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Documentary filmmaking in a changing media Landscape:

Internet vs TV – dia 1

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting to be with you this morning.

Talking to audiences who were interested to know more about

the different aspects of documentary production in Europe is

something I have done many times and in many different

countries, often for people who belonged to a language group

that in fact could be called a minority. Coming from a small

region like Flanders I know what that means.

I have been in different roles and positions when I was doing

this. First I did is as a producer. In fact my very first international

production was with Italy, about an environmental scandal in

Porto Marghera, near Venice.


After that I became a commissioning editor. Many of you might

think that such a position must be a dream. Well, let me tell you

that the two years I spent within the walls of a broadcaster were

the two most miserable years of my life. I'll come back to that

later in this presentation, for it has a lot to do with today's

subject.

When I was a commissioning editor, it became clear to me that

I, like many of my former colleagues-producers and many of my

colleagues within the broadcasting environment were very

quickly turning into dinosaurs, because we kept dealing with

media in the same way we had done over the past twenty

years, and we were blind to the fact that the media landscape

was changing and that the game was starting to be played

under a new set of rules.

Trying to do something about that I created a postgraduate

training institute in France where we did our best to prepare all

kind of professionals working in Media - I use the word

professionals intentionally as you will see later - where we tried

to prepare them for a new and much more demanding future.

Alas, that adventure ended when local politicians decided to cut

the subsidies we needed to keep the school alive. Today I'm

more than ever convinced that media people need a lifelong


training to stay at par with the developments in de media

environment, and it is my intention to add professional training

activities to the range of activities that EDN is undertaking.

Today I'm here in my position as the director of that association,

a professional network and information source at the service of

close to 1000 documentary filmmakers, commissioning editors

and anything in between these two positions. Looking at my

past you might say that I’m familiar with the concept of

“change”, which is good, for today it’s all about change in our

trade.

Later this morning I will introduce you more into detail to the

European documentary market, or I could even say: to the

international market, for production and financing don't stop at

the borders of our own continent any more. I will also briefly

introduce you to the pitching system but before doing that I

would like to ask for your attention for this brief - well, not that

brief - presentation on how I look upon the current documentary

market. Prepare for a shock.

For many years, documentary and television have been

synonyms. Many filmmakers still aspire to bring their film to the

cinema, but unless your name is Michael More or Morgan

Spurlock, or if you concentrate on making films on pinguins,


dolphins or migrating birds, you will never make a cent out of

the big screen. So television it is!

If I have been able to build a career out of documentary

producing, I owe it all to two main sources: public financing

through film funds (national funds and European) and television

money. Television has been my friend for many years. Still I

would like to refer to a speech I delivered a couple of months

ago, during the most recent Sheffield Meetmarket.

It was a keynote address in front of the EBU documentary

group, in which most of the commissioning editors that we have

all been chasing down to pitch our projects to are represented.

I dare say that the speech created quite a stir because in

essence I was accusing the public broadcasters of letting down

and abusing the sector of independent documentary

filmmakers. If you want to read that whole speech and find out

more about the point I was making, you can go to the EDN

website and read it there.

My job this afternoon is to entertain you with a lecture that

should introduce you to the current media landscape and the

position of Italy therein. In my opinion this speech however

should be more about the changing tv-landscape versus the


internet, for it's in that latter field that the challenges are to be

found, but also where the potential for a successful production

company can be discovered.

indeed these are two factors that cannot be denied: the face of

television is changing rapidly and the internet is becoming the

creative, commercial and social heartbeat of our society.

The television landscape is changing on two levels: content-

wise and in the field of broadcast technology. Although it might

seem that these levels are two very different things, it is my

conviction that they are intimately linked and both are of

importance for what you’re doing now and will be doing in the

future: content and technology: friends or enemies?

I fear that in order to be able to make sense of today's subject

and to come up with some plausible theories that you can use

in your professional activities, I cannot avoid looking at the past,

also, because it’s easier to talk with certainty about what

happened in the past than to predict a very uncertain future.


I took advantage of the speech in Sheffield, not to attack the

commissioning editors but to inform them about how the

independent producers look upon the current production

situation and how we feel about the relation between “content

providers” and “content distributors”.

