Filmmaking Articles - The Documentary Network

Photo taken by monkey is not copyright protected

Hannes Kreuzer — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 06:35:37 +0000

There has been an interesting debate between a photographer and the organisation Wikipedia whether photos taken by a monkey are the photographers copyright and protected by law. US Copyright Office now declared that it cannot be copyrighted as it was created by an animal. UK based photographer David Slater has been on a trip to Indonesia in 2011 and one of the monkeys grabbed his camera and took some pictures by itself. According to sources - hundreds. The outcome of this "artwork" is hilarious and the pictures started to make rounds on the internet including uploads on Wikipedia. The photographer requested a take down following the argument the monkey used the photographers equipment. The organisation declied the request. So the debate came to the US Copyright Office and they made this case pretty clear. An excerpt of the US Copyright Office's 1.222 page report states:

The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.

As a result of this clarification the photo is now (and has always been) public domain, free to use by anyone, commercially and non-commercially.

Sensory: BBC Wildlife Director John Downer & the technology of ‘spy-cam’ filmmaking

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:48:32 +0000

Exciting developments in camera technology have levelled out of the playing field between the professional and the amateur and so the battle now for programme makers like award-winning wildlife filmmaker John Downer is having to produce something better than the average person. The difference comes from investing into understanding the behaviour of the animal and devising a way to capture those unique moments, using a huge amount of research, inventiveness and dedication. This has resulted in exceptional and unique technical solutions that tell a story in an new and compelling way.

What is Fair Use in a Documentary Film?

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 17:49:33 +0000

With a maze of copyright laws to navigate, filmmakers need a hand in editing their movies to get them legally up to snuff. For this reason, Ondi and Vlad from BYOD brought doc advocate and entertainment lawyer Michael C. Donaldson to clarify some of the key points surrounding Fair Use. They discuss satire, using clips, and how filmmakers can secure the same rights of confidentiality as journalists. So what is allowed? What's not? You can jump right to the topic you are most interested in (see below) or just watch the whole video, highly recommended for any documentary filmmaker. GUEST BIO: Michael C. Donaldson is an American entertainment attorney, independent film advocate and a recipient of the International Documentary Association's Amicus Award, an honor bestowed upon only two others, Steven Spielberg and John Hendricks, in the 25-year history of the awards. He is a proponent of the 165-year-old fair-use doctrine and, through its use, is known for saving documentarians hundreds of thousands of dollars while preserving their First Amendment rights. In addition to serving as General Counsel to Film Independent (home of the Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival) and the Writers Guild of America/West Foundation, Donaldson practices at his Beverly Hills law firm, Donaldson & Callif, where, in 2008, entertainment attorney Lisa Callif became a named partner. Time Topic 00:49 Welcoming Michael Donaldson. 02:33 Michael's path to entertainment law. 05:14 The wrong reason to write a script. 06:26 Writing "Clearance and Copyright." 09:04 The explosion of fair use revenue. 12:43 Fair use as a offense, a defense and right. 14:23 The three criteria for fair use. 17:40 A clip for "This Film is Not Yet Rated." Back and forth with the director over orgasm length. 23:05 Showing fair use of a song, 'Expelled," and "Imagine." 24:40 Proving that outside music is "essential" to the work. 27:02 The cinematic language of words and images. 28:32 The protection afforded to filmmakers who act like journalists--dealing with Chevron. 35:56 The same set of laws for non-fiction print and documentary. 39:05 "White Trash," clip featuring "Castaway." 40:58 Errors and Omissions Insurance. 46:02 The power to talk down claims. 47:52 Keeping up with Michael. 49:13 The Daily Dig Down.

MIA documentary director leaks teaser – then quits project

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:00:27 +0000

Imagine you are directing a documentary film and it seems to be the case that it never sees the day of light anytime soon. You would be frustrated right? Thit is the case for director Steve Loveridge and his doc film about famous artist M.I.A. In an ongoing battle with the records label of M.I.A. Roc Nation he decided to leak the trailer online on YouTube with the effect of being hit with copyright infringement claim by the IFPI a few hours after the upload. He then posted an discussion with representatives of the label concerning how the trailer leaked. ""I know how frustrated you must be with the whole subject, but I promise we've been having ongoing conversations internally, trying to get legal stuff and funding resolved". The reply from him: ""I really couldn't give a flying f--k. Count me out. Would rather die than work on this..." Below you can find his original response to the record label Roc Nation. Frustrated with release dates and general distribution topics, was this a smart move? Do you agree with him?

