Around the Block: Doug Block's Doc Blog

This Week on The D-Word - Crowdfunding with Jennifer Fox and Katherine Nolfi

Earlier this year, when a broadcast pre-sale fell through at the last moment, acclaimed filmmaker Jennifer Fox suddenly needed to raise $50,000 for her newest documentary feature, MY REINCARNATION.  She and her team, led by associate producer Katherine Nolfi, turned to Kickstarter and ended up raising $150,456, more than any other completed film in the history of the crowdfunding platform.

Starting today on The D-Word, Jennifer and Katherine will talk about some hard-earned lessons they learned from their campaign, as well as share fundraising insights and tips, in general, in a special 5-day topic on Crowdfunding.  The discussion is already underway, feel free to leap right in.

The story behind their extraordinary Kickstarter campaign makes for essential reading, so you may want to check it out in advance of the online conference.

MY REINCARNATION opens in U.S. theaters this Friday, October 28.  For more information about the film and the filmmakers, and for more background on their extraordinary Kickstarter campaign, go to: www.myreincarnationfilm.com.

Producing 201 - Werner Herzog: "Be the hornet that stings"

 Filmmaker Marcelo de Oliverira has been posting at length about his experiences at the Werner Herzog Rogue Film School on the invaluable Scottish Doc Institute blog, and it makes for great reading.  Here are some of my favorite takeaways:

Sound is critical: "He continued over the course of the morning to delve into the importance of a director paying attention to sound, how important collecting wild tracks is and how important it is to build up a catalogue of sounds."

Documentaries are feature films in disguise: Says Herzog: 'We should not be the fly on the wall. We should be the hornet that stings. Seize the opportunity to be a filmmaker. You are not a slave to be fact based. We are filmmakers. We shape the film. We are not slaves to the material. We are directors. Go absolutely and completely wild.’

Dismiss pre-conceived ideas in a documentary: "Werner underlined that he does not believe in writing scripts for documentaries.’ This only creates dead films as seen on TV’, he said."

Herzog on being a character in his own films: 'The joy of storytelling is throwing yourself in it.  It is healthy to look at yourself with a sense of irony. Think the unthinkable, go anywhere when making a film.’

Producing 201 - Producing is About Agreement

I never went to film school, so when I started making my first film (The Heck With Hollywood!) I kind of made things up as I went along.  It's called learning by trial and error, while doing everything possible to avoid the error part.

It soon became apparent that much of producing boils down to a few simple things.  Treat others with respect.  Do your homework.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.  Eat your vegetables.

Less obviously, I also found producing is about making agreements.  In my list of biggest producing mistakes, I wrote about the importance of getting signed releases.  But I'm talking way beyond just getting signatures on paper. 

It goes without saying that you believe your film is worthy of funding, worthy of working on and worthy of getting out into the world in the widest possible way.  Producing is getting the world to agree with you.

Producing is negotiating, persuading, coddling, arguing, sweet-talking and convincing.  All to get people to agree that your film is worth supporting, working on (even for a lesser fee), telling their friends about, spending their hard-earned money to see in a theater. 

Producing is doing all the work you wish you had the money to pay a lawyer to do for you.  Or a publicist.  Or an assistant.  Or another producer - a real producer.

If I want you to do something for me, I sure as hell better be thinking about what I, or my film, can be doing for you.  Or for the world. 

And finding a way we can come to agreement about it.

Producing 201 – The Five Biggest Mistakes a Producer Can Make (#5)

The last on my list of big-time mistakes is geared to documentary filmmakers.  I'll just say, going on a shoot without these is simply a recipe for disaster...

Mistake #5 - Not bringing release forms.  Or bringing them and not getting them signed.

The first part is simple and should be drilled into your brain.  When you pack for a shoot, always take a bunch of release forms with you. 

The second part is pretty simple, too, though inexperienced filmmakers often have a hard time with it.  Make sure your subjects sign the releases before you leave. 

I always have my subjects sign after the first shoot, just as I'm packing up to leave.  (Never before I shoot - I don't want to make them any more self-conscious than they already feel.)  I try to make it sound as matter-of-fact as possible.  "Oh, sorry, I gotta get your autograph on this or we can't show it anywhere."  I've never had anyone refuse me, either.  Not even my immediate family.

