BLACK GOLD: The Film and the Roller-Coaster Ride - Part 1

This is the first of four posts looking at the film BLACK GOLD.

The irony is that these multiple posts have come about as a result of what was originally intended to be a short phone conversation with filmmaker Marc Francis a couple of weeks ago - for a short piece looking at the film and how it managed to so successfully reach audiences around the issues it documents.

Our conversation turned into a long one though, and I’ve been at odds as to how best to cover the different points that were brought up as Marc recounted the story of how BLACK GOLD got made and put out into the world.

In the end I didn’t want to leave much out so I’ve decided to transcribe a lot of our 90 minute conversation over the next three posts and then post a fourth which will meditate upon some of the points we hit.

Marc is one half of the co-directing/producing team that made this film (his brother, Nick, is the other half) which looks at the worldwide coffee industry and the relationship between western coffee consumers and coffee farmers in the developing world.

It’s remarkable within the genre of social-issue documentary making because it’s audience took the film for their own and because it’s been the instrument of tangible change around the issues it explores.

Since the film’s world premiere at Sundance, the price of the coffee featured in the film has significantly risen, the film’s protagonist has met with Tony Blair, major corporations such as Starbucks and Kraft have been brought under the international spotlight and screenings and debates about trade policy and development have taken place in institutions such as the World Bank, EU and UN - and that’s just a portion of the impact the film has had.

All this for a film that started out as going against the conventions of films exploring similar issues - initially closing the doors to them of conventional funding routes and forcing them to forge their own path ahead.

What started out as purely a film project has become something that is really a movement more than a film. Whilst Marc and Nick were certainly savvy in the early stages of the filmmaking process, they were still totally surprised and unprepared for the force and gusto with which audiences reacted.

The result is that whilst this was obviously hugely gratifying for them personally and for what they were seeking to bring to the world’s attention through the channel of their film, it also, unexpectedly, made them both accountable to and responsible for the momentum that it generated. - A weighty, demanding position to find yourself in unexpectedly and one that forced them to reassess their expectations for what their roles would be as filmmakers as the role of spokesperson was thrust upon them.

In this first of our four posts, Marc outlines how BLACK GOLD got made up to it’s world premiere at Sundance. It explores why the premise of how they wanted to make the film made it difficult for them to get funding through traditional routes - and how that forced them to think about audiences from the earliest stages of the filmmaking process. It then charts the adventures of the film at Sundance and begins to explore how they used the festival as a platform to begin a dialogue with audiences about the issues of trade justice.

Marc Francis: BLACK GOLD is a film about one mans search to find a better price for his coffee - set against the backdrop of the industry. We wanted to make a film about the developing world that would have more of a connection to western audiences and to find a way to join the dots between our actions as western consumers here and how that relates to people on the other side of the world - in developing countries - so we were looking for a story to try to do that.

We wanted our protagonist to be an African person.

Often films on Africa (fiction or non-fiction) are about how the white man goes in (celebrity/non- celebrity/presenter) and goes on a journey through Africa and you get a  report. They’re talking to camera and the people they’re talking about are behind them.

We wanted the people who are normally talked about as the people doing the talking.

So we cast an Ethiopian (Tadesse Meskela ) as essentially the hero of this story - who’s trying to find African solutions for African problems.

But because we didn’t have Angelina Jolie or someone like that present it, it was very hard to get funding. So knew from the beginning that if that was going to be our conviction, we were going to have a big struggle to raise finance.

Secondly, back in 2003 when we were doing this, issues of fair trade and trade justice were not as commonly spoken about as they are now. (Marc distinguishes between fair trade/trade justice and FairTrade - the trademark).

SO WE KNEW WE WERE DOING SOMETHING NOT MAINSTREAM ENOUGH FOR FUNDERS TO GET THEIR HEADS AROUND AND JUMP ON - BUT WE WERE GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY, AND THAT WAS IT.

So nothing was going to stop us from doing that and we just started finding our characters and stories in Ethiopia and put our own money into it, and we didn’t think beyond that, given we didn’t have much money up front to make it.

And what happened after the film was not really something we thought much about in the production stage.

It took 2 1/2 years to make the film.

