Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category
Producer’s Resource: Writing a Better Treatment
Below is an invaluable tool for anyone seeking to write a pitch document for a grant, private investor, foundation or broadcaster. I’ve been referring to it for several years and re-read every six months or so. I’d add to the discussion several key points:
1) Describe (early in your treatment) what you want to accomplish with the project – is it a call to action?: Do you hope to get people to start a garden, cherish their kids, write their congressman, discuss your story with their friends, boycott the mall? Or is it a personal exploration? By exploring your sexuality, probing your family’s past, or creating animated fantasy worlds you hope to inspire others to reflect on the universal stories we share. Even if your project is a “straightforward” history doc or science show – try and define what reactions you are hoping it will stimulate in your audience. This will help define your entire project.
2)Consider your print format: find ways to bullet or break up your key points into quickly readable bites (you never know if you’ll be pitching this in person and your audience chooses to grab your paper and scan it while you talk.) Nothing is less appetizing than a solid mass of text with narrow margins and few paragraphs – no matter how well written.
3) Be sure to consider the ways that your project will stand out from others under consideration. What storytelling innovation are you bringing? Do you have a niche audience? Do you have 5000 followers on Facebook? Is there a video game or app attached to the project? Will you be screening on rooftops? Today, more than ever, funders are looking for innovation.
WRITING A BETTER ITVS TREATMENT
“If a story is in you, it has got to come out.”
- William FaulknerTREATMENT
In the treatment section of the ITVS proposal we ask you to communicate your passion and to explain how you envision translating your story from page to screen – taking into account structure, theme, style, format, voice and point-of-view. What do these words really mean? Here, members of the programming staff offer notes on writing an effective treatment. Remember, these are only suggestions; your treatment will undoubtedly be unique – tailored to the specific demands of your story.PASSION
When writing the treatment, don’t be afraid to infuse your words with passion. Your excitement and sense of urgency should be contagious.STRUCTURE
Like the frame of a house, or a human skeleton, structure holds up all the parts of a story, supporting and organizing the elements into a coherent and interrelated dramatic whole. Structure determines how the story will unfold dramatically, how it will build – moving through moments of tension and conflict – from beginning to middle to end. Structure is the road a reader takes through the dramatic terrain of the program.Article continues…
Mountain Lake PBS talks up Skatopia – who’d ah thunk it? Tonight at 8:30 – Tomorrow Online
This Week on EXTRA
June 3rd, 2010 @ 8:30pm
LAKE PLACID FILM FORUM
The Lake Placid Film Forum is celebrating 10-years, with special guests including actors Hal Holbrook, Parker Posey, and authors William Kennedy and Jay Parini. The festival host screenings of 2 locally produced films, The Summers of Walter Hacks by Vermont filmmaker George Woodard; and Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy by filmmakers Colin Powers and Laurie House from Essex, New York.
For information on events and screenings: www.lakeplacidfilmforum.comSKATOPIA
We’ll talk with filmmaker Laurie House and Brewce Martin, who is the force behind the outrageous skateboard park in rural Appalacia.
DOUBLE FEATURE
Our film critic Rick Kisonak has his own mini-film-festival with a double feature of 2 of the summer blockbusters: Robin Hood and Macgruber.
Skatopia at the Lake Placid Film Forum!!
It’s fair to say that this’ll be the only time Skatopia shares the bill with Hal Holbrook and Parker Posey! Come check us out in Lake Placid – June 11th at 11 PM!
skatopia: 88 acres of anarchy. june 11 at 11.
May 25, 2010 by tjbrearton
There’s a lot of talk out there about anarchy, about anti-establishmentarianism. There’s a lot of talk about living the dream. The creator of the real-place “Skatopia” and his constituents are doing it. Skating, hedonism, and the impulses of the id reign. Not for the faint of heart, “Skatopia” delves into the philosophies of aggressive patriarch Brewce Martin, a self-described dictator, and the mythos of his disciples, prone to foul mouths, crash-up derby driving, and escaping from realities of life outside the park. Director of Programming for MLPBS Colin Powers and filmmaker Laurie House helm this down and dirty documentary.
“He comes to Skatopia for genuine reasons…to skateboard, get drunk, and [get] chicks….”
- Brewce, describing a regular visitor
Come for the skating, stay for the life.
Showing at the Lake Placid Film Forum Friday June 11th, at 11pm, Palace Theatre. Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Producer’s Academy Take 2
I really didn’t mean for these to appear in alphabetical order, but here’s a teaser for fellow student Mark Barroso’s film A Puppet Intervention. When I read about it I thought I knew what I’d see (seen lots of activist puppet stuff living in Philly, Eugene, Berkeley). These have to be seen to be appreciated. Obviously a nice light touch with the filmmaking and some cool verite moments.
“A Puppet Intervention” movie trailer from Mark Barroso on Vimeo.
Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for Public Television
Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for PSBs
by Kelly Anderson
At the recent Hot Docs festival, MercuryMedia CEO Tim Sparke took the opportunity to announce the launch of the Documentary Distributors’ Association, a group that aims to lobby public service broadcasters to consider airing more documentaries.
