Documentary Pre-Production

Learn the first steps for turning your documentary idea into a film, from what and how to research, to creating a budget, figuring out what crew you need and how to find them, and establishing a schedule. Speakers include Betsy West and Julie Cohen (RBG), Carolyn Hepburn (Motto Pictures), Maureen Ryan (Man on Wire) and others.

Documentary Pre-Production Schedule

10:00 – 11:00am I Have an Idea. What Now?
Elizabeth Pauker (I Am the Revolution), Bennett Elliott (Bisbee ’17 ), Jonathan Bogarín (306 Hollywood) and Mira Chang (V.P. Development and Production, Show of Force) discuss how to decide if your idea should be a documentary (or if it’s better suited for a podcast, tv show, etc), how to develop your story, and the different challenges you might have depending on the style of your film. Moderated by Farihah Zaman (Feast of the Epiphany)

11:15am – 12:15pm Deep Dive into Research
Betsy West and Julie Cohen, co-director/producers of RBG discuss how to get your project off the ground. Moderated by Laura Michalchyshyn (Bobby Kennedy For President)

1:30pm – 2:30pm Budgeting Masterclass
Carolyn Hepburn (Motto Pictures) walks us through a documentary film budget, line by line, and explains how to build out a flexible budget that can change with your production. Moderated by Theresa Navarro (V.P. External Affairs, American Documentary)

2:45pm – 3:45pm Scheduling Masterclass
Maureen Ryan (Man on Wire) shares her schedule template and discusses how to beat out a documentary film schedule.

🍻4:00pm – 5:00pm Happy Hour 🍻

BIOS:

JONATHAN BOGARIN is a Venezuelan-American filmmaker, teacher, visual artist and co-director of El Tigre Productions. His debut feature, 306 Hollywood, premiered opening night of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as the first documentary ever included in the festival’s NEXT section. It has played over 50 festivals, won multiple awards, was released theatrically through the Sundance Creative Distribution Fellowship, and broadcast on POV. Jonathan was chosen for Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Film and awarded Emerging International Filmmaker at Hot Docs.

MIRA CHANG is a producer, director and cinematographer with 20 years of experience in documentary filmmaking, whose work covers an array of topics including social and political issues, food, and music. Her projects have been shown theatrically and on PBS, CNN, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Nat Geo, Discovery, A&E, ABC, and Sundance. As VP of development for the production company Show of Force, she oversaw a slate of award winning film, tv, digital and social impact projects, and is currently finishing a PBS film for 2020 broadcast. Mira Chang is adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts MFA program in Social Documentary.

JULIE COHEN is the Oscar-nominated director/producer of RBG (Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films, 2018) along with Betsy West. Previous films she’s directed include The Sturgeon Queens (7th Art Releasing/PBS 2015) and American Veteran (Freestyle, 2017).  A former staff producer for NBC News and the creator and producer of Supreme Court Watch on Court TV, she has won a duPont Columbia Award, two Gracie Awards, and three New York Emmy Awards. She holds a B.A. from Colgate and master’s degrees from Columbia Journalism School and Yale Law School.

BENNETT ELLIOTT is an Emmy award-winning producer based in New York. She is the producer of Robert Greene’s Gotham Awards-nominated Bisbee ’17 (2018), which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Bennett was the co-producer of Greene’s multiple award-winning Sundance documentary Kate Plays Christine (2016). She was selected as a 2017-2018 Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow and recently produced a series for Red Bull that is Executive Produced by David Byrne.

CAROLYN HEPBURN Carolyn Hepburn is an Emmy winning producer who joined Motto Pictures in 2010. She produced 2019 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner One Child Nation. In 2018, she produced Take Your Pills for Netflix and Take Back the Harbor for Discovery. She co-produced Life, Animated which won three Emmys and nominated for the 2017 Academy Award. Carolyn executive produced Weiner, winner of 2016 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and produced 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets, winner of 2015 Sundance Special Jury Prize for Social Impact. Other recent projects include Humans of New York: The Series; Shadowman; Art and Craft; and Indian Point. 

Moderator LAURA MICHALCHYSHYN Laura is an accomplished producer and media executive whose career in film and television spans over 25 years. Laura recently produced the 4-hour documentary series Bobby Kennedy for President with director Dawn Porter and RadicalMedia. Currently she’s producing a new documentary with Dawn Porter on Congressman John Lewis for CNN. She and Robert Redford executive produced the HBO, 2019 Sports Emmy winner Momentum Generation.

In 2012 Laura co-founded Sundance Productions with Robert Redford and together they executive-produced 3 series including AMC’s The American West, CNN’s Death Row Stories, Chicagoland and a number of documentaries. Laura has led cable channels including Sundance Channel, Discovery Planet Green, and Showcase heading up their programming, marketing and development teams. Her awards include three Emmys, a GLAAD and a Peabody.

Moderator THERESA NAVARRO is an Independent Spirit Award-nominated producer and vice president of external affairs at American Documentary, the nonprofit behind award-winning PBS series ‘POV.’  Over the past decade, she’s led development, communications and public program initiatives for arts and cultural organizations, including cause-marketing collaborations with Disney, HBO, MTV, Toyota, and Verizon. Her producing credits include: sports doc 9-Man (DOCNYC ‘14), sci-fi feminist narrative Advantageous (SUNDANCE ‘15) and Emmy-nominated documentary series AMERICA REFRAMED on WORLD Channel.

ELIZABETH PAUKER is a producer at The Criterion Collection and the Criterion Channel. Elizabeth is also an independent film producer of female-focused shorts and feature-length documentaries, including Death Metal Grandma (New York Times Op-Doc, 2018) and I Am The Revolution (2018).

MAUREEN A. RYAN is a producer based in New York concentrating on narrative and documentary feature films. She is co-producer of James Marsh’s Man on Wire, a documentary that won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best British Film and Project NIM which won Best Director of World Cinema Documentary at Sundance and was shortlisted for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Ryan is Co-Executive Producer of the USA Network television pilot Stanistan and has producer credits on three feature documentaries due to premiere in 2020. She was also the Re-Creations Producer for Johanna Hamilton’s feature 1971 and Alex Gibney’s award-winning feature Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. Her numerous productions have won many awards including a Peabody award, three AICP awards, a Billboard award, a Freddie, a CMA award, an ACM award, 11 Addys and 5 Tellys. As Director of Production and Associate Professor of Columbia University’s Film program, Ryan has taught film seminars in various U.S. cities and internationally in Toronto, Canada, Amman, Jordan, Beijing, China, Brussels, Belgium and Kinshasa, Congo. Her books Producer to Producer: A Step-by-Step Guide to Low Budget, Independent Film Producing, 2nd edition and Film+Video Budgets, 6th edition. Her website is at www.ProducerToProducer.com.

BETSY WEST is the Oscar-nominated director/producer of RBG (Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films, 2018) along with Julie Cohen. She is a 21-time Emmy Award winner for her work as an ABC News producer and executive producer of the documentary series Turning Point. She was executive producer of the MAKERS documentary and digital series (AOL & PBS, 2012), the short doc The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem (Epix, 2016) and the feature documentary The Lavender Scare (PBS, 2019). A graduate of Brown University, she is the Fred W. Friendly professor at Columbia Journalism School.

Moderator: FARIHAH ZAMAN is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, critic, and curator (dir.  Remote Area Medical, This Time Next Year, Feast of the Epiphany). Her industry experience includes Magnolia Pictures, IFP, The Flaherty Seminar, and Field of Vision, where she recently served as the Production Manager. She is credited as Production Manager on Crime + Punishment and Concussion Protocol. Zaman teaches Documentary in Residence at Bard College.