Commission & distribution log - week 6 30/11/07

In todays lesson I interviewed Susan Osmand on the subject of Distribution for film and television. I wanted to find out her experiences as an independent film maker at Cannes film festival. I spent the first part of the morning formulating questions to ask her. I wanted to find out how the film festival circuit works and why its so important to producers. I also wanted to know how important the relationships between the various roles of people in the distribution industry are. These are the questions i put to her:
Finding a distributor for your program or film is the ultimate goal for you as an independent film producer attending Cannes - take us through that process.
Why is the sales rep so important and why do they have such a close relationship with distributors?
How do you find out who is the right distributor?

I felt the interview went well although technically there was a problem. I could only manage to capture the interview in mono due to a faulty lead as a work around i'm going to convert it into a stereo file in protools at the edit stage.

Production schedule and outline for individual project

Clifton Suspension Bridge radio programme outline:

Introduction link (30 secs)
Vox pop and interview (30 secs)
Link (30 sec)
Interview with Ian downs (60 secs)
Link (30 secs)
Clifton suspension bridge sunset society interview (60 secs)
Link (30 secs)
Vox pops (30 secs)
Link (30 secs)

Programme schedule:

W/C Saturday 1st December.
Interview with Ian downs, volunteer at Clifton suspension bridge.
Friday 6th-Sunday 8th December
Sunset at Clifton suspension bridge, interview with society president. Record vox Pops in Bristol.
W/C Monday 15th December
Write and record script. Begin edit phase and production.

commission & distribution log - week 5 23/11/07

I found today’s lesson hugely comforting in that we actually began the process of organising and forming the material we had collected into a radio program. I also interviewed Sarah Pitt on the distribution process. The practicalities of this interview were quite challenging as we didn’t have a recording space or the correct equipment for the job but we managed to work around this problem using a portable DAT machine. Although not perfect I was pleased with the resulting interview that, I found fun doing and I feel is great material for my program. Sarah answered all my questions and after listening back to the interview I realized that there were questions that I hadn’t asked that I would need to ask my next Interviewee or expand on myself using script. Especially around rights and the future of distribution.

Commission & Distribution Log - Week 1 05/10/07

Hi Mike, here with week one of my log...

We spent the lesson researching the commissioning process in particular editorial guidelines. We examined the BBC commissioning website http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/ to look at theirs.

This is an extract from the site:

The BBC is committed to delivering the highest editorial and ethical standards in the provision of its programmes and services both in the UK and around the world.

We seek to balance our rights to freedom of expression and information with our responsibilities, for example, to respect privacy and protect children.

The BBC Editorial Guidelines are a statement of the values and standards we have set for ourselves over the years. They also codify the good practice we expect from the creators and makers of all BBC content, whether it is made by the BBC itself or by an Independent company working for the BBC and whether it is made for:

* radio
* television
* online
* mobile devices
* interactive services
* the printed word.

Editorial guidelines are important to the producer as they provide a framework to work around and give an idea of the type of content the channel commissions. Editorial guidelines differ from one channel to another. What would be appropriate for BBC 1 may not be appropriate for Channel 4. This alludes to the four DO's when pitching for a commission (selling your idea):

KNOW YOUR CHANNELS
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
KNOW YOUR MARKETS
KNOW YOUR BUSINESS

There are literally hundreds of channels from terrestrial's such as BBC 1 and ITV to free view and satellite channels like Sky 1 and the discovery channel and each one has different guidelines .We also looked at channel 4's commissioning website http://www.channel4.com/corporate/4producers/ It was interesting to note that due to the nature of commissioning,the fact that treatments are passed around the company to different departments, Commissions are only excepted in electronic formats such as word or PDF documents.