You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to IH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two eighty seven. The best education in film is to make one. Stanley Kubrick broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood
when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage. Now.
Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film, market and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that used to reading temp bowl movies when your movie is going to be done for one
hundred thousand dollars. And we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to cover my Screenplay dot com. Have you ever wanted to learn from a Hollywood blockbuster screenwriter or even an Oscar winner?
Well, I wanted to put together a free three day screenwriting video series taught by legendary screenwriters David Goyer from who wrote The Dark Knight, Naval Duras, who wrote The Big factoryk Wedding, Oscar winning Callie Corey, who wrote Thulm and Louise, and Oscar winner Paul Hagis who wrote Casino Royale. If you want access to this free class, head over to bullet Screenwriting dot TV Ford Slash Free. Now, guys, today we have returning champion Steven Follows.
Many of you might remember Stephen as the dataman, the man who crunches the film data like nobody else in the world, and he has been on the show multiple times and my favorite episode, of course is when we finally proved for once and for all that Diehard is the greatest Christmas movie all time, and we looked at the numbers to prove it. Now Steven's back on the show because he has launched a new website called vod Clickstream, and what he's
done is remarkable. He's been able to go inside of Netflix to see what is actually going on in all of their data. He's been able to come up with answers for questions like does Netflix have a long tail? How do romantic comedies perform on Netflix? How do scipher films perform on Netflix? Did American audience stream international TV shows? How did The Office truly perform on the platform? Which TV genres are the most popular on Netflix? And so so
many more. When I heard about this, I called up Stephen. I said, Stephen, you got to come back on the show. We need to get this information out to the tribe because it's just, again a snapshot of what Netflix was doing during the time of twenty sixteen two end of middle of twenty nineteen. But it is better than nothing, when before all that information had been hidden behind the walls of Netflix. But we have been able to get inside of that. Now I do have to have a disclaimer for
this episode. All this information is wholly independent research and is not affiliated with Netflix or any other streaming platform or studio. Just wied to make that very very clear. So without any further ado, please enjoy my eye opening conversation with Stephen follows. I like to welcome back to the show, returning champion Stephen Follows. How are you doing, Stephen Dan? Very well? You say that every time, and I'm starting to believe you. Well, that's
what I'm trying to do. A little by little, I'm building. I'm building you up. So I'm building you up. I'd like it to be back. And your audience are always awesome as well. Every time I'm on the podcast, people reach out to me and say, hey, I heard you. I'm part of the tribe. I heard you an Alex's podcast, Hey I got And every single one so far has been like really polite but also with a really interesting question or perspective, and yeah, you've got a
great tribe. So I'm always happy to come back. Thank you, man, I appreciate that. And last time we were on the show, we did that die Hard episode which was fairly controversial. Sir, oh was it did you get pushback? No, well, a couple of people, A couple of people. I got a couple of dry members of like really Alex
an entire episode about my heart and I'm like, yes it is. But you know, funny enough is that when I m h where when I m talk to people now about Diehard because now I'm you know, I'm I'm an evangelist. Um, I go, you know, you know that hurts it Christmas movie, and they'll push back up like no, no, no, no, no, I have data. I have proof that dieharded. So
I appreciate you doing the hard work on that. And so now at parties or at least Zoom meetings, nowadays, I get to I get to say, no, no, I have got data, here's the link, and I send them to our interview and people are just like amazing, and I just it's always the thing you want to hear a party when you're having a conversation with someone, when they go, no, no, I have the data. I know exactly. It's just your life of the party. You
are the life of the party without without question. Um. And then I just released a link of the top twelve screenplays of unconventional Christmas movies, and of course Diehards on the top of that list, but I had lethal Weapon on there. Um, what else did we have on their lethal Weapon? Gremlins, Gremolin's too good Night? Which one? What's the one with from ninety seven with oh oh Davis, Oh No, Longest good Night? Yes,
Longest gons Longest good Night is on there as well. A bunch of a bunch of Shane Black, A bunch of Shane A bunch of Shane Black episode whatch I'm gonna call it screenplays because he's he just loves, absolutely loves writing. I mean, I could argue Iron Man three, but I prefer not. Um, you know, Disney do do list that? And on Disney Plus on the Christmas movies? Oh, I genuine yeah, I genuinely don't know if they're doing it to try and stir up controversy or do they
genuinely believe it. And before we start on our current interview, I have to I'm going to list off the list of Christmas h Christmas unconventional Christmas movies, Die Heart, Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Uh, Gremlins, Gremlins to Batman Returns. Yeah, eyes wide shut, Oh you really went I went there, sir, Yes, Edwards, scissor Hands, blon Kids, good Night, bad Santa, Black Christmas, and Prampus. Yes, yes, all quite a list. That is that. That was.
