Whether we are unemployed creatives, overwhelmed freelancers, or underpaid employees, it can often seem like everyone else has figured it out. Social media is a constant stream of people announcing new jobs, festival screenings, and prestigious grants and awards. Yet more often than not, the filmmaker who had the big premiere, received all the accolades, and even successfully sold their film is still struggling to get by, just like the rest of us. So how are filmmakers actually making a living?
Business
A dizzying, fast-paced, 150-minute montage about American jazz, Western imperialism, European colonization, and the assassination of Congolese
As the theatrical market for arthouse and documentary films continues to recover from the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, it may not seem
In November 2020, a group of filmmakers met via a Directors Guild of America Zoom panel to discuss a harrowing commonality: missing films. On this
Producers and funders will discuss how filmmakers can make business decisions that support values like creative independence, representation, sustainability, and authorship today, given the limited funding sources available to all.
Raising money for a film often feels like a Sysyphean task, constantly pushing a boulder up a hill. But as documentaries have become more popular
This is a fully revised look at documentary budgeting, and updates the 2006 Documentary article “Don’t Fudge on Your Budget: Toeing the Line Items.” At the center of the documentary "business" is the budget, which offers a map of the filmmaking process, expressing both the film you’re planning to make and how you plan to make it. Ideally, it is also a living document that can help get a film to completion.
One of the costs of living in the US is that you have to pay income tax to enjoy all the services of the government. This year, paying taxes just got
In the face of perceived dominance in the documentary marketplace by such major SVODs as Netflix and Amazon, an international coalition of
By Susan Margolin and Jon Reiss During IDA's Getting Real 2016 conference back in September, we held a panel called "So Your Film Didn't Get Into