Ask HN: Can a No Budget Indie Movie Make $1m Online?

[incub8or]

We've made a no budget indie movie with:

No studio No distributor No movie stars

Our goal is:

to gross $1m and fund the next movie

It's sounds quite impossible. But we've come up with a strategy:

Everyone who registers to download the movie will get to display a picture, logo or text of their choosing on a billboard in New York's Times Square.

Prices start from only $10 upwards. So for as little as $10 you can get any message / image / logo (as long as it's not obscene and you own the rights) up on a Times Square billboard.

What do folks think about this and could this be used as a cheap form of marketing for startups?

[noahc]

This is a novel concept. There's an emotional satisfaction that you get out of this. If you ran the ROI numbers on the advertising it probably wouldn't play out, but if you wanted to brag at a cocktail party that you had your company advertised on a Times Square Billboard, then yeah it's worth $10.

I don't think this is a cheap form of marketing for anyone because the ROI doesn't probably make sense. However, it might make sense as a novelty ad/gift or something to that effect.

[incub8or]

Thanks....You are right, there is a certain novelty factor present, but isn't that the case with all (movie/entertainment) marketing? The pricing structure makes sure there is something for everyone and the sales we have to date actually show that startups would be interested in looping the recording of their Times Square message for display on their websites. Funnily enough, our marketing strategy was actually inspired by the promotions studios used to do in the early days of cinema eg a studio used to take a lion to towns and when people came to see the lion, they would sell them a movie ticket. For more on this see: http://bit.ly/pgyGaR

[stfu]

You might want to include in your offer some high quality picture or HD vid of the message on the Times Square screen.

Assuming you guys are great with capturing a "scene" in an impressive way, this would make it at least for me much more interesting. You could include there some photomontage of the final result already on the website.

Maybe in the end the most important shoot of the movie is going to be the one of the sponsors displayed at Times Square. A true money sho(o)t ;)

[pasbesoin]

This was a thought I also had. An HD recording of the message stream, with enough of the surrounding environment to make it look / demonstrate its "liveness" and context.

Rather than trying to deliver individual fragments to all the contributors, see if the ads/messages are clocked tightly enough that you can simply post one or several videos somewhere (YouTube, Vimeo?) and then provide contributors the timestamp of the start of their particular ad/message.

Possible, the ad/message stream videos may take on a life or their own. Two results for the price of one, as it were.

P.S. Beware of liability, though. At your price point, that's a lot of content to vet. And you don't have just obscene content to worry about, but possibly also trademark infringement, accusations of hate speech, etc., etc. Some of which might be hard to catch in a cursory examination. (OTOH, one brief display might reduce the change of facing legal action. IANAL and all that.)

[incub8or]

Thanks a lot guys. Very helpful suggestions.

[Fliko]

I don't think it will be as successful as you think, and my reasoning for that is that it really doesn't have much to do with the movie. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea and you should do it for the novelty if you want, but if you really want to increase sales you should do something relevant to the product you are selling.

It's probably too late for doing anything with this, but if you do more movies you should consider doing an ARG (like ilovebees, the beast etc.), and I think this would be effective because you are hitting an online audience by releasing a movie that you download. Unless you are pro at creating ARGs, or unless you really put time into it and have a bit of luck it probably won't introduce commercial success, but it would definitely open your film up to a small niche.

Another interesting thing is pricing models, and I think that it won't increase sales, but if some people want to pay more money for extra stuff, they will do so and it will help increase revenue. A good example is at http://joshfreese.com/ (I promise I'm not affiliated, just a favourite musician of mine who had success with this model)

[incub8or]

Thanks for the feedback, which I found very interesting. We did look at the possibility of an ARG but decided to go another way for this movie. We are treating the movie launch as a software product: make, launch, get feedback, iterate, repeat. The response we've had in terms of sales and feedback has been phenomenal. We are working on other value added stuff to add to the promotion and looking at the Josh Freese site was very inspiring. Please do let us know what you think when we add more to the offering. Cheers.

[md1515]

I don't think anything is impossible. Heck, take a look at the Million Dollar Homepage: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Nonetheless, you do have to convince 100,000 to do it (if they all took the cheapest option). That is quite hefty.

I think you may have to set your sights a bit lower, but it is worth a shot. Try to raise some funds via Kickstarter or IndieGoGo - both have a heavy focus on indie films.

Good luck

[incub8or]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. The feedback so far is actually favouring the more expensive options, which means we would need less people. But this is an experiment, so anything can happen.... Million Dollar Homepage was one of the ideas in mind when formulating this strategy. Another was the way movies were marketed originally: http://bit.ly/pgyGaR

[stfu]

There was a while ago the "1 second film" idea. I really liked that one and contributed as well. By donating money you received credit as a producer on IMDb. Unfortunately after the listing of producers went up into the thousands, IMDb stopped that game and the project died away. Might be interesting for you to read up on how they did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1_Second_Film

[incub8or]

Thanks for this. Very interesting. I know IMDB have clamped down on this sort of thing so that's why we offer the credit on the end titles of the film where we can control it.

[nycs]

how is it the movie that's making the money?

[incub8or]

Good question. $10 buys the movie and as a "Thank You" you get a line of text on the billboard. $49 buys the movie + soundtrack and you get 1/4 screen text/image. $99 buys the movie, soundtrack, special features and you get full screen text/image and $149 gets an associate producer credit as well on top of this. Basically, people are buying the movie in different packages and are getting the billboard message as a "Thank You" from us.

[kongqiu]

Any specifics as to the content or genre of the movie? (Many companies wouldn't want to be associated with certain kinds of content.)

How large (as % of the billboard) are the picture, logo, or text?

[incub8or]

You are right, although the billboard would only be used to thank everyone who downloaded the movie and not necessarily used for the movie promotion itself.

More information on the movie and the billboard options can be found at http://bit.ly/n4XQG0

[jdnnhs]

i'd love to be notified when my message will be shown, as well as receive a photograph of the message on the board.

sounds unreal

[incub8or]

A recording of display will be available for download; so you could grab a still or loop the video and post on your website.

[ig1]

Why not just sell the movie via itunes, if the movies good enough people will buy it and recommend it to their friends.

[incub8or]

It's not that easy (or cheap) to get into itunes. Plus you would be competing with blockbusters who spend tons of money on marketing. We thought this could be a way to disrupt traditional film distribution. For more on our strategy check out: http://bit.ly/pgyGaR

[jorgedf]

Sounds like a great deal for a poor startup. Isn't it?

[incub8or]

The startups who have bought the package would agree, especially when they can place on their website a looped recording of their message being displayed on Times Square.

[LarryMade]

Is it a good movie?

[incub8or]

Great question! We think so but only the audience can answer that objectively. Check out some audience reactions at http://bit.ly/owHzdn