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There is really only one, sustainable, long-term way to make money as a filmmaker, and many who have the dream don’t clearly understand what that is.
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Welcome to the Crimson Engine, my name is Rubidium
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Today we are talking about money and how to make money as a filmmaker
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There is only one way to make money as a filmmaker consistently and most people don't really
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know what that is. They think if their work is good enough or if they know enough people or if they do enough
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jobs they'll eventually have to find a way to make money and that's just not true
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The only way to make money long term as a filmmaker is make money for the people who
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employ you. That's the only way, you can't support a career unless the films you make cause people to
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open their wallets, buy something, donate to someone or spend something. A lot of clients do employ you and ask you to do things that aren't really going to be
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successful, like a bad concept, bad social media campaign, bad ad for their charity
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If they don't see a reaction, if they don't see more money come into their company or
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business or charity than it costs you to make your video or ad, they're not going to do
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it again. They have lost money working with you. The only way that people will keep working with you again and again is if they make money
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when they pay you. Orson Welles, widely considered to be one of the most influential filmmakers of all
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time struggled with money his entire life because even though his films were considered
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masterpieces and a lot of people knew them and saw them, they didn't make money for the
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people that invested in them. They made plenty of money for Orson Welles but he wasn't very good at delivering what
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he promised on a schedule so that people could receive a return on their investment, then
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put more money into new films of his. He only made 14 films in a 50 year career
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Roger Corman, on the other hand, a writer, producer, director known for his cheapskate
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ways, directed 55 movies and produced hundreds of them. He even wrote a book called How I Made 100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
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I'm not saying your movies should be more like Roger Corman's than like Orson Welles
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but if Orson Welles had been more like Roger Corman and made money for his investors, he
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could have made dozens of films. We could have had Touch of Evil Part 1, 2 and 3
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Check out this video. It is over 10 years old and I think it probably fails technically on every level
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The delivery is not great, the lighting is terrible, the camera work, despite being a
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locked off shot, zooms in and out and the sound isn't even that good
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But Gary Vee started a YouTube channel and his videos sold a boatload of wine, which
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is why he did a thousand of them. Again, I'm not saying that you should make videos like Gary Vee
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I'm saying that if you want to get paid to make films, your films need to make people money
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Film does not have to be a financial, economic pursuit. Film is an incredibly powerful artistic medium
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You can tell stories, you can create worlds and express yourself with film
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All of that is wonderful and worthwhile. But if you want to make money making those films, then you have to make money for somebody else
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It used to be that we didn't really know if commercials were successful
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A company invested money in an ad, they put it on television and sales went up or down
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But was that causation or correlation? Was it due to just the fact that the new product was good
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Nowadays with Facebook and Google and Instagram, advertisers track very specifically who sees
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what ad and what cause it makes. If your ads don't cause people to spend money, you're not going to get the chance to do them again
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Now, you may not want to do that, but if you do, you need to think outside the technical
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aspects of filmmaking and get an understanding of how advertising works, how marketing works
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because that's the only way you're going to be able to create a career that continues
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time and time again. Like I said, film is a great art form. It is a very expensive one
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And if there's going to be gold at the end of that beautiful VFX rainbow, you need to
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create movies that make money or else you won't be able to make movies anymore
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I am really fortunate to have been working in film and using it to support myself for
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two decades. In that time, I've learned that some of my favorite clients, some of my favorite jobs
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went away and never came back. And looking back, I realized that I could have had a longer term relationship with those
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brands, had I insisted that the videos we were making really earned their keep, that
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they really made money for the people I was working for, and I would have got the chance to do it again
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So even if your client wants to do something cool or wants to do something strange, part
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of your job as a filmmaker is to bring it back to what the objective of this is, and
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that is to make someone rich so that you can become rich making films
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Thanks very much for watching. I will see you next time
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