I did not only share with them our worries and fears, but I also

extended an inviting hand to tackle together the many current

changes in the media landscape that drive all of us out of our

comfort zone and that force us all to become more daring and

innovative than ever before. In other words: personally I still see

a future for the traditional broadcasting system although we will

never return to the comfortable times of the late nineties/early

21th century.


I started by telling the commissiong editors at that meeting that

- in my humble opinion - in today’s media environment there are

no certainties any more. Every single current media-model is

under pressure and although there are many questions about

where the future will take us, there are no clear answers

available that can put our minds at ease.

I don’t think that I’m the only one who experiences this kind of

uncertain situation as disruptive, paralysing and threatening.

I also referred to another lecture that recently I have been

giving to documentary professionals in Czech Republic and

Bulgaria under the very optimistic title:


hurrah, we’re in a crisis.

In that speech I gave a more detailed overview of the different

aspects of the changes in the media world that might seem to

be a threat, but in the end could turn out to be an opportunity.

Let's not forget that: threats can be turned into opportunities for

those who are ready to change their way of thinking and acting.

In Sheffield I told the commissioning editors that over the past

years, the independent documentary sector and they

themselves, the commissioning editors, we’ve had our quarrels

and differences of opinion about how to work together, but that

in essence and in all honesty we both have been defending

what we thought was right, as seen from our own side of the

playing field.

Now the time has come, so I told them, that we have to set our

different opinions aside and reunite our forces, for if we fail to


do so, we might very well get kicked off the media playing field

altogether.

Let’s face it: we are in a crisis. There’s no doubt about that.

Changes in the entertainment- and media environment affect all

sectors of production and distribution. The old evolutionary

theory by Darwin is valid, more then ever:

ADAPT, OR DIE!

But the other side of that coin is the second part of that theory;

THE STRONGEST WILL SURVIVE.

Let's think a bit more about that: we might ask ourselves

whether a crisis is a problem or a blessing in disguise? Maybe

it’s exactly what we needed to be shaken awake and to make

us understand that some things need to change if we as

documentary filmmakers want to stay relevant.


How did this crisis come about? How did the media

environment change over the past years and why could these

changes be so threatening to all of us?

I started producing about 30 years ago.

If we had the whole day I could tell you how I began as a very

small and innocent, naive might be a better word, as a naive

Flemish producer, who wanted to make a living out of producing

documentaries that would change the world. We don't have that

time at our disposal today, but let me say that it took me about

three years before I understood the rules of international

production and co-production and made my first steps on that

market.

Very soon I also started making me first mistakes, but alas I

don't have the time to talk about those neither. That would

certainly take a full day.

What I did learn very quickly was that if I wanted to break out of

the boundaries of beautiful but small Flanders or even Belgium,

I had to travel and meet people. I needed to create a network.

That network I started to build by going to events like the one

that you are participating in today.


I went there, looking for partners and money and after a very

long period of searching, seeking, pleading and experiencing

many disappointments, I finally managed to start finding

funding. The money came mainly from broadcasting related

sources and I dare to say… that worked well.

Workshops, pitching sessions and even festivals proved to be

places where commissioning editors would gather. They were

the people who where in charge of strands and slots for

creative documentaries and who had a keen interest in the

fascinating world across their own borders. If you're not familiar

with the terms strands and slots, please ask me about them

during the Q&A at the end of my presentation.

These commissioning editors liked their documentaries to be

innovative, surprising and they loved it when they were directed

by a real filmmaker; by a person with a vision and maybe even

with a message, but certainly with his or her own creative

handwriting: diversity was the key to success.

18 years later, I had become a commissioning editor myself.

Now why on earth, do you ask, did I change my profession as a

relatively successful producer and stopped producing?


There were several reasons and they all had to do - already

then - with emerging changes in the television and the

production landscape that made me feel uncertain and uneasy.

First of all, the once rather small international community of

producers and directors was expanding rapidly. Increasing

numbers of people started to make documentaries, the

competition became heavier and it became more difficult to

complete the financing plan. More projects were competing for

the same amount of money and this growing competition

made me feel that it was time for a change.

Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to start working for

a public broadcaster, I jumped to that occasion.