WE KNEW THAT ONE OF THE KEY FACTORS IN TERMS OF AUDIENCE THAT WE NEEDED TO HAVE AT THE FOREFRONT OF OUR MINDS WAS TO TRY TO MAKE THE FILM WITHIN SOME KIND OF TUNED-IN NETWORK OF SUPPORTERS.

So we invested a lot of time in building relationships with NGO’s and other network groups who are talking about and disseminating information about this issue. And we said, ‘Come with us!’. - Ya know, we’ve got this film, can you help us out, or, when it’s ready, would you be interested in talking with us about this, that and the other?’

So as the film was developing, our network base was increasing.

And even when we did get funding, some of the funding came from these very organisations who themselves have got vast amounts of email databases of members.

So some were building an invested interest - if we had a bit of money from them, there’s also a further investment of their interest when the film’s finished of communicating that to their own members.

Some relationships became financial at the very beginning, others not till the very end.

We had no website in early stages. We just wanted them to know that we’re making a film about this issue.

Firstly, we asked, ‘Would you like to come in on funding? That’d be nice if you could. And secondly, if that doesn’t materialize, let’s just keep a dialogue going. We can keep you in touch with our film and when it’s ready, we can talk on a much more serious strategic level about how we want to engage audiences about it.’

So at least they knew there was a film in development and in production about this issue. In the research of the film, and in raising production money for the film, we were talking to the same people anyway. In those areas. It was all happening simultaneously.

Part of the deal was that UPFRONT we had to present our vision and our hopes and plans about what we’re gong to do with this film.

SO WE SAID, WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THIS FILM, AND THIS IS THE FILM THAT IS GOING TO CHAMPION THE ISSUE OF FAIR TRADE.

That’s what we’re doing. And some people were more positive and others were not too positive. Some were actually quite negative. Because some NGO’s are, in this case, very…. it’s hard for them to get passionate about projects that are not generated from within their institution or organisation. So when an outside initiative or project comes to them, their big question is going to be, ‘how visible is my brand gonna be if we align ourselves with this film?’.

When they generate projects inside their organisation, it’s easier for them to control branding visibility, but when they support projects outside of that it’s harder. And some NGO’s really care about their brand and how it’s seen more than the actual content of the issue you’re talking about.

So we engaged NGO’s on what we were convinced we could achieve.

LS: And was that faith?

MF: FAITH! YES! Absolute faith - nothing other than that, let me tell you!

… TO PUT TOGETHER A GOOD AUDIENCE STRATEGY, THERE’S A CONSTANT CHICKEN AND EGG GAME YOU’RE PLAYING. BECAUSE, AT THE END OF THE DAY, IF YOU’VE GOT A SHIT FILM, WHAT’S THE POINT?

So as a filmmaker, our first priority is to make an excellent film. And one doesn’t want to invest too much time and energy during the filmmaking process to make promises that you don’t actually know at that point are going to happen.

And sometimes you can make a bloody good film, but it just doesn’t take off, because that’s the nature of the industry. But at the same time, which is what this is about, we needed to have parallel strategies in place:

- We’re going to do our best to make a good film; if we don’t have the distribution outlets open to us, then what’re we going to do?
- That’s why we wanted to kick in this alternate strategy to integrate this with other organisations to get this film out there.

So we made the film and we got into Sundance - and it’s world premiere is in Sundance - and that’s when everything shifted. Coz what we decided to do, as soon as we’d got the okay to go into Sundance, that’s when our strategy could kick in. Because we had a major launch pad there: the film was gonna be taken very very seriously and it was gonna get immediate attention - just by being in that film festival. So when we got into Sundance, we invested a lot of money in PR’ing the film at the festival.

I MEAN WE REALLY MADE A BIG NOISE AT SUNDANCE.

Very minimal time was actually spent on preparing for Sundance - we just made sure that we could get as many of the crew out as possible, got t-shirts, badges etc… made.  We hooked up with a coffee company in Seattle who was the coffee company selling all the takeaway coffee outside one of the main theaters. They supported us and we got Black Gold stickers made - so every cup of coffee they were giving out to the people coming out of the main cinema, it had a Black Gold sticker on it. And we got Black Gold flyers on their counter. And we also got them to give out free coffee from the region of  coffee in our film at all of the BG screenings.

