Pollinate is a new addition to the Workbook Project network. Its focus is on all things related to audience. In an extensive four part series Lisa Salem looks at how Mark Francis’ feature doc BLACK GOLD reached global audiences.

By Lisa Salem – The irony is that these multiple posts have come about as a result of what was originally intended to be a short phone conversation with filmmaker Marc Francis a couple of weeks ago – for a short piece looking at the film and how it managed to so successfully reach audiences around the issues it documents.

Our conversation turned into a long one though, and I’ve been at odds as to how best to cover the different points that were brought up as Marc recounted the story of how BLACK GOLD got made and put out into the world.

In the end I didn’t want to leave much out so I’ve decided to transcribe a lot of our 90 minute conversation over the next three posts and then post a fourth which will meditate upon some of the points we hit.

Marc is one half of the co-directing/producing team that made this film (his brother, Nick, is the other half) which looks at the worldwide coffee industry and the relationship between western coffee consumers and coffee farmers in the developing world.

It’s remarkable within the genre of social-issue documentary making because it’s audience took the film for their own and because it’s been the instrument of tangible change around the issues it explores.

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First off, if you haven’t checked out Brett Gaylor’s open source cinema project you should. It is an exciting doc project that pulls from collaborators around the world. Brett is currently looking for some materials to finish the film. Here’s a request that he sent out to his Open Source Cinema members. If you’d like to join this ground breaking project visit http://opensourcecinema.org

Hello dear members of Open Source Cinema! This is Brett Gaylor, the director of the project. I’m writing to you because the film, Basement Tapes, is almost done. It’s been a four year process of filming, interviewing, and remixing, and it’s almost done. The film is about 90 minutes long, and has a lot of great remix work from both opensourcecinema.org and from the ether of YouTube. It’s going to be good, but it still needs more contributions!

There are 4 things I’m looking for, and I’m hoping you can help!
1. Work you’ve already made that remixes pop culture. Videos and Songs that really highlight digital transformation, humour, insight, and mayhem. I’d like to open this film by showing some creative examples of remix culture, so if you have them, please send them!

2. Videoblogs on the subject of copyright, filesharing, the Internet. At several points in the film, we hear from videobloggers and youtubers. If you haven’t recorded any, this would be a good chance. If you need some inspiration, consider Jammie Thomas – the single mother who was ordered to pay $222,000 for downloading 24 songs. Some reaction videos would be great – we’ve already used a few. Rant and rave or get creative!

3. Copyright criminal photos. Take a picture of yourself with a criminal mugshot – current copyright laws make us all criminals. We’re going to compile these and make an animation for the film.
Download the mughsot template here!
http://opensourcecinema.org/node/2226

4. Finally, and most importantly, we’ve got some specific remixing we’re after for the final section of the film – the last speech by Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig on copyright, and Girl Talk’s guerilla remix dance party at the Montreal Jazz Festival. MIx it all together on your computer and then re-upload it on the site – the last section of the film really needs collaborative power! The call for remixing is at :
http://opensourcecinema.org/node/2225

Thanks to those of you who have submitted material and helped shape the film – stay tuned as we near completion! Editing is scheduled to finish in June 2008. If you aren’t a member of opensourcecinema.org, go there and register and help make the film!

Keep remixing,
Brett Gaylor
www.opensourcecinema.org

This edition of TCIBR is brought to you by IndieFlix and Breakthrough Distribution – Dan Goldman is a critical acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator. His most recent project “Shooting War” went from being a free online comic to sparking a bidding war. Various major publishing and production interests battled it out for the publishing and film rights. Goldman is a strong believer in the concept of crowdsourcing and micropatrons and a number of his new ventures are embracing the concept of audience as collaborator.

For more on Dan and his work visit www.dangoldman.net

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Power to the Pixel is a conference that focuses on funding, producing and distributing films in the digital age. The next edition of PTTP will be held in Paris this coming June. Liz Rosenthal the founder of PTTP was kind of enough to share the following video. Please feel free to embed and spread.

The final Power to the Pixel session brings together five pioneering filmmakers who are reinventing the way that films reach audiences and audiences reach films. Lance Weiler, Arin Crumley, Susan Buice, Matt Hanson, Jeremy Nathan explain why they chose the DIY path. Moderated by Liz Rosenthal.

We hear this all the time. It’s about who you know. Most professions in life seem to benefit from networking, but in filmmaking it is about as important as it gets. And getting out to network can become very difficult when you are spending weeks and months in the edit room and have devoted your entire income – plus whatever you can muster up on your credit cards – on the film you are making. That being said, you have to find ways to network and you can start by doing it online and through email.

We didn’t realize how important networking was until after we were done editing 10 MPH. We definitely talked to people and met up with friends who knew friends, but didn’t figure out who exactly was who until we started getting into film festivals. I now realize this ‘who is who’ stuff can actually help get you into bigger festivals and build a bigger impression of your film from the get go.

