Machinima for Dummies: Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?

Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:48:00 +0100

It may not have escaped the notice of our eagle-eyed readers that there’s been a small new entry into the world of web-based video, namely Mr Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

What’s interesting about it?

It’s a big-name, cult-following director releasing something purely on the Internet - one of the first, actually, after David Lynch (whose projects have been, shall we say, not mainstream).
It was produced on a “low” budget, but low, in this case, is estimated at about $250k (Whedon’s said “Low six figures”).
The numbers (there’s a great post on this subject) say that Mr Whedon is likely to at least break even on his investment, if not make a couple of million dollars.
It wasn’t released for unlimited availability - it went up for free viewing, then it came down again five days later, and was only available to buy on ITunes after that, with a DVD release coming later.

So, what does it mean for Machinima artists?

First of all, it’s very hard to say what’s going on with Dr Horrible seperate from Joss Whedon’s fame. All the actors and crew essentially agreed to work on the project because it was Joss Whedon’s work. And the publicity for the project has, essentially, been “Look! New Joss Whedon thing!”

The biz model is obviously based around that principle. “What? New Joss?” Fans rush off to check it out, love it, and then buy it - because a pretty good proportion of people who dropped whatever they were doing to go watch it were obviously going to buy it on ITunes or DVD anyway. Meanwhile, everyone who comes late to the party has to buy it from ITunes - where it’s cheap enough to be an impulse purchase. Generates buzz for no cost, maximises potential revenue. And, because it’s well known that a deadline will force people to act (it’s a standard sales tactic), it may well have increased total viewership and blog activity on the subject.

The cost’s a bit startling, frankly, for a Machinima/ultra-indie guy like myself. Bits of Doctor Horrible (noticably anything approximating an action scene) still look darn cheap. There are a lot of sets and characters (meaning actors), though, which will have eaten through the cash fairly fast. It’s an interesting demonstration of the power of Machinima.

Using motion capture and creating all sets and characters from scratch, with the same actors being paid the same rate, the cost would have been considerably lower (my rough back-of-the-envelope calculation says about half to a third of the cost, maybe less, assuming cel-shading, everything created from scratch, union rates, outsourced 3D modelling, and cheapish mocap).

However, if someone like me had taken exactly the same script and made it with no-name actors, a lot of corner-cutting, and basically the same approach I used on BloodSpell, the cost would have been orders of magnitude lower. That’s an interesting calculation, particularly given that using Moviestorm or Second Life, we’d have been able to sell the work in just the same way as Joss Whedon.

So, could a Machinima producer use the same model? Should we all start expiring our videos after five days then selling them on ITunes? Maybe.

The big problem for a Machinima producer is the matter of pull. We are, let’s face it, not Joss Whedon-level famous, and that springs a bunch of leaks in the biz model. Or are we?

The article I link to estimates that Joss Whedon has between a couple of hundred thousand and a million fairly hard-core fans. That’s an interesting number - it’s lower than I would have estimated it. However, the rest of the article seems to be reliable.

Having a look at Alexa.com, Whedonesque, which is the nearest thing to an “official” Joss Whedon site, has .003% of all Alexa users visiting it. RedvsBlue.com, by contrast, has 0.002% of all Alexa users - pretty darn close. Strangecompany.org has 0.00005%. So, that’s two orders of magnitude down - which is interesting when comparing the budgets I’m talking about above, which could also be pushed to at least one order of magnitude down.

What’s even more interesting are the viewing figures. Apparently, Act 1 of Dr Horrible was streamed 1.2 million times over the five days it was available. Now, that’s a lot, but compare it to Oxhorn’s viewing figures, say (which I don’t have right here, but I seem to recall were in the order of 100,000 in first week of release for “Inventing Swearwords 3”), or the figures for When We Two Parted (60,000 views in a week). 1.2 million streams is not out of the question for a Machinima release by any means.

Of course, there’s also a stickiness factor - the conversion from viewers to buyers. But the numbers suggest that a popular Machinima producer like Oxhorn or Phil Rice might be in the right ballpark to employ the same tactics Joss Whedon is using.

Would that work? We don’t know. We’ll have to wait for Joss Whedon to say how well it went. But there’s some powerful psychology at work here that fits with conventional sales tactics. And the numbers for budgets seem to suggest that a less-popular Machinima creator would be able to offset lower sales with lower budget.

Against that, few Machinima creators have the rabid level of devotion from their fans that Joss Whedon does. Obviously, any commercial project would have to use a non-game engine or have a license. Given there are well-known issues with viewing numbers outwith games, and most Machinima creators with a following tend to have that following within a single game engine, it’d probably be wise for a known Machinima artist to negotiate a license with that games company (which is doable, if tricky). Selling video online is a pain if you don’t have the clout to persuade ITunes to work with you (anyone know any companies that will work with smaller producers?) And if you don’t have a following already, this approach isn’t going to work for you.

