Story of the Month: Investors Target Unscripted Production. There’s a frenzy of investment in unscripted production // Wall Street Journal. New SVOD’s fail to understand that success depends on streaming addiction // Lightshed Partners. Netflix Australia: Revenues surge but avoids taxes and local production // The Age + Documentary Business. Audiences want more documentaries in streaming libraries …
Howard Swartz is the Senior Vice President Docs and Specials, Factual Networks & Streaming, for Discovery. For Sunny Side of the Doc‘s Meet the Executive session, he joined Peter Hamilton to share Discovery’s documentary strategy and key buckets. Following are session highlights, including clips of several projects that reveal Howard’s priorities. MISSION & STRATEGY What …
Update: Mandy Chang is leaving her post as legendary BBC-STORYVILLE‘s commissioning editor. Last year she recapped her STORYVILLE strategy in detail for my panel at Taiwan’s virtual CCDF-CNEX Documentary Conference. Our fellow expert panelists were: Hong Kong-based, Phoenix TV exec Haibo Huang And from Washington DC, all-knowing veteran programmer and senior consultant Dan Salerno. Read on …
BIG vs SMALL stood out at Sunny Side of the Doc 2019 as a pitch to watch. Last Friday, PBS‘s primetime NEWSHOUR dedicated a report to Director / Producer Minna Dufton‘s gripping feature documentary of Giant Wave surfer Joana Andrade. Below is the link to Stephanie Sy’s video report, and the transcript follows in case …
A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. But what are the odds that a U.S. or international documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? And what is the total expense on all those submissions that missed out? This year, the Sundance Film Festival screened 73 feature-length …
Quoll Farm is a classic natural history film about a very cute and little-known Australian marsupial, the Eastern Quoll. It has a gentle conservation message, and like several recent films, notably My Octopus Teacher, there’s a story of human redemption as part of the wildlife package. I was totally charmed by the antics of the …
Room 2806: The Accusation is a 4-parter from France’s CAPA Productions that follows the sexual assault case in New York involving French presidential candidate and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. On May 14 2011, Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel maid reported that DSK had forced her to perform oral sex in his suite in the Sofitel Hotel …
Loren Baxter (Head of Acquisitions), Stefanie Fischer (MD of Sales) & Leila Monks (Head of Commissioning) joined me for a revealing Off the Fence webinar at Sunny Side’s Global Pitch. My key questions: What is your key focus in Sales, Acquisitions and Commissions? What is Off the Fence working on? How do you work together …