Shyama is not the first film to be made available for free online. However, other filmmakers who have gone down this route have been labelled as crazy or desperate, rather than brave and wise. This is why we think we should explain the economics behind the Shyama model.

The underlying principle of the Shyama model is ubiquity: anyone who wants to watch the film can do so whenever they want, in whatever format they want and at whatever price they want, including for free. This is the opposite of the underlying principle of the traditional, copyright-based distribution model, which is scarcity.

Free economics

In his book Free: the future of a radical price, Chris Anderson defined four Free-economics models:

- Free 1: Direct cross-subsidies [The producer offers two products, one which is free, the other which is paid. The consumer can get the free product but is tempted to buy the paid product. Eg, buy one get one free offers]

- Free 2: The three-party market [The producer offers its products to the consumer for free, the advertiser pays the producer for advertising space, some consumers pay the advertiser for the paid products they have advertised, eg, Google]

- Free 3: Freemium [Many consumers can get the basic product of the producer for free while some consumers pay for the premium product of the producer, eg, free e-mail but consumers have to pay for spam filters, more space, etc]

- Free 4: Non-monetary markets [Consumers can obtain information, products, etc for free while the producer gains attention and reputation, eg Wikipedia, blogs, etc]

The context

Shyama’s core audience is the Bengali diaspora - several million people widely dispersed all over the world, mainly connected to the internet and generally quite affluent. The target audience is anyone interested in Indian dance, culture, etc., ie, a low percentage of people all over the world. Not everyone in the target audience has an internet connection but they are probably well-educated and affluent.

The film is now available as a DVD ($14.95 from amazon.com and $9.95 from indieflix.com in the US) and as a video-on-demand rental (30-day rental for $4.95 worldwide in high definition from indieflix.com, 1-day rental for $1.99 in standard definition in the US from amazon.com ). It should, in due course, be available from other online platforms such as Hulu, iTunes and theauteurs.com.

Revenues from selling the soundtrack album on online music stores are smaller per track.  The English script of Shyama is available as a book/e-book from amazon.com in the US. The translations of the script in other languages will be published in the same way. Inner Eye gets a share of these revenues after deducting costs.

Even so, as you can see, it would require a very high volume of sales for the film to cover the costs of making a film like Shyama with a large, professional cast. Under the traditional film distribution model, a lot of expensive advertising would be needed for our film to achieve such a high volume since the audience is so small and widely scattered. So, overall, making and distributing the film traditionally would not have been commercially viable.

The strategy

The film's release strategy is to have a free, online version as well as the paid DVD and VoD versions, which are better quality and more convenient [Free 3]. House parties/screenings can be organised easily using the shyama.bravenewtheaters.com platform [Free 1] and it may be worth showing the film in cinemas digitally once there is wider interest in it in specific places where the interest is concentrated [Free 1]. Depending on their availability, Kaberi and Obhi are happy to talk (for free) about Shyama in live Q&A sessions straight after house parties/screenings via Skype or iChat video chats [Free 4].

All versions of the film are open to personal copying using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence. This way, anyone who likes the film and knows a friend who might also like it could make a copy for them. People making personal copies or doing peer-to-peer filesharing of the film are helping us to distribute the film to those who would like to see it.

Although Kaberi is an international-class, professional Indian dancer, she could only expect limited performance fees and occasional performances as she is now based in Europe, where she not well-known. Even so, her fee per appearance is equivalent to the royalties on the sales of several tens of DVDs. The more widely the film is seen, the more likely it is that Kaberi is asked to perform and her performance fees would increase. [Free 1]

PayPal donations are always welcome [Free 3]. The experience of US filmmaker Nina Paley with her animated feature Sita Sings the Blues has been that people are happy to reward artists whose work they appreciate, whether by buying the normal or artist endorsed editions of the DVD or by making donations.

In the same way that Susan Buice and Arin Crumley put together a podcast series about their film Four Eyed Monsters, we are making a free podcast series about the film and its author [Free 4]. We are developing free/paid iPhone/iPad applications which will bring together the book, album, series and film [Free 3].

Although we didn't actively seek sponsorship for Shyama, we have included two sponsorship logos from our partners Movieset and Forbidden Technologies plc at the start of the film. This could lead to more lucrative sponsorship in future projects [Free 2], though without having more than two logos, which appear at the start of the film for 5 seconds each just like production logos.

The sponsors would need to want to reach the same target audience as the film, which would eventually reach all of the target audience due to its free availability and its openness to personal copying. Of course, the sponsors would need to have a global or at least international profile to take advantage of the global distribution of the film. There would be no point in them advertising to a territory where their product or service is not available.

Similarly, once the film becomes widely known, acquisitions editors for TV stations worldwide would have heard of it and may want to take the TV rights for it, if it fits the audience profile of their TV station [Free 3]. All versions of the film would include the sponsorship logos, which would continue to promote the advertisers in perpetuity.

The translated versions of the film we already have mean it can be watched by 1.23 billion people in their native language. Even if only 0.1% of people are interested in the film, that's still quite a large audience.

Between all of these platforms and sources of revenue, and if we had a regular turnaround of 2-3 digital feature films per year, having invested in the equipment/software, it should be fairly easy to recover the production, distribution and marketing costs, finance subsequent productions and secure more frequent performances/higher performance fees for Kaberi.

Evidently, the copyright-based business model relies on keeping tight control of who watches the film. It's perhaps still appropriate for highly commercial films but it's rarely relevant for niche films such as ours. This type of film struggles to achieve any visibility at all.

We should mention that, for our film, the global release on all platforms is only possible because all the copyright is vested in the film (Tagore's copyright expired in 2001 and the entire soundtrack was performed by the cast).

A word from Tagore

Would Tagore have approved of the Shyama model? Perhaps one of his most famous poems gives us an idea:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up

into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

From the English Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (1912), the main work for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Please e-mail us if you think this explanation could be improved.