And the Oscars 2013 Nominees for Documentary Feature Film & Short are…

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:53:30 +0000

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM (Watch trailers above this article in this order:)

5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi)
The Gatekeepers
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugar Man

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Inocente (Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine=
Kings Point (Sari Gilman and Jedd Wider)
Mondays at Racine (Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan)
Open Heart (Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern)
Redemption (Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill)

Crowdfunding works best for Documentary Films

Hannes Kreuzer — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:11:18 +0000

On January 3 2013 Kickstarter reported that more than $100 million have been pledged to film projects since April 2009. This is an amazing number and shows the impact this film financing form can have on the film industry. Compared to the overall film budgets of the whole film industry the amout is of course very small but if you take a closer look at what films have been funded via crowdfunding you will be surprised. The funds of the crowdfunding people have been distributed to the following genres:

Film Subcategory	Pledged	Funded Projects
Documentary	$42.64 million	2,394
Narrative Film	$31.74 million	2,331
Short Film	$16.68 million	3,000
Webseries	$6.83 million	619
Animation	$4.87 million	223

According to this figure the genre documentary film is in leading position when it comes to financing via you - the audience. For some this is not really surprising because most documentaries have lower production costs compared to fiction films. You can make decent doc-films with a tiny crew while you need a big team for fictions films. Some other interesting facts:

People created more than 8.000 films with the $100 million (this would be one film from a major studio)
Three documentary features and two documentary shorts are currently shortlisted for Oscar nominations in 2013: The Waiting Room, Detropia, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Inocente, and Kings Point.
Two films have been nominated for Oscars in the past two years: Sun Come Up and Incident in New Baghdad. A third, Barber of Birmingham, launched a project after being Oscar-nominated.
At least 16 Kickstarter-funded films have been picked up for national broadcast through HBO, PBS, Showtime, and other networks.
Kickstarter-funded films have won at least 21 awards at the Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Cannes, and Berlinale festivals.
Film stats on Kickstarter: Total pledged: $102.7 million, Total collected: $85.7 million, Total backers: 891,979, Funded projects: 8,567

So what do you think of these numbers? Is crowdfunding the future? Note 1: See the possible Oscar contenders of the Academy Awards 2013 (including the mentioned above) here: Note 2: You can submit your crowdfunding campaign to us to get more awareness. And don't forget to tweet us. via Kickstarter

YouTube enables 6 new langauges for auto-captions

Hannes Kreuzer — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:48:34 +0000

Did you ever come across the auto-captions feature on YouTube? When viewing a YouTube video people can click the CC button in the toolbar. This enables the automatic capturing of the film. Meaning the systems tries to identify the talking and automatically generates the subtitles. This works lets say - more or less good. Now this feature is available for six new languages: German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Dutch (plus the existing English, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish). If you are not happy with the captions you can always change them with a provided editing tool. You can also download, edit them offline and reupload your captions file. YouTube is also working on auto translated captions, so you can read/understand them independent from the original shooting language. The far more better solution is for sure a handcrafted human captions file, with the exact timcodes and most important the exact meaning. But this can be too expensive for some independent filmmakers. So especially for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and viewers who speak other languages the auto-feature is a nice service. Read our tips for creating closed captions here.

Documentary Film and New Technologies – MIT Discussion Panel

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:23:39 +0000

Emerging digital technologies are opening powerful new ways to create and even to reconceptualize the documentary film. How will handheld video cameras and ubiquitous open-source computing change the nature of documentaries? What are the implications for makers and viewers of documentaries of today's unprecedented access to online editing and distribution tools, to an ocean of data never before available to the general public? These and related questions will be central to our discussion. Panelists will include a scholar of digital culture, a producer who has begun to exploit emerging technologies, and a representative of a newly-important specialty of the digital age -- a curator of digital artifacts. Speakers Gerry Flahive is a producer for the National Film Board of Canada. He has produced more than 50 films and new media projects including Project Grizzly, Waterlife and Highrise. Shari Frilot is senior programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and curator of the New Frontier sectionof the event. Ingrid Kopp is the new media consultant at the Tribeca Film Institute where she runs the TFI New Media Fund. Launched in 2011 with the support of the Ford Foundation, the funds seeks to develop interactive, non-fiction projects centered around issues of social justice. Patricia R. Zimmermann is professor in the Department of Cinema, Photography and Media Arts at Ithaca College and codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. She is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film and States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democraciesand coeditor of Mining the Home Movie: Excavation in History and Memories. Moderator: William Uricchio is professor and director of MIT Comparative Media Studies and professor of comparative media history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His books include Media Cultures(2006), on responses to media in post 9/11 Germany and the US, and We Europeans? Media, New Collectivities and Europe (2009). by mit.edu

