Fascinating ITVS Survey for Documentary Filmmakers

The data from ITVS’s 2009 Digital Survey is in, and the results are fascinating.  If you’re wondering how to write your distribution plan for your documentary film, take heed.

While “television is still king,” and DVD sales are down, the Internet is driving revenues at an unprecedented pace, according to the survey.

What does this mean for you? While there are a proliferation of distribution options, you should definitely look into Internet sales as a chief source of recouping your investment and even making a profit.

While today a mere 1% of documentary films actually turn a profit, according to recent statistics cited on Doculink, that figure is destined to climb. Producers are figuring out how to sell their films online at an unprecedented rate.

Organizations like Stacey Parks’ Film Specific (http://www.filmspecific.com/) and Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller’s DocuMentors (http://www.documentaryhowto.com/) are cropping up to guide filmmakers in this self-distribution venture.

If you are at all interested in distributing your documentary via the Internet, and you should be for any funder to take you seriously these days, the ITVS survey suggests that filmmakers plan to retain the nonexclusive digital rights to their documentary film. The good news is that these rights were deemed “important” or “very important” to 93% of the filmmaker surveyed.

On a related note…for information on how to write a proposal for an engaging quest-driven documentary using many of the dramatic devices employed by screenwriters, please check out my E-course, ” Editing the Character Driven Documentary” at https://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/.