The only time I've ever had a problem was when I didn't bring them.  It can become a huge pain getting their signature later.  They've had time to think about the footage that you shot with them, and fret about how awful they must have come across.  They're more likely to want to know how you're going to use the footage in the film.  Or maybe even say they want to see the footage before signing.

So pack those suckers, and don't forget to get them signed before you leave.

Producing 201 – The Five Biggest Mistakes a Producer Can Make (#4)

This mistake costs friendships.  It certainly cost me one, so lesson learned the hard way.

Mistake #4:  Not getting clear, signed agreements with your key partners.

This is especially important for producing partnerships on low-budget films.  And even more important if you're producing with a friend. 

People bring different assumptions and expectations to a film.  They have different ideas about when deferrals should be paid, when a film is in profit, what credits they're owed.  So it all needs to be spelled out in advance in a very clear-cut way that anticipates all that can possibly go wrong.

What happens if one partner leaves the production early?  Or if one winds up doing the lion's share of the work?  How might that impact credit and profit share?  In what order does personal money loaned or deferred to the production get reimbursed?  What happens if an investor comes aboard?  Who gets paid back first?  Who owns the film?

Written agreements are important across the board.  But the mistake so many people make when producing with friends is thinking that a written agreement somehow shows a lack of faith or trust in the friendship.  I'm not saying this agreement needs to be run by lawyers, though it's probably a good idea.  But if you truly value the friendship, you'll spell things out clearly in black and white.  Then type it up, print it out and sign it. 

Producing 201 - Sage Advice From Marjan Safinia

I'm briefly interrupting my list of five biggest producing mistakes to post a short interview with my friend, The D-Word co-host and producer extraordinaire Marjan Safinia.  Marj packs more good doc filmmaking advice into 4 minutes than I previously thought humanly possible.

A mini-master class and great stuff!

 

 

Producing 201 – The Five Biggest Mistakes a Producer Can Make (#3)

If you ask commissioning editors, grants panelists and other lucky blokes who get to sift through countless funding proposals for the most common mistake they come across, this one would probably top them all:

 

Not having a high enough budget. 

 

 Producers, particularly first-time ones, consistently undermine themselves by asking for too little money.  And usually far too little. 

 

Why?  Because they don't know what typical documentaries actually cost.  They underestimate the time involved and tend to vastly underpay themselves.  And because a high budget feels so scary to them, they assume it will surely scare off the funders.

 

In fact, the reverse is true.  Nothing sends funders scurrying away faster than producers who under-budget.  They see it as a sign that they have no experience and haven't done their homework.  They look at a line item like $30,000 (or less!) for a director/producer and wonder how this person will live for a couple of years (yes, they know how long films take) on that little pay.  They worry that the film will never get finished.  And that, even if it does, it'll be crap.

 

Drawing up a fair and accurate budget can be a huge psychological barrier to leap across.  But there are plenty of books and online resources to reference.  And, if you can afford it, I highly recommend attending a pitching forum like the one at Hot Docs as an observer.  Along with seeing a few dozen pitches by experienced producers, you get a booklet with a detailed synopsis and budget for each project.  You'll see that it's not uncommon for documentary features with international broadcast ambitions to have budgets that range from $500,000 to $800,000.  You'll come away with a far better grasp of the documentary marketplace. 

 

And maybe, just maybe, you'll stop undervaluing the contribution you're making to the world with your film.

Producing 201 – The Five Biggest Mistakes a Producer Can Make (#2)

Thanks to the affordability of digital camcorders, along with the sad fact that it often takes years for documentary filmmakers to scrape together their funding and shoot their stories, most end up accumulating hundreds of hours of footage along the way.  Which means you're inevitably in for a very long edit period. 

Which all-too-often leads to mistake #2: Hiring your editor before you've raised enough money to pay him or her through the entire edit.

Let's say you've been relatively economical and shot only 150 hours.  For argument sake, let's also say that the editor is screening it herself and can get through 5 hours of footage a day (personally, I screen all the footage with my editor and discuss it thoroughly as we go along, so we're lucky to get through 4 hours/day).  That still comes to 25 hours/wk, or 6 weeks in total, to slog through the material. 

Top NY and LA editors pretty much begin at $3,000/wk, but you have a fantastic project that will save the planet so you've managed to convince one to work at $2,500/wk.  So, in this somewhat conservative scenario, you're paying your editor $15,000 just to look at your footage!  (Let's not talk about the film I helped shoot and co-produce that dealt with well over 1,000 hours of tape.)