I have always been a strong supporter of public broadcasting.

To me, it’s the cornerstone of a democratic and open-minded

society, the place where standards are set for quality and

professional media-standards. You can imagine that I looked

forward to working in that kind of environment because I

believed that it was the place where documentary really

mattered and still was appreciated. By accepting to change

sides and by becoming a commissioning editor I no longer

would be obliged to compete with friends in order to get the

necessary funds to make my films, but at the contrary I would


be in a position to help them make theirs. What more could one

ask for?

Alas, it turned out differently. When I went to the pitching

sessions in my first year as commissioning editor I was full of

hope and very enthusiastic, convinced that I would manage to

set up a system of international co-production between my

employer, other broadcasters and – most important – the

international independent production sector.

Two years later I had lost the hope of being able to do that. I

started to see that the kind of documentaries that had been so

popular on television in the nineties and during the early years

of the 21th century - the kind of documentaries that I and my

colleagues had produced – how these became less in demand

by the broadcaster’s management and the programming

departments.

I don’t think this was because the audience didn’t like these

documentaries any more, but it was because the media

environment had changed and public broadcasters started to

struggle with their identity in a communication environment that

became very commercial.


The public broadcaster's solution was to start copying the

commercial broadcaster’s programs and style and the first

victim of this change in policy was the creative documentary.

The genre was exiled to the late hours of the evening, or often

even to the early-night hours.

I believe that for a short while the decision to turn towards a

more commercial model for the public broadcasters was the

right decision. Many of them had become ministries of

television, and I'm sure I don't have to explain to an Italian

audience that bureaucratic administrations are not exactly the

right places for vibrant work. Before you start to be insulted, let

me assure you that the situation in Flanders was not better at

all.

But what is worse: once the public broadcasters had managed

to regain the confidence of their audiences, they stayed in the

same commercial logic of thinking, very often forgetting what

their role in society should be. This different way of thinking

and running a broadcaster led to a situation in which we lost our

former natural allies: the commissioning editors themselves, the

people who knew about and loved documentaries.

Until then, Commissioning editors had been real decision

makers and could more or less independently decide what


projects they would support and show to the audience. The

new market-driven thinking of their employers, the public

broadcasters, now forced them into a role in which they had

less power and had to follow the orders from higher

management-levels and – worse – from the programming and

marketing department.

The financing departments also started asking questions:

- why are we investing in heavy-risk projects if we can wait until

they’re finished and we can buy them at a lot cheaper prices?

- why are we dealing with small and vulnerable production

companies that very often lack the financial backbone to deal

with unexpected problems?

- Shouldn’t we be working with established and bigger

companies who have deeper pockets and carry less risk?

The business aspect of commissioning became a lot more

important. The broadcasting environment, in which I had been

working very comfortably during so many years, disappeared

and new rules started to apply.

For many years the relation between the C.E.'s and the

producers had been a very personal one: it was important that

they knew who you were and that they remembered your face.


Now the relation became more anonymous and business-like.

And then, there was another phenomenon emerging at the

horizon: one that did not even exist in the period when I was a

producer: the internet started to play a role.

When it first appeared, with it’s low transmission speeds and

poor picture quality, nobody believed it would ever be an

important player in the media landscape, except some

information technology prophets, who hardly anybody took

serious at the time.

It meant that also on a different level, things started to change.

The broadcast contracts that until then had been rather simple

became more complicated and the broadcasters would start to

demand the rights for internet applications too. They didn’t

know what they would do with them, but they preferred to

possess them anyhow.


In most cases the producers were only too happy to give these

rights away, more or less for free, for they themselves saw no

possibilities to create an extra income in that field. Who cared?

Well, that situation has changed for sure. I’m not saying that the

internet rights bring in a lot of money today, but they certainly

have become a matter of importance for the broadcasters’

efforts to stay in touch with their audience and create loyal

viewers who are interested in their programs.

I think that by now, even the most conservative documentary

producer understands that the internet rights represent a

potential value. And it's not only the internet that changes the

landscape.

