Love Notes to Newton is Going Away (or How Vimeo Dropped the Ball)
One of the bargains I struck when pitching Love Notes to Newton to potential interview subjects was that all the proceeds from the film would go to charity.
Specifically, Be the Match (now called NMDP) which you can learn about here.
Crowdfunding took care of most of the cost of the film (about $8000 Canadian dollars), and when it went over-budget I put in $2000 of my own money (later costs of advertising and promoting the film sort of dropped off my radar).
Documentaries rarely make back what they spend, most filmmakers try to break even, which can be hard for a niche indie film with no distributor. But Love Notes to Newton did well enough on Vimeo's pay-to-buy service, Vimeo On Demand:
At the time, $5518.72 translated to about $8000 Canadian. Pretty good!
It may have been a mistake from a business standpoint, but I donated the lion's share of the proceeds to Be The Match, reserving a small amount for promotion. No matter, I'm glad we did it, and I'd do it again (but smarter).
But...
There won't be a next time for Vimeo On Demand, because they've announced they are shuttering their On Demand service on November 20th, 2026. One of the most powerful tools in an indie filmmaker's toolkit is going away: the power of self-distribution.
Of course, you could make a living on YouTube as many great creators do, or you could use Vimeo's OTT service to create your own Netflix (and add to the crushing number of subscriptions people pay for every month). You could also sell video files on your website using Woo Commerce or Shopify. Maybe you could use Claude Ai to make your own alternative, but none of these tools are as elegant and streamlined as Vimeo On Demand.
For Love Notes to Newton, we used their mailing list tools, their great international pricing tools, and we even used the built-in tool to generate redemption codes for the crowdfunders and mailed/emailed them out once the film was done. It was a beautiful, powerful system and I haven't been able to find anything so elegant.
So what happened, Vimeo? A few years ago they were acquired by a venture capital firm called Bending Spoons, and while I have nothing against them personally, VCs typically spell the end of useful, inexpensive and creative tools and services, and the introduction of subscriptions, fees, and the atrophying of anything that's not a big cash-cow. Vimeo pivoted to providing video hosting and review services for companies, and tried to delete beloved services such as Vimeo Staff Picks, the Vimeo App for AppleTV, and of course Vimeo On Demand (it has since brought back Staff Picks and the app, but who can trust them anymore?)
What was a dynamic and exciting new way to share videos has become... just another company trying to extract value from its users. I'd love to be proved wrong about this, but there it is.
There are other ways of making money from films. Some great organizations like Seed and Spark can help front-load the fundraising and get your film off the ground. But what about self-distribution?
Not to discount the value of having a real distributor such as a broadcaster like CBC on-board to get your film out there, but some films do really well in a small niche to a dedicated group of people. In this situation having the overhead of a distributor means that the filmmaker never sees a return, meager as it will be, on their investment.
Love Notes to Newton is not really going away. A couple of years ago I felt it had had its run on Vimeo On Demand, and I put it on YouTube for everyone. But bidding adieu to Vimeo On Demand is sad.
