Rachel Gordon - The Documentary Distribution Toolkit: How to Get Out, Get Seen, and Get an Audience

Mapping out a diverse journey through documentary distribution, this book is a comprehensive global how-to reference guide, providing insights into the landscape of documentary distribution; targeting the right audiences to expand the reach of your documentary; and building a sustainable career.

Detailing how to prepare your documentary, strategies for crowdfunding, working with documentary organizations and online platforms and outlining the channels to consider, The Documentary Distribution Toolkit demystifies the process of distributing your documentary. Featuring case studies and interviews including filmmaker Alice Elliot, representatives from public television stations such as ARTE, ZDF, Al Jazeera, TRT (Turkey), NHK, as well as drawing on author Rachel Gordons over 20 years of experience working in documentary distribution. Foregrounding documentaries for nonprofit and educational purposes, each chapter gives guidance on how to think locally and globally, on money matters to consider, and personal questions to answer before proceeding to help filmmakers manage their time, money and energy wisely.

This book empowers the filmmaker to distribute their documentary in an effective and strategic manner. Providing concrete advice on how to navigate the documentary ecosystem beyond the classroom, this is the ideal book for professional and emerging documentary filmmakers, as well as students who are looking to distribute their documentary films.

Rachel Gordon has been working in documentary distribution for over 20 years. After working at the National Film Board of Canada, she collaborated with independent documentarians for several years and then did grassroots audience building for the International Monetary Fund. She has also worked as an independent filmmaker, directing and helping produce five short films screened at festivals across the United States and the United Kingdom. www.rachelgordonmedia.com

Rachel Gordon

First published 2022

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Rachel Gordon

The right of Rachel Gordon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gordon, Rachel (Film distributor), author.

Title: The documentary distribution toolkit : how to get out, get seen, and get an audience / Rachel Gordon.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021025633 (print) | LCCN 2021025634 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367715472 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367715458 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003152545 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Documentary films--Distribution. | Documentary films--Production and direction.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D6 G67 2022 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D6 (ebook) | DDC 070.1/8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025633

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025634

ISBN: 978-0-367-71547-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-71545-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-15254-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003152545

Typeset in Bembo

by MPS Limited, Dehradun

In loving memory of Harriet and Michael Gordon, Hedy Hirsch, Stephen Kay, Karlyn Loucks, Hilda Nanny Sachs, and Nina Segre.

Extra special thanks to:

My perfect partner and husband, Brian Kay and our awesome daughter, Naomi Kay.

My parents Arlene and Richard Carpel, Ian Gordon, Thomas Lahr and Ronald Dovel, and Nana Lisl Schick for collectively raising me to be curious, independent, empathetic and adventurous. To Marion Kay for encouraging our artistic pursuits.

My uncle Marc Sachs for reminding me to express myself in the simplest way possible.

My friend Kathleen Diehl for being an amazing editor.

And to my incredible network of family and friends who I do not have the word count to name.

He was known in many parts of the world as James Bond. He was tall, handsome and debonair. As a veteran distributor from a major Hollywood studio, he was a tough negotiator with keen instincts that told him when to hold his ground and when to compromise. He was also a fantastic teacher as I grew up in this glamorous new world of distribution.

The James Bond comparison was entirely fitting. A few decades back, many of the top studio distributors were leading a similar lifestyle to the fictional hero. International travel, an extravagant lifestyle wooing new clients in pricy foreign restaurants and late nights ordering martinis shaken, not stirred at five-star hotels. A good distributor could bring in millions of dollars in revenue in just one trip armed with a few brochures, a sizzle reel and a brash, confident charm.

As President and General Manager of the Discovery networks in Canada from 2003 to 2015, this was a world totally alien to me. I was already an experienced broadcaster and programmer. I read the daily overnight ratings every day. I knew the schedules of our main Canadian competitors intimately. When I met with production companies from across the country, I instinctively knew what ideas would work and what our viewers would reject. I was immersed in a domestic market where I could easily help create, shape and schedule content with a high degree of confidence that it would succeed.

But now I was about to oversee a new division an inhouse production and distribution business that was creating content for a global audience. We needed someone to head up the department and sell our content to multiple markets. So we interviewed prospective candidates and that is when I met our first director of distribution. Our version of James Bond.

I will never forget attending my first international market MIP TV in Cannes with him. Surrounded by the chaotic buzz of thousands of network executives, producers and sales teams, he calmly surveyed the scene and said to me: Paul, you can tell which ones are the distributors. Theyre the ones with the fins on their backs.

The vision of being surrounded by a pack of circling sharks filled me with trepidation and fear. Having programmed Shark Week for many years on Discovery, I was well aware of the dangers of swimming with one of the deadliest predators on the planet. But I also knew I was in good hands. My mentor would protect and guide me. So I plunged into the deep end.