The technological developments allow for a complete new way

of distributing content and making money with it: digital

broadcasters come to us through high speed cable or satellite;

time shifted media consumption is a reality; Over-the-Top

distribution is knocking on our door; VOD services flourish; we

can now use bits of an existing program to reformat them in

other formats that we produce for different screens; the

possibility to integrate and actively make use of social media in

the distribution strategy around a program, It all represents a

potential income but it doesn’t come for free.


How fast did things change!

The technological progress was no longer an evolution but it

became a revolution.

I’m not going to take you through this slide in detail, but do see

how for 50 years the media technology was a slow process of

improvement, whereas since the turn of the century each day

brings a new surprise that changes the way media are

distributed and consumed.

(There will be some improvisation talk here, translator!)

Out of a sense of nostalgia, we can disregard these new

technologies and try to stick only with our old faithful partners in

the television environment, but I am convinced that such an

attitude will be the shortest way to extinction.


If you allow me to take you back once again to the horrible

days when I was employed by the broadcaster, I can tell you

that before me and my colleagues realised it, this technology

that we considered to be a plaything for nerds, the internet,

started offering creative and business possibilities that nobody

could have imagined just a couple of years before.

If internet distribution was something unimportant when I left

production in 2004, when I turned my back on the broadcaster

in 2006, one could feel that this technology had the potential to

become a game changer.

Talking about the current media landscape and trying to

discover how Italian producers can find a place in it, I have to

underline the strong potential of this new platform.

During my stint as a commissioning editor I had learned two

things:


a) the media world was becoming much more business-like and

needed well-trained people who besides making good

documentaries could also run a healthy company and

b) the media world was undergoing a revolution that neither the

production world nor the broadcasting world was prepared for.

The convergence of tv and broadband was and is becoming a

fact but at the moment leaves us all with many open questions.

How important will converged TV become? Nobody knows.

By 2007, changes in society too had played their part in the

evolution of media consumption. The audience by then knew

how to make full use of the available technologies, and after

having been offered a wider choice (more available channels

through cable and satellite, the first distribution initiatives on the

internet, linear and later digital recording of programs they

wanted to look at later and/or on different screens) the audience

now also got a louder voice.

They could actually start to communicate with the television

makers and let them know whether they liked what they saw...

or not! And if they didn't like it, they were not very faithful. They

just zapped away and maybe would never return.


This became a nightmare situation for every broadcasting

executive. They became addicted to ratings and audience

behaviour analysis and in many cases did no longer ask

themselves if what they were offering to the viewer was good,

but only whether it was pleasing the audience.

It has led to the current situation where television has become

predictable, superficial and very often just boring. That person

that television had been serving for over a 50 years – the

viewer – now had become the “consumer”.

This situation and the broadcaster's reaction to it also

influenced the reality of the production environment. Now that

the “consumer” was in charge, the programmers aimed to

please and the answer was found in an avalanche of light-

hearted entertainment.

Now that’s a strategy that I can understand for a commercial

broadcaster, but I was shocked to see how the public

broadcasters adapted the same strategy, in an effort to keep

their market shares.

The situation today is that in the majority of cases the

broadcasters are not looking for innovative storytelling any

more. The budgets for the few slots that still cater for creative


content started to go down and in an ever-increasing way

commissioning editors continue to lose decision power. As a

self-fulfilling prophecy the slots for creative documentary are

increasingly being cut: the marketing people consider the

interested audience to be too niche, too limited.

But today, thanks to internet, broadband and soon glass fiber

technology, niche audiences become interesting target groups,

and once again here I can see good possibilities for aspiring

producers or established producers who are not afraid to jump

on the train of new technology.

For the first time in history, voices are heard that claim that

broadcasting will become less important as a distribution

channel and that broadband will become the medium to find

and to keep an audience. Visionary people are telling us that

the internet and broadband distribution will become the main

means of communication, information, education and

entertainment and that the new technology will also bring along

new ways of financing and monetising audiovisual productions.

These people are pioneers and actually still not many in the

business really believe them, most of the commissioning editors

laugh at these predictions, claiming that linear television will

always be around and will stay the number one partner of the


audience that is looking for content. Many television people

consider themselves and their environment as being

invulnerable.

I have to admit that at my time in broadcasting I didn’t know

what to think off it myself… wait and see: that was my attitude.