Here's where the mistake comes in.  Many producers charge ahead with only partial funding in the blind faith that they'll raise the rest once they have a great rough cut to show.  So they get to the cut, or maybe only a partial cut, run out of money, put things on hold and frantically go into fundraising mode. 

Do you think the editor is waiting around while they do that?  Nope.  Will she be available again should the producer actually raise enough money?  Possibly.  But if she's in demand the far greater likelihood is she soon goes off on another feature. 

Your options then are to wait until she's finished, which could be quite a while, or else hire another editor.  Who'll likely want to screen most, if not all, of the footage.  Which means you've not only lost your original editor and momentum, but you're unnecessarily spending another $15,000.

I'm not unsympathetic to the fact that it could take years to raise enough money to pay a top editor all the way through to the end.  That's why so many doc filmmakers wind up editing themselves, at least to begin with.  But if you have great ambitions for your film and want to work with the very best editor available, I highly recommend you wait before you leap.

Producing 201 – The Five Biggest Mistakes a Producer Can Make (#1)

Actually, there are dozens of mistakes I could label as “biggest” if I put my mind to it.  I began drawing up a list and here are the first five that came to me.  They’re certainly biggies.

1.  Submitting your film to an A-list festival before it’s ready.

Every year at this time, producers scramble to finish their films for the Sundance deadline.  I can’t begin to tell you how many consults I do with filmmakers that concludes with me telling them to take their time and urging them to wait.

Your world premiere is precious.  No festival, no matter how prestigious, is worth sacrificing the potential of your film for.  If you miss Sundance, there’s always Berlin, or SXSW, or Tribeca, or Toronto, or any number of other great festivals where new filmmakers get discovered or established directors get a career boost.

In the end, there’s only one thing that will sell your film and get you the kind of breakthrough results you’re hoping to achieve.  Making a great film.  Or, at the least, making the very best film you’re capable of.

And that comes from taking the time you need.  It's one thing when circumstances require you to rush (pressure from investors, funders, broadcasters, etc.).  It's another thing altogether when the pressure is self-induced.

Producing 201 - The New Audience

I recently taught two classes for Thom Powers' Advanced Producing course at the School of Visual Arts.  And while it's geared for documentaries, it forced me to collect my thoughts on various aspects of film producing, in general. 

Since I feel guilty for blogging so infrequently during the distribution of The Kids Grow Up, I thought I'd partly make up for it by sharing some tips on producing that came up for me, in the process.  Or that come to mind in the daily slog of producing.  I'll try to put up an observation or bit of advice here every day or two (or three), and we'll see how long I can keep it up for.

My first observation is about how audiences, particularly young audiences, are viewing films these days.  It's something I've known intellectually for a while now, but the class brought it home to me in a visceral way.

Part of my second class was to be a case study of 51 Birch Street, so I made seeing it a homework assignment. I didn't give the 20 class members (average age of about 25) any instructions on how to see the film, but said it's easily available on multiple platforms.  When we next met, before I began the case study, I conducted a quick survey.

It turns out that 8 saw it on dvd via their laptops, 11 streamed it directly onto their laptops and 1 honest soul fessed up to not seeing it at all.  So, no one saw it on anything as large as a monitor or normal tv screen. All but one who watched it streamed saw it for free on Hulu, and they reported there were commercials about every 20 minutes. Not counting these commercials, each person paused the film at some point in their viewing between 3 and 5 times, on average.  Considerably more than half admitted to texting, chatting or answering emails at some point (if not constantly) while watching, as well.

Like I said, this doesn't come as a total shock.  I have a 22-year old daughter who's spent her whole life half-watching movies while multi-tasking with laptop in hand.  But it reinforces the big challenge traditional filmmakers, used to telling stories with character arcs and 3-act structures, are facing these days.  It's a fact of life that most people under 30 (and many older, as well) will not be raptly watching your film on a big screen with their undivided attention.  If they watch it at all, they'll do it on their small screens with their attention absolutely divided.  Their experience will be more like reading a book that they put down and pick up again than how we think of as the immersive experience of watching a movie.

Whether to tailor your next 90-minute feature documentary to this new audience or not is a timely and compelling question.  But whether you do or don't, it's absolutely something to keep in mind.