Beyond the Shadows is out now on our website! Please Watch, Share, Comment! Here is the link: https://www.greatgusproductions.com/bts
Why YouTube?**
We decided to release our second feature film on YouTube for a few different reasons. The first is the most obvious in that YouTube is free to all to see. We are such a young company that going any other way than free would be almost counterproductive in a way? We learned this lesson with our first feature High Note. All of us were excited that we were able to get High Note on Amazon Prime (you know a legitimate streaming platform). What we didn't realize was that not a lot of people actually had Amazon Prime. We also learned that Amazon only pays out about $0.06-$0.12 an hour (Edit: Amazon now only pays $0.01 an hour). Receiving such a small amount while also losing potential audience members turned us off from any paying streaming platforms altogether (However we still watch Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime like the hypocrites that we are "There's a lot of good programs on TV right now..."). That left us with Vimeo and YouTube. I actually prefer Vimeo to YouTube. I love the layout of their site. It's very neat and simple to use. But once again, not a lot of people actually use Vimeo. So we went with YouTube. In the future though, it might have to be Vimeo.
Another lesson we learned from our previous film was of the distribution companies. We received some offers for distribution from various companies, but we feel that they weren't really interested in our film the way you'd expect a company to be. Distribution companies just want to add volume to their libraries. They're looking for quantity, rather than quality. A distribution company should feel like they would want your movie because they believe in it. We didn't feel that with the companies we talked with. They also asked for upfront costs to get our film on the major platforms like Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu (and additional costs if we needed to make any changes). Money that we didn't really have at the time. And once they are on the site, they often get buried rather quickly because it's not just ours that goes up, but hundreds of indie films at once. So they take a 20% cut of all profits for us to pay them to put it on a major platform, do our own marketing of the film, compete with hundreds of their other indie films being dropped on the same day, and have zero control over the rights of the film. That's right, we do not own our last film for another year and a half. We decided to cut out this middle man and just put the film up ourselves. Probably more work on our end, but it feels better that the results are on us? We get to decide our film's journey that constantly has to change and adapt to its environment. It's much more exciting.
**We no longer have the full length film on YouTube. We ran into various issues, so we have now put it up onto our site here. We also couldn't go free for many reasons, one being that Beyond the Shadows is for Mature Audiences only. Charging people at least makes sure you are old enough to have a credit card. We are throwing this out there that you must be a legally recognized adult to view our film, or have parental consent.**
What You Can Do To Help
Watching, Liking, Subscribing, Commenting your favorite quote of the film, and Sharing are the most effective ways to help. It's simple and doesn't cost anybody anything. Just the way we like it.
Another way to help (if you would like, honestly no pressure) is to check out our store where you can buy a GGP Shirt or Sticker (and maybe a GGP hat in the future) ****Edit: You can buy a GGP Shirt, Hoodie, Beanie and/or Hat**** Your purchase will go to covering the cost of the products, and then split between the cast and crew. Approximately $16 covers the cost to make the Tee, while the leftovers will be split between the cast and crew of Beyond the Shadows. For our Hoodies, it costs us approximately $21 to dropship, with the rest being split between the cast and crew of Beyond the Shadows. Our beanies cost about $17 to dropship, with the rest being split. And finally, our hats cost us about $21 to dropship, with the rest being split between the cast and crew.
Our goal is to sell enough merchandise to fund our next project. Our goal is $50,000. We can make a film for far less, but we tend to have to cut a lot of corners. We also want to pay our actors a living wage for our next film. The majority of the funding from our previous crowdfunding campaigns went to our cast and it was such a minuscule amount that it felt almost pathetic on our end. We were thinking of doing an equity thing where you buy a tee shirt and you can receive some equity into our next film, but it was getting too complicated on the tax end so it didn't pan out. We think that could have been the future of indie filmmaking. No more waiting for people with large sums of cash to help you make a film. Individual communities will help make the film and split any profits. The way it ought to be. For now, we will just be selling some swag, hoping it is a cause that you can get behind.
*** 20% of Proceeds Will go to Local Small Businesses ***
We know this is a time of hurt for a lot of people. Me and my brothers and sisters are all fortunate enough to be working and providing for our families doing our regular jobs so this is our way of helping the situation that we are all in. We aren't exactly sure how the 20% will be donated. We are looking at different options and different organizations. There will be a future blog post detailing how we can give these businesses the help they need.
That is all for now. Keep a lookout for more of our Bloggin Shtuffs in the future. We will try to post a blog at least once a week (maybe once a month who knows we're pretty bad procrastinators EDIT: probably about once every few months from the way things have panned out lol) where we will talk about a large spectrum of topics that range from film edumacation to our favorite movies to behind the scenes things. Basically, what we want to show you is that anybody can make a film and you don't really need to go to a film school to do so. That is the goal. May we meet it in reality. Please reach out to us on any of our social medias if you have any questions or concerns.