Today I don't have that doubt any more: linear television will

never disappear but will lose a lot of its power and influence.

Better take that into account when you're working on your next

business plan.

Today, we’re still in the middle of the technological revolution

and the situation has already changed completely, as far as

funding possibilities are concerned. DVD has practically lost its

importance as a source of financing, the budgets made

available by public broadcasters have decreased considerably

(the available amounts have gone down with a factor between

30% and 70%), VOD-services are all around but until now fail to

prove that they can really contribute to the financing of

documentaries and other major players have appeared but until

now, they too they fail to contribute in a significant manner to

the financing of creative documentaries: you know the names of

these over-the-top companies. Netflix, Hulu, youtube, most

probably apple-tv and google tv quite soon…


These corporations are the biggest threat to the existing

broadcasting system because… who needs broadcasters

anymore.

Will you be waiting to watch your favourite documentary or TV-

series until some programming executive will make it available

for you to watch it on tv, while the same programme is available

for you to watch where you want it, when you want it, on the

screen you want it and at a reasonable price?

If I would be a broadcasting executive today, I would be very

worried about my future.

Actually, if I were a producer or a director today, I would also be

very worried, be it for different reasons. Sheffield received over

650 demands for a meeting with C.E.’s during the MeetMarket;

DocsBarcelona had to deal with more than 250 applications

from producers who wanted to get in touch with decision

makers to ask for their support, the Media support program

received close to 500 applications for one single call for single

project support… and from my own experience as an expert

reader for film funds I can tell you that there we are confronted

with the same huge increase in the number of applications.


It seems that today everybody wishes to be a documentary

filmmaker in an environment where there’s less and less

funding available and the number of television slots keeps

diminishing! The number of documentaries that are produced

every year is astonishing.

Now it’s time for us to look into the mirror and ask ourselves

whether quantity equals quality?

As a community of documentary filmmakers, we should be very

critical towards ourselves and honestly examine whether what

we offer is of the highest standards, up to the quality level that

is needed to fulfil our promises to our audience.

None of us, professionals, should turn a blind eye to the fact

that technically speaking, today everybody is a filmmaker and a

content distributor. Only two decades ago one needed to be a

trained cameraperson, an experienced sound engineer or

seasoned editor to be able to work with the expensive and

sophisticated equipment that was needed to turn top-quality

images and sound into compelling stories.

Today, an untrained but technology savvy person who owns a

6.000 euro camera, a 2.000 euro portable computer and a

couple of software programmes worth around 1.500 euro can


produce a film that looks better than what we produced - at top-

prices - 20 years ago.

Already a couple of years ago I predicted that shooting

documentaries would become a lot cheaper. I emphasize the

word: shooting! What did not really become cheaper is the

professional post-production and of course the labour. More

and more I notice during pitching sessions that producers come

to the table with part of the project already shot and looking for

funds to recoup the money they already invested or - in the best

of cases - to find the budget to complete a high standard

postproduction process. That's what technology does for you.

And that’s also what tolerance does for you. All of us here in

this room pay - more or less happily – rather high prices for a

top-of-the-range flatscreen TV so that we can watch those

wonderful programmes in the very best quality, but the younger

generation couldn’t care less about the size of the screen.

See them walking around with their PSP’s, their mobiles and I-

pads or other tablets, consuming all kind of content that appeals

to them on a screen, the size of which gives dinosaurs like me a

headache.

Do they care? Not in the slightest. They love it. They produce

and distribute their own content and happily consume their


friends’ content, delivered at internet speed by many platforms

that are available for free and on which everything is allowed.

Often what they find there is funny, shocking, revealing even,

but more often it’s boring, purely exploitative and repetitive, and

what is almost always lacking is a good story. I wonder whether

this is the right way to build up a loyal audience.

We’ve entered the digital age, for sure. I consider people of my

age to be dinosaurs who try to keep up with the new

technologies and fight a bitter struggle to integrate these in their

professional strategies – and often fail. People between 15 and

45 are the ones that are of the mixed generation: they know

how to use the new technologies but they still remember more

or less the old world and therefore they can relate to us, still.

