Blogging Hot Docs: Playing the Pre-Sale, Co-Production Game

Hot Doc: Geoffrey Smith's film "The English Surgeon" focuses on surgeon Henry March (pictured.)

The Toronto Documentary Forum is a high-powered, pressurized event that happens alongside the Hot Docs film festival. A couple hundred commissioning editors and broadcasters from around the world gather for two days of project pitching. Thirty participants are carefully selected from around the world, and they are given 15 minutes each to make their pitch to a roomful of 300 or 400 observers, many of them filmmakers who have paid hundreds of dollars just for the opportunity to be close to the action.

We pitched my new doc BLAST! there last year, and it was one of those memorable adrenaline experiences which led to elation afterwards. Ours went well, even without indulging in the bottle of whiskey provided at the table for pitching filmmakers. With BBC already at our side, we were able to add SVT (Sweden), YLE (Finland), and Discovery Canada to our list of co-production partners. (We documented the process as part of our ArtistShare project).

Filmmakers in the Hot Docs festival are allowed two-hour slots to observe the TDF. Mine came on the second of two days, right at the end. I did not actually get to see any pitches because they had changed the format, leaving the last afternoon for one-on-one sessions. But I was able to join everyone for lunch in the beautiful sunny courtyard.

One of the ironies of Hot Docs is that, because the TDF is so intense, commissioning editors are not necessarily getting excited about completed films. It’s very hard to get them to pay attention to, let alone attend, films that are in the festival. They’re looking for What’s Next.

After a few months, maybe a year on the festival circuit with my previous film Power Trip, I started to get the feeling that my movie had become old news. Ironically, hanging out at TDF can give you that feeling the moment you premiere.

Part of the reason is that you’ve gone from “pre-sale” to “acquisition.” I did not understand this myself until recently when BLAST!’s international sales agent Louise Rosen explained that a pre-sale allows the broadcaster to put the broadcaster’s name on the piece, and pay more for the privilege. No on-screen credit can be claimed in an acquisition, so there’s less money.

A pre-sale requires more risk, so many pre-sales happen at the very end, after the broadcasters have hedged their bets, made certain the film will get finished, maximized their return, and minimized their risk. Of course, this means that the filmmaker must absorb the risk instead.

And perhaps the burden placed on filmmakers is starting to catch up. The general vibe I got was that the reaction to pitches was much more subdued this year. I spoke to Ann Hebron of Discovery Canada who said she had not yet identified anything to commission.

The one pitch that seemed to stand out was from Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, Trials of Henry Kissinger), who is working on a piece about Ronald Reagan. Several filmmakers pointed out the positive reactions he received around the table, with commissioning editors gushing that they would work with him on any project he proposed. There was some envy that Jarecki’s name and track record were making it easy for him.

To give them a reality check, I pointed out that Eugene was also at TDF last year pitching Ghetto, a fascinating, close examination of the creation of Ghettos, ranging from Nazi Germany through the U.S. prison system. What happened to that project? Did all the CE’s who gushed last year follow up with checks, or has the movie been put on the shelf? Another filmmaker pointed out, “It’s easy to say you will support a film around that table, especially when’s there’s peer pressure. But how many will still be saying the same thing months from now when no one is listening.”

We all know it’s tough out there, and TDF this year seemed to make that all the more clear. Filmmakers are feeling trampled by the commissioning editor/co-production model for financing, and are seeking alternatives. One filmmaker wistfully wondered how independents might unionize!

But it’s a beautiful sunny day, there’s opportunity here and for the moment the game must be played. So I chatted up as many people as I could, including Yukari Hayashi Kawamura, the commissioning editor for Japan’s NHK. She expressed interest in BLAST! last year at our TDF pitch and said that Power Trip had been very well-received in Japan. Thankfully I was prepared with a screening DVD so she’ll have a chance to watch it on the long flight home.

Ikke Vehkalahti received a DVD as well and my thanks for YLE/Finland’s support of BLAST! as co-production partner. I listened in on a discussion between him and Peter Wintonick (Manufacturing Consent) about the challenges of curating a series of 3-minute documentaries for the Internet.

I also had an opportunity to meet Geoffrey Smith, the charming director of The English Surgeon, an accomplished piece about an English brain surgeon working in the Ukraine. After a discussion about what level of blood and gore is acceptable in a documentary (2 people fainted at the screening I attended), we compared notes on business models. Geoffrey very wisely budgets funds to cover his time after the movie is completed, when promoting at film festivals.

Here are a couple other great pieces of advice from Geoff:

Get your movies shot quickly. Longitudinal documentaries are becoming unsustainable. No one will support the downtime between shoots. The English Surgeon was shot in 3 weeks.

Hire an editor with fiction experience to edit your documentary. Their understanding of character development and story structure will serve you well.

Meeting filmmakers like Geoffrey, who have developed effective strategies to get their remarkable movie made can provide a much-needed morale boost. There’s still hope!

Related Links:

Watch the trailer for Geoffrey Smith's The English Surgeon.

Watch the trailer for Celia Maysles' Wild Blue Yonder.

Watch the trailer for Juan Carlos Pineiro's Second Skin.

Watch the trailer for John Walker's Passage.

Watch the trailer for Paul Devlin's BLAST!.

Read Paul Devlin's posting on his film's world premiere in Toronto.

Read Devlin's posting on his thoughts the morning after his premiere. What's next?

Read Devlin's posting on his executive producer, Nick Fraser of BBC's Storyville.

Read Devlin's posting on the opening day at Hot Docs.

Visit the Hot Docs website.

Visit the BLAST! website.

Read about the process of making the film BLAST! at Artistshare.com.

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