Welcome to the Crimson Engine. My name is Robitium. Today we are talking about money and how to make money as a filmmaker. There's only one way to make money as a filmmaker consistently and most people don't really know what that is. They think if their work is good enough or if they know enough people or if they do enough jobs they'll eventually have to find a way to make money. That's just not true. The only way to make money long term as a filmmaker is make money for the people who employ you. That's the only way. You can't support a career unless the films you make cause people to open their wallets by something, donate to someone or spend something. A lot of clients do employ you and ask you to do things that aren't really going to be successful. You know like a bad concept, bad social media campaign, bad ad for their charity. If they don't see a reaction, if they don't see more money come into their company or business or charity, then it costs you to make your video or ad. They're not going to do it again. They have lost money working with you. The only way that people will keep working with you again and again is if they make money when they pay you. Orson Wells, widely considered to be one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, struggled with money his entire life because even though his films were considered masterpieces and a lot of people knew them and saw them, they didn't make money for the people that invested in them. They made plenty of money for Orson Wells but he wasn't very good at delivering what he promised on a schedule so that people could receive a return there investment, then put more money into new films of his. He only made 14 films in 50 year career. Roger Coleman on the other hand, a writer producer, director known for his cheap skate ways, directed 55 movies and produced hundreds of them. He even wrote a book called How I Made 100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. I'm not saying your movies should be more like Roger Coleman's than like Orson Wells, but if Orson Wells had been more like Roger Coleman and made money for his investors, he could have made dozens of films. We could have had Touch of Evil Part 1, 2 and 3. Check out this video. It is over 10 years old and I think it probably fails technically on every level. The delivery is not great, the lighting is terrible, the camera work, despite being a locked-off shot, zooms in and out, and the sound isn't even that good. But GaryVee started a YouTube channel and this video's sold a boatload of wine, which is way to a thousand of them. Again, I'm not saying that you should make videos like GaryVee. I'm saying that if you want to get paid to make films, your films need to make people money. Film does not have to be a financial, economic pursuit. Film is an incredibly powerful artistic medium. You can tell stories, you can create worlds and express yourself with film. All of that is wonderful and worthwhile. But if you want to make money making those films, then you have to make money for somebody else. It used to be that we didn't really know if commercials were successful. A company invested money in an ad. They put it on television and cells went up or down. But was that causation or correlation? Was it due to just the fact that the new product was nowadays with Facebook and Google and Instagram, advertisers track very specifically who sees what ad and what cause it makes. If your ads don't cause people to spend money, you're not going to get the chance to do them again. Now, you may not want to do that. But if you do, you need to think outside the technical aspects of filmmaking and get an understanding of how advertising works, how marketing works, because that's the only way you're going to be able to create a career that continues time and time again. Like I said, film is a great art form. It is a very expensive one. And if there's going to be gold at the end of that beautiful VFX rainbow, you need to create movies that make money. Or else you won't be able to make movies anymore. I am really fortunate to have been working in film and using it to support myself for two decades. And in that time, I've learned that some of my favorite clients, some of my favorite jobs went away and never came back. And looking back, I realized that I could have had a longer term relationship with those brands. Had I insisted that the videos we were making really earned their keep, that really made money for the people I was working for. And I would have got the chance to do it again. So even if your client wants to do something cool or wants to do something strange, part of your job as a filmmaker is to bring it back to what the objective of this is. And that is to make someone rich so that you can become rich making films. Thanks very much for watching. I'll see you next time.