Between 20, demand for documentaries on streaming services more than doubled, and films that once had hoped to eke out a couple of million bucks at the box office were now selling to streamers for $10 million, or $15 million, or $20 million.Ī genre that had always existed in part to inform and enlighten was now primarily a commercial product. The streamers had enough data to know what people liked - murders, celebrities, episodes that end with a cliffhanger - and by 2020, when Netflix was releasing a new documentary or docuseries every week, the streamers were competing less for awards than for the next true-crime hit. Netflix won its first three Oscars for documentaries, including Icarus, a 2017 investigation into the Russian sports-doping scheme, which was produced by Cogan.īut as Netflix and other streamers battled for market share, documentaries themselves began to change. When streaming began its Hollywood takeover in the 2010s, documentaries presented themselves as a low-cost way to burnish a reputation. The returns were modest by Hollywood standards ( Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and only the 589th-highest-grossing movie), but so were the costs ( James Cameron blew through Moore’s $6 million budget in five minutes of Avatar: The Way of Water). After decades of relegation to art houses and public television, films like An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me, and anything by Michael Moore were suddenly finding an audience and making money. The pitch will take place at DOC NYC 2023.When Dan Cogan co-founded Impact Partners in 2007 with the goal of making good documentaries that also did good for the world, it was the beginning of what he and others now look back on as the golden age of the form. Reaffirming the values of integrity and inclusion in order to spur innovation, the Original Voices Shorts Pitch aims to break down barriers of authorship and authority between news media networks and consumers, support diverse documentary filmmakers with the resources of a legacy news organization, and strengthen public trust in fact-based reporting and film.
#Nytimes mini docs archive
The purpose of the Original Voices Shorts Pitch is to open doors to the NBCU newsroom and archive to diverse documentary filmmakers eager to present a more vibrant, equitable, and accurate take on American history and society today.
The five pitching teams will receive a grant of $6,000 each to help further their documentary and to assist with the costs of attending the pitch event.įrom the five finalists, NBCU Academy and NBC News Studios will select one winning project to commission with a $100,000 investment.Įligible filmmakers are US-based documentarians who identify as – or showcase stories highlighting social issues affecting – women, LGBTQ+ folx, communities of color, and people with disabilities regardless of career stage. NBCU Academy in partnership with NBC News Studios, the NBC News documentary division, is collaborating with IF/Then Shorts to launch a national open call for archival and journalistically driven short documentaries highlighting social issues and identities.įive teams will be invited to take the stage at the Original Voices Shorts Pitch, an inclusion focused pitch session where a curated selection of diverse filmmakers propose their documentary works in progress to a panel of industry professionals. Recent work includes, Every Body (Tribeca Film Festival/Focus Features) directed by Julie Cohen, Leguizamo Does America (MSNBC), The Disappearance of Shere Hite (Sundance) directed by Nicole Newnham and co-produced with This Machine Diamond Hands: The Legend of Wall Street Bets (SXSW) from Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari the scripted mini-series The Thing About Pam (NBC) starring Renée Zellweger and produced with Blumhouse Productions and Big Picture Co Upcoming projects include collaborations with directors Errol Morris and Dawn Porter. Our team has decades of experience in documentary film and television and has been honored with multiple Emmy, Peabody and DuPont awards. We partner with premier filmmakers and leverage the assets of our esteemed news organization to bring stories to the screen, including eight decades of television and radio archive, a global network of journalists, a world-class investigative team, and rich trove of editorial IP. Our specialty is documentary storytelling, but we dabble in scripted, too. NBC News Studios is a full-service production company inside NBC.
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