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I'm aware I've been a bit quiet of late, and I just wanted to let you know that I - and indeed DFG in general - have not been sitting admiring the view from our window (although it IS lovely). Rather, we have been v. busy working on our fabulous new site - further details of which will be coming ever so soon. Part of that involves dragging ourselves into the 21st century. We are already on Twitter as most of you are aware (just learning very slowly) but we are now also, as of this week, PROPERLY ON FACEBOOK. Come and join us - make it look friendly and welcoming by telling us what you're up to! And maybe even help us learn how to use it!! Ahem... In other news, we're very chuffed to learn that DFG Member and alumnus David Cornwall - aka SCORPION TV - has been selected as a finalist at this year's MIPTV. Scorpion TV, the recently established specialist content distributor been selected as the only UK finalist in the Ogilvy / Coca-Cola MIPTV Content 360 competition: "Engaging with teens through branded content for Coca-Cola." The contest called for ideas that would help Coca-Cola brands engage with teens relevantly through branded content of all types, from a TV show, to a web movie series, a mobile application, or advergame. A record 189 entries were submitted and Scorpion TV is one of 3 selected finalists with its idea "The Win Win Show”. The live pitch and winner announcement will take place on Wednesday 14th April at MIP TV in Cannes. The Grand Prize will be a €10,000 development contract to co-develop the winning idea further with Ogilvy for Coca-Cola. Good luck David!
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Very belatedly I bring you news of a member success. Frances Harper, whose first documentary, Where Angels Fear to Tread, was broadcast on BBC EAST in 2008, has had her second documentary commissioned by SKY Real Lives. My Son, Drugs and Me is about turmoil in the family caused by young people and their misuse of drugs, and the fact that it covers every social background. It was first broadcast this week (sorry we missed it Frances!) but is being repeated this weekend on Sky Real Lives - on Sunday morning in fact at 2am. Catch it on your way to bed you crazy party people you, or pick it up on Sky + if you're a futurist type. I can do neither, not having a functioning television at present, but Frances is something of an inspiration to me. She came to documentary filmmaking late in telly terms, and is forging her own path with great success - congratulations Frances!
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Apparently I shouldn't be saying that, because apparently documentaries have never really disappeared from ITV. However, news in is that fabulous filmmaker Leslie Woodhead has been commissioned to make two documentaries for a themed season Visions of Britain, while John Pilger returns with a new documentary for the channel. There's another new addition to the online docu-family with ex-CBS exec Peter Hamilton's blog DocumentaryTelevision.com, which will initially focus on what networks pay for programming - handy to know if you're pitching a low-budget DV-shot doc to Discovery for instance... And lastly, DFG's lady members might want to join me in responding to Broadcast's survey on Women in TV, which covers discrimination, management styles and career challenges. You never know - something good might come of it!
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So many snippets to pass on this week, not one big enough for its own post (in my opinion anyway), so I'm just going to throw them at you: - Tom Giles has been named new editor of the BBC's current affairs strand Panorama, replacing Sandy Smith who has moved to the One Show. It's not a huge surprise, given that up until now he had been deputy editor... Thanks to Broadcast for that one.
- Simon Shaps, former director of television at ITV, has spoken up this week ahead of his appearance at this weekend's SEE Festival in Brighton, that documentaries "are cool, and much in demand – films as diverse as The September Issue, An Inconvenient Truth and Man on Wire, for example. Yet traditional broadcasters are not committing to fully funding these programmes. There is oversupply as the barriers to entry are much lower – anyone with a camera can call themselves a documentary maker." Not news as such, but always interesting to hear someone else say what we're all thinking.
- Enemies of the People, directed by Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin, fresh from its win at Sundance, has been announced the recipient of the True/False Film Festival's True Life Fund, which aims to raise $10,000 during next week's festival for the directors' ongoing work in Cambodia. Rob presented the film as a work in progress at a very early 10x10. I don't like emphasising the 10x10 bit like we have some kind of ownership over this amazing film, but I do it because it's one of my favourite ever screeners, and because when I saw it at IDFA last year it blew me away. You have to watch this film.
- And lastly, because I can't let a week go by without thanking TV Mole, we learn that Jamie Oliver has won the 2010 TED Prize, worth $100k, which he's using to tackle the USA's obesity problem in the same way that he tackled our problem with school dinners. Go Jamie!
