Institutions research - 4th October

After researching audience theories and identifying my perspective target audience through a questionnaire and demographics I decided to investigate media institutions to understand how they are involved and how they influence documentaries. From this I will indentify the scale I seek my documentary to be and the institutions and production details that are associated.

Institutions

Documentaries like most media productions are hugely affected by institutions. Institutions such as television, distribution and production companies are vital to documentaries as they provide some of the services key to a documentaries success, funding, distribution and promotion.

Institutions create the split between amateur and large scale documentaries. The main split is created by funding. Funded documentaries are often the ones heard about by the public as they are broadcast on major television channels or showcased in multiplex cinemas, advertised in well known publications and presented by well known people. All of this of course requires funding. Those documentaries without major funding are what are known as independent documentaries and are a small scale almost underground operation broadcast through YouTube. They are often unheard of and unprofitable.

Large Scale Documentaries

Funding for large scale documentaries depends primarily on its final output category. If the documentary is to be screened on television, then a documentary is mainly funded by television companies such as the BBC, ITV or Channel 4. On the other hand if a documentary is to be showcased in cinema then released on DVD then often it is funded by film companies looking for a profitable investment. In some cases however a documentary can be co funded by parties from both categories such as the recent BBC documentary “Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link” which was shown on BBC 1 and funded by both the BBC and American production company Atlantic Productions.

Often funders for documentaries are shrewd investors and can see that it is set to profit. A good example of a documentary profit was Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” which had a budget of $4 million and went on to make over $58 million.

Below is a list of some of the highest grossing documentaries and who was behind the funding and distribution:

1. Fahrenheit 9/11 - $222,446,882 – Lion Gate Films
2. March of the Penguins - $127,392,693- Warner Independent
3. Bowling for Columbine - $58,008,423 - Unite Artists
4. An Inconvenient Truth - $49,756,507 - Paramount
5. Sicko - $35,767,758- The Weinstein Company
6. Winged Migration - $32,257,753- Sony Pictures
7. Madonna: Truth or Dare $29,012,935 - Mirimax Films
8. Super Size Me - $20,641,054- Samuel Goldwyn Films

From this list we can both see the money to be made from documentaries as well as those documentaries that sell the most. All of them have similar themes in that they spur curiosity such as “Sicko’s” investigation and scrutiny of the health care system and “An Inconvenient Truth’s” revealing view into climate change, themes that of course sell. It is also interesting to note that all these box office topping documentaries have been funded, marketed and in many ways influenced by some of the largest and richest film companies showing us the extent of which institutions impact documentaries and drive them to create money.


As we can see by this, documentaries are a very profitable medium if they succeed. In order for documentaries to succeed often institutions and investors influence the documentaries design, ideas and production to sell. As making money is the key factor in there investment they promote conventions that sell a documentary. Some key selling conventions with documentaries are fear, controversy, speaking out as well as mystery. Often documentaries are watched as the audience wish to be educated on a matter or they want to discover the truth. Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” is a good example of this as with most Moore documentaries it speaks out against the authorities and gives the public an insight into darker truths behind matters. The controversy in the case of this film is the so called “legitimate” election of US President George .W. Bush in 2000. In this Moore relentlessly argues the deceitfulness and corruption of this “show case election”. Society as a culture and audiences within it love this, they see it as there own private rebellion against authority and therefore this sells, making money for big production companies, we need only look at the list above to see the profits turned by some of the most successful documentaries.

Small scale documentaries

However the profession and art of the documentary is not as glamorous and profitable as we have seen above. At the other end of the scale we have independent documentaries. Independent documentary makers are often individuals who feel so passionately or strongly about an issue that they feel it needs to be made public however they can. Often or not they assume a role similar to that of a free lance journalist and seek out interviewees, research and information off their own backs. From this they use domestically available filming and editing equipment widely available such as hand held video cameras and I Movie or Final Cut Pro on Apple Mac computers.

Often funding for these projects come from the director themselves and as they are a low key affair they require little more than time and transportation costs. However for those documentaries a little more adventurous that are intended for DVD, certain organisations such as The UK film council (UKFC) or Media 2007 exist and provide grants to documentary makers they see have promise or films they feel will be well received by audiences. Of course with all grants competition for the small amount of grants available render many documentary makers aidless and having to fund the project from their own bank accounts.

Of course the chasm between large scale and small scale documentaries is not absolute. Documentaries that are for the most part unheard off but still available on DVD are often funded by small scale film production companies and these documentaries are often fairly good quality but not box office material.

My Documentary

From my research into documentaries I have discovered the wide variety of documentary production, project and all associated institutions within this. By looking at large scale cinema documentaries and the scale of funding and production associated with this I feel this would be a medium far over what my piece and my resources would be capable of. On the other hand I wish not to dismiss my piece as a one man amateur YouTube production. Therefore I feel my documentary ranks itself as a piece that would be shown at an off peak time on a digital television channel such as BBC3 who often showcase less serious investigative documentaries.

As a smaller scale television production my documentary would not be a box office sell out yet would also not be a rank amateur production, but would embrace the passion of independent documentaries and the quality of a professional piece.

My documentary would be primarily distributed and shown on the BBC’s digital channels, but would later on depending on the positivity of its reception be produced on DVD and shown on the BBC’s main channels to be distributed and profited that way.

Having decided on the medium in which I wish to distribute my documentary, I will investigate audience consumption, looking at TV listings and identifying which channels showcase what documentaries at what times in order to see when my target audience would most likely watch it, in order to attract as larger audience as possible.