Sonnett Media

I had a wonderful time at this year’s Silverdocs documentary film festival and conference, which ran from June 12 through June 17 in Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s always very encouraging to see the local audience’s enthusiasm for documentaries (the weekend screenings I attended were nearly also sold out) and to connect with movers and shakers from the wide world of factual filmmaking.

The Films

I made a concerted effort to pack in as many films as I could this year. I managed to get in 12 in 5 days. Here are the 10 word or less summaries of the films I was able to see:

“Anderman” (director: Jaap van Heusden)
Caring for his mother with alzheimer’s, man loose his mind.

“Artic Tale” (directors: Adam Ravetch & Sarah Robertson)
The lords of the Artic kingdom are on thin ice.

“The First Sunday in May” (directors: John Hennegan & Brad Hennegan”
Trainers dream of Kentucky Derby while chasing ill-fated Barbaro.

“Lot 63, Grave C” (director: Sam Green)
Murdered Rolling Stone’s fan’s absent tombstone gathers no moss.

“No End in Sight” (director: Charles Ferguson)
Iraq war planners drive off cliff, Bush sleeps at wheel.

“Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037” (director: Ben Niles) Handmade instruments created with skillful tenderness for loving, finicky pianists.

“Pete Seegar: The Power of Song” (director: Jim Brown)
This film surrounds hate and forces it to surrender, peacefully.

“Please Vote for Me” (director: Weijun Chen)
Chinese third-graders learn democracy is far from child’s play.

“A Son’s Sacrifice” (director: Yoni Brook)
Half-Pakistani man cuts new path as a Muslim slaughterer.

“Souvenirs” (directors Shahar Cohen & Halil Efrat)
Son directs father back to buried past as a Liberator.

“Voyage in G Major” (director: Georgi Lazarevski)
French violinist explores his 90 years of regrets in Morocco.

The Conference

My week started with the Inside Discover conference session, held in the Discovery HD Theater, deep inside the Discovery Channel’s imposing headquarters. The session, moderated by television production guru Mat Tombers, featured a range of “go to” production companies for the Discovery networks talking about their experiences inside the beast. Mary Donahue, VP of Creative Content and Talent, was in the hot seat for Discovery and charmed the crowd of mostly independent producers while tossing cold water on their dreams of having their independent visions showcased by the media giant. Allusions to Discovery’s recent reorganization were mostly positive as several panelists noted hopefully on the streamlined bureaucracy.

One of the challenges facing the panelists is how to incorporate new media deliverables into their business plans. Margery Baker, VP of CBS News Productions, described a new initiative called Band of Bloggers, which will feature a variety of user-generated content from soldiers in Iraq distributed through The History Channel’s Web site. Following up with Hal Gressner, Executive Producer of Creative Development at CBS Eye Too Productions, during the Q&A, I learned that the venture will feature both text and video content and will be supported by a television special expected to launch later in the year to help drive interest in the launch of the online project. Hopefully, this all will make it pass the military’s sensors.

I attended three “Future of Real” sessions (following up on last year’s rather heady 1.0 version) continued the muddled debate on how best to utilize the on-line environment to extend the audience (and increase revenues) for documentaries. In the first session, “Readiness & Revenue”, Panelist Tamara Gould, Vice President of Distribution for ITVS, quoting from the recently released phamplet “The New Deal: Version 1.5” from American University’s Center for Social Media, said that although few have found a way to make any money off of web-based distribution platforms, these platforms will be a part of the digital future for filmmakers (even if only a minor part). Fellow panelists Jonathan Miller, of the educational market distributor First Run/Icarus Films, Inc., and Linda Lawrence, of web-based educational program distributor Open Media Network, engaged in an animated discussion about the effects and ROI of web distribution, making it clear that the diverse goals of doc distributors and promoters will both feed the desperate excitement for web-based distribution and guide the community as a whole toward some sane practices. With the help of the Center for Social Media report, hopefully we’ll see more of the latter.

Center for Social Media Director Pat Aufderheide lead a wonderfully diverse panel for the “Engaging New Audiences” session that showcased some of the innovative ways public television, non-profits and media companies are reaching out to new audiences through online media. Daniel Cross, Director of HomelessNation.org and my old friend Shane Seggar, the Program Director for Pacific Islanders in Communications, spoke about the cool social networking projects they are working on.

A session entitled “Cutting Edge Technology Issues” included a presentation from Second Life avatar Brian Mnumonic (Dr. Bryan Carter of Central Missouri State University in real life) which delighted the audience with a virtual PowerPoint that encouraged “mindset reformatting” in order to take advantage of Web 2.0. And Kevin Dando of PBS and Dennis Palmieri and ITVS had some great case studies of how public television is beginning to harness the blogsphere, social networking and video-sharing sites like YouTube to reach out to new audiences. Web 2.0 clearly offers a great opportunity for innovative “outreach” (now called “community-based interaction” by some). But for many of panelists, the old school face-to-face interaction was still the most critical in terms of garnering support for their programs.

In a nod to keynote speaker Ted Leonsis, the “Filmanthropy” session featured a Who’s Who of non-profits and advocacy groups involved with documentary film: Gillian Caldwell (from Peter Gabriel’s Witness), Cynthia Lopez (American Documentary/P.O.V.), Susan MacLaury (Shine Global, Inc.), Ellen Schneider (Active Voice) and Meighan Stone (Bono’s ONE Campaign). The panelists emphasized that non-profits are, by and large, under-utilizing the skills of filmmakers in their media plans and could benefit from partnerships with storytellers in order to showcase their programs for the general public and to decision makers in government. Meighan mentioned that non-profits under the ONE umbrella need to work more with filmmakers and offered to matchmake between the filmmakers in attendance and these groups. Needless to say, she was swarmed after the session.