Until next week, it just leaves me to flag up once again, our really important announcement about changes to membership.
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That kind of rhymes... Anyway, the ever-reliable TV Mole informs us this week that Celia Taylor, formerly commissioning editor at Sky 1, has been named as the channel's Head of Factual and Features, following Emma Read's departure from the broadcaster last year during a major restructure. If you happen to be perusing TV Mole's site, by the way, you might want to check out the series of excellent pieces on Copyblogger Articles You Need To Read Before You Write Your Proposal, taking lessons from the top-rated Copyblogger blog and giving them a very TV twist. As for the DFG news, we are still moving along with our planned reboot. The designs for the new site are nearly complete (and we're very excited about them), and they're currently in the hands of our wonderful group of volunteer testers, so I just wanted to flag up last week's message about the important changes a-coming. This is really important if you're a Community (i.e. unpaid) member so please read!Lastly, congratulations to Jo Blyghton and John Kennedy, winners of the Kim Longinotto DVD giveaway from Second Run DVD. We've contacted the winners of the draw for free membership and look forward to announcing them next week. Until then!
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Hello all, I sent out an email a couple of weeks ago, asking for your help and your input into our plans for a revamped website and membership. You gave a fantastic response, so thanks to all of you. We'll be announcing the winners of the draw shortly, and contacting the first ten of you who agreed to take part in some further user testing, but in the meantime I just wanted to give you a taster of what you told us and of the events to come in the next few weeks. So, to the feedback. A whopping 74.7% of you would like to see more input on our site from funders, commissioners and other filmmakers, while you're also pretty set on in-depth articles dealing with current issues and debate within documentary. It may seem obvious, but your main pre-occupations are with funding, distribution and making films independently. We're very pleased to see though that you're still interested in the craft of filmmaking, which is very important part of this doc business after all. You're also up for more member-only events, which is just as well given what's planned... How about you? Well, the vast majority of you work in film and tv, and consider yourself an independent filmmaker, although in general you're a well-skilled bunch in many areas. Many of you are freelance, with over 3 year's experience in the industry. And most of you are in the UK - and in London. Hello to those of you who thrive outside this fair city: we're going to do our best to reach you too: please post here if you have any ideas or offers of help up your sleeve. You're pretty tech-savvy, which means we have to look smart and make sure we're at the cutting edge of current offerings - 84% of you are on the web every day, and while you're not necessarily building your own websites, you are using it pretty comprehensively. So there's the life of an average DFG member. Of course, we never settle for average and we'd like to work on behalf of those of you who don't fit the profile above too: more physical events and networking opportunities that aren't web-dependent, more jobs (for the very single-minded 85th respondent, you know who you are), more opportunities to save money - and more DFG get-togethers. We're starting already, with our launch of a new series of events aimed at helping you get the edge in your craft ( Doc Talks). It's not member-only at the moment, but we're aiming to make it so much more affordable for members, that eventually we'll have enough of you to fill the room and cover our costs. There are going to be a lot of changes over the next few weeks, and I'll be posting up regularly to keep you in the loop. In the meantime, if you have any comments of questions, please post them on the Community so everyone can share. That's all folks - for now. Thanks again for your help in sparking off what we hope will be a pretty darn cool 2010 for documentary. Kerry & all @ DFG
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If you've always fancied your hand at making an ad then this is the competition for you. Some of the biggest global brands want you to make a video for them. They've posted a brief, supporting assets and even music files you can use to complete the challenge. The five brand winners will be flown to Barcelona in February for 4 days all-expenses paid trip to enjoy the GSMA Mobile World Congress plus each brand has its own amazing prizes. Get your video uploaded by Feb 1 2010 and for more details see the MOFILM site. Thanks to Helen @ Shooting People for the heads up on this. Check out their comp here.
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Thanks again to TV Mole for this one, especially given that our Broadcast emails have gone a bit weird on us. Says the Mole: "Katy Thorogood has been appointed as commissioner for daytime and factual at ITV1 from 4th January 2009. She was formerly head of factual, features and formats at North One TV." This follows my post back in April last year reporting that Jeff Anderson, controller of documentaries and current affairs, had left in an ITV restructure. No word yet on exactly what Thorogood will be looking for, but it's time to update your address books nevertheless...
