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BLACK GOLD: The Film And The Roller-Coaster Ride - Part 3

October 12th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in update

This is the third and last part of my interview with Marc Francis - co-director/producer (with his brother Nick) of the film BLACK GOLD.

You can view parts one and two here.

Next week, I’ll look in more detail at a few of the points he’s hit in the course of our conversation - and what we, as content-creators in this new environment, can glean from what Marc’s talked about.

Last time Marc spoke about the experience of putting BLACK GOLD out into the world as a roller-coaster ride - one where it’s very success threatened to sink this independent film before it had even gotten out of the starting gates.

This time, we look at straddling both mainstream and alternative models of distribution and what it means to be a filmmaker when you take responsibility for building audience around your films.

We look at how this changes the process of filmmaking itself and how to think about what you are and aren’t willing to do as a filmmaker in order to save your film from oblivion in the marketplace.

… Last time, we left off with Marc saying how BLACK GOLD, and it’s demands on them as filmmakers two years after it’s initial release, is finally slowing down - but still not stopping. In fact, it’s still very much alive - and that’s a good thing, no matter how demanding that may be...

Marc Francis: IT’S QUIETENED DOWN BECAUSE WE’VE TRIED TO QUIETEN IT DOWN, BUT IT’S NOT GONNA STOP AND IT SHOULDN’T STOP AND IT SHOULD CARRY ON - DEFINITELY.

LS: It’s like a business - it’s scaling.

MF: Absolutely. And coz it comes down to the obligation of the filmmaker to keep it going, that’s why it becomes really hard - but this might never happen again. I mean, we really hope it does but the fact that one should always embrace demand - I believe - if you have have a film that’s generating that coz you don’t know if it’s gonna happen again.

WE MIGHT LOOK BACK AND GO - ‘OH MY GOD, WE HAD NO IDEA HOW INCREDIBLE THAT TIME WAS! AND IT’S NEVER HAPPENED AGAIN FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!’

So we said, let’s embrace the experience, let’s go on the ride, and let’s really give it everything we’ve got to maximize it’s global release and it’s global attention.

And it’s just been released online in the States now and there’s gonna be a whole online thing very soon with it in the UK.

SO I HAVE CONVERSATIONS WITH FILMMAKERS SAYING - TO WHAT EXTENT ARE YOU A FILMMAKER AND TO WHAT EXTENT ARE YOU A DISTRIBUTOR?

And I think there’s a very important argument to have - I think ultimately, if you get a distribution deal and if somebody is prepared to give you a $50million marketing budget and it’s gonna be on billboards and buses, great! You just turn up to your few world premiere launches and do your master interviews and get on with your next film.

But out of the thousands of filmmakers, how many actually end up being in that situation? And to what extent is it up to the filmmaker to really try and do it themselves, until they’re able to get into that situation? And some filmmakers will never be in that situation coz the type of film they’re making is not suitable for that type of global distribution.

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BLACK GOLD: The Film And The Roller-Coaster Ride - Part 2

September 14th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in update

This is the second of four posts covering the film BLACK GOLD - a social-issue driven documentary co-produced/directed by brothers Marc and Nick Francis. The film joins the dots between coffee consumption in the west and coffee production in developing countries.

As I said last week, BLACK GOLD is remarkable because of the tangible social impact it has had on the issues it covers and because audiences rallied around the film and really took it as their own.

Last week, Marc spoke about the making of the film and how they engaged with NGO’s from very early pre-production to form relationships that helped them build their audience once the film was complete. We also heard how they levered their acceptance into Sundance 2006 to create waves around the issues the film covers.

In this next post - we chart how BLACK GOLD received more audience attention than Marc and Nick ever would have expected, how they managed this attention and levered it to it’s maximum potential - and how it was their very success that nearly took them under before they’d even had a chance to get going…

Marc Francis: AS FILMMAKERS, WE WANT OUR AUDIENCE TO BE EFFECTED 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. Effected by it. The experience lives on.

