[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: With your film Evidence, when did piracy come into play?
Ryan McCoy, Filmmaker: The first territory that the sales agent had landed for me was the UK territory.
It came out on DVD in the UK, I think March 12th of 2012.
Within a few days it had already been pirated online and then new sites were popping up daily.
Because UK is an English-speaking territory, it was the movie’s in English and boom! There it is.
It completely blew up the film in like a good and bad way.
Bad way…I’ve never made a dollar from Evidence.
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The good way is that it became (this was pre-social media) very viral on the internet.
On IMDb it cranked up to like 100 or 200 for a nobody with no record that’s very difficult to do.
Because of some good reviews that we got through some horror sites and it garnered the attention of the studios.
I had Paramount and Universal and all these people kind of calling me at home and wanting to screen it.
That’s how it became pirated so quickly it came out on DVD in the UK and then days after was already ripped and uploaded online.
That was a battle. That was a fight.
At one point a friend of mine was working with this anti-piracy company.
I became a client of theirs.
I saw all the numbers of IP addresses.
I saw all the data.
I was like wow.
Even to this day the film has a huge following of people.
Just on my channel alone it’s getting thousands of views a month and comments every week.
It has an audience.
People have enjoyed it.
But it was a big fumble on my end, you know what I mean?
Again I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t have anybody else to really guide me or rely on…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Ryan McCoy was born and raised in Everett, Washington. Growing up, he made movies with his childhood friends. After high school, he attended the Art Institute of Seattle, where he studied film and video production. While still attending school, Ryan began pre-production for his first film, “black.” He met his director, Claude Sandeaux, while in school and asked him to direct. Three years later, Ryan has now moved to Los Angeles, where he continues to pursue filmmaking. His first film, “Black,” is now in the process of finding distribution.
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