High Speed Camera Robot Shoots Amazing Slow Motion Footage

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:26:15 +0000

Check out the high speed motion control system 'Spike' from German based company "The Marmelade". Amazing footage... Academy Awards 2011

Our groundbreaking High Speed Motion Control System 'Spike' brings the creative freedom of a moving camera to the world of high speed filming and so enables us to create shots that would be impossible to achieve otherwise. 'Spike' can freely move the camera with unparalleled speed and precision, thereby removing the previously existing creative limitation of having to shoot high speed sequences with a locked camera. By marrying the hardware of a sturdy and reliable industrial robot to software that was built from the ground up for the demands of motion controlled high speed imaging, we developed a unique system for creating real life camera moves with the ease of use normally associated with 3D Animation. Exactly repeatable camera moves can be created and modified within a matter of seconds. Using the rich previsualisation features of the system, creative options can be quickly explored on the computer screen and the resulting changes then immediately be performed for real. Additional effects can be triggered in sync with the move, allowing complex effect sequences to be performed. And of course 'Spike' also is at home at slower speeds, producing dramatic product shots as well as stealthy perspective changes and breathing life into pack shots.

Filmmakers Dream? New & slimmest MacBook Pro ever with 2,880×1,800 resolution, Intel Quad-Core i7, SSD, USB 3.0, HDMI, 2kg

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:37:34 +0000

Apple is once again pushing the limits with the new Retina display for mobile computing. At its developers' conference in San Francisco on Monday June 11 2012 they introduced the all new MacBook Pro that could be a dream machine for pro filmmakers. Why? Find out. The combination of full power, light weight and slim design was always kind of a dream of the mobile filmmaker. With the new MacBook Pro this dream could turn into reality. But - there is always a but: The price for this machine starts at $2,199.00. So tell us, will you buy one? Here are the facts:

Aluminium unibody design and an all-flash storage architecture 2.3/2.7 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Diagonal screen size 15.4 inch
Screen resolution (max) 2,880 x 1,800
8GB 1600MHz memory (upt to 16GB)
256GB flash storage (up to 768GB)
Intel HD Graphics 4000 & NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory and automatic graphics switching
Built-in battery (7 hours)
MagSafe 2 power port
Two Thunderbolt ports (up to 10 Gbps)
Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
HDMI port
Headphone port
SDXC card slot
802.11n Wi-Fi wireless networking;⁴ IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible
Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology
Ethernet 10/100/1000

They also included a new cooling system which could be a critical part of the laptop due to the high performance.

Height: 0.71 inch (1.8 cm), Width: 14.13 inches (35.89 cm), Depth: 9.73 inches (24.71 cm), Weight: 4.46 pounds (2.02 kg) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GWBo2ZYWxI

CAPITAL C – A Documentary on Crowdfunding seeks Funding (plus Filmmaker Interview) UPDATE: FUNDED!

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:28:39 +0000

What is it really about this phenomenon crowdfunding everybody is talking about recently? Who can really benefit from it and how to run a successful campaign? The best way to find out would be to dig deep into the topic and start at the beginning. Filmmaker Timon Birkhofer is doing this exact thing by making a documentary about crowdfunding with the help of crowdfunding. Not only he plans to interview really notable and experienced people but this film also profits from its own funding experience. Update: 3 days before the end of the campaign, they reached the goal of USD 80.000! Congrats! Confirmed interviewees so far: • Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia • Scott Thomas, Design Director of the Obama Campaign • Brian Fargo, creator of Wasteland 2 • Tim Renner, former CEO Universal Music Europe • Prof. David Alan Grier, President Elect IEEE Computer Society • Prof. Eric von Hippel, MIT • Zach Crain, founder and CEO of Freaker USA • and several inspiring project initiators from North America to Europe We asked filmmaker Timon some questions and will regularly update this post to see how the funding campaign and the production of the movie works out. Plus: Don't forget to support the production of the movie at Kickstarter.