It took me a minute to put it together. But I had to. I had to. I had to. I had to. I had to give them love. So so just Leaven, man. I mean, I'm always so impressed with everything you do. I love. You're just an insane, insane, insane human being. Um. In the way and the same way you call me insane for what I do. It's it's a mutual admiration because I can never do what you do in in twenty lifetimes, I don't think I'll be able to ever do what you do. Um, But I
was, I was. I don't know where I saw it, because you kept it, you kept this to yourself. I have to I have to keep this. I have to. I have to give you props for this. You told me that you were working on something big, and I'm like, what is it. He's like, I can't, man, I gotta keep it. I gotta keep it quiet. And I'm like, all right, fine, I do the same thing. That's fine. And then I think I saw a pop up. Somewhere like a few weeks later and this
thing called VOD click Stream showed up. I'm like what And I clicked on. I'm like, what is this? And and I didn't get Honestly, I didn't connect that it was yours for a second till I till because I literally had no idea what this was. And then I went to the about and the team and I'm like, oh, son of up, this is this is Stevens. And I emailed you right away. I'm like, what is this? What's going on? So can you tell? But yeah, so so I did. Actually I think it's like, what the f So
can you tell the audience what VOD click Stream is? Yeah, definitely. I'll give you the simple pitch, and then I'll make it more complicated than nuance because it's got some weird sort of qualities to it. But the simple pitch is that I've got an access to a huge data set which reveals what people have been watching on Netflix over a three and a half year period. So this is yeah, I know, it's It's something I've been chasing for a while. And we can talk, you know, in a minute about
the history of the whole thing. But it's been something I've been chasing for a while, and it's it feels it's like almost more of a mission for me than than just a stats project, because I don't like that we don't know what's going on on that spot, and I think it matters, I think, and I think it matters, you know, for your audience and my audience, which are very similar. We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor and now back to the show. Like, the studios must have a better idea than the average filmmaker, and we don't have the kind of of openness and transparency that we have on theatrical or in other areas. And crucially, everyone's experience of s FOD is so different. My wife and I share a Netflix account, but we have our own profiles, but they're so different. If we're accidentally locked one with hers, I'm like, oh my god, it's all pink, white Sonutri Bullock and everything. Mind,
Like, why is everything so sad and exploding? And the thing is what that means is that even two people who like live together still can't get a sense from their own experience. Whereas when you go to the theater and you see if it's full. You see lines, you know, you hear about it, and we have the same shared experience. So because of that, because of the s FOD is so highly personalized, you can't get any clues
how things are doing. And they started to release a little bits more data in the last few months and stuff, but compared to what we're used to getting on the box office, and even that's not enough. Like how a filmmakers supposed to know what to do, what people want to watch? Like, what is this new realm that is dominant eating so much of the value chain is only going to dominate more of it. And obviously COVID and LEFT I just don't know how else we're supposed to do this. So this is
an answer to that. I guess it's not perfect, but it's it's pretty unusual and I think really powerful. And we've only just begun. Really, this isn't a project where I've launched a finished thing. Here's a report, go read it. It's like, okay, the work begins now. So this is essentially the wholy gril. This is, this is this is El Dorado for you as far as data. As far as data is concerned, no, it's neither is the Holy Neither is the Holy Gril or El Dorado
for that matter. I get the WiFi is terrible in Eldorado. It's horrible. It really, I've been there. It's not it's not pleasant. Is that why you left? Yeah? Yeah, I just left. I mean I grabbed a couple of things along the way, but left. But yeah. So it's like it's been really exciting. And the volume of data and the complexity of the data is it's an order of magnitude, much bigger than I'm used to dealing with. So it's not just me. I've had some
help from some amazing data signs. And most of them, I mean two of them have PhDs and theoretical physics, you know, they deal with things like dark matter and whether the standard model of the universe as we understand it is correct or not. And then I start talking to them about like what we know about Netflix and and they're like, Wow, we know more about dark matter. We know more about the origins of the universe than we know about what a film performed on Netflix. And I was like, ah,
do you want to like join the team, Let's figure something out. And you're India. You're Indiana, Jones and you're putting together a team. They're almost all physicists, like we're the team is more I think it has more
theoretical physicists than people who are not a theoretical physicist. And by the way, I'm one of them not And so it's been kind of bonkers because not only are they very talented data scientists, but also they're used to dealing with abstract ideas and abstract numbers, and actually you need to deal with that. I mean, we'll talk about this later on. I'm sure some of the ideas in how you analyze this get quite abstracted quite quickly, because it's not
as simple as like, you know, box office. You say how much money did it make? Even that's a bit flat because you don't know if it was lots of kids or fewer adults, or peak time or off. But generally it's comparative, you account for inflation, you can sort of sort
of out with this data. It's so much more complicated than that to try and get straightforward, simple answers, and so that's why they were so they just had all the right training for it, and it was just a joy to work with those just incredibly smart talented people and sort of see if we can do something interesting for the film community. I have a theory, see if it. I feel that the reason why people take you seriously, it's not only because of your work ethic and your talent, but I truly believe
it's you. It's your it's your accent. Because everything you say I mean, I mean it's it sounds so legit. Like if you if you would like, listen, my friend, I have some land to sell you, some swampland to sell you in Florida. I'd be continue. But you know that you have a voice for excitement. Let me tell you something exciting. I'll be like, Oh, so if we joined forces, Stephen, we could rule the war or we could ruin each other. Very true, very
