Whenever I’m preparing to give a talk at an industry event, it gives me cause to think. Which is good. There’s so much about the state of the film industry right now (let’s not even mention this godforsaken world!) that makes me want to crawl into fetal position, suck my thumb and do anything but think.
What I’ve been thinking mostly about lately is the future of the feature-length documentary. In a post a few weeks back I admittedly went scorched earth when I asserted:
“The feature-length doc is dying, if not already dead, and we desperately need to consider other forms and outlets for our storytelling.”
Ok, a bit over the top, for sure.1 Especially as producer of a feature length doc that was recently acquired for nationwide distribution in the fall — I mean, stop your whining, dude. I was being intentionally provocative. Welcome to the internet.
I actually don’t think the biggest crisis facing the feature doc is funding, as hard as it’s been with all the federal cutbacks and gatekeepers growing small weenies. Funding has always been hard. And doc makers are a hardy breed, as relentless as the weeds that pop up through the cracks in city sidewalks. We’ll always find a way to get our films made, even if it takes years. Even if it means doing it on a shoestring. Even if we have to sell our blood.
It’s the distribution part that’s crippling us.
The corporate mergers.
The chickenshit streamers committing true crimes with their aversion to risk.
The shrinking of theatrical distribution opportunities, forcing us to go DIY.
The need to be marketing from the get-go.
The glut of product and difficulty of cuting through the clutter.
The energy it takes to reach the most minimum of eyeballs.
Viewers with the attention spans of gnats.
The paucity of important film critics whose reviews make a difference.
Digital platforms that pay peanuts.
The near impossibility of recouping our costs.
I could go on but you get the idea.
The bottom line is we’re too attached to one delivery system. And now that the machinery is faltering — or at least radically contracting — it’s time to adapt or die. There are some personal factors involved, as well, but it’s caused me to totally re-conceive the storytelling format and platform for Betty & Henri (& Me), the feature doc I’ve been working on for almost a decade.
I’ll be talking about that publicly for the very first time Friday morning at a Reality Check Forum panel I’m doing with my friend Nina Gilden Seavey at DC/DOX in Washington, DC. It’s called R/Evolution: New Paths for Documentary Storytelling, and it’s gonna be a humdinger. Because the premise of our talk is that this eco-system collapse may ultimately produce more inventive nonfiction storytelling, not less.
Film funding and distribution are tighter than ever, so why wait for years for our documentary stories to see the light of day? Film R/Evolution will help you expand your nonfiction horizons. Documentarians see themselves as being primarily “filmmakers” when, in fact, we are storytellers first and foremost - with many platforms at our disposal. In this session moderated by Erica Ginsberg, co-host of The D-Word, longtime documentary filmmakers Nina Gilden Seavey and Doug Block discuss how to employ and integrate a multitude of nonfiction platforms to bring our stories to the public.
How many times have we seen a documentary that felt far too long, but was stretched out solely to qualify for trade reviews and awards consideration? Filmmakers have been expanding or compressing stories into rigid 90-minute structures simply because the industry only validated one format as worthy. Some stories may actually work better as:
Evolving digital journals
Serialized investigations
Annotated archives
Multimedia memoirs
Subscription communities
Live performance hybrids
Collaborative audience experiences
A book
A magazine or newspaper article
A photography exhibit
A short (duh!)
Grist for your therapist’s mill
Again, I’m being intentionally provocative. I’m not really suggesting the feature doc is dead. People still crave cinematic experiences and great documentaries will always be made. Festivals will still matter. Exceptional films will still break through.
But on Friday I’ll be arguing that the feature documentary should no longer be the unquestioned center of the nonfiction universe. It should be considered one form among many.
And I think that’s healthy.
I’ll be writing in much more depth about the reincarnation of Betty & Henri (& Me) in future posts. Incorporating your feedback as I go along will all be part of the process, so stay tuned.
But why wait? Feel free to give
your feedback now.
To be fair, I was just quoting from my response to an email. But still…
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