(bright music) - All right.

First of all, I just wanna welcome everybody.

This is the first time that we're doing something like this around TVFilm.

So thank you very much for coming to WHC.

And if you don't know, TVFilm is a local series that we run, typically, the season it will open up for submissions in early January and then we'll curate films that are of the things that are selected.

And they'll be broadcast starting at the end of June.

So we've just celebrated 15 years of TVFilm, which we're super excited about.

I am Will Pedigo, chief content and engagement officer with WMHT, sorry, and very grateful for you all being here.

I'll say I joined the station, like, October 21, 2021, and I've been super, like, pleased with the amazing talent of this region.

You all have so much rich skill and it's wonderful to be able to support local filmmakers through TVFilm.

We are able to provide a licensing fee to be able to air the programs courtesy of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

So we're super grateful for that through the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

And also shout-outs to Karen Helmerson.

Thank you so much for your support when you were working with NYSCA.

So again, I just wanna thank you for being here.

I'm gonna pass it off to Catherine Rafferty.

Thanks also to our panelists, by the way, and our WMHT team, including Catherine Rafferty, who is the producer of TVFilm, always does an amazing job.

So with that I'll pass off the microphone.

- I have some music on this.

- Thank you so much, yeah.

Yeah, so hi everyone, I'm Catherine.

I'm the producer of TVFilm.

We have a great conversation that we're going to be having here tonight.

We have our beautiful panelists here, but I'm also gonna play a quick overview of the season that we had of TVFilm this year just to kick it off for us.

- If you're willing to put in the work and get a good team that believes in your vision, you can make something worthwhile.

- I think there's a strength in telling a story about what you know.

- We have such an awesome film community and we can just sort of make movies because why wouldn