true, served very very true. Okay, So how okay, so you're essentially going inside the algorithm of Netflix's ex something like that. Not quite that. So, so this it doesn't come from Netflix themselves. There's no data breach. We haven't scraped it, we haven't taken it from them in any sense. What's happened is it utilizes this sort of type of data called click
stream data. And what click stream data is is that people have volunteered, they've signed up, they've opted in to install plugins and services and things like that in their browser and other things like that, and that these let's say plugins are really useful, you know, they maybe they're a really good trend later tool, or they just do a certain thing really well, and they're free for the users. And the deal is that in return for that,
the users agree that they're anonymized history. Their click stream, all the clicks they made essentially can be sent to a server and put into a big bucket and that sort of fire hose of millions and millions of people. They're anonymized history allows us to see what the journey they made around the web. And so the actual raw click stream which I don't have, which is the full, like epic amounts of data. You can imagine millions of people clicking constantly
or around the world. That is so valuable to so many people in so many different ways. You know, you could get a sense of how popular something is before the quarterly reports come out. You could see how people are buying things on Amazon. All that what I wanted was the tiniest slice of it, and I just wanted I actually wanted all the spot streamers, but
Netflix was, for various reasons, the best one to go for. And I've been chasing these guys for a while, and I was like, because I've known about this for a few years, and I have said, look, just give me access to the Netflix slice Netflix dot com because it could
be really instructive and very useful for filmmakers and stuff like that. And because of the nature of the click stream industry, it's a small industry that makes highly expensive content data, and so they were quoting massive figures, like five figures a month, a massive high end, and it was just impossible. And then so I've been talking to them every six months or so, I catch up and go, hey, have you suddenly sort of decided that your
data is worth far less than it was? And they're like nope. And then around the summer of twenty nineteen, there was a sort of big shift in the click stream data world where there was a there was a sort of a perfect storm of a few different things, like some of the brows that the big browsers changed some of their rules about what their plugins and extensions could
do and what data they could share. Generally, people were getting tighter on privacy and so things that they were happy to share in the past they were
less happy to share now. And just so all these sort of things came together and so the clixtream industry transformed and sort of what a lot of the business models they had imploded, and some of the companies are still around doing other things, but basically it kind of that version of it kind of ended in the summer or twenty nineteen, and so towards the end of last year, in the beginning of this year, so the beginning of twenty twenty, I went back to them and said, look, you've got this now of
static data set, and I can't offer you load of money. I can't there's no I don't know if the values in that, and I can't do much with it, but I know that it's fascinating and for filmmakers and could be very instructive. Please can you basically give me the Netflix data? So I worked out a deal with them, which didn't which was possible to do, and then so then they gave me about two thirds of a billion data
points. And so first of all, it was it's just the volume is like it's just and you know, they get they gave me a sample. You can only have a million rows in Excel before it crashes, and before it didn't won't load any more rows. And they gave me a sample of the data and it was like day one, hour one. An Xcel was like, that was an hour. It was day one, But an excelent can't can't look at anymore. And so that that volume is amazing because it's
it's really granular. And so what I ended up with was, these are anonymized users. So each user has a randomly generated ID which resets over a certain period, and I know what country they're in, and I know what you r l. They clicked on exactly the time and the day, and that's pretty much it. There's a bit of metadata that's pretty much it. And so in and of itself, a click isn't doesn't mean anything, but
when you add them together you can infer meaning. So you could say this person clicked on the Netflix link that is the watch page for a bit of content, and the content of twenty two minutes long. They waited twenty two minutes and then they clicked on the next one. Well that you can reasonably assume that they viewed it right, And you also can see what people have searched for and things like that. So we have all this data. It
has sort of three big limitations. The first is it's historical, so our data starts in the beginning of twenty sixteen and ends in the summer or two nineteen, so it's like three and a half years. It's a shame it's not live that everyone asks me, can it be live? And the answer is always sadly not. But if it were live, I wouldn't be able to get access to it, So it's kind of it's this or nothing.
Secondly, it's only desktop and laptop users, which Netflix say are about twenty five percent of their audience, and so we didn't know if that would have a skew or not, like whether people watch fundamentally different content on their desktop and laptop than they do another on TV or tablets or whatever. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So the first thing we did was that we went about recreating the stats
that Netflix had announced during that period. So when they've said bird Box got x number of views or was the number one film within the first two weeks or whatever, whatever, it was like any data point that they said in a press release, we would go back to our data and try and recreate it. You know, we would perform the same analysis, and time and time again we were getting the same answers they were getting. So because of that analysis, I'm very very confident that the big picture we have is a
very very good model of what they have. There'll always been cases where it's slightly different or whatever, but fundamentally, considering we're starting with nothing, I think we're very happy with that was wracking period. So then you don't know how many people actually watched Koba Kai or Tagger Kick, no exactly. That's what's so interesting is so what we have is we do have a number for how many people within these panel of users watched it, but we don't know
exactly how that scales up. So what we've had to do is if we had every single click on Netflix dot Com, then you'd have your viewing figures, right, you'd have a raw number. But because we have a flecture eating panel and we've had to account for like different factors, Like first of all, over the course of these three and a half years, this size of Netflix subscriber base has changed it's basically grown and it's paunched in different countries.
