Jonathan Ng, an animation filmmaker who has been showing his work on Film Annex since May, 2012, visited our studio here in Manhattan. The Toronto-based filmmaker's work consists mostly of handdrawn animations, but he also has experience creating 3D work for feature films (The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Mummy 3), commercials, and TV Shows.
Prior to his visit to our studio, Jonathan showcased his latest animated film, Requiem for Romance, which premiered at Cannes, at the Athens Animation Film Festival located near the Hudson River just 2 hours away from New York City. The 7-minute hand-drawn digital animation won the Audience Award and added one more accolade to Jonathan's impressive list.
Jonathan Ng is a unique artist and filmmaker, because, in addition to creating powerful and beautiful animations, he is in control of his films' promotion and distribution. During our interview, Jonathan talked about how his engagement in social media increased substantially after he joined Film Annex. When you look at Jonathan's Film Annex profile, you will see not just his films, but also his original drawings and blogs that shed light into his working process. "When I joined Film Annex and you guys were explaining how sharing across these social platforms leads to making more revenues for ourselves, that pushed me over the edge to start maintaining a Twitter account," said Ng about his newly found involvement in social media.
When asked about how he monetizes his content, Jonathan replied, "I wasn't really doing anything about some of the films I uploaded on Film Annex, because sending films to different festivals can be a lot of work. So it seemed like a very convenient thing to put this content online and have an additional way to bring in revenue to help me produce the next project."
Promising projects await Jonathan as he continues his journey in filmmaking. It sounds like Film Annex and online film distribution in general became an unreplacable piece in Jonathan's puzzle when it comes to making his work seen and shared.
During the first week of September, we featured Jonathan's Web TV on our homepage (read the success story here), and his revenues rose up to approximately $10,000 in 7 days. Jonathan is planning to invest this money into the pre-production budget of his next project, which is a feature-length film.
Read this piece on our corporate blog.