My advice on how to make the best bang for the buck when it comes to getting to know this industry is to get yourself over to one of the key conferences for indie filmmaking. The two that I really like are the IFP Conference and SXSW’s conference and panels that co-exist with the film festival. I went down with my buddy Kelly Wilkinson (also an Assoc. Producer for 10 Yards) during the 2007 festival and we met tons of people that had quite a bit of influence. Not only did I understand the industry better after this experience, but I was a lot more confident about how to position our next film – 10 Yards. Another perk about a film festival like SXSW is that just about every feature film has a party of some sort following its screening and so do all the major sponsors. So take advantage of these and don’t be afraid to crash a few parties. Kelly and I got into Morgan Spurlock’s party after the screening of What Would Jesus Buy, a film he executive produced. Some of the people we met earlier changed their tune about us after they saw that we were ‘invited’ to this event.

To get 10 MPH released, we knew we needed connections. We didn’t know how we’d release the film, but initially envisioned that some company like THINKFilm would come on board and do everything for us. The very first thing we did – after getting a decent rough cut finished – was fly to Toronto to meet with a few of the execs at THINKFilm. We sat in a conference room and watched our movie with them. It’s funny when I look back on this because it was probably not the best use of time and money for us at that moment, but I think this did something for us that has potentially paid off in other ways and still might pay off down the road with another film. We still keep in touch with the two execs who watched our movie and they are interested in our future projects.

This brazen approach for getting recognized and figuring out how the industry worked set the stage for other meetings and networking opportunities down the road. We talked to the brother of a friend who did some PR for very big-named people. He got our movie into the hands of some influential Hollywood types. They of course insisted we needed to hire a professional editor until they did us the favor and passed the movie to a professional editor who really liked the film and felt the editing was very solid. We ran around in circles like this for a few months, and it helped us start figuring it all out. You hear about rejection and how anyone making films gets used to it. But this period (7/05 to 12/05) was where we really got to experience that. By the end of 2005, I was certain we had probably gone down a dead-end path trying to be filmmakers. But during these encounters, we listened to people and got feedback on the film that I believe ultimately made it stronger. You are never done editing a film until you abandon it and show it to the public at large.

After we started getting a few acceptances to festivals in early 2006, our enthusiasm for the film picked up again and we found more ways to network and look for a way to get this film out there. At this point, we were still dreaming about a big distribution deal. I was fortunate enough to work for a marketing agency that did some work for Blockbuster. Naturally, I worked on making my responsibilities with this client as strong as possible with the hopes that maybe somehow it might lead to a connection that could benefit my true passion. I got the chance to visit Dallas (Blockbuster’s HQ) and after wining and dining my key clients (who I still keep in close touch with), one of them offered to introduce me to this buyer who supposedly had some good connections in the industry.

The next day I met him and handed him a screener of 10 MPH. He was a good guy, but like every other connection I felt this would be one of the dormant ones. As it turned out, he loved the film and found it a really fresh alternative to all the typical Hollywood crap he’s stuck watching day after day. Over several conversations, he told me he felt this film deserved to be distributed and asked me to send him several copies. He was, in effect, going to serve as a producer’s rep for us and help find a deal. We were pretty hyped up by all this, but like most things in this business, the buzz eventually fades and you get stuck in this terribly agonizing waiting period of wondering whether anything is actually going to happen.

By summer of 2006, we were getting invites to more festivals and starting to film 10 Yards, so the urgency to find a way to distribute 10 MPH had faded. Film productions take over and during 10 Yards, we had some real life struggles that were also complicating things. It wasn’t until early 2007, after primary production had wrapped on 10 Yards, that the connection with the Blockbuster buyer finally turned into a serious lead. He hooked us up with a sub-distributor called RepNet, LLC, which wasn’t of course the big distributor we were envisioning at the time. Ultimately, though, this is where the DIY path would begin for us. I do wonder sometimes how things would be different if we didn’t make the connections we did during the last few years. My guess would be that I’d probably be sitting in a stanky cubicle somewhere doing meaningless busywork for 8+ hours a day.

Keep on keepin’ on. I notice a lot of filmmakers in the festival circuit that have spent an arm and a leg both in terms of time and money to make a film. They are reaching the point of burnout and don’t have any idea how to make another film. So, they don’t. Josh and I realized we had to keep making films, otherwise we would have probably faded away too. When we launched plans to make 10 Yards we were pretty burnt out, but it was refreshing to see how this film re-invigorated us and gave us a lot of new energy around developing this career. We were also amazed at how much easier it was to raise some of the money we needed to make the film. With the success 10 MPH was having on the festival circuit, people were more apt to support.

Whatever it takes, if you are into filmmaking because of the career, you have to find ways to keep making films. That job I took between 10 MPH and 10 Yards was fast becoming too comfortable and I could see how easy it would have been to slip back into that world for good. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. It’ll happen to many of us and someday may still happen to me, but I really do hope it’s a clear and conscious choice if it does. Not something that is the result of a bunch of dead ends. Next week: Sponsors

Hunter Weeks made his feature-length directorial debut with 10 MPH. He’s also the mastermind behind the creative marketing and distribution efforts that led to national recognition and critical acclaim for the film. Photographing the world since the early nineties, Hunter Weeks has developed an eye for capturing moments of humanity in off-the-beaten-path places, like Croatia, Morocco, and Indonesia. His photography background influences his work on documentaries, which currently focus on American pop culture subjects. As the follow-up to 10 MPH, he’s working on a documentary about fantasy football, currently titled 10 Yards.