10 Steps To A Successful Documentary

Documentary films now account for half the films at Raindance Film Festival. Online streaming platforms, from the majors to the niche are focussing on documentaries too. New channels are increasingly relying on short form documentaries to round out their content delivery broadcasts. I’ve learned that there are 10 steps to a successful documentary.

Making a movie is very similar to launching a startup. And the roadmap from idea, to finance, to project delivery is very similar to that if you were starting a new business in a totally new field. Many of the start-up rules apply to you and your new documentary too.

If you are looking for advice on how to make and launch a documentary, you are in the right place. The Raindance team has viewed thousands of documentaries, both features and shorts. The instructors at the Raindance Film School London have produced countless documentaries which have been released in cinema and online.

Raindance tutors and advisors have made documentaries that range from corporate docs, to red carpet interviews and passion projects. The styles they use are incredibly varied. The stories they tell document the lives of all kinds of people in all different types of situations: from war zones and global conflicts, to deeply personal situations.

10 Steps To A Successful Documentary

There is nothing difficult about these steps. However, they demand hard work.

1. Create a business plan

Why not do something that most emerging documentary filmmakers never do. Which is, test out your documentary idea. If you have never made a film business plan before, learn how. We use canva.com to make the final business plan. This can also be altered to become a pitch deck for commissioning editors, and a funding ‘ask’ for private investors.

The most important question your business plan must answer is: Why do you want to make this project? What is driving you to make this documentary film?

2. Who is your audience?

Anyone who touches you or your film’s business plan will want to know who you believe your audience is. This is important, because an investor in your film would be able to start to assess your project’s financial viability. This will lead you to the very important Step 3.

3. Build your audience

The time to start building your audience is now. Not when you have finished your documentary. This is so important. To launch your completed documentary successfully, you need to let people know along the filmmaking process what you are doing.

Many filmmakers loathe the idea of social media. They also shun the time consuming task of building email lists. But, without an audience your festival debut screening threatens an empty house. Commissioning editors will come up with an eerie silence if they Google your film. And should you be considering a crowdfunding campaign, you need to have a significant audience in order to raise enough money to secure your budget.

4. Consult a distribution expert

Once your business plan is complete, including your ideas for key artwork, why not present your project to an expert? Ideally you could meet with a sales agent that specialises in documentary sales. Dogwoof, run by Oli Harbottle (who used to produce Raindance Film Festival in the naughties) is exactly the kind of expert I would highly recommend.

How do you meet them?
Attend film festival and industry events. Build relationships. Get their feedback and advice.

5. Music rights

Understanding how music rights are acquired and used is an important part of your strategy. Basically, try and use 100% original music that you commission and own. Without properly cleared and licensed music you will not be able to monetise your film. It’s that simple.

6. Funding your first documentary

Producer colleagues of mine claim that funding a documentary is simply a series of emails and phones calls. And they are absolutely correct. The tricky thing is finding the financeable project.

Don’t knock yourself knocking on the doors of the big funders.
I would recommend leaving the hallowed hallways of government and public funders until later in your career, so too the hallways of broadcasters. For your first project, you are just too new and unproven.

Lets get serious here: Your first documentary is going to be funded by:

• friends and family
• angel investors
• crowdfunding

If you are making a social impact documentary and want it to be screened on public service broadcasters like PBS, remember this key fact. They will not consider documentaries funded or part-funded by the subject or a related organisation.

7. Publicity

Social media has made publicity for your film much more accessible. Remember there are two different aspects that you need to consider.

The first is your own self branding. What sort of documentary filmmaker are you? Remember that branding has nothing do do with logos or websites. It has everything to do with what people think of you. For example: are you honest, hard-working and reliable.

The second is the branding of your documentary. The key artwork should let a casual visitor to your film’s website know exactly what your movie is about.

Start as early as possible with both aspects of your publicity.

8  Develop merchandise

Each project you create should have merchandise potential. Decide what merch you want to create. Do your homework. find out the cost of manufacture, design and delivery. From this you should be able to calculate the profit, adding an important passive income stream to your project.

9. Consider multi formats

Have you considered other formats that your project could use? What about graphic novels, games or comic books. We have a terrific course on multi-format content creation.

10. Festival premiere status

Major film festivals like Raindance are super-brand-conscious. We want to have the world premiere. Failing that we want the international premiere followed by the national premiere. Do you see how festivals are trying to cash in on your film?

Just be aware of festival premiere status and decide how you can make it work for you.

Fade out:

Keep the ball rolling – get working on your next project. There is no reason why you can’t develop several different projects at the same time. In the industry we say that he/her has a ‘slate’. Having a slate makes you look professional instantly.

Remember this: everyone is screaming for content. You are a content creator. Learn the rules of the game. And make movies

Yours in filmmaking,

Elliot Grove

Ask a question about documentary filmmaking courses at Raindance