Doc/Fest - Sheffield

There has been a long and honourable relationship between British filmmakers and sponsors, ever since John Grierson started using the term documentary. Classics like ‘Night Mail’, Karel Reisz’s ‘We Are The Lambeth Boys’ for Ford and Humphrey Jennings’ poetic ‘Listen to Britain’, were all sponsored documentaries. In the 1960s, British Transport Films commissioned John Sc...

10 x 10 is the popular free workshop run in partnership by the Documentary Filmmakers Group (DFG) and the North American organisation Doculink. Filmmakers screen up to ten minutes of their work-in-progress and receive ten minutes of directed feedback from the audience. Work screened has included trailers, excerpts from a rough cut, key scenes and even rushes, and it’s a great opportunity f...

Every day for six months during 2008, Radio 4 recreated that date’s events in 1968, using vivid audio archive and music from the time.

Each day’s programme was four minutes long, and was broadcast right before PM, the network’s evening news strand. Proximity to the headlines of 2008 allowed listeners the opportunity to compare and contrast events then and now. Every Sunday evenin...

Anybody with a mobile phone can be a filmmaker, and many of us have become video chroniclers of our own lives. While most footage never makes it past our laptops, a few personal stories have made for unforgettable documentaries. But just what makes a life story a compelling one? How do you keep the camera rolling during major life events? And isn't it possible to share too much? Lawrence Bar...

Hamish Mykura, Head of Documentaries at Channel 4 and Head of More4, is interviewed by Nick Fraser about his influences, views and plans for documentary at Channel 4. Hamish sees the documentary brief at Channel 4 as "one of the most exciting and varied commissioning roles within television, ranging from popular series to feature-length landmark films" and regards the job as an irresistible ...

The most popular pitch of the festival is back for the seventh year running. Six contenders will compete in a series of knockout rounds in front of a panel of television executives, including Channel 4 commissioning Editors. Everything from the candidates’ CVs to their pitching skills will be under scrutiny. The prize: a 10-12 week placement to direct a half-hour film with a £50 000 budge...

With thousands of hours of factual programmes commissioned by British digital channels every year this is a market producers would be mad to ignore. But with such a diverse range of channels and output where should you start? Our panel of leading commissioners, each with millions to spend on new programmes reveal their strategies and wishlists for the year ahead.

Documentaries are increasingly being commissioned by other genre commissioners which sounds like great news for producers in search of a wider market. But how can documentary commissioners reclaim their territory? How healthy is documentary commissioning today? And what new trends and content are the different channels fighting over for the year ahead?

Factual entertainment is seen as the saviour of the schedules, popular with audiences and cheaper than soaps and dramas. But how do you spot the next Apprentice amongst the myriads of formats? And how do producers come up with the goods? In our own fantasy formatted session, we put the Commissioning Editors to the test, ask them to put their money where their mouths are and bid against each ...

Specialist factual departments are traditionally responsible for many of the jewels in the crown for broadcasters. But with increasing dependency on extreme medical stories and celebrity presenters how can Specialist factual commissioning break new trends and set the agenda? Find out what the different channels are looking for and how canny co-production can make all the difference.

Networks are starting to invest more in cross platform content and expecting multiplatform delivery in projects. What sorts of projects are the new digitally-minded commissioners looking for? Come along and hear the panel give an insight to their thinking as they respond to pitches from producers who have developed original ideas fro cross-platform documentary projects at the recent Crossov...

Landmark filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus first worked together in 1977 on ‘Town Bloody Hall’ the legendary “battle of the sexes” between Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer.Their long time collaboration has resulted in numerous acclaimed projects including the Academy Award nominated ‘The War Room’, a behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign....

The debate is a tradition at Doc/Fest and this year’s motion is ‘Documentary Filmmakers: Profiteers of Human Misery?’ Are filmmakers doing some good in the world? Are we selflessly sacrificing ourselves for the greater good? Or simply exploiting the vulnerable, taking advantage of conflict zones and cashing in on the world’s troubles? One of the most popular sessions of the Festiva...

How often do we see the developing world on the screen? And when we do, is it just depressing stories of war and famine? Is this really what the developing world is like? Is this what audiences are interested in seeing? What about filmmakers from the developing world, whose films rarely make it onto our screens? Examining current trends in documentaries in and from the developing world, pane...

A quirky but informative seminar will discuss all the ways for new and emerging documentary filmmakers to begin working in factual television. From pitching (and not stalking) commissioning editors, to protecting ideas; from working with production companies, to New Talent slots - this seminar offers a comprehensive Beginners Guide to Getting Into Television. Hosted by Andy Glynne with a su...

This session is proof that a TV career can happen – but not without answering some difficult questions. Documentary director Olly Lambert has built a career in this crazy industry, working for all the major broadcasters and making award-winning and critically acclaimed docs. This session will take you through the hazards and pitfalls of building a career that is your own, and ask you some...