That the number of people using these plugins and services has changed, gone up and down, and maybe they break into a new country or a tool gets taken off, and so that's changed. And then also, how you compare a piece of content that, let's say it was only available for one year in twenty sixteen, how do you compare the performance of that film with another film that was out in twenty nineteen or something, or two and eighteen
or whatever. How do you compare them because they weren't available at the same time. And so what we had to do is basically normalize all of these views per day, per country, per type. What that basically means is, for every single country, we've said, on this particular day, what was the most watched film, and then comparing all the other films to that film, So like film number two, the second most popular film got seventy percent of the views, the first one did and the third one got sixty
percent or whatever. And then that then gives us comparable things because you can say, within all the films that are available, how did each of them perform? And then that allows us to then create scores overall over those three
and a half year period. So this is where the scientists were really useful because they're you know, comparing this content across time and space and different planel sizes in the dark matter and then the beginnings of the universe and so getta Okay, So all right, So the last the last limitation is that we don't have demographic information. We don't have IP addresses, we don't know age,
gender, like we know what country they're in. But that's it's all right, So all right, so let's um, let's let's ask some some tough questions and see what you can do to help us, because the reason why filmmakers are listening is like, we find this very fascinating how you're getting this data about how does this helped me? So, um, does Netflix have a long tail? Is that something that that you were able to come
on That's exactly something we're able to look at. So the long tail idea was was made sort of most famous by an article in Wide in two thousand and four, and it was this prediction based on the idea of growing digital platforms like Amazon selling books and DVDs at the time, but the idea being that previously, when you have a physical shop, you make most of your money from the top titles, top ten, top hundred, whatever the ones you can have in the front of the store, right and that's where you
make your money. The concept of the long tail is that the way at Amazon in the future will make their money is actually through all of the other inventory, the other hundred thousand titles, some of which that only sell one or two every every year or whatever, but there's enough of them on total, and so it becomes about the misses, not the hits, you know. And so this was an idea that was put out there and some people support it to people don't. And how it relates to us is that we
already know that the box office doesn't really have a long tail. We know that three quarters of all of the money made in the box office goes to the top fifty films each year. Like it's heavily, heavily skewed towards these top movies. So the other however, many you know, seven eight hundred movies released that year are competing for the final quarter. And that is not great because it makes it very hard for us to compete because we're if you're
not big, You're nothing, right. So one of the first things we wanted to test was, Okay, well, we know that the movie industry
is already top heavy, already massively disproportionately supports the big films. But if we took on this long tail idea, maybe Netflix would be a place where lots of the smaller movies would do well everyone, which is something different, but it doesn't matter overall because Netflix are happy, and maybe that's our savior, you know, maybe it's a fairer space for us all to compete in
and loads of tiny movies can equally survi. So that was a big thing for me to look at, and I gotta say it's disappointing but not surprising news. So basically, the viewing patterns on Netflix are slightly more skewed towards big films than the box office, which means that most people on Netflix are watching a small amount of massive bits of content, which was mostly in the
US, it was mostly Disney films. Like Disney, they had a deal with Netlik which is now finished, but that accounted for a huge proportion of Netflix's views, and it really was a problem for Netflix when Disneys ended that deal. I don't know the ins and outs of the deals, but what I can tell you is that they lost their best performing content in a number of different realms. Yeah, and the Office and the Office as well got last because it went over to is it an HBO Max or somewhere else?
Presumably it's peacock because it's right right, right, yeah, And so yeah, the Office is The Office is a great example because the Office allows us we've got all the stats on the episodes of the Office, and because all episodes of the Office were available across our entire time period, it's actually really easy for us to compare the performance of different episodes. We actually don't have
to worry about accounting for time and availability and stuff. And so we've actually used that as as a good example to look at how might the nature of s VOD viewing change the way we think about filmed content. What I mean is right, So in TV we're used to having seasons, you know, because of the way that they're funded and broadcast and just the way that it's evolved. We are used to having a piece of content. So having a
series that has got a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe it's got an arc across the season, and the beginning and the end of the season is significant and then we wait and whatever. But that doesn't there's time is less of a factor with things like Netflix, like it's not relevant, but it's far less of It doesn't matter whether it's summer or winter. You just
watch them, binging them. So when we looked at all the viewing figures of all of the episodes of the Office, we noticed a couple of really fascinating things, which is, first of all, the most popular season was season four, not seasons one or two, which is kind of interesting and I think it's about that was where it really hits stride and where people start watching it or maybe where they rewatch it as well. But we couldn't see.
If you have a look at the chart of viewing figures across, you know, on the left hand side you've got season one, episode one, on the right hand one, you've got the last one in season eight or nine, whenever the last one was, And you have all the viewing figures as a line, sort of a line going up and down across across those two points. You can't see where the seasons begin and end. You know, they may make them as seasons, but people don't watch them as seasons,
so it's much more like a podcast than a radio series. Right, So you might think a radio series has got a season, and only in the UK the BBC have like, okay, this will be six or maybe ten episodes of a radio series. Then they'll be a hiatus and then they'll come back, whereas podcasts you just think are always going to continue, right you just it's a long stream of content. It's like a soap opera rather
than a mini series, and that's how people watch the content. And so I don't know how long it will be, but it seems inevitable based on data we have that when people start making more content for Netflix, they're going to move more and more to this sort of soap world where they're always making them like a churn, like even the expensive ones. From the way people watch them, it makes sense to just drop a new episode every two weeks forever. Then it does to quickly go and make ten of them. I
mean, the economics of the production costs might be different. You might want to film all in one location, but the production costs are not a big concern if you get a Netflix hit. So maybe we're going to start seeing seasons of indefinite lengthy break breaking down like how long episodes are, Like I've just been watching them. There's some brilliant comedians called Auntie Donna, Australian comedians. They've got a Netflix series it's just come out, which is incredible.
