How to Make Money in the Film Industry

When it comes to the realm of going digital, film seems to have a disadvantage.  We are living in a time when most people realize that having your content available on the web is absolutely mandatory. Having it available for free is almost just as vital. However, when it comes to things like the films and television shows that you regularly like to watch, you may be spending much less money than you realize.

For the world of music, it’s becoming almost second nature for artists to release the albums, or at least several songs off of their albums for free. People can then go to iTunes and purchase any remainder of the album they wish, or more often than not, they will seek out the rest of the songs elsewhere on the Internet also for free. But artists can still make revenue by offering other things. You can’t download merchandise, and who doesn’t want a t-shirt with their favorite band’s name on it? And concert tickets still need to be purchase. More and more bands are doing more touring these days in an effort to keep revenue up, and are offering special incentive packets to fans for a little bit extra money. While mega-artist tickets, whose price value is already quite expensive, are finding themselves asking even more now. So even if music is being gobbled up for free, there are still ways to make money.

When it comes to the world of books, you would be very hard pressed to find a place where you can just download books for free like you can music. And people don’t seem to have a problem purchasing their books for digital readers such as Kindle or Nook. And comic books have yet to really embrace being fully virtual, so their physical sales are still in good spirits.

But for the film industry it’s hard to actually find ways to make money. If people aren’t going to the theater, merchandising can only go so far, and even then it only works for certain films and franchises. Episodes may be rented or purchased at sites like Amazon Instant Watch. And there are paid options like Netflix or Hulu Plus, but you are still only paying a fraction of the cost (and for more content.) The film world as a whole has to seek out more creative ways to boost revenue and not let digital freebie’s completely run them into the ground.

 While the provided chart, courtesy of The Numbers, shows an increase in revenue this is only because of the increase in cost of the movie tickets. You can actually see that the number of tickets purchased has gone down and in order to keep things even, the cost of attending a theatre showing has had to increase drastically.

As Adam Davidson, a columnist with the New York Times, pointed out, two reasons why the film industry has such a hard time with making money lately are as follows:

1.) It is a guessing game. Even when researching trends with moviegoers, it’s hard to truly know why people saw a movie, why a film did so well, and what people want to see in the future. Just because super hero movies seem to be doing well a particular time, does that mean that people like seeing them at that time of the year? Or do people see them simply because that’s what’s available and considered to be “summer blockbuster” material? And it’s very easy to get overly saturated and irritate people with too much of a particular kind of movie in the theaters at once. Or a particular gimmick (think 3-D.)

2.) Everyone wants to believe they were the reason the movie was successful. It’s true that Hollywood is filled with a lot of egos. But it’s hard to every be able to cash in on what makes a film successful when everyone is thanking themselves for it. Was it the acting? Directing? Lighting? Or a multitude of reasons that made a certain film come together and really shine? Not knowing what to forecast for the future is part of what makes the film industry ping-pong with its success.

In order to truly take advantage of making money in today’s market, the film industry will have to seek out new solutions for making money digitally, and also be able to get good reasons under their thumb for just what is making them money. We are in a time when studios can’t afford flops, and definitely more than one in a row.