Sparke says the idea behind the Documentary Distributor’ Association came from MercuryMedia chairman and former ITV director of television Simon Shaps. “He felt it was something that the industry really needed,” says Sparke. Shaps will be chairman of the DDA, while Sparke’s role right now is to get the word out and get the first 10 distributor members on board.
The main goal is to approach public service broadcasters to get docs back on their schedules. “It’s about documentary fighting – and I use that word guardedly – for an enhanced position within television schedules and on other platforms,” says Sparke. “There’s no doubt in my mind that television is still the preeminent place for telling people about what’s going on in the world and documentary is the single most important tool [for] telling people that.”
Judge Rules That Filmmaker Must Give Footage to Chevron
Juan Diego Pérez/Entendre Films An Ecuadorean cancer victim’s reflection in an oil-polluted stream near her home in the documentary “Crude.”
5:10 p.m. | Updated
A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday granted a petition by Chevron to issue a subpoena for hundreds of hours of footage from a documentary about the pollution of the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador and the oil company’s involvement.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of United States District Court said that the director Joe Berlinger would have to turn over more than 600 hours of footage from his documentary “Crude.” The film, which was released last year, chronicles the Ecuadorians who sued Texaco (now owned by Chevron) saying the operations of the companies’ oil field at Lago Agrio contaminated their water.
Pitch Perfect at the Toronto Documentary Forum
Dispatch from Toronto | Hot Docs ’10: Pitch Perfect at the Toronto Documentary Forum
by Basil Tsiokos (May 7, 2010)
The scene at the Toronto Documentary Forum. Photo courtesy of Hot Docs/Joseph Michael.Hundreds of broadcasters, funders, filmmakers, and other observers convened this Wednesday and Thursday morning for the Toronto Documentary Forum, North America’s largest documentary market, as part of the ongoing Hot Docs film festival. Led for the second year by Elizabeth Radshaw, the TDF selects twenty promising new projects for filmmakers to pitch for potential co-production support, providing invaluable access to the movers and shakers of the non-fiction world and allowing them to make an early impression that may pay off with a broadcast deal or at least open a door to acquisition meetings down the line.
A number of strong-sounding docs got pitched at this year’s TDF at HotDocs… but I’m a little astounded by the proposed budgets. When producers of fiction features (generally higher grossing than docs) are being told to keep budgets to the $200K range (see Ted Hope’s comments at IFP marketplace last fall), how do documentary makers think their ever going to recoup these budgets?
Adam Curtis and some bold documentaries
A couple years ago, some friends in Philly held a little screening session with a selection of films they brought back from the annual INPUT festival that features the best of worldwide public television.
After the screening, a couple films really stuck with me. One was Adam Curtis’ “The Mayfair Set”, but at the time it seemed destined to remain a UK-only film.
I was struck by the playful imagery, imaginative work-arounds for sections without direct footage and for Curtis’ willingness to tackle a bold narrative that assailed major figures in the UK power structure and even threatened his bosses at the BBC.
Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can now view much of Curtis’ work on line (albeit missing quite a bit of beauty due to web delivery limitations.) As his wikipedia entry describes, Curtis combs the BBC film vaults for archival footage that wonderfully illustrate his narratives.
Here are a couple of links in no particular order. I haven’t watched the whole of Mayfair Set yet, but look forward to working my way through.
A more recent film “The Trap”
A writeup and trailer for his most recent collaboration with an avante garde theater group:
A wonderful dialogue between Errol Morris (Fog of War; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control) and Curtis.
Finally, here’s Adam’s blog at the BBC.
Hope you enjoy his work as much as I do.
Wild & Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
Our friend Julian Nitzberg made a great followup to “The Dancing Outlaw” that will be in theaters this summer. He has been friends with Jesco White and his family for two decades. We had a great time last fall hanging out with Julien, his friend Dale and a bunch of hillbilly movie fans at the Hot Springs Doc Festival. Here is a short piece about the film from last year’s Tribeca Film Fest:
SKATOPIA SOLD OUT AT MIDNIGHT!
Thank You to all the intrepid midnight filmgoers! We never guessed we’d fill the theater twice in Athens. Thanks to Brewce and the entire crew from the farm for coming out again. And to paraphrase Frank Zappa, “Thank you Athens, Ohio, wherever you are.”
Photo courtesy of David Hooker
Tribeca Film Fest takes its movies to Video on Demand
Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festivalBy JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago
NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.
Whitecross estimates that 90 percent of the films that were influential to him — such as “Taxi Driver” and “La Dolce Vita” — he watched “on very dodgy, knocked-off VHS tapes” or on TV early in the morning with commercial breaks.
“Better to have seen them that way than not at all,” he says.
Whitecross’ experience guides the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday amid concern that the volcanic ash disrupting air travel in Europe might ground some of the many European filmmakers who were planning to attend.
. In an effort to help films find audiences, movies won’t just be screening in downtown Manhattan.
A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival’s parent company, Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen movies — including Whitecross’ directorial debut “sex & drugs & rock & roll” — available on TV by way of video-on-demand in some 40 million homes. A “virtual festival” will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for viewers willing to shell out $45.
A win-win for indy filmmakers and indy-loving audiences who can’t get to Manhattan (or can’t get a ticket.) Get the films on VOD and watch in your home theater. Now I’ve got to convince my little cableco to sign up!
Skatopia: By Popular Demand! Another Athens Screening