But they some of their episodes are like seventeen minutes long, and it's great because every second is great, but they don't have to stretch it to twenty two thirty minutes whatever it would have to be for TV. So, you know, So with with all this information, are you seeing because I've been reading a lot that Netflix, you know, is infamous for just canceling shows. Um, some of the people's favorite shows just get canceled. And they're
like, you know what's grew you. We don't care because we're gonna get We're gonna put out twenty new shows this month. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And they generally don't go past three four seasons, you know, five. I mean, I think frank Grace and Frankie is one of the longest running shows on Netflix. Oranges a New Black got canceled ended eventually and they don't seem to care about letting things go on and on and on and on, because they
just rather just starts filthing from scratch. And I think it's because mostly because of the talent costs and and thing it's going to say, I don't I have no inside track to Netflix, and the data doesn't give me all of
what I'm saying here. So some of this is filling in the gaps or my opinions, sure, but I would say that the cancelation for most of these things comes down to exactly what you'd expect, which is number one cost and number two talent, which is a related to cost because they are they asking for more money each season, and crucially, do they want still want
to do it? And obviously Netflix are going to cancel shows that they don't think are performing, but they could do with more content almost always, And if you think about it, what they actually really want. They obviously want content that everybody watches that's amazing, that would be great, But one of the other things that's actually really important for their business model is content that's important
to some people, like really important. So let's say that hypothetically, you and I both have a Netflix account and let's say that you watch loads of different TV shows every every month, you watch thirty different shows. If I watch just two shows every month, but both of us pay the same fee, that those two shows are that I watch are more valuable to Netflix because if they canceled those two, or maybe even just one of them, maybe
I would leave. But if they canceled ten of the thirty that you watch, you've probably be watched the other twenty and maybe some other ones. So the model that they're having to use here is not just not just the number of people watching it, but it's how valuable they are to that particular audiences. Yeah, exactly, So that's what I mean. It's a whole different
business model. Whereas on television you're saying how many people are watching it and what demographic are they in, Like, that's that's what's driving content on television, um, and what's driving content on Netflix is different, completely different. And so what I have to ask the question, what does the lowly independent filmmaker? How did their stats work? I mean, obviously you said that
they're mostly skewed towards the big movies or big stars. I mean I saw an interview or an article discussing why Adam Sandler is one of the biggest stars on Netflix and that's and like people like, why does he keep making these movies? Why why does Netflix keep giving him money? Why? I mean, like, I'm personally a fan of Adams, so I love his stuff. Um, not everything, but most of his stuff. And the thing that they said was in the article was was really interesting and it made a
whole lot of sense. Was the reason why Adam Sandler is is given these kind of movies and these kind of deals, Because when you're scanning through an spot platform, there's just so much content that when you see something familiar, when you see an Adam Sandler movie, you know what you're going to get, Like there's there's no mystery about Like, I think he just in this Halloween. They just released Hawley something or other Halloween, Hawley Halloween or something
like that, which was a huge, huge hit. They're going to do a sequel to it because so many people watched it and it's the same you know, it's the same stuff Adam Sandler has been doing since Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. But because of people's comfortability with they know what they're going to get. People watch and watch and watch. We see a lot of that.
I mean, there's a lot of brands that do very well in a brand, Adam Sandler being a brand hit that does very well on Netflix, and I think that some of it is down to is absolutely what you're saying. I think with him, there's also not that much competition. You know, there aren't many substitutes. What's the Adam Sandlers substitute. Well, Kevin James is in most of Adam Sandler's films, so is David Spade. There
isn't a lot of competition. And I think that there's something you touched on there which is incredibly important, which is the way that people invest in the time they're spending watching stuff on squad is a lot more about relax time and not making a decision and stuff like that. And I think that speaks to why Adam Sandler's popular, but also why it's the same film as people are watching, and they're watching the same TV shows again and again rather than watching
new ones. And I think that actually doesn't help independent filmmakers because we're making stuff that doesn't have famous people, doesn't have existing brands, and more often than not, is trying to challenge something. I'm not suggesting we're all trying to pass on a message or communicating, but it's not the same. It's not the kind of soccer and stuff you might get from Transformers or a Disney movie or Adam Sandler, where you're like, Okay, I'm just going to
go with the flow. Most independent filmmakers are making something a bit spikier than that, and I think that doesn't suit most of the way people watch Netflix. And so I think when your question about what is assuming that Netflix is what we've learned so far from Netflix, it applies to the other platforms and continues broadly in the future, I'd say that it's not great for selling independent content because first of all, what these platforms like Netflix want is the MCU.
They want the Marvel Cinematic Universe because the people will watch it. They also can do one deal and get loads of it, and that will get most their views. They don't want to do individual deals. The audience aren't watching that content the other the independent content, so there's not much of a drive for that, and so I think that's not great. However, what I would say is in the same way right now, I wouldn't invest in
any of the companies that own theaters. I would still invest in the concept of theater going because I think people go on dates, they see their mates. It's a cheap for it's it's the cheapest, most social form of going out with the lowest effort. And I think that what's happening right now, I mean I just happened. I was reading a few days ago that Netflix have spent two billion pounds in the UK alone on content this year on production.