But those who are younger than 15 – the digital natives – they

have never known what I would call “our world” and they don’t

see a reason why they should. And let’s face it: these are your

future audiences. If you can’t convince future funders that your

productions will reach this audience, you’re in trouble. Like it

or not, but more and more you’ll have to cater for these

audiences’ needs and expectations. If you fail to do so, you’ll

lose contact with them and they’ll find their way to the “Over

The Top” platforms and the V.O.D. offerings, where they will

find exactly what they will be looking for.


I still don’t know what is going to happen but one thing I do

know for sure: nothing is going to be the same ever again and

those who think and hope that they can continue to produce

and distribute documentaries like we did it only 10 years ago

are making a fatal mistake.

Allow me to refer to the world of technology to make an

analogy. How many of the technology companies that were too

big to fail in the seventies, when the I.T. world started to

develop, how many of them are still around? Texas

Instruments, Digital, Wang… Many of you will even never have

heard of these companies who, in those days, were the

mastodons of new technologies.

They were convinced that by sticking to the old business

models they would also stay on top of the industry. Well, they

didn’t.

Those companies who did survive, like IBM, diversified and

changed their ways of doing business. The other blockbuster

companies were so sure that they knew it all, that because they

had the money, because they had the experience and because

they had the brains, they thought they could dictate how society

would use the new technologies that they would chose to


develop. Take it or leave it was their motto. Time has proven

them wrong!

That example should make us think twice about how we see

ourselves develop over the next decades. Clinging on to what

once was has never been a good survival strategy.

This goes for broadcasters, but it also applies to independent

production companies. In the new media world that we will be

confronted with, we will need to create compelling media

experiences that go far beyond the traditional documentary

format, media products that take into account different media

consumption patterns and find ways to make our stories work in

a multiplatform environment. That’s quite a challenge and it can

only be answered by being innovative and by using the creative

input that comes from different sources and by working very

hard.

When I started in the business I could detect three sizes of

production companies. The first one I would call the big boys.

These were indeed the blue chip companies (often founded by


former commissioning editors who left the broadcaster and

started on their own). They were producers who had privileged

relations with the broadcasters. They seldom had to pitch, or

did not really have a hard time when they had to do so,

because indeed they were serious, well organised and well

structured. No harm in having them around and every big

language territory had a limited number of them. But because

they were so big they were also rather expensive to work with

and therefore could not cater for the poorer slots.

That’s where the independent but smaller productions

companies came in.

Let me now first jump to the other side of the spectrum where in

those days already, one would find the idealists, the

experimentalists; the people who were fond of media but who

had no real intention to make a direct living out of it. Very often

they would be very close to the art world and live either from

somebody else’s income or from state subsidy. Their products

where seldom to be seem on the regular screens but they

would form the environment in which new techniques and forms

of storytelling would be invented and would be tested. But this

was a rather small group indeed.


In the middle, there would be a rather large group of medium

sized companies. Also rather well structured but less well

capitalized than the big boys; working with a more limited staff

and very often contracting independent researchers and

directors. They would also be more mean and lean in their

organisation structure. They would be making a limited number

of documentaries per year, enough to keep them alive and have

some butter on their lunch-sandwiches. They would actually

make enough money to pick up some of the better ideas from

the experimentalists and turn them into more mainstream forms

of storytelling. Once these ideas would have been tested and

approved, the big boys would often take them over and start

making real money with them.

But actually, this sector would be the place where new talent

could be tested and got battle experience, before they moved

on to better paid levels.

It was not such a bad system: between the real factual

programmes “industry” on one side and the experimentalists on

the other, there would be this important middle class that would

serve as cement or glue and keep everything together, driving

forward creativity and innovation. I would say that many of you

where situated in that class.


Exactly like in the real society, this situation has now changed.

We see the disappearance of the middle classes everywhere,

and we witness the disruptive effect is has on society.

The same is happening in our own media environment.

The middle class production companies are struggling to stay

alive and are getting less numerous by the day. A recent study

by Joerg Langer for AG.DOK in Germany revealed that the

average wage for a producer is less than 10 euro/hour.

80% of the companies are working at a loss!

