This event was recorded live on Wednesday, September 30, 2020.

DOC NYC PRO presents a day dedicated to the art of documentary producing. Sessions will feature guidance in negotiating credits and waterfall structures; career sustainability in pivotal times; and developing financing, co-production and executive producer relationships. The daylong course will also include an interactive Q&A breakout session and social hour.

Session One: 11-11:45 am ET

Career sustainability in the Covid-19 era

In session one, we host a conversation with five producers who share their efforts to build sustainable careers within the documentary field. What producing skills are crucial for career longevity? How can producers diversify their roles across multiple mediums and formats? How important is self-advocacy when it comes to crediting and compensation? We’re joined by producers Razan Ghalayini (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee); Alice Henty (Welcome to Chechnya); Diane Quon (Minding the Gap); Jameka Autry (Through the Night, Ernie & Joe) and David Felix Sutcliffe (Black Mothers, (T)ERROR), who share the paths they’ve taken and challenges faced and overcome. Moderated by Farihah Zaman.

Co-presented by:

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Session Three: 1-1:45 pm ET

Co-production, financing and the executive producer relationship

In our third session, we discuss models for documentary financing, including co-production, equity financing and the role of the executive producer. We’re joined by Impact Partners’ Executive Director, Jenny Raskin; Executive Vice President of Imagine Documentaries, Sara Bernstein; Suhad Babaa, Executive Director of the nonprofit Just Vision; Jannat Gargi, VP, Head of Documentaries at VICE Studios; and Multitude Films producer Jessica Devaney (Pray Away, Always in Season).

Co-presented by:

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Tickets are $40; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net. 

This event was recorded live on Wednesday, September 23, 2020.

DOC NYC PRO presents a day of education on current trends in documentary distribution and audience engagement, including sessions on theatrical and digital distribution for the pandemic context and beyond; new realities for audience engagement–both long-term developments and more immediate responses to social distancing requirements; and a case study on the hit Canadian doc Once Were Brothers.

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Session Four: 2-2:45 pm ET

Spotlight on Canada: a case study of Once Were Brothers

In a final bonus session, we’ll dig deep into a case study of the music doc Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, a multi-partner Canadian production that represents an international collaboration between LA-based Imagine Documentaries, Toronto’s White Pine Pictures, Bell Media Studios and Universal Music Canada’s Shed Creative, released internationally and in the United States by Magnolia Pictures. Panelists include film director Daniel Roher; Magnolia Pictures President Eamonn Bowles; Neal Block, Head of Marketing and Distribution at Magnolia Pictures; Justin Wilkes, President of Imagine Documentaries; and Peter Raymont, president of White Pine Pictures.

Session co-presented by:

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Tickets are $40; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net. 

This event was recorded live on Wednesday, October 7, 2020.

Join DOC NYC PRO for a 90-minute panel exploring the use of archival footage in documentary filmmaking. The panel discussion will include Shola Lynch, independent filmmaker and curator of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Lia Jusino, director of archival research at VICE Media; Candice Murray, Vice President of Editorial at Shutterstock; filmmaker and artist Mariam Ghani(What We Left Unfinished), and editor Carla Gutierrez (RBG, Pray Away).

Independent director Mariam Ghani will discuss the crucial role of archival footage in shaping the story arc of her recent feature-length work, What We Left Unfinished. She is followed by Candice Murray of Shutterstock, a long-established photo archive that’s expanding into film and video footage; and Lia Jusino, who researches and licenses material for VICE Media’s nightly news program, Vice News Tonight and must mine archives across a wide breadth of topics and with an intensely quick turnaround. We also hear from the Schomburg Center’s Shola Lynch, who oversees that archive’s collection of films, videos, music, and spoken-arts recordings, which document the experiences of people of African descent. And Carla Gutierrez weighs in on the editor’s perspective. Her work on the Ruth Bader Ginsberg doc RBG–and currently, a forthcoming Julia Child project–relies on archival footage to bring depth and color to portraits of two women who have lived much of their lives in the public eye. (Please note: Penny Lane, originally scheduled to participate in the event, is no longer able to take part.)

Co-presented by:

Tickets are $15; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net. 

This event was recorded live on June 16 & 17, 2020.

Join DOC NYC PRO for its next Immersive webinar program, a two-session deep dive into the ethics, risks and practicalities of production in sensitive production environments, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, during social protests, after natural disasters, and with vulnerable subjects. As the world of doc production and distribution shifts, how can film teams reexamine their responsibilities to their crews and subjects, now and in the future? How might our current assessment of production risks reshape industry standards for filmmaking in the public interest and in marginalized communities? And how can the documentary field carry the lessons learned in this moment forward into other contexts?

