Michael Weatherhead from Meet the Filmmakers reports back after attending AIDC (Australian International Documentary Conference) in Melbourne.
The Changing Landscape for Documentary – AIDC/Doc Week
There were some very interesting things happening at AIDC/Doc Week in Melbourne in early March. This was reflected in the buyers who attended and what they wanted. There was a lot of talk about noisy content (high impact) and sticky series (bringing viewers back).
Of course there were the usual suspects (BBC, PBS, Discovery, Foxtel, Nat Geo, SBS, ABC, Prime/Sky NZ, WGBH Boston, World Channel, Seven, Maori TV, NZ on Air and lots of distributors and funding organisations). Most of them want series but BBC Scotland prefers one-off documentaries.
And there were some exciting new players like:
- Vice Australia looking for co-productions and short documentaries.
- Red Bull TV which is launching later this year and are looking for noisy content and strong characters.
- New York Times Op Docs, which is looking for 5-10 minute documentaries.
- Kinonation USA, which distributes to 100 VOD platforms.
Good luck to all the documentary makers in Northern Rivers and beyond.
Michael Weatherhead
http://www.meetthefilmmakers.com
[email protected]