Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy!
The film community stormed the Twitterverse this week, following the announcement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science, under pressure from ABC/Disney over declining ratings of the Oscars telecast, announced major changes, including a new category for most popular film and a proposal to relegate the crafts honors to commercial breaks. Kristopher Tapley from Variety rounded up some choice reactions.
"The film business passed away today with the announcement of the 'popular' film Oscar,” actor Rob Lowe tweeted. "It had been in poor health for a number of years. It is survived by sequels, tentpoles, and vertical integration."
The Los Angeles Times' Stephen Battaglio, reporting from the Television Critics Association conference, writes about Showtime's success in its streaming platform.
[Showtime Chief Executive David] Nevins said the number of cable and satellite subscribers taking Showtime has remained steady even though the number of pay TV homes has been declining in recent years. The growth is coming from customers signing up for the over-the-top service, he said. Streaming has reduced the price barrier that had limited Showtime’s distribution…"Streaming has allowed Showtime to go from being a luxury item to a bargain," Nevins said
Benjamin Mullin of The Wall Street Journal reports on the state of OTT doc/nonfiction platform CuriosityStream, whose targeted subscription base of seven million by 2020 will likely fall short.
"When we launched Discovery back in the infancy of the cable industry, the lessons we learned during our first few years of operation were huge contributors to our future success," [CuriosityStream Founder Jon] Hendricks said. "You evolve, you adjust, you stay nimble."
Writing for the Sundance Institute blog, Lindsay Utz reports on Sundance's Contemplating the Cut seminar on the art and craft of nonfiction editing.
[According to Jonathan Oppenheim], the job of the editor "is to absorb the subject of the film through the footage, to live and breathe with the material, making it his or her own, and, ultimately, to emerge with a vision for the possibilities (and impossibilities) of the film." The problem, he noted, is that the artistic model "tends to be implicit, the view that 'dare not speak its name.' My sense is that it is often experienced by the editor but rarely asserted.
The New Yorker's Rachel Riederer shares her observations of the live stream "bear cam" on Explore.org, which she deems "captivating, unedited zen."
I watched these Internet stars through a live stream popularly known as the bear cam, which provides a counterpoint to the hyper-produced prestige nature documentaries that use music, high-definition videography, and delicately placed cameras to turn wildlife activities into dramatic cinema. If Planet Earth is a Michael Bay production, the bear cam is not even a home movie—it's CCTV.
From the Archive: Winter 2016--"Oscar Mired: The Peaks and Pitfalls of an Awards Campaign"
"Documentarians cannot afford to take a year off to campaign, to pay for the hotel rooms, to pay for the publicists. AMPAS has its rules, but I would love for us to of work together to create clarity, to create a world in which money cannot influence the outcome."
In the News
TIFF Announces Documentary Slate
International News and Current Affairs Emmys Nominees Revealed
EDN Is Hiring a New Director
HBO Ties with Digital News Startup Axios to Produce News Documentary Specials
Heather Schuster Exits Amazon Studios Head of Unscripted Investigation
Film Independent’s Global Media Makers to Mentor 14 Filmmakers from Middle East, Northern Africa and Turkey
Ken Burns to Launch Documentary Filmmaking Course Online with MasterClass
Fox Searchlight Backs Scotty Bowers Biopic Based on Sexy Tell-All Memoir
LeBron James to Produce Three-Part Documentary for Showtime