Headlamp Pictures Blog

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?

Why Online Video Fails To Meet Its Lofty Expectations

With television advertising being a $70 billion market and total online advertising weighing in at $22.7 billion for 2009, you can’t help but wonder why online video advertising only represents a $1 billion market. 

In fact, according to the IAB, video advertising grew from $734 million to $1.017 billion from 2008 to 2009 — or 38%.  That’s not bad, but when you consider that total video consumption per month has soared from 10 billion videos in July 2008 to over 33 billion in December 2009 (or 230%), you wonder why the revenue growth hasn’t mimicked the viewership.

For sure, economics tend to trail consumer patterns.  Moreover, the recession and advertising slump didn’t help either.  And yes, the so-called experts might not be all-knowing either, after all.

I personally think there’s more to it than that. 

The Genie is Out of the Bottle

In 2000, I worked at a search engine company.  We gave away our search engines for free and sought to generate revenue via advertising.  The Nasdaq crashed and took down the ad market, after which point we sought to collect licensing revenues for our technology.  With the cat out of the bag, it was impossible to get people to pay for the product afterwards.  Lesson learned: If you give something away for free, you can’t charge for it subsequently.CTD…

An argument that professional content will continue to dominate the audience’s attention and that the likely way it will be paid for is through ads. But will the ad revenue be enough to fund the programming we’re fond of? Maybe a reality show, but probably not Lost, or CSI.

This year there are some local films, that after speaking with Athena director, Ruth Bradley, could really contend to win Best Film. There is the film Skatopia that focuses on the Meigs County skate park. Bradley said that this could be the biggest of all of them and it was almost sold out when I spoke to her on Wednesday. This is a local film with local people and is being shown to a local audience. This is really cool especially for local filmmakers because the movie industry is so tough to break into and now there is an opportunity for a local production to break into the market and be shown to an audience that has vested interest in this product.

Nice write up from WOUB TV that interviewed Laurie the day before the show.

SpringBoardMedia: Ken Price, Bukowski, Curation and Film

My favorite part of the show was over at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in Midtown (only until April 20) – they have a collection of ephemera, books, postcards, album covers and even tequila bottles designed by or featuring art works by Ken Price. If you like his sculptures (I’m not as big of a fan of these as his other work, though they are what he’s most known for), then you must stop by to watch the ten minute video showing his process (layering up paint and then sanding it down to expose layers in patterns). Note to curators – put this video on YouTube once the show is over and his sales will likely triple. Anyway, the piece I most liked, and that I think is in a weird way most relevant to film, was a limited edition hard-bound coffee table book of Charles Bukowski’s Heat Wave, with drawings and original art work by Ken Price. The cover is the photo I’ve used here. As Black Sparrow’s website explains, the book was a large format (15×12) portfolio, with text by Bukowski (poems), illustrated with 17 black and white works by Price, handbound and including a disc of Bukowski reading his poetry and containing a compartment in the back with 15 original serigraphs which could be removed and framed. A limited, signed edition was made as well as a limited, unsigned edition and the entire thing came in a slipcase with a cool design.

I’m a fan of both Price and Bukowski (yes, I’ve not left my college reading days too far behind), but you don’t have to like either to think about how this could be used for film. Not every film, but some. I’ve often talked about ways to monetize content in a world where everything is increasingly becoming free – well, here’s a great example. I can see Price’s works for free, in galleries and online. Bukowski’s poems are all over the place, and even with his popularity, I can find them in numerous used bookstores for cheap. But this is a piece of art – when it first came out in 1996 it sold for about $3,500 and I imagine it’s worth much more now. I can’t afford it, but I bet the 100+ editions they made sold out. How can filmmakers duplicate this? Again, not everyone can, but I imagine there are fans who would buy something similar from many indie films. Perhaps stills from the film, coupled with the script, a DVD, etc. Or maybe the film, the soundtrack and text from an author that is in a similar vein as the subject of the film.  I’ve got lots of ideas for this, and I’m helping a few filmmakers whose films could definitely be re-purposed this way, but thought I’d share the idea with all of you, perhaps you can come up with an even better way to copy the idea in your work.