May 3, 2021
Over three years ago, I wrote in this magazine about my entry into the documentary film industry, some funding strategies I'd employed, and key
Producing
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December 18, 2020Can there be upsides in a global pandemic? COVID-19 has decimated huge swaths of the entertainment industry and led to massive unemployment, food
September 14, 2020Since our founding in 2016, the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) has grown to include over 300 members from 53 cities, eight countries and counting. Originally founded to advocate for producers whose role was misunderstood and chronically underpaid, the DPA’s work allowed us to realize that the issues we were facing were not due to our professional failures but to systemic ones larger than ourselves. Our goal as an organization is to identify and advocate for best practices for a field that is largely unregulated.
August 31, 2020COVID-19 exposed and accentuated long-standing fault lines in our industry: a financial sustainability crisis, the absence of labor protections, and a growing movement to reconcile decades of structural inequities between white and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) filmmakers and communities.
January 28, 2020 @In this Extended Reality (XR) Master Class with VR editor and producer Jennifer Tiexiera, participants took a hands-on approach to the burgeoning world of XR, from terminology, the creative team structure, to the current tools and techniques that are being utilized in this space. As opposed to...
September 20, 2019 @In this IDA Conversation Series, we highlight and explore the extraordinary career of Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and producer Susan Lacy. Hear how her passion for American cultural history led to the creation of PBS series American Masters and her more recent journeys in telling the stories of...
January 25, 2019Over the last several years, as sustainability has become a hot topic in the documentary community, we have seen the issue unfold in a number of ways
January 24, 2019Raising money for a film often feels like a Sysyphean task, constantly pushing a boulder up a hill. But as documentaries have become more popular
January 15, 2019Editor’s Note: What follows is a statement from the IDA regarding the Documentary Producers Alliance ’s “ Best Practices in Documentary Crediting.”
January 4, 2019This is a fully revised look at documentary budgeting, and updates the 2006 Documentary article “Don’t Fudge on Your Budget: Toeing the Line Items.” At the center of the documentary "business" is the budget, which offers a map of the filmmaking process, expressing both the film you’re planning to make and how you plan to make it. Ideally, it is also a living document that can help get a film to completion.