Man, this is a *good* vlog. Because this is the State Of The Business right now. And it's bad.

I really don't understand the logic of 'customer's complaining' = Amazon paying less. How are those two things even remotely related? Who the fuck is streaming an indie flick on Amazon Prime and then writing to Amazon and complaining? Wut? They use algorithms to push content based on what you watch, so if you like Jean Claude Van Damme movies then you aren't gonna see a thumbnail for my movie. What's the problem? And if somebody watches your film for 100,000 views then fucking pay them.

The Bottom Line is they just want us to Go Away.

Amazon just went down the same path that every startup in the last twenty years has taken: Rely on customer content to build your business and then Get Rid Of Them or start charging for a 'service' that was worthless beforehand. Think Gracenote, or Yelp!, on in this case Amazon Prime which started out desperately trying to get content by wooing the very indie filmmakers they're now tossing into the dustbin. Remember their producing offers? Their free scriptwriting software? All that and more has been systemically shuttered and now all that's left is to evict us from the premises. Don't kid yourself, the CER rating is a deliberately confusing metric designed to blither their way out of a class action lawsuit. Because it's actually pretty simple: Number of clicks and how much time watched. Why do I need fucking trigonometry to figure that out? Look, do you really think the Duplass Brothers "Puffy Chair" or Swanberg's "Hannah Took The Stairs" has a CER higher than 40? Come on. If films like that aren't getting purged then what the fuck?

Until indie filmmakers create, or find, a streaming platform that caters to indies only--and I'm not talking about Sundance self-produced films with name talent--we're effectively doomed. It's a Bad Time right now and nobody cares. There's no film critics to curate The Good Stuff and keep us alive. There are far too many film festivals, diluting their importance, and have become bubbles of self-abuse, stroking off to whatever is the annual social justice and drawing fewer and fewer crowds. The market is fractured and over-saturated--and yes, drowning in metric tons of Bad Shit, let's not kid ourselves--and New Tech have become the New Gatekeepers. And having no part of The History Of Cinema, they see use only in terms of revenue to be absorbed. Fuck movies. Services that don't want to be associated with shaggy dog, micro-budget filmmaking are helping kill off micro-budget filmmaking. Hell, the entire industry is hellbent on killing newborn talent and slitting the throats of their own future. I mean, can you name ten actors under the age of thirty-five who are box office draws? Can you name five? Fuck it, name two. You can't. The Industry has cannibalized itself already.

I really wish these services would use their massive profits to fucking help us. And they could do that by curating the titles. And don't let the truly shitty films on. I'd love for them to follow the lead of Vimeo's Editor's Picks because I find that is really a great way to see new and interesting content. It's no different than the 'Recommended Books' shelf at the local bookstore where the staff writes a 3x4 card on why you should read a book they like. I can't tell you how much Good Stuff I've watched just by clicking on thumbnails with their Editor's Choice logo. But Apple/Amazon/Hulu/Whoeverthefuckisstartingastreamingservicetoday just does not give a fuck. I mean, we live in a world where David Lynch and David Cronenberg can't get funding to make a film. Think about that.

You're not hippy dippy. And it is corporate greed. I don't think our days as indie filmmakers are numbered. I think they're already over. The questions is where do we go from here?

Great vlog! This should be upvoted to the top of r/filmmakers