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Well, End of the Decade lists are cropping up everywhere at the moment, and DFG (well, me anyway) hates to be left out of the party. Peter Knegt at IndieWIRE has been running down the top grossing films by genre, and his documentary list really got me thinking. He's right of course, in that the Noughties have been a fantastic decade for docs at the box office, even if we put Michael Moore and cute penguins to one side. We've seen some wonderful innovations in documentary filmmaking that have enabled docs to reach out to a different kind of audience, from slick thrillers to family dramas. Knegt's article focuses on North American box office, and it made me wonder about the situation in the UK. We're even less used to handing over money to sit in a cinema and watch a doc than our American friends, as my oft-cited experience of trying to buy a ticket to see a documentary in my local cinema illustrates, so how different has the last decade been here?* The UK Film Council's statistics for top grossing docs still puts Fahrenheit 9/11 at the top of the list, grossing over £6.5 million here in the UK. March of the Penguins in second place manages only half that, while No. 20 in the top 20, Errol Morris's The Fog of War, managed just under £180,000, showing the monumental gulf between the 'docbusters' (pardon the pun) and the rest of the doc releases. As far as UK docs go, the top two of the decade on both sides of the Atlantic are, unsurprisingly, Touching the Void and Man on Wire. Perhaps more surprising is the only other UK film in the top 20: Terence Davies' BFI-released Of Time and the City. Not your obvious cinematic choice perhaps, but it grossed £245,000 - possibly due to Davies' auteur status as a major pull for audiences. But... while Man on Wire was 2008's highest grossing documentary in the UK, taking £879,000, it doesn't even make it into the top 20 UK films released that year. Or more depressingly, 54 docs were released in the UK last year ( 54!! Name me ten, off the top of your head - no searching now) and took £3.4 million IN TOTAL. That's 0.4% of the total box office gross. What this shows - and to the packed crowds at Doc/Fest's session on theatrical docs will seem like stating-the-bleedin'-obvious - is that we've certainly got a long way to go before we can get truly excited about the cinematic potential of documentary. But I don't like to end the year on a low, so perhaps we can just say is that it's been a strong decade for US docs, and this combined with a couple of standout UK successes shows potential for a change in audience expectations, which could ultimately lead to a stronger place for docs on our cinema screens... right? * Thanks to Shabani for her research!
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Yes folks, it's time to update your little black books once again. Thanks to TV Mole for this one - Emma Read, commissioning editor for factual entertainment and specialist factual at Sky 1, has taken voluntary redundancy from the satellite broadcaster after a major restructure of the commissioning team. According to Broadcast: "Director of programmes Stuart Murphy is to create two new roles - head of entertainment and head of factual and features - because he wants a uniform structure across the business." The budget for Sky 1 has also been slashed to £100k per hour so anyone thinking of pitching to Sky should start working out how they'll be affording Ross Kemp if they want him to explore the St Albans shadowy gangster underworld.
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No tulips, no windmills, and I thankfully managed to avoid the awful array of novelty clogs that were to be found in every shop. Do people really buy those things?? Anyway, my rapturous film watching wore off somewhat as the Forum started and I began my daily exercise in humility, trying - and failing - to talk my way into it. I have a newfound adoration for Doc/Fest now, with its general openness and an industry programme that's open to all delegates, and not just the precious few. However, I did manage to catch Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath's exceptional film Enemies of the People, which follows journalist Sambath's quest to track down the men and women involved in Cambodia's Killing Fields. Rob's another 'graduate' of 10x10, where he showed a clip to an enraptured audience early last year, and I've been eagerly awaiting the finished film ever since. Nominated for the top prize at the festival, the film missed out to Last Train Home, Lixin Fan's remarkable film about the annual return of migrant workers from their jobs in China's big cities to their rural homes to celebrate Chinese New Year. As the opening titles tell us, it's the world's largest human migration, and there are incredible scenes of crowds pushing their way through the train station and onto the train, with people fainting and crying - although they're more likely to be seen with a grim determination on their face. It's the first time I've ever really understood the term 'a sea of people'. The film follows one family over the course of several years: the parents have been working in the city for many years now, sending their money back to pay for the education of their two children, who are being brought up my their grandmother. The eldest daughter, at that delightful teenage stage of resentment and rebellion, forms the centrepiece of the narrative in a story whose dynamics are very similar to the fantastic earlier film Up The Yangtze. I'm not sure whether this detracts from Last Train Home's achievements, or adds to it, because the director's access is fantastic: when the family reaches rock bottom, he's there, an accepted presence in their lives. At one point, the daughter turns to the camera and screams "you want to see me? This is the real me." Returning to Afghanistan, Valentina Monti's Girls on the Air (also nominated - this time in the mid-length competition) follows Humaira, a young Afghan journalist who sets up an all-woman radio station, Radio Sahar, after the fall of the Taliban. On a lighter note, The Matilda Candidate (a comedy! a comedy doc!) follows one man's campaign for the Australian senate, running on a ticket to make Waltzing Matilda the national anthem and had everyone in the audience laughing. I have railed quite publicly against the increasing demand on these shores for lighthearted docs over other important, but possibly less upbeat, stories but I have to admit some light relief was welcome that day. There are more - so many more - to talk about. And so I probably will - some day.