So independent filmmakers might have many more roots to being employed than they would have had previously, as in if their previous roots were big movies or TV shows, they now have a whole new realm they could compete in. I don't know how, I don't know how fair that system is. I don't know, but certainly there's got to be more and more entry level people because there's just more concurrent, more content being made complently. Oh yeah, here
in me here in New Mexico, they're they're expanding. Netflix just got approval from the state to expand their studios. They're building out a massive studio complex in that's going to hire people, it's going to high create of course below the line, and so as filmmakers like that's and also there are some interesting things Netflix is. It's very easy to think of them as a studio and they're actually fundamentally not. They are a technology company and they bring a lot
of different values into what they're doing. I mean, I would argue that they are one of the most forefront of HR in the film industry human resources, like they actually are able normally when you if you work on if you're below the line crew member, and you work on six different independent productions in a year, you can expect to have six different relationships and no concurrent, no sort of handover really beyond a mild relationship and the sense there's something bad
happens, you just try your luck again and the next one. Whereas here, because there's a continuity of people being the higher end, you know, Netflix care whether there's a complaint about somebody, and this is great for things like sexual harassment or unfair treatment or discrimination. I'm not saying they're going to solve everything, but there is a continuity there. I mean some of the
studios have tried that. Warner have been doing that for a bit, and Disney to some degree, but no one to the extent Netflix are doing this, so they are doing some things very differently, and as individuals it might be a good thing. As people buying and selling content the way we've used to doing it, I just can't see it being better than it was because it's also an oligopoly, you know. I don't I'm not suggesting they're acting in any way to blisters, but when you have five or six possible maybe
even let's say three or four, actually no, hold them. So Apple aren't buying existing content. So let's say that it's Amazon and Netflix. Let's say that they're the only two that could you could sell your content too in any big way. That's not going to engender you fair prices. And you're doing a single deal in perpetunity for the world. Maybe maybe, And so that's that's a simpler to sale. If you get a good price, then that's that's amazing. But will you get a good price? And I also
think there's some worrying practices. I don't think any of them are illegal, but I don't like them. It's all I can say. So for example, I was talking to a lawyer recently who's sort of looked over a lot of deals to one of the big streamers. I won't say which one, And this lawyer said, look, one of the problems is that part of the terms and conditions of the deal between the distributor and the platform is that the distributor is not allowed to tell the filmmakers how their film is performing.
There has to be some sense of aggregation of the numbers. And you know, yeah, so it's horrible that. Not only is that horrible in a human sense, that is also terrible for that deal, and it also and stifles long term growth, like how can you have a sustainable career on as you get feedback and your feedback can't be We did a deal, but I can't tell you anymore. And that brings us full circle back to the Vietly click stream because that's what we're trying to get a sliver of light in a
dark room. Like it's not like we can illuminate everything, but we're trying to understand these things that filmmakers need, this feedback loop that needs to happen with the audience. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Now do now our American ARTI this streaming a lot of international shows because I personally watched a bunch of international shows um recently because they've been popping up on my on my my feed, so I'm
like, oh, that looks interesting, Oh that looks interesting. And sometimes they'll they'll pitch me something. I'm like, yeah, no, no, thank you, I need yea. And it just depends. Like you know, I'll watch subtitled movies, but not normally because I want to relax when I'm watching movies unless I'm watching it for for cinematic purposes. But if I'm just chilling, I don't want to read. I just well, also, you don't want to be challenged. Like there are some movies that I would
in a heartbeat recommend to other people that I've only ever seen once. I might see again once in the future, but only to introduce it to someone else, or because you know some bizarres at second stongs. Yeah, there are bad movies that I will acknowledge that are bad. That I've seen The Meg twice. Right, it's you that's the wrong ratio. It is it is the wrong ratio. And you know what the Meg. You know, I watched The Meg as well, and it's just a it's a popcorn movie.
It's you know, it's there, it's the it's the reason why I just it's the reason why my wife and I just sat down and watched all four lethal weapons in a row because we watched the first one because I hadn't seen the first one forever, and I'm like, oh my god, that's so brilliant. Well we have to watch two, Oh, we have to watch three. Well, well let's just let's just go. Let's make it
the fall four. And in four days we watched for all four of them, and we're just like, what's next, Let's watch Tango in Cash, you know, like, like I haven't seen that in twenty years, so it's like, I'm going But it actually says exactly what you've been saying, is I'm doing that because I know that I'm comfortable. Those are comfortable viewing habits, and I'm like, oh, let me go revisit that again because I haven't seen that and forever I remember here and there, but I haven't
seen it. So that is the true response to being overwhelmed with content, because you know that there are so many movies been out there, and if you had to create a list, how would you find brilliant movies you hadn't seen. It would take you seconds. IMDb score, Meta score one the best screenplay, and there's loads of movies that you'd be like, Wow, I'm sure I heard that's amazing, I've not seen it. But that all takes a lot more effort and commitment than most people are willing to give.