If the idea of launching your career on the 48th series of ‘Extreme Cooking UK’ doesn’t appeal, then have you ever thought about the myriad other ways in which you can get started in the world of documentary? That world is changing, and if you’re building a career then it’s just as important to get seen on the web as it is on TV. A panel of the very people behind the revolution –...

Current TV will run a pitching session in which six lucky individuals will get chance to pitch live to a panel of Current TV executives. The commissioners will be open about their deliberations on stage and give detailed feedback and the best pitch will receive a commission from Current.

Indies are increasingly being asked for 360-degree commissions that can play out across a number of media platforms and maximise audience engagement and interaction. What are the commissioners looking for, how are they supporting this major shift and what additional resources are being made available to factual content producers to innovate cross-platform?

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions. Players interact directly with characters in the game, and often work together with a community to analyse the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs ar...

The field of games aimed at social change is young and ripe with opportunity, and several recent announcements of corporate/public-sector partnerships to develop such games are further fuelling hopes for its success. However, production costs can be really high and there are few examples of killer applications to date. Can games really make a difference? Is there a significant enough audie...

Traditional documentary forces complex stories to be in a linear form but new non-linear technologies allow the opportunity to weave multiple media together to tell a more comprehensive story. This session is an inspiring showcase of leading factual projects which have best exploited new platform non-linear opportunities. The showcase has been chosen and is presented by leading commissioners...

So you’ve made your documentary – now where to put it? Is anyone still paying out there? Amidst all the potential of digital distribution, are cinema and TV still important? Join a panel of feisty international distributors who will each offer a different perspective on the digital ‘revolution’ and expose what’s solid and what’s fluffy. Best of all, you’ll learn not only how t...

For A-level students wanting to make documentaries and needing help from the experts. There will be panel presentations and leading industry mentors available to help students with their short doc ideas, giving feedback, advice and development support. Participants can vote for the best documentary ideas, which will then get pitched to a Channel 4 commissioner. The mentors are a mix of award...

Kasim Abid and Maysoon Pachachi will present Independent Film & Television College the free-of-charge training centre they set up in Baghdad in 2004, (www.iftvc.org). They have so far managed to teach about 80 students, who have produced 11 short documentaries. Kasim and Maysoon will show some of these films and discuss the thinking behind the project, how it was conceived and realised and t...

Artist Doug Fishbone will perform one of his celebrated comic slide-show lectures, taking his audience on a journey through his mildly warped imagination, including a nostalgic look at the Cold War, and his childhood growing up in New York City. Illustrating his narration with hundreds of images downloaded from the internet, Fishbone has come up with a new and innovative form of story-tellin...

Documentary makers are exploring an ever broader variety of documentary forms to get at 'the truth', from docu-musicals to animated documentary, from drama to formatted reality and CGI history. Is this a distortion of the pure form, buckling under the pressure to deliver audience figures, or post-Grierson, is 'documentary' on the verge of a new, bright and vigorous future?

The Arts - Not Really Wanted unless it's a Reality Show? The Arts, a key plank of public service broadcasting, is under threat. Unless of course it's a reality show like 'The Choir' or 'Maestro'. Did shows like 'Operatunity' open up the arts to the predatory instincts of factual entertainment or did they get the joy of performing into the limelight. Our panel of producers and commissioners, ...

Young audiences are the most fickle of them all. So how do you successfully attract them to documentaries focusing on unfashionable issues we’d often rather not talk about? This year, BBC THREE has taken this matter head on and commissioned programmes such as ‘Blood, Sweat and T-shirts’ and ‘Britain’s Missing Top Model’. Find out from BBC THREE’s Danny Cohen and Harry Lansdown,...

In the beginning, documentaries were made by people who were relatively privileged, about people who weren’t. Filmmakers were outsiders looking in at other worlds. Time passed, and this dynamic was questioned: did such films distance viewers from subjects, presuming viewers shared the filmmakers’ perspective? Then, with the advent of cheap digital technologies, anyone could make a doc ab...

Films highlighting and challenging green issues stir the debate about how we treat the planet, but the industry has a whopping carbon footprint of its very own. So what concrete steps are broadcasters taking behind the scenes to ensure that making TV will be kinder to the planet? There’s increasing talk – and some action - about addressing the issue on-screen and off. And as debates cont...

Sometimes overlooked as the location of first choice, discover why Scotland is one of the UK’s most vibrant places to make documentaries. With BBC Scotland annually producing over 100 hours of network television, coupled with the addition of its new cutting edge production headquarters in Glasgow, take a look at a selection of inspirational and award winning documentaries created north of...

