Hi-diddle-dee-dee a pirate's life for me!
Piracy is obviously illegal and wrong. It’s stealing. Get it.
Now, let’s put that aside and talk about how piracy can help or hurt an indie filmmaker depending on your situation.
Many of you are thinking it’s just plain wrong, but I have to say that I had a film of mine (from years ago) picked up by someone and distributed and I didn’t care…in fact I was thrilled. Why? Well, my film was basically sitting online not being viewed and suddenly people in Europe, apparently, were watching my movie. I don’t know about you, but as an indie filmmaker with limited marketing materials and no distributor…I saw this as a huge success.
I get we all need to make money and certainly our income matters as much as Hollywood’s…in many ways, even more. However, if you are an indie filmmaker, have no money for marketing and don’t have tens of thousands of followers, the chances of more than 50 people watching your film online are slim, especially if you are charging for the view. For arguments sake, let’s say you absolutely know that 50 people will watch your film and you are renting it for $3, part of which is taken by the streaming provider you use. For the sake of argument, let’s say they take 50 cents. This leaves you with $2.50 per view. Okay great. So that would be $75. Fantastic! (Really, making any money off an indie film is a success. Bravo.) Now let’s say it is pirated, and another 1,000 people watch your film for free. You could look at it as losing $2,500. But the truth is those 1,000 people would never have known about your film to begin with so it wasn’t your money to lose. But maybe just maybe, word will get out about your film. Maybe half the people who hear about it will watch it illegally, but the other half might just go and pay for it. Some people, like myself, are not comfortable watching things illegally and care about being fair to the artist.
So, let’s say another 1,000 people hear about it and 500 pay for it. That’s another $1,250 you just made. So I like to think of piracy as marketing.
If your film really gets big on the underground like that, you might find that you get some press. Who knows? Your following might grow exponentially, even if you don’t make more money. Money you weren’t going to make anyway.
The old Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K) series did this, they were on a public access station doing their show and people were recording the series on VHS and sharing it around. That’s piracy 101. The team at MST3K added a line to their credits that said, “Keep circulating the tapes.” Their fan base basically got the word out and did marketing for them and eventually they were picked up by Comedy Central. By encouraging piracy, they actually made a name for themselves and got a contract that changed their lives and the life of the series. And, I do believe that Comedy Central allowed them to keep that line in their credits because they knew it was free marketing. Genius!
Now let’s flip that on its head to be fair. Let’s say you already have a big following that you’ve worked for years to develop. You have tens of thousands of followers and your film gets stolen and distributed online for free. You figured at least 20,000 people would watch your film. That would be $50,000. If the film is placed online for free and you lose half of your viewership to piracy, well, that’s a lot of dough. That’s a $25,000 loss. That is a lot to lose and obviously the bigger you are / the bigger your fan base is, the more you can lose. So if you are in that camp, which few indie filmmakers are, yeah, piracy not a win for you.
So to me, piracy can both help and hurt indie filmmakers. I’d look at your personal situation and see if you can find the bright side of this and try to work it to your advantage. Piracy unfortunately is not going to go away.
One way to fight it: if you made your film with your own funds and are not beholden to a contract that says otherwise, put your films up for free. That’s right! Get out your eye patch and go ahead and pirate your own film, at least when you first launch it. Get people excited about the project, get the buzz going and then see how you can work the money in and start earning some cash back. Remember most indie film do not make their money back so really there is nothing to lose. Gaining a following is a big win in itself. You do want people to watch your films afterall.