The group of big boys has become a lot bigger but also a lot

more international, which means that there’s not a lot of

diversity to be found in their programmes. More and more they

offer “one size fits all”. And still they are the ones that the public

broadcasters increasingly want to work with to please mass

audiences! Does this create an opportunity for those companies

who manage to create productions for smaller but very

interested audiences? Maybe yes. But from where will the


financing come? And how will these products find their

audience if not shown at a decent hour?

The group of experimentalists and idealists has grown

exponentially. Today, they produce an enormous amount of

content but it will never find its way to the traditional screens.

They are now the ones who cater for the non-professional

needs of the internet, but very few of them will actually make

any real money.

But the real danger lies in the fast reduction of the number of

middle class companies, and as I said, I believe that many of

them are in the audience today. The way independent

producers of creative documentaries are being pushed aside

and treated like beggars by many a public broadcaster is not

correct. If they manage to find some support at all, in many

cases the amounts that are being offered are scarcely enough

to cover a limited part of the production budget, and generally

small independent companies are considered to be a pain in

the ass. It’s true that working with them is challenging: there’s

more risk to it and certainly more work involved; they might be

more stubborn than the big boys in defending their ideas and

also yes…their documentaries are more demanding and are

less aiming at entertainment, and therefore maybe are less

crowd-pleasing.


But these films are the voice of an important part of our society

and they should be the gatekeepers of quality, innovation and

creativity. Do the broadcasters claim that the audience doesn’t

like thse films anymore? How could they, if that audience

doesn’t know about them? How can the audience like

something they never see?

On the other hand: can a company survive on making only

creative documentaries? The answer is very simple: NO!

Like IBM in the eighties small and middle-sized companies

have to diversify and produce different kinds of programs, some

of them very commercial and aiming at the huge market of

digital broadcasters, big and small. And there's nothing wrong

with that.

Only yesterday morning I was at the Nordisk Forum in Malmo in

Sweden. There I talked to a very respected Swedish filmmaker,

with a couple of extremely successful documentaries behind his

name and I asked him why he had such a worried look on his

face: the answer was quite simple: he worried about how to pay

the bills. Worldwide success, many sales to broadcasters and a

film shown in tens and tens of festivals did not bring bread on

the table. He had just finished a duo-masterclass with a very

well known and also very respected American filmmaker who's


name I can divulge, Alain Berliner, and who indeed is making a

lot of money… by shooting commercials and corporate movies

that finance his more creative documentaries.

Now the million-dollar question is: will the broadband

technology and the ever more talked-about trans-media offer a

solution for this dilemma of financing? A lot has been said about

it and many theories are going around but personally I haven’t

seen the light yet.

Even when I’m talking to people who are very involved in the

concept of trans-media, I hear opposite opinions and a lot of

conflicting theories and above all lots of intentions but not so

many concrete results.

As you have noticed by now, I’m an old fossil, a dinosaur.

I admit that I too, I struggle with the new developments and I do

not yet feel very close to the emerging possibilities of cross-

media or trans-media, whatever you want to call it. Trans-

media: are they about stories or are they about technology?


Or does the success lie in a happy marriage between both?

Being here in Bari, I want to use this opportunity to confirm that

EDN is not blind for this situation and will act to assist our

members to deal with the new circumstances. We too will have

to adapt our actions and come up with innovative solutions to

make sure that the documentary genre not only survives but will

become more popular, on all platforms, in all formats.

Together with our members we’ll look for solutions to make sure

that the wonderful films you’re going to make will find and

audience that will be captivated by them.

To me personally it’s important to find solutions to make sure

that producers and directors can work in professional

circumstances and make a decent living out of their creative

efforts. How we will make this become reality is still an open

question and we at EDN are very open to discuss about this

with you and to take in your opinions and advices.

Talk to us, because information and knowledge mean power

and power is what we’ll need in the coming years when we’ll be

negotiating with the powers-that-be.


You might think that all what I've said is sad and pessimistic

and not really encouraging. Well, it isn't. It is possible to

produce and direct and to make a good living in media land.

If you're dreaming about having that Ferrari in front of your door

then I would advise you to seek another sector to work in.

However, if you plan to have a life worth living, meeting nice

and interesting people and in your own way making this world a

little better place to live in, then you've come to the right place.

Thank you for your attention and good luck with your projects.

Entertainment & Humor

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