And this is something that I think filmmakers, really independent filmakers really need to either embrace or realize you're not going to embrace it, and then find other roots. Both are valid. Like I'm not actually saying make popcorn movies. I'm just saying you can't make challenging movies and expect them to then survive in a mainstream environment called world, because that's not how people watch that content, right, It's just fundamentally and I think the growth of content, sorry,
the evolution of content, and the growth of platforms are massively interlinked. And the best example I can give you is outside of the film world, but is kind of makes a lot of sense, which is that the rise of Kindle the kindled eReader was a massive part of the success of fifty Shades of Gray, and fifty stades degree was a massive part of success of the Kindle because you could be on the train reading something, reading basically soft porn and
no one would know. And both of those two things sort of coincided at the same sort of time. And it's not that everyone reading stuff and Mkindle was porn, but it did mean that you could read private things. And
it's the same with the rise of sort of portable devices and podcasting. You know, these things are interlinked, right, And so what we're seeing, what we're starting to understand with s food is that people don't watch content in a curated way the way that they might when they go to a certain type of theater or they go to like you know, they could Draft House, or they or they watch or they buy a Blue Ray or the Criterion collection.
You know, they considered centiphile way. That's not what people are largely doing on these big platforms. They're sitting down watching stuff that's comfortable, that it's easy to understand, that won't challenge them, that they can pause when there's someone at the door, or they want a cup of coffee or something that is Adam Sandler through and through. No, there's no there's no question,
I mean. And the other thing is like you're saying movies that challenge you, you should also you can make movies that challenge you, but you've got to do it on a budget. If you you know, if you if you have any hopes of recouping that money, like you can't make it two or three million dollars. You know Indie film that five people want to watch, she's just irresponsible. So there's more, you know, the more it just makes sense. The more you spend them, more you've got to
recoup. But I and I totally agree with that. I think the other thing that I know you've been screaming at this at people for since way before Netwix, but it's even more the case now, which is you have to know your distribution route before you make it. I'm not saying do the deal, because I appreciate that it's very hard to walk into room and say, I haven't met, you don't know me, you don't know my movie,
and I haven't made it, but can I have a deal. I appreciate that as kind of pre sales and happened, but you can't hope that you're just going to throw it in with the with the sort of stream of content and including the streamers and it will get swept up and then it will rise to the surface. It just from the data I've seen here, that just
doesn't happen. That's just not the case. You can't write a book and expect it to be on the front page of Amazon or in the in the front of the bookshops, right, we know, and yet filmmakers still think if it's good enough, it will break through. And I do worry somewhat that the way the squad platforms are working now, through no fault of theirs, they're just chasing the subscribers in the bottom line is that it isn't It
doesn't reward films the way that the previous system would to some degree. You know, maybe we'll see fewer breakouts. Maybe it will be that the where you really break out is on a much smaller platform, like for example, film festivals, whether they're physical or online, or maybe it's niche sites like Shutter or something like that. I don't know why I don't have anything on that side, but that is nowhere near the volume that Netflix does or Netflix
Compartion appears. So there is we all know that there's huge amounts up in the air. Partly it was happening anyway, and then COVID accelerated and things like that, and it hasn't landed yet. But we don't yet know what this model will be for independent filmmakers. I am absolutely confident independent film will exist, because it's not It's never been supply and demand. It's always been supply right where can I find the demand? And that's been part of the
joy of like movies, they've not been made. Some of the best movies have been made because they want to be made rather than because I know. I know, I already have a deal in place, but things are going to get tougher until we figure out what they are. But if I have, it's never been easy. And you look at some you know, the crash of cinema tickets in the nineteen fifties, you look at the crash of DVD, and you look at the uncertainty of sward and all this stuff there.
We'll find a way, but just don't know what that is yet. And it's not the one. It's not the easy one that's in front of us, you know. And so you are asking earlier on about TV because we have we have data for movies for TV and for comedy specials, and for TV it's it's it's the same pattern in a different format. So what we saw with movies is that the most watched movies by a huge degree are
the big, famous ones. And when it comes to television, what we tend to find is that it is the big shows, but also it's the more familiar shows. So if you go on if you're in the US and you go on Netflix, there's content from many different countries you could choose to watch. But what do people watch. They watch it from their own country, you know, and generally yeah, yeah, exactly. And certainly if you look at the like the top shows, like the top fifty shows,
they're almost all produced in the US. And you have to even the top five hundred most watched shows not episodes shows on Netflix over this period, almost three quarters of them were US produced. The UK does very well, but that's largely down to the Great British Baking Show and things like things. David Adam, I would have to say, I've seen both. Well. I think it's so interesting is that, first of all, I was as proud as like, great, these these Brits are surviving and competing against that,
and I was like, oh, notes two shows. There's an example like what this means is though there's an interesting like thought process that goes on here. If you were being rational, you would say it would make more sense rather than trying to make three films or trying to make one film that competes in three areas. It's quite good, it's quite scary, it's got some
films. It makes more sense based on this data alone, to compress all of your resources and that includes time and money and passion and whatever into one thing. You know, do one thing incredibly well. And because of the power law and the sort of nature that if you go from being the second most the third most popular to the second most popular will mean so much more for you than going from fourth to fifth, from from fifth to fourth,
that it would argue it's better to make something that's extremely one thing. And you see this, I mean that we're recording this before Christmas, and you look at how many Hallmark Christmas shows there are. They're good or well made or enjoyable. I'm sure one or two are, but what they are is feel good Christmas like. They are absolutely that. There there's a formula and
again the comfortability factor for a specific demographic of people. That's why those films generally have a Mario Lopez or or a Dean Kane or a face that people feel comfortable with because they remember them from you know, they're just comfortable. They've watched their films or watched their TV shows over the years, and they'll watch it because it's like, oh, you know what, I want to feel good. I want to feel good Christmas. Ee, and oh great,
this is a new movie. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And there you go, and all of us like I knew that. I know that Mario Lopez Christmas movie exploded on Hallmark apparently because people love Mario Lopez because you know it's later. But and here's here's this thought that we I haven't heard expressed very much.