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Owing to some serious processing in my head, I'm only now posting about a film that I saw here at IDFA on Sunday: the now infamous documentary Stolen,
in which two filmmakers set out from Australia to make a film in
Western Sahara, only to find themselves uncovering stories of slavery
within the refugee camps. Much of the controversy has arisen from slur
campaigns co-ordinated by the Polassario organisation in control of
Western Sahara, which have included the woman at the centre of the
story, Fatim, being flown across to the Sydney premiere of the film to
denounce the claims made by the filmmakers. The hoo-ha that's arisen
from this, with claim and counter-claim flying back and forth between
the filmmakers and their politically motivated detractors, has sadly veiled the opportunity to discuss some of the real concerns that the film raises.
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the filmmakers' claims, but
thanks to the aspects of Michael Moore in their approach I can't
support them either. Rather than a journalistic story investigated with
corresponding vigour, this film was a personal story, emotionally told,
the focus on the danger the filmmakers themselves went through rather
than deep investigation of the story they had uncovered. This pales
into insignificance in compared to the danger that Fetim and her family
put themselves in through taking part in the film, and at no stage
either during the film or in the Q&A afterwards did I get a sense
that those dangers had been discussed and agreed.
In fact, the Q&A after the screening was worse than the omissions
in the film: any attempt to criticise - or even discuss - issues
brought up by the film were quashed by the moderator who seemed more
eager to answer the questions than ask them, so that we were never able
to get to the bottom of how aware the film's participants were of the
danger they were placing themselves in by taking part. The filmmakers
argue that the urgency of raising awareness of this
issue is paramount, and that this film is a vital tool in the campaign.
But the fact remains, as at least one person in the audience tried to
say, that if putting this film out to the wider world is putting the
lives of the people involved at risk, then is a documentary really the
best way to put this issue on the table?
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I'm now well into my third day at IDFA, and it's come as quite a shock to me. No, not the lack of tulips on offer, but the sheer scale of documentaries surrounding me. A five-year veteran of Sheffield Doc/Fest, this is my first trip to another documentary festival, and it's quite thrilling to be the original and the biggest. The first impression is the overwhelming selection of films on offer. At Doc/Fest it's easy to forget the films (for me anyway) in favour of the panel discussions, interviews and pitching sessions, but here the focus is very definitely on the films themselves, and having just been refused entry to the Forum on my cheeky second try I'm trying to make the best of things by catching up on everything I missed at Sheffield three weeks ago, including Jawed Taiman's film Addicted in Afghanistan, produced by DFG Member Sharron Ward who screened an early excerpt at 10x10. It was sold out in Sheffield, and deservedly so. A harrowing, uncomfortable experience but an absolutely vital story, Addicted tells the story of Zahir and Jabar, two boys living in Kabul who have been addicted to heroin for several years. Taiman never points the finger (although Jabar does, several times: at the Americans, even calling for the Taliban to come back and rescue them from their addiction) and never takes his focus from the drama centred around his two young protagonists as they try - repeatedly - to kick the habit. The complexities of the situation are not lost, however, and it feels watching it as though the story of Jabar and Zahir mirrors that of their country. I may not have come out of the film hopeful for the future, but I did leave with a consuming empathy for a situation that had previously felt very far away from me. I'll post more as I absorb my surroundings - and hopefully meet even more interesting people. It's a fantastic reminder of what documentaries can achieve to be greeted all sides by films and filmmakers from all over the world. I've already spoken to a Zimbabwean filmmaker making impossible films from within the country, heard from Iranian filmmakers making important films in terrifying conditions and found more than one instance of filmmakers become so involved in their story that they have to intervene. More to follow on this later... The salient point to draw from this of course is that I am here at IDFA, pretty darn excited about it, and would love to meet any of you lovely folk who also happen to be here. Drop me a line at kerry@dfgdocs.com if you're around.