On Day 1, we welcome Brenda Coughlin from Sundance Institute, part of the international team behind an evolving documentary filmmaking risk-assessment guide for the field, titled “Independent Documentary Filmmaking in the Time of Corona.” She will discuss the legal, journalistic, and ethical considerations that are crucial to film teams’ decision-making, during Covid-19 and beyond. She’s joined by filmmakers Michael Premo, Stephanie Wang-Breal, and Cecilia Aldarondo, whose work in vulnerable communities and with subjects in special need of protection and safety offers insights into how doc makers can navigate weighty decisions in sensitive production environments.

On Day 2, we’ll hear from Filmmaker Magazine co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay, who has been following the evolving realities of production insurance during the pandemic. He’ll share the latest updates from insurance brokers, and will summarize how professional guilds, insurance companies, big distributors and individual film teams are having to rethink  issues of liability and worker protection–perhaps forever. He’ll be joined by Carrie Lozano, producer, journalist and director of the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Documentary and Pare Lorentz funds. She’ll discuss her recent piece, “The Ethics of Production in a Pandemic”, which breaks down the “life-and-death ethical and moral dilemmas” that current production activities pose, and situates those dilemmas within the history of best practices in ethical journalism and filmmaking.

Tickets are $15; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net. 

This event was recorded live on Wednesday, September 16, 2020.

Join DOC NYC PRO for a 90-minute panel highlighting projects that live at the intersection of documentary film and journalism.

Guests include director Ursula Liang, discussing her 2020 film Down a Dark Stairwell; New York Times journalists Catrin Einhorn and Leslye Davis, who share their decade-long reporting journey for their new Netflix feature Father, Soldier, Son; Editorial Director for Film & Television at The New York Times, Kathleen Lingo; Steve Byrne, Executive Director of Detroit Free Press’s Freep Film Festival in Detroit; Charlie Phillips, Head of Video at The Guardian; and Erin Brethauer, co-director of the San Francisco Chronicle’s feature doc Last Men Standing.

In a conversation moderated by Columbia Graduate School of Journalism professor Nina Alvarez, panelists will discuss how they view their roles as both filmmakers and journalists, and they will unpack the opportunities and challenges inherent in bringing audiences different forms of a story via a variety of platforms and mediums. We’ll also cover the rise–and the future–of documentary projects produced in collaboration with major news outlets and their staffs.

Tickets are $15; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net.

This event was recorded live on May 5 & 6, 2020.

DOC NYC PRO hosted its first, virtual two-day webinar program, recorded live on May 5 & 6, 2020 – an immersive two-session deep dive into the nuts and bolts of creating highly shareable online content, especially in this moment when nearly all our social and business interaction has to take place virtually. Guests included representatives from digital marketing firm Smarthouse Creative; ViceNews; and the cult doc hit Fantastic Fungi.

On Day 1, we heard from Seattle’s Smarthouse Creative, a marketing and PR firm specializing in indie film and creative projects. Co-Founder Ryan Davis and Director of Marketing Amie Simon unpacks the must-have criteria every film and film team need to attract a robust online audience, and the customizations that are necessary to create a unique online imprint for your film. They also offer advice on what’s changed in this pandemic moment: who’s online, how our social media behavior is shifting as we enter a second month of remote work, and how digital messaging needs to respond to the Covid-19 crisis–or not.

On Day 2, we came back for more guidance from VICE News’s video publishing specialist, Olivia Awad, who shared details about VICE’s patented approach to creating highly shareable and clickable video content for audiences with lots of choices. Olivia was joined by Kirt Eftekhar, owner of Area 23a Films, the distributor behind Louie Schwartzberg’s feature doc Fantastic Fungi, whose grassroots and influencer marketing efforts, both online and off, have helped garner what the The New York Times called, “a level of social-media fame scientists can only dream of.” Kirt offered a case study of what’s worked for Fantastic Fungi and why, and how the community behind the film has been unstoppable–even in a time of social distancing.

Tickets are $15; all who register prior to the live event will receive access to the livestream; all registrants also receive access to the recorded session, a written transcript and a copy of the slide presentation. Tickets are non-refundable. If you have questions about registration, please email caitlin@docnyc.net.

To purchase a pass to DOC NYC PRO’s entire Summer/Fall 2020 line-up, register here; passes are $150 and include access to recordings and transcripts for all past events. 

For questions about accommodations and accessibility, please email accessibility@docnyc.net.