I'm sure it's not a brand new thought. But in the last ten years of being an independent filmmaker and working with independent filmmakers and chatting to them, I've heard people talk about, oh my god, do we have to hire people actors who've got a bigger social media following or whatever people A people have often complained, do they have to way up talent and appropriness for the
role on the one and fame on the other. What I haven't heard many people talk about, but I would argue is perhaps the battle that we're going for in the next five years is in familiarity, not fame, but how comfortable are people with that person. So it's like, you know, one of the reasons that George Bush got in over Goore is that people were happy to have a drink with George Bush. It wasn't about politics to some for
some people. And I know this because I know some people that vote for him who actually I think their politics are slightly strange, and they were like, yeah, I just don't like algor I'm going to have a drink with Bush. And so when you think about actors, it's not so much their fame, although obviously that's not a bad thing, and it's not so much
their talent. Although do you feel comfortable do you think your audience would go yeah, okay without thinking about it, you know, And that's why you look at actors like, I mean, almost every one of Adam Sanders movies as a comedy, to the point to which people have been watching uncut gems and been appalled, whereas there are other actors who you just don't know what their movie is going to be because they play such a wide spectrum of ca
Yeah. Yeah, Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, Like he'll play everything. You know, He's definitely that Adams. Yeah, it's his brand, but that's fine. But you also feel comfortable within Tom Hanks, or with Meryl Street. Mill Street plays everything. She's going to be in a musical this month on Netflix, but yet you know she she also was on HBO Max doing another film with Steven Starderberg, and you know she she does everything, but that's her brain, and you feel comfortable. I studied this a while
ago. I studied on my blog like how broad the act the roles the actors had played across genres, and I found Adam Sandler was the most siloed. Most of his films have been in one genre. And the actor I only looked at sort of a couple of hundred really big actors, but the actor I saw that who had the broadest as in like, who had the least siloed in one genre was Ron Perlman. Yeah, you know, and you take there's no one genre that accounts for more than a third of the
roles he's done. So he's done some comedy, but he hasn't done mostly comedy. He's done some kids stuff, he's done some horror, he's done
some fantasy. And so Ron Perlman as an example here, who I think is a terrific actor and seems like a good bloke, he is a perhaps a metric slightly less attractive to hire because he doesn't have that whatever we're going to call it, comfortability effect, whereas someone like Adam Sandler, who I wouldn't obviously Ron Perlman take on Ron Perlman take on some certain drama roles over Adam Sander, but Adam Sander would be a more comfortable watch for more people.
So I don't know what we'll do with that. It's it's it's very interesting the way this whole, this whole thing is. But I'm really I'm really happy that you're doing what you've done um with with vo D clickstream H and I'm I'm just impressed, like I always am with everything you do. Man, You're insane for what you do, and I know that you're going to be digging through that data and continuing the league grow and build out more
of a data. Yeah, you just started to go through that, and that's a good It's it's not exactly what's going on, but man, it's it's more than we had before. And it's definitely a direction to aim at. It might not be pinpoint, but man, it's better than you know, like, hey, I'm gonna go throw a football into a stadium, I have no idea where it's gonna Now, at least you'll get it on the field, and maybe you could even get it within a few yards,
you know, maybe, And that's the goal. And also, you know, filmmakers should use all of these data points and all of these things they hear and then they know themselves and they talk, they hear on your podcast interviews. All of these are things you need to weigh up yourself and weigh them against everything else. No one person or one system can tell you what to do. And I'm just glad that we have at least one set of
signals about SPOT that doesn't come from the PR Department platform. Well, and I appreciate you are fighting the good fights are and getting this information to the filmmakers. Where where can people go and get this infilm? So it's at via d clickstream dot com. It's entirely free. You if you want to read more than the beginning of the articles, you need to sign up,
but it's free. But that's the reason we put that barrier in is that we have got forums that anyone can join, and we wanted to make sure that there was there was some effort you had to put in, and that effort is signing up and accepting your email just and what that means is that we have forums where people can post suggestions because we're still working out what to do with all of this data, you know, some of it. We have plenty of ideas and we're churning away at them, but then there's some
deeper things that we don't know what to look at. Yeah, and the best suggestions for the research I've done over the years have come from audiences. Like it. If I was to think of the sort of most exciting things I've studied, they almost all of them come from audience suggestions. So that's what we're looking to have is like, what have you always wanted to nerve
about squad? I can't give you an immediate answer, and I might not be able to answer at all, but maybe probably I'm the best shot most people have, and I'd be delighted to follow those threads and suggestions that we've had from people. Well, man, I appreciate everything you do, Stephen. Thank you so much. We have to we have to come back on the show and talk about our twelve unconventionable Christmas movies and do another episode next
year, but I appreciate everything you do. Brother, thanks again for coming on and sharing very valuable knowledge with the Tribe. And so thanks again thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to be here. I want to thank Stephen for coming on this show and dropping the knowledge data bombs on the
Tribe today. Thank you so much, Stephen. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to check out the free service vod clickstream, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv for it Slash two eighty seven, Thank you so much for listening to guys. As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.