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One of the first things I did on returning from Doc/Fest last week was sign up to the TV Mole newsletter - not only to ensure I was kept up to date on commissions and other industry news, but also to get my bonus email series: Sex Lessons from Mad Men, in which TV Mole unpicks the ways that pitching documentaries and factual TV is not unlike the world of advertising and then gives you tips like Know Your Client. This may seem so simple as to not need stating, but actually it's pretty bloomin' key. So I thought I'd share the love with you here, in place of the Newcomers Bible which is still in production... I'm also a fan of the article Seven Reasons a Commissioner Will Reject Your Idea. Again, deceptively simple but I see the same mistakes made again and again - even in things like submissions to the Mini-MeetMarket. Now, in the interests of fairness I'll hold my hand up here and say that yes, I know Nicola Lees, who IS TV Mole. She was a mentor on Mini-MeetMarket at Sheffield Doc/Fest, and she's teaching our upcoming development and pitching workshops but if that undermines my recommendation, then I'd suggest you just check it out for yourself. I'm off to see if I can watch Mad Men and get myself inspired to pitch better AND wear a fetching twinset.
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As regular readers of my blog (I'm sure there's at least one of you) may have noted, DFG likes to round up our experiences of the annual company building exercise that is Sheffield Doc/Fest by listing our highlights and lowlights. Obviously, we're excluding our own events, because that would feel like cheating. But it's worth mentioning that DFG member and tutor Anton Califano picked up a Broadcast Development Award at the Wellcome Pitch, and that 10x10 was another success, bringing filmmakers from outside London into the fold - and the community. Congrats also to member Sheherzad Kaleem for her win at the CBA-DfID Broadcast Media Scheme International Pitch, as well as to DFG alumni Damian Rafferty and Valentina Samac for making the top six. We all feel very proud here at DFG! This year, ever mindful of our obligations to public health pronouncements, we've gone for the theme of Love It, Keep It, Bin It (to be repeated to the refrain of Catch It, Bin It, Kill It), so here goes: The lovely Amber loved the Marc Isaacs masterclass (including a contribution from super-editor David Charap) and wants to keep all things cross-platform thanks to Doc/Fest, specifically the Crossover Summit and the Cross-Platform Pitch. She doesn't necessarily want to bin Tapeless Made Easy, but would love it if someone could actually make it easy. The lovely Estelle loves Horses, thinks Doc/Fest should definitely keep joiningthedocs and has voted for binning fast food and cheap booze. Yeah, we wish! The lovely Paola couldn't decide what she loved more out of the incendiary Campaigning Documentaries: The Thin Line Between Passion and Propaganda, Working Your Film and Making a Sustainable Living, so she gets to keep all of them. She wants to bin the Sheffield weather, which given that she's more used to Italy's moderate climes, we forgive her for. The lovely Deb was unavailable for comment, but we happen to know that she loved Yodok Stories, although would advise binning any thoughts of partying directly afterwards. For my part, I've nabbed the Citizen Filmmaking session on Sunday for my absolute love - and I've nabbed it from under the noses of all the rest of the DFG team too. A truly inspiring session featuring representatives from B'Tselem and the Democratic Voice of Burma, the organisation behind Burma VJ, together with Alan Hayling. We would like to officially second his call to move the session to a more prominent slot. Keep? Well the atmosphere of course. And bin: the Void, mainly because it challenged my frankly terrible navigation skills. It only leaves me to say that you will shortly be seeing the official Newcomers Bible available to download from this very site, but thanks to the lovely Estelle, a preview is available here. Cheerio for now!
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