Interestingly, these tactics are very similar to Red vs Blue’s approach to distribution - at any one time, it’s impossible to download all the episodes of Red vs Blue from their site. Only a few are ever available at one time.

Is this a new model? It’s hard to say, yet. But, if you’re a popular Machinima artist who’d like to make some money, it might be worth trying the “Dr Horrible” approach on a short series.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:04:23 +0100

Damian - sorry, only just saw this comment!

Yes, I’m using Dr Horrible as an example because it’s probably the highest-profile Internet-only film work so far, and I figure that we, as a pretty much exclusively Internet-based artform, could learn some lessons from that.

Thanks for asking about that - I hadn’t thought to clarify! Bad blogger, no cookie.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by damian@thisspartanlife.com

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:30:21 +0100

Hi Hugh and all! Clear something up for me. I watched a bit of Dr. Horrible and didn’t see any machinima. Maybe I misread your post. Are you drawing lessons for machinima from this show solely because it’s internet media? Not that that isn’t wise, I imagine it would be instructive.

Sorry to be so out of the loop on this. I am trying to find more time to check out the really interesting stuff you, Phil, Paul and others post about machinima. Whenever I do, I wonder why I don’t find time to check more often! I need Dr. Horrible’s Freeze Ray.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:22:35 +0100

Zach - I must have not made my point clear. I’m talking here about the commercial possibilities of Machinima and how they relate to projects like Doctor Horrible.

My example was the script of Doctor Horrible, and a rough estimate of how much it would cost to produce using Machinima to a standard that people would be happy to watch.

I don’t think that any of us are as good a storyteller as Joss Whedon (yet). Indeed, I mention that in the article.

My point is to talk about audience size and commerciality, and there it’s possible to make some fairly accurate estimates about our pull compared to Mr Whedon, and to discuss whether the same business model he uses is one we could use to make money from our Machinima.

You don’t need to be as good a writer as Joss Whedon for that to happen - you just need to be good enough and popular enough. I doubt that anyone I know is as good a cook as Ferran Adria, either, but I know a few people who make their living cooking.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Zachariah

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:59:24 +0100

So the goal is to make the cheapest looking thing you can? I don’t get it?

either way, It’s a bit presumptuous to pretend that any of us are in the same league as Joss Whedon. That’s like saying, “Oh, I could do nascar too! and I could do it with my 1994 Geo Metro! That’d REALLY be efficient!”

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:47:01 +0100

Jeffrey - that makes a lot of sense, yeah. And obviously, that would also be where a Machinima production would make most of its savings - I’d estimate a crew of maybe 3 people if that would be needed.

(Have you run across Machinima before? There’s a good summary on Wikipedia.)

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Jeffrey McManus

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:24:55 +0100

Thanks for the link. If you watch the credits for Dr. Horrible following Act 3, you can get a a sense of where a lot of the money went – the production had a crew comparable to the crew of a regular TV show (about 50-100 people). Even if all those people worked for union scale (as I surmised in my estimated profit/loss post on my blog), that adds up pretty quick.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:10:27 +0100

I reckon that DH would have cost between a grand and ten grand, assuming that most people were working on deferred fees, using something like Moviestorm or SL. Major issues would have been lipsynch (oh, for cel shading) and content creation, particularly animation (I must admit, I’d probably want to go for minimal animation or very cheap mocap).

Obviously that’s a slight cheat, but it’s not actually that complex a piece. If I get time and have access to the videos, I’ll look back over them and see what I think.

I’ll do a costing for minimum wage, too. That would certainly be nearing ten grand, but probably no higher.

"Does Doctor Horrible offer a way for Machinima creators to make money?" by Matt "The Mongoose" Kelland

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:06:42 +0100

“if someone like me had taken exactly the same script and made it with no-name actors, a lot of corner-cutting, and basically the same approach I used on BloodSpell, the cost would have been orders of magnitude lower”

How many orders of magnitude? Honestly?

Whedon claims it cost $250k. So at one order of magnitude, you could make DH for just over £10k (yes, I switched currencies). At two orders, you’re saying you could have done it for about a grand. Three orders, and you’re talking just over a hundred quid.

Realistically, now, how much do you think it would cost you to have made DH to a similar quality? And how much if you were to pay everyone involved, including yourself, minimum wage for the hours they all put in?

I’m not saying you’re wrong - I’m just interested to find out whether you reckon the numbers actually stack up.