We were lucky to catch up with Alix Jean-Francois recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alix, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

All projects have meaning, I’m not sure if any are the most meaningful. Each one helps you learn and grow. My first project, “Love’s Sweet Thing 2004” had meaning as a stepping stone to expanding and learning about independent films and film festivals. The Outlawz series allowed me to learn and apply my growing knowledge of the important details of filmmaking, from audio, to lighting and editing. My ongoing project, INdie Channel allows my projects to have reach and stream on my own platform to be seen.

At present, I am working on a science animation. This was a project I began in 2013 to teach my daughter about science and physics using characters that looked like her. The technology was not available at the time to allow private individuals to create animations efficiently at the level of quality I was looking for.

Alix, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started out in the industry not because I wanted to be famous, it was because I was in need of money. At the time, you could buy a news paper, look in the want ads and find background work. Average pay for non-union was $50-75 per day, some projects even more.
I grew tired and restless of walking back and forth in major motion picture backgrounds. A friend and fellow actor, John Trapani, suggested I try Black Box theater. From there, it was a natural progression from writing one act plays to independent films.
The finished film products lead me to film festivals. Conflicting views with my film partners lead to a long hiatus, until COVID when I started producing short films to keep busy. This lead to an award winning streak and my next step was to create a platform to stream my films.
Everyone suggested Youtube, but I got tired of my films being streamed and Youtube profiting off my work with ads and commercials and our company getting very little return. I decided to launch my own Streaming platform through TVSTARTUP, an OTT hosting platform.
Of course it was near impossible to negotiate with independent filmmakers to stream their content. Indie filmmakers and film festivals are interested in immediate compensation, they are not interested in networking and building together to create a greater shared revenue. Which is understandable, but two years later I have built a revenue generating platform whose revenue goes to licensing films from the current main stream platforms and compensating our core group of actors.
In the end, the main goal of this journey was to generate some income and compensate the actors, technicians, and the filmmakers I collaborated with all these years. We see ourselves as more of a theater company than a films studio.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn was the idea of being rescued. There were no significant grants out there for the type of work I do. There are no business loans out there for a company with no starting assets, despite all the ads and solicitation for these kinds of loans. It is a long journey, even those who say they are with you, are only there but so long until they see the money just isn’t coming yet. Who can blame them? You can’t continue being a starving artist when you have a family and mouths to feed.
My road is paved in pain and suffering, failure after failure and determination.
I would not have gotten to where I am, if I didn’t have an education, which afforded me a job and a steady paycheck I could use as seed money. I couldn’t have gotten here without the support both emotionally and financially from my now wife.
Success is not a dream, but a reality grounded in step by step choices and determination. What one person may call success, another person may call struggle. There are a lot of big name actors who you would believe are set for life, but still work because they have to. There are a lot of artists showing off jewelry houses and cars, come to find out those items are property of their studios.
There is no institution, or hero you can call on outside of yourself. People can be jealous of what you have, but are never jealous of the work you had to do to get what you have.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Though I can’t speak on social media, My audience is being built by conventional means. My channel is a Roku platform. The only way to find Roku fire stick users was through buying ads on Roku Ad Manager. A good deal of budget for film and TV needs to be set aside for advertising, then word of mouth hopefully kicks in as well. With a small budget, my ad was able to reach 79K viewers within one month.
Once I built an audience, I was able to contact and sign an agreement with a DSP ad agency. This helps generate income for licensing, advertising and residuals. The next step is bringing INdie to Amazon Firestick to reach a wider audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Beyonimation.org
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/Khem.Benu/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alix-jean-francois-6a546a8/

Image Credits

Sijo Saabir Quwi Muhammad, Ralph Carter, Taimak Guarriello, Avery Perez (Grandson)