You decided to ask for $80,000. This amount seems rather high for a documentary campaign; is there some strategy behind it? No doubt, $80,000 is a hell of a lot of money to ask for. But all six members of our team will put their full-time jobs as DOPs, graphic designers, producers, editors, or directors aside to fully concentrate on making CAPITAL C a reality. This means several months of research, preparation, traveling in North America and Europe for shooting, editing, postproduction, sound design, mixing, and working on rewards and fulfillment. We have been working together for years and we are fully aware of the fact that all of our living expenses will have to come out of our own pockets during the production of CAPITAL C. At the same time, we do not want any external investor or financer to gain control over the content of the film, the selection of interviewees or the kind of stories and statements that make it into the final cut. CAPITAL C will be the very first documentary about the crowd funding movement that emerged from the independent culture scene. Making this movie any other way than independently would feel inappropriate to us. What are the top 3 questions you are trying to answer with the film? This project started quite differently from all the projects we did before: In 2009, we first discovered that cool little idea of making creative projects become reality with the support of the crowd. The only question was: Would crowd funding work on a bigger scale as well? In 2012, this question has already been answered by thousands of projects, small and huge, created with the helping hand of the crowd. So we've talked with several project starters to find out whether crowd funding could possibly work for us too. And when we realized that, yes, it could indeed work for us as well as for countless other projects out there, it began to dawn on us: This was not just a cool little idea anymore. It had grown into a game changer for filmmakers like us: Imagine yourself trying to sell the idea of a documentary film about the life of independent game developers in North America. You would have a very hard time doing this. Still, James Swirsky did it and asked the crowd instead of producers to support his film. He found his crowd, made his film, and won Sundance 2012 with “Indie Game: The Movie.” Would “Indie Game” ever have been produced without crowd funding? Well, most likely not. We will talk with many independents, just like James, to learn more about their adventure of working together with the crowd. We want to understand the dynamic and motivation of the crowd, its full potential, and its limits. And, of course, we hope that CAPITAL C will help others to reach out for their crowd – as it has helped us already. But there is at least one more question that we want to explore with CAPITAL C: What's next? I mean, every business that comes into contact with crowd funding is changing fundamentally. Take a look at the game developers Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo: They had little more to offer than the idea to create a new game. And each of them raised about $3,000,000 with the help of their crowd. Imagine the creative freedom they have with a budget like this and without publishers breathing down their neck. And now imagine what that means for the future of their former publishers… For that reason, we will also talk with crowd experts like Prof. Eric von Hippel, MIT, and Prof. David Alan Grier, president-elect of the IEEE Computer Society. And we’ll interview people who've already experienced the ultimate power of the crowd, like Scott Thomas, design director of the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama, and Jimmy Wales, founder of the biggest crowd sourcing project of all time, Wikipedia. Sorry for answering that extensively, but I hope I have mentioned at least three questions that we will try to cast light on with CAPITAL C. Who should watch this film? Literally everybody. Honestly. Crowd funding is such a powerful tool for innovators and consumers that it will shape the future for all of us - for established entrepreneurs and artists who already have their own crowd backing them as well as for up-and-coming talents, who introduce their very first creations to the market. It just doesn't matter anymore where we are located or where we are coming from. The only things that count are the idea behind the project and the desire to really make this idea happen. How much time did (or do) you invest in promoting the campaign? That's a good point! Most filmmakers are working on their projects on the Q.T. We are no exception. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t promote our work before everything is in place. Now with crowd funding, we are forced to show what we have in the middle of the process. Is that a bad thing? Not at all, since it makes things better: During our crowd funding campaign, many people approached us and offered their help. Brian Fargo and Scott Thomas, both interviewees of CAPITAL C, even backed our project. Other backers told us we should give them a call whenever we are in the area and they offered us to stay at their homes during the production. What more can you ask for? In this way, the promotion becomes part of the production process. It’s difficult to say how much time is used for what - but be sure: It’s a lot. Outcomes so far? Check it out on Kickstarter. We regularly post updates there and everyone's welcome to be part of the project!

