At the 41st Annual International Quorum or Motion Pictures Producers a panel of noted documentary producers and directors spoke about successful funding, marketing and distribution techniques for documentary filmmakers. This panel includes Doug Block, driector of 51 Birch Street, J.R. Morley, producer of Super Size Me, and Amy Sewell, producer of Mad Hot Ballroom.

Watch the Video: The Business of Documentaries

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My Notes from the Video

Business of Documentaries

Doug Block
Director, 51 Birch Street

• Starts off with a passionate idea that you want to get out.
• Do well to not lose money in theatrical, hold on to rights — pay a distributor a fee, share advertising costs, and do a lot of the work yourself.
• Film cost was 300K. 75-100K to get out
• Most money was from HBO as pre-sales…this led to conflicts from major distributors who’s parent company was a rival of Time Warner.
• GO out and make the best movie you can make. There is a place for docs in the market if its good.

Marketing

J. R. Morely
Producer, Super-size Me

• Cost of theatrical of a doc is a crap-shoot, cost of doing it compared to the benefit is usually not a good one.
• You’ll make the money back on Cable and DVD. The only time you would do it as a theatrical is if you want to qualify for the Academy

Distribution

Amy Sewwell
Producer, Mad Hot Ballroom

• Targeted a market, soundtrack, etc.
• There are smart people in pockets all across America that WANT to see documentaries, don’t care about what others say.
• Lawyers, sales agents, investors — the doc was an LLC business model, shares were sold. It was a $500K movie, $10K was 1 share. Investors got 15% return on investment.
• Good side for the LLC is if its a loss, you count is as an income loss, if you make a salary of $100K a year, and you lost $10K, you report that you made only $90K that year. Tax write offs aren’t that good though in LLC.

Leveraging the Web

Doug Block
Director, 51 Birch Street

• Many web doc-makers don’t exploit their resources.
• Give active daily updates for people to watch and be engaged, this way you can grow an email list. All those names move forward to your next production.

Truly Indie

Doug Block
Director, 51 Birch Street

• Put up a certain amount of money for every city you want to open up in
• Open up in five cities
• They opened in; NYC, LA, Miniapollis, SanFran, Chi-town — $50,000 was the result
• Have a national publict that coordinates for each local paper.

When not to seek Theatrical Release

J. R. Morely
Producer, Super-size Me

• When you sell off the rights, make sure that you get a sizeable advance for it. They sold it to a large distributor and to showtime.
• For a small doc do a simple small contract deal only if you will make money. DVD sales is where the smaller documentary film was to make its money
• Film business is chaning. How money comes in and goes out is diff. Netflix is now buying films and they want to do that.
• The way they did the funding for their film was to fund it themselves as a private corporation

     

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