative features, to stop doings
trying to take on too much myself. Yeah, try trying
to do too much. You need to like movies as
a collaborative art and like you have, you have to give.
Even even on the docks where I'm pretty much one
man crew, I still have people that I can count

(01:06:25):
on to do this or that. Go to people who
are experts in their area. Just you know, don't don't
try to take on too much yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
And what are three of your favorite films of all time?

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Three films? Oh, I'd say I had this changes week
to week. But the world, according to garp Avam Williams
movie that means a lot to me and a lot
of a lot of my favorite movies have to do
with what's going on at the time, and I just
I bonded with my mother over that movie, like really,
like in a really powerful way, and I just I

(01:06:57):
always love it and it's one of Robin williams the
best dramatic performances. Great movie, my second one. And again
I hate to be yeah, I always feel like self
conscious when I talk about Tarantino because I don't want
to be that filmmaker's like, oh, no, Tarantino good, It's
all good. And I say Reservoir Dogs and again not
necessarily like you know, I think he's made better movies,

(01:07:19):
but like Reservoir Dogs. And when it came out, that
was my gateway movie like that. I mean, I had
seen all kinds of stuff, but it was right there.
And then hearing him talk and talk about John wu
and talk about Walter Hill and talk about French New Wave,
and all of a sudden, it just opened up this world.
I'm watching all these guitared movies and I'm watching you know,

(01:07:39):
The Killer and Heart Boiled and Bolt in the Head.
It just it and it showed me what a director
could be. I just I didn't up until that point,
I had seen pretty much every Walter Hill movie. But
it wasn't until I heard Tarantino talking about him that
I like put the two and two together, like oh,
forty eight hours and the Long Riders, like, oh, it's

(01:08:01):
the same guy, you know. Yeah, so that's as Dogs
and then maybe amily after.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Yeah, yeah, that's been on the list of any times.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Yeah, just a just a visual style and it's so
sweet and beautiful. Like I've done. I've done a lot
of like nihilistic horror movies and stuff, so it always
seems weird, but some of the things that affect me
the most are these like basically like positive suite like movies.
And I don't know that one, like I can watch
that over and over.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Very cool. Now, where can people find you? So?

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
I have a website at www dot Jhorton dot com.
You can pretty much find me on you know, Twitter, Instagram,
wherever at at j Horton. My YouTube is Jay Horton
or the j Horton. Yeah, and that's about it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Very cool. Jamie. You are an inspiration, sir of and
and a personification of the film entrepreneur method. So I
do appreciate you coming on and dropping the knowledge bombs
on the tribe. Brother, Thank you so much, man, thank you.
I want to thank Jason for coming on the show
and dropping those knowledge bombs on the tribe. He is
a true film entrepreneur and is expanding his film entrepreneurial

(01:09:18):
empire on a daily basis. I hope you get some
inspiration from Jason and what he is doing, because there
is no excuse anymore why you, as a filmmaker can't
make a living doing what you love to do. If
you want to get links to anything we spoke about
in this episode, head over to the show notes at

(01:09:39):
Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash for zero nine. Thank
you so much for listening, guys, as always, keep on
writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
Screenwriting dot tv.