Sustainable Producing
+ make once, distribute to infinity
I had a conversation recently with a filmmaker who is putting the finishing touches on her independently financed TV series pitch which she wants to shoot in the next couple months. It’s a travel series, with her as the host, and she’s got a fairly large built in audience. So far she has half the budget raised in a sponsorship deal and is planning to fund the other half with her own money.
We got to talking about Distribution because naturally since she’s putting her own money at risk, she wants to see a path to recoupment and ROI.
The main revenue drivers of the series will come from Ad Sense and additional sponsors on You Tube (plus some back end digital products), however there’s a whole universe of opportunity she didn’t even consider.
Enter Creative Windowing….
Amazon Prime allows you to go direct and opens up a whole other swath of viewership to tap into. Then there’s the dozens of AVOD platforms that require going through a distribution partner but is still a huge unlock. Followed by the FAST ecosystem of channels. And suddenly you have a global distribution plan complete with creative windowing at your fingertips 🙌.
Obviously there’s nuance involved in these windowing strategies and it assumes you are executing to broadcast spec but as you can tell, I’m super bullish on this approach to independent series production and truly believe it’s a huge market opportunity hiding in plain sight.
The real money in TV is not made on a single run. It comes from slicing and dicing rights and making money on the same thing over and over again across multiple windows and platforms.
Sustainable Producing
TLDR; Match the money with the show.
As producers we can’t have sustainable businesses if we’re over spending on projects and the economics aren’t aligned with what we’re making.
For a project like hers, I advised not spending more than $50K-$100K for the entire series in order to protect her downside. But since she has a sponsor to cover half the budget, and she’s comfortable risking a little more of her own capital, she’s going to spend more than that (probably double).
To reduce costs, she could always make six episodes instead of eight, work with a skeleton crew and post overseas. There’s so many ways to reduce budgets if needed to match projected revenue potential of a show.
I preach this all the time in the feature film world - why make a film for over $250K-$500K if future revenue scenarios don’t pencil out to more than that even when using creative windowing?
Sustainable producing doesn’t mean you have to make everything on a shoestring budget. It just means that when scaling up to bigger budgets you need a path to bigger revenue (that doesn’t include a theatrical release since that is an expense not a revenue center).
I’m putting my money on low cost productions that myself, my partners and clients can own and control across the chain of distribution. I am involved in higher budget projects which require a lot more creativity on the finance side to reduce capital risk and are dependent on attaching A-list talent which feels like a vulnerability but hey… lol. 🤷🏻♀️
How are you managing Sustainable Producing?
Hit me up in the comments and let’s discuss!
Wanna engage in Sustainable Producing together? Join me over in FS Pro where I can advise you personally and create a customized road map for you and your projects.
Alright everyone I’ll wrap this up here. I hope you have a wonderful day ahead and I’ll speak to you again soon!
Stacey
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I agree with this model. I've been working to shift my focus from low budget features to micro-budget features. I want to start controlling my own product and retaining ownership of what I make, and I can't do that if I owe too much to investors. I never thought about doing it with a series, but I find it interesting.
Thank you, Stacey for sharing this insight on Creative Windowing. I'll see how I can apply this to some of my potential series projects.