Dr John Morse likens the consumer’s COVID experience to living thru an episode of “The Twilight Zone”. He analyzes U.S. media usage trends during the pandemic in a PACT (UK Producers) webinar hosted by Dawn McCarthy-Simpson (Wednesday 20th May). John takes us on a deep dive into the data, highlighting the Big Trends: Viewing has …
SUNNY SIDE OF THE DOC is France’s great international documentary market. My guest is MATHIEU BÉJOT, Sunny Side’s strategy director, who is locked down and safe in Paris. Sunny Side 2020 is branded “The Connected Edition” to capture the many layers of digital Content, Trend-spotting and Networking that delegates will experience from June 22-25. Podcast …
What program or genre will be a blazing success when we make the inevitable economic recovery from these dark weeks? Well, History can teach us a lesson. I’m talking about two meanings of ‘History’: ‘The study of the past’ And A+E Networks’ History Channel. Pawn Stars While the 2008 Recession tore through consumers’ wallets and …
The 2020 PGA Awards broadcast the industry’s acceptance of the booming documentary category as a peer with even the most popular, binge-worthy scripted series. There was a surprise winner in the PGA’s prestigious Outstanding Producer of Televised or Streamed Motion Pictures category It was 1895 Films for Apollo: Missions to the Moon. APOLLO’s competitors were four …
Greg Boustead is director of Science Sandbox, a portfolio of strategic grantmaking at the Simons Foundation, focused on outreach and engaging new audiences with science. He shared his strategy and grant-making process at Sunny Side of the Doc’s Science-themed Meet The Executive session. We are publishing Greg’s very informative session as a podcast, though without …
Netflix senior programming exec Diego Buñuel presented to two standing-room-only audiences last Tuesday at Sunny Side of the Doc in beautiful La Rochelle. It was the ‘event with the event.’ Delegates lined up for an hour beforehand to secure their seats. Netflix is that hot! The generous Diego is a former producer who comes from that …
POMPEII RISING is an ambitious €1.6 million budget Science / History project from France’s Gedeon Programmes. Coproduction partners include French, German, Japanese and other international public broadcasters, and the online subscription platform CuriosityStream. In this Case Study for Sunny Side of the Doc we capture the development, production, distribution and select deal highlights of POMPEII …
This month’s coverage of the documentary and unscripted landscape is curated by your friends at Sunny Side of the Doc and DocumentaryBusiness.com. Fetishizing personalities: “The Inventor: Out For Blood” exposes the celebrity money cult led by Silicon Valley’s Elizabeth Holmes, founder of collapsed medical disrupter Theranos // The Guardian. Misogyny? That’s what a tech writer …