Filmmakers around the world now have to deal with a tangle of legal rules: copyrights, clearances of ever smaller fragments of music or image, licensing disputes. What is going on? Is it producing better art, better film, consistent revenue streams? Is the clearance culture a matter of legal reality or business fantasy? Two experts on the way law affects the conditions of creativity offe...

Andy Burnham’s visit to Sheffield comes at a time of increasing focus on the issue of Public Service Broadcasting in the digital age, with the publication of Ofcom’s second stage review into PSB in September and the ongoing consideration by the Government’s Convergence Think Tank of the potential challenges and opportunities that convergence presents to communications industries and be...

The Documentary Doctor is in the house! And she’ll tell you how to make a trailer which is going to raise money for you. Internationally renowned author, Fernanda Rossi, (Trailer Mechanics) and story consultant to over 200 films and demos, will present the main points to consider when making a trailer to raise funding and financing, common mistakes to avoid and show successful samples. And...

Scientists and Filmmakers/the Media have a notoriously tricky relationship. When it works it can open a unique and exciting window on our world, forging a path between the towers of academia and every day life. Audiences get passionate about science when it speaks their language, and they’re as compelled and hungry to learn as experts are to share their knowledge. But the medical and scien...

‘Man On Wire’ has received rapturous acclaim at festivals worldwide including best film at 2008’s Sundance Film Festival. We are delighted that the film’s director James Marsh will be joining us at Doc/Fest for an exclusive masterclass. James will show clips from his films, including ‘Man On Wire’, which re-tells Philippe Petit’s outrageous high wire walk between the twin tower...

MeetMarket* is the pitching initiative at Sheffield Doc/Fest, designed to match documentary makers’ most innovative project ideas with UK, European and international buyers. It is UK's largest documentary marketplace offering a unique way to pitch new and groundbreaking documentary projects. MeetMarket is the perfect place to meet potential production investors and partners in a structured...

MeetMarket* is the pitching initiative at Sheffield Doc/Fest, designed to match documentary makers’ most innovative project ideas with UK, European and international buyers. It is UK's largest documentary marketplace offering a unique way to pitch new and groundbreaking documentary projects. MeetMarket is the perfect place to meet potential production investors and partners in a structured...

A unique opportunity to hear the legendary English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter discuss his successful BBC travel documentaries. This 90-minute session will attempt to discover the ingredients that make Michael’s documentaries so distinctive and personable to the audiences. Themes will range from inspiration & practicalities to managing dangerous and unexpected situatio...

The Mini-MeetMarket is a unique opportunity for new and emerging documentary filmmakers to meet industry mentors in an informal setting at the Sheffield DocFest. The Mini-MeetMarket is a project pitching and steering session, running during the morning of Friday 7th November 2008. The session is open to Sheffield DocFest delegates and DFG Newcomers Day passholders, who will have the oppor...

Casting is central to television production, whether it be a reality show or a feature length documentary. Molly Dineen’s characters are the lifeblood of her films, dictating the theme, the ideas and the story. What’s more they are always surprising and deeply memorable. How does she find them, how does she know when’s found them, how does she build her relationship with them and how d...

Recent reports suggest the British internet TV market could generate revenues of £1.78bn by 2011. With increasingly faster internet connections, social networking sites are exploiting the market with popular shows such as Kate Modern and The Gap Year. So with numbers of people using social networking sites exploding around the world, what are some examples of filmmakers using them to get to...

NEWS FLASH! What makes a good story for a documentary film? We are surrounded by news reports and articles in daily newspapers about extraordinary stories - Which ones could make an interesting documentary? Now is your chance to choose a real-life story at our free workshop NEWS FLASH and pitch it to our panel of experts who will vote for the pitch ‘most likely to succeed’! This wo...

Over the past twenty-five years Nick Broomfield has established himself as Britain's best-known and most accomplished documentary filmmaker. Beginning his career by looking at the plight of working class communities in Liverpool, he has subsequently pursued on camera and in his own inimitable style the likes of South African supremacist Eugene Terre ’Blanche, comedienne Lily Tomlin, Margar...

What is the future of public service factual? What will it look like and who should pay for it? As Ofcom prepares to make its recommendations to government, critical decisions that will shape its future are being made. Who will the winners and losers be in this heated debate? What programmes serve the public interest and how do channels fulfil their public service remit successfully? In a wo...

In 2005, multi award winning exec Robert Thirkell wowed Sheffield with the debut of his acclaimed C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T masterclass. The follwing year he was named Britian's "hottest producer" and he presented the 8 Rules of Television which was rated by Sheffield delegates as the best session of the festival in 2006. This year he debuts his brand new masterclass A.U.T.H.E.N.T.I.C as C.O.N.F.L.I.C...

