I’ve found myself back at square one with the Tibet documentary film project. Actually to say “back” is misleading because I think we skipped over square one in the first place!
As it stands now, Andrea is moving to India next month, and the film is now 100% in my hands. One powerful lesson I’ve learned over the last few months is that it takes a tremendous amount of time to produce a documentary film – on the order of months if not years. Of these two new developments, I’ve decided to re-assess. Basically to discard any previous notions and start from the beginning.
This is more than necessary, as I was beginning to get discouraged, or at least feel overwhelmed by the complexity and enormity of the project!
Recently, I had the good fortune to meet with a professional dicumentary film editor, Kathleen Dargis. She turned me on to a book entitled “Trailer Mechanics” by Fernanda Rossi, and it is walking me through the steps to fully understand my motivations and desires for making a film. This is so important for if I’m going to dedicate the next year of my life to this project, then I better be doing it fir the right reasons, or I’ll get burned out, or worse just fail miserably!
So now I am starting to develop a concept around the values and topics that I am interested in… and then the next step will be to create a fundraisibg trailer that will demonstrate the idea to foundations and potential finders, as well ad become a tool for developing an audience for the film.
My current production schedule;
Nov-Dec -Fundraise from my immediate network while working on concept. Perhaps a few intimate evenings where I can show footage, talk about the project and get support.
Jan-Feb – Edit the trailer
March – ? apply for grants, private donors, create events. Also this will be when I will be doing additional interviews or filming to support the new film story/framework.
Stat tuned!
