I think the closest festival to NY that is currently planned is in Woods Hole, MA. However, due to the pandemic, all of the "screenings" will likely be virtual. As soon as I have links with details on how to view those, I will add them to my original post.robedge wrote:Any plans for a screening in New York?
I could write pages and pages on the pitiful state of independent documentary funding in the USA. There's a sharp difference between the money paid to people who work to make a documentary (i.e. the working stiffs like me, and James and David who labored to make the film) versus any money that might be made on the back end by the funders+copyright holders of the film. An extremely tiny number of documentary features make any profit on the back end through distribution and sales. Most people or institutions who fund such endeavors do it for social capital rather than financial capital. They don't expect to make money, they want to see the particular story be told through film and they earn the social esteem that comes with funding the arts. Another detail that most people don't realize is that outside of a few exceptions, for most content on PBS the network does not a pay a dime to the filmmakers and copyright holders. In fact, most filmmakers have to pay PBS fees for the privilege of having their film made available to the stations. Most documentary filmmakers (myself included) work on commercials + corporate video to make ends meet. Even famous Oscar winning documentary filmmakers like Errol Morris also make commercials to pay the bills: https://www.errolmorris.com/commercials/miller.htmlrick.lang wrote:Thanks for the effort and cost details. Can you comment on the income side at all, not in terms of the cheques being written to finance the documentary, in terms of the income the documentary will earn?
Since I don't want to derail this thread with any more of my rambling, if anyone has more questions about funding or anything else, we should probably start a separate thread.
Many thanks to all for the questions and kind words!!!!
www.cinedocs.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4601572/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4601572/