So one of the first things we managed to do was hook straight in with the local coffee company - that were happy to support us. We hired a really good PR company (the guys who were involved in Supersize Me and stuff like that) and they represented us and we then flew in and did it - it just kicked off.

EVERYTHING CHANGED FOR US AT SUNDANCE COZ WE DIDN’T EXPECT TO GET THE ATTENTION THAT WE GOT.

Two key things happened there: 1) The vice president of Starbucks North American operations left a v/m message on our mobile and through the PR company. They were somehow trying to get us to do a talk coz Starbucks were one of the sponsors of the festival that year - and since then they don’t sponsor the festival.

So at the Starbucks salon they had something called the Starbucks debate and they asked us to participate and we said no. (- Starbucks had refused to be interviewed for the making of the film). Then we heard that 5 senior execs wanted to see the film at the press screening and then at the world premiere they were sitting in the audience.

And then they had senior execs at every Q&A and they waited till the audience had left and then got up from their seats and followed us out. So they were saying, like, ‘we’re watching you’. That was very clear.

SO WE KNEW SOMETHING WAS GOING ON WITH THIS FILM.

And we hadn’t made a Supersize Me type film for Starbucks. It really isn’t a film about Starbucks. They feature in it, but it’s not about Starbucks. So we were very surprised at getting this attention from them.

And then at the end of the film, an audience member said; ‘How much to build the school?’ (- a school in the film that desperately needed funds) and I said, about $10,000, and he said, ‘Well I’m gonna write out a cheque right now for $10,000 so you can give it to the people in the school.’ - And that was our first Q&A!

And we wired the money right there during the festival.

SO WE WERE GETTING THE AUDIENCE COMING UP TO US - VERY EMOTIONAL - AND GIVING US THIS FEEDBACK, AND WE THOUGHT: MY GOD, MAYBE WE HAVE A MUCH BIGGER FILM ON OUR HANDS THAN WE ORIGINALLY THOUGHT!

And from that moment on …. till Sundance, we just had a simple website saying the film’s finished and it’s going to be at the Sundance film festival. It wasn’t developed because we didn’t have the time to develop it. And we still didn’t understand enough about what we were trying to develop it into at that point.

LS: I was thinking you suddenly have to become the spokesperson and this role people are perceiving you as and you kind of have to catch up with it as you go along.

MF: That’s right.

COZ UP TO THAT POINT, AS FAR AS WE WERE CONCERNED, WE WERE FILMMAKERS PASSIONATE ABOUT OUR FILM AND YES, THERE’S AN ISSUE THAT’S VERY CLOSE TO OUR HEART WHICH WE WANT TO GET OUT TO THE REST OF THE WORLD …BUT WE WEREN’T CAMPAIGNERS.

- And in the film BLACK GOLD itself, it’s a film that tells a story of this guy who travels around the world to get a better price for his coffee, set against the backdrop of the industry, but the film itself doesn’t seek to analyse or explain to people in an info-doc sort of way about how price falls and rises and stuff like that. Not like Inconvenient Truth does.

SO THE OBJECT OF THE FILM IS THAT WE WANTED TO PROVOKE AUDIENCES TO ASK BIGGER QUESTIONS ABOUT STUFF. AND THOSE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE SOUGHT AFTER THE FILM.

If you look at this in terms of the narrative of the audience for us there’s three acts of a film experience:

Act 1 is them learning about the film for the first time and letting them know that it exists and making a decision to going to want to see it.
Act 2 is them experiencing the film.
Act 3 is what they then do when they leave the cinema. Are they gonna go and tell 100 friends? 10 friends? Are they gonna change their lives in some way? I don’t know.

I think this applies to any genre of film. You can make a romantic comedy and somebody might leave the cinema and think differently about the way they might relate to their partner in a relationship - I don’t know.

AS FILMMAKERS, WE WANT OUR AUDIENCES TO BE AFFECTED IN SOME WAY WHEN THEY LEAVE THE CINEMA.

We’re not interested in popcorn filmmaking which for us is  - you’re there for the thrill of the ride and by the time you’ve gotten out of the cinema you’ve forgotten about it.

We want people to wake up the next day and be thinking about it. Affected by it. The experience lives on. (TBC…)