The Changing Face of Documentaries – Keynote from David Lyle (CEO, National Geographic Channels US)

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:38:27 +0000

One of media's most innovative and forward-thinking leaders, David Lyle, will share his vision of how factual programming is having to adapt to audiences as they get used to different types of storytelling. National Geographic is looking for new and fresh styles of programming and encourage producers from around the world to think of exciting, contemporary ways to tell their stories.

Jeremy Paxman’s infamous Michael Howard interview

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:09:31 +0000

We all know the situation when interview partners continuously try to avoid answering simple questions. But for investigative filmmakers it can be essential to get answers. Here is a chance to see Newsnight's famous interview of Michael Howard by Jeremy Paxman. What do you think? Was Jeremy Paxman out of line with his questioning, or was Michael Howard being over evasive? 4:00 is the start of the action. It is an old clip from the BBC.

Film Academy changes rules for Documentary Oscar Nomination Process

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:08:11 +0000

In order to be eligible for an Academy Award, your feature-length documentary film will need to be reviewed by the L.A. Times or N.Y. Times. In an effort to both pare down the number of documentaries eligible for Oscar consideration and increase the involvement of the entire 157-member documentary branch, the academy’s documentary branch has adopted new rules for the 2013 ceremony. But the change, which would come into effect for the 2013 Oscars, is raising concerns among some filmmakers, including members of the academy's own documentary branch, that the new rule will favor wealthier documentary makers who have professional publicists over the vast majority of colleagues who typically struggle to finance their films, let alone publicize them. Here a list of filmmaker quotes:

A New York Times or LA Times review does not make a lot of sense to me, because the academy already requires a one-week run in a theater... ...Now in addition to running ads we have to hire publicists and get guaranteed a review. Joe Berlinger, whose most recent film, "Paradise Lost 3," has made this year's shortlist for best feature documentary.

New rules in the Oscar documentary process are not going to make things harder for documentary filmmakers Michael Moore (TheWrap)

The changes do not address the key problem, which is 99% of the documentaries being made are not released in theaters. So tightening up the rules for theatrical release just highlights the issue all the more... I would prefer to see the academy figure out a way to get rid of the theatrical requirement and recognize that the distinction between theatrical and non-theatrical for documentaries is a phony one and makes no sense in the modern world of documentary production. Lawrence Hott, a two-time Oscar nominee, said in an email to L.A. Times

How to create subtitles/closed captions for films and videos

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:48:49 +0000

In order to really reach a global audience it is very important to offer subtitles. We show you how to do so and what apps to use. So you have a film in german or spanish language? Then chances are low that your film will get a worldwide awareness. If you have shot your movie in any language other than English, you at least should offer English subtitles. (Other languages like Spanish, French, German etc. should be also added.) Of course there a always budget limits, but there are some free or cheap solutions for generating the translations and the subtitle files. 1) Before uploading your film to a videohosting site, you should check if they support subtitles. Best choice would be YouTube: You can upload seperate language files in many formats like SubViewer (*.SUB) and SubRip (*.SRT). 2) First thing: you need a transcript of your finished film. This can be a lot of work but it is essential. 3) Next you need to generate a subtitle file. This is a file that contains all the text in the film AND the timecodes when the text appears (and ends) in the film. Example: 0:01:06.300,0:01:08.800 Is it a good thing or a bad thing 0:01:08.800,0:01:11.300 that it's becoming harder maybe 0:01:11.300,0:01:13.300 impossible to encapsulate 0:01:13.300,0:01:16.300 information in discrete units and sell them? 4) To merge your transcript with the correct timecodes you can just define the codes by yourself or you can take advantage of an application. This is recommended for any films longer than some minutes. Note: Subtitle files on YouTube are not yet supported on iOS Youtube app. So if you want to be 100% sure people see the subtitles with the film, still the best option is to put the subtitles directly in the video file. Please share your own experiences! Further links: Caption it yourself - Guidelines CaptureTube: Create subtitles for YouTube videos Universal Subtitles: Translation Platform Software Subtitle Workshop (Windows) Movie Captioner (Mac) Belle Nuit Subtitler (Mac/Windows)