BUT WHAT WE DIDN’T REALISE WAS HOW BIG THE REACTION WAS GOING TO BE FROM OUR AUDIENCE.

We had no idea about it. And that was the reaction we got. On the one hand, we got people wanting to give us thousands of dollars to help us help Ethiopia and people were saying they wanna invest in ethical companies now they’d seen our film. On the other hand, we’ve got companies like Starbucks building an international PR campaign to discredit our film and tell the world to think good about Starbucks coffee. - And really, to be able to manage all of that attention and interests from all sides you need an organisation that can really try to match up to those standards.

On top of that, we’ve got emails flooding in from all over the world from people wanting to see the film, screen the film, show the film! Our inboxes started to quadruple

LS: You must’ve been really stressed!

MF: YEAH! YOU ALMOST GET TO THE POINT OF IMPLODING BECAUSE YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY COPE WITH THE DEMAND - YOU CAN’T MEET THE DEMAND. YOU COULD ALMOST IMPLODE BEFORE YOU’VE EVEN GOT OUT OF THE STARTING BLOCKS. AND THAT NEARLY HAPPENED TO THE TWO OF US. More »

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

September 7th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in update

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. More »

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“One Small Step” And The Audience That Will Bring Your Work To Life

August 24th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in update

When David Hastings’ play ONE SMALL STEP was taken up to the Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Festival this month - the festival’s most respected venue -  the outlook was quite pragmatic: take the show up there, expect a financial loss but gather thy reviews and hope they harvest into eyeballs and cash in the form of a UK tour of the play over the next year - something that might not even be possible without an Edinburgh premiere and the prestige that can garner.

So when Scotlands’ main national newspaper gave it a 5 star review last week  - one of only 8 of the 598 plays they’ve reviewed at the festival this year - hopes and expectations were raised a notch for the Oxford Playhouse team who brought the production up there.

Since Sunday, when the review was released, audiences that began at 20 and plateaued at 40 suddenly spiked sharply to a full house (122 seats) and haven’t relented since.

David Hastings, the author of the play and a friend of mine sent me an email:

“Audiences are going mad for it… it’s not the  play anymore which is exciting, it’s the audience. The atmosphere is extraordinary. I said to our producer, ‘We created it, The Scotsman discovered it, and Edinburgh audiences own it.’ - reality next week.”.

Whereas with the smaller audiences, ONE SMALL STEP was receiving a wholesome, happy applause, now they’re getting standing ovations for every show.

It’s interesting. In the next post, we’ll be looking at the film BLACK GOLD - an independent social-issue driven documentary that began life as something that no funders would sniff at and resulted in becoming a film whose success was so powerful that the audience, in taking it for their own, were almost too powerful and the demand almost too strong for the filmmakers to keep up with.

In both cases, I’d say it’s a classic case of the audience being the element that really breathes life into something clearly worthy but that, without their attention and investment, essentially fails. The upside is that when opportunities for audience succeed, alchemy takes hold. In the case of ONE SMALL STEP, as also in the case of BLACK GOLD, success breeds success - and without some kind of kismet, it’s uncertain how, when or whether history might repeat itself.

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    • CONTRIBUTORS

      LISA SALEM set out to walk the whole of LA pushing a baby-stroller with a video-camera attached to the end of it, facing inwards. When people approached her, she invited them to walk with her while she videoed their conversations. She posted those videos to a blog and in the process attracted a large and intrigued audience to what she was doing. Since then, Lisa's been looking at the process of audience-building in detail. She lives in London now and when not working on her film-portrait of Los Angeles "WALK LA WITH ME", she runs workshops that help filmmakers be more independent.

      LANCE WEILER has written and directed two feature films (Head Trauma, The Last Broadcast) which he self distributed all over the world. Lance is the founder of the Workbook Project, and is currently working on a number of film, TV and cross-media projects.