Is the pen mightier than the camcorder? Comic-book artists are documenting the difficult reality around them in new ways. Dan Goldman has been drawing the US elections. Rutu Modan’s work has the Middle East as backdrop and is documentary-inspired. Woodrow Phoenix’s Rumblestrip analyses the role of the car in contemporary society and Ted Rall’s acerbic takes on the follies of US governm...

Scotland boasts an incredible range of talent, from award-winning directors and writers to internationally renowned actors not to mention the country itself as location; prehistoric sites to contemporary cityscapes. Today we are asking of our esteemed panel how to take advantage of the co-production opportunities and make it in Scotland. And at the end of the day is it all really worth it?...

The making of documentaries quite rightly focuses on the story and the director’s message. The script, the shots and their sequence is of vital importance but all too often an opportunity to considerably enhance the impact of the pictures and the message is lost when sound is only considered in detail during the post-production stage. This seminar is intended to help illustrate that some c...

Could our obsession with entertainment be the death of documentary as we know it or its saviour? In an attempt to lure mass audiences is entertainment riding roughshod over our documentary roots? Is the documentary genre being watered down so much that it might as well be renamed Factual Entertainment? Can documentary satisfy our thirst for entertainment whilst staying true to its origins? W...

Richard Klein, television's favourite Commissioning Editor, poses a provocative question. Why on earth do we still have documentaries? The forces ranged against them are many. Poleaxed by new technology, pounded by ever mutating forms of factual entertainment and pulverised by the obsession with ratings, surely the documentary should be down and out by now? And to cap all that there's pr...

We believe in the power of documentary to create change. Films can alter public opinion, drive fundraising and influence law and policy by bringing stories and issues to the widest audience. In order to give films long and influential lives, we need to engage with strategic partners who can pick up the challenges of outreach and audience participation when the edit is over. Join th...

Looking for a chance to talk to some of the key buyers and decision-makers at Doc/Fest before you leave? We’re holding an intensive, short, sharp session of ‘round table’ meetings for limited numbers where key international financiers can present themselves to delegates and hold group discussions. This is a way to make connections with funders and gather information on documentary fina...

Investigative filmmakers and law enforcement agencies have always lived in symbiosis – working together to discover important stories, reveal them to the public and seek prosecutions. When the West Midlands Police publicly condemned Channel 4 for ‘Undercover Mosque’ it became clear that dynamic has shifted. In this session, the CE of ‘Undercover Mosque’ is joined by the Head of the...

The family - the social institution that tells us more about how we live today than any other. A British family opened its doors to viewers in what is Channel 4's most ambitious documentary series in years. Filmed on an unprecedented scale, using modern camera techniques, family dynamics are played out to reveal an intimate portrait of family life in modern Britain in a dramatic and authent...

Theatrical documentaries, both in the US and the UK, have had a rocky roide over the past few years. Feature docs like 'In the Shadow of the Moon' and 'Deep Water' won awards and critical acclaim but underperformed at the box office. 'Touching the Void' may still hold the title of'most successful British theatrical doc of all time' but is there the room - or indeed the appetite - for others ...

Documentary has an insatiable appetite for suffering. But do filmmakers and TV companies know what they are getting into when they enter the psychological murk? This session will explore the tensions between gathering grabby footage and exploiting disturbed individuals. In particular, how can filmmakers protect themselves when they encounter traumatic and distressing material. Drawing on the...

Tribal Culture has become a primetime staple on terrestrial television, through series like ‘Tribe’, ‘Meet the Natives’, and ‘Tribal Wives’. In this session we’ll look at the rich tradition of anthropological filmmaking as it’s sometimes embraced, sometimes fought the medium of television. For filmmakers, what do anthropologists bring to observational documentary – and vice...

Universities are potential goldmines for the filmmaker – full of new factual content and expert presenting talent. This session addresses the pleasures and pitfalls of the media and academia working together, and gives tips on how to forge mutually beneficial partnerships that win commissions. Using case studies we look at how to spot research that has documentary potential, how to come up...

Come and pitch your science documentary idea to the Wellcome Trust for a 10k prize! Wellcome’s Broadcast Development Awards support the development of broadcast proposals in any genre that engages the audience with issues around biomedical science in an innovative, entertaining and accessible way. We are interested in funding individuals and organisations with brilliant early-stage ideas f...

Which U.S. networks schedule documentaries and factual programs? How much do they spend on factual? What do they buy? For which slots? For how much? Who are their preferred producers? And what are the terms? How are their relationships with producers evolving? The panel, led by New York-based consultant for U.S. networks, Peter Hamilton, will analyse the key trends in factual programming...

A brief and lively introduction of all attending commissioners, funders and decision-makers open to all delegates. The Who’s Who session provides an informal setting in which all Doc/Fest delegates, including selected MeetMarket participants, can see which commissioning editors, buyers, distributors and other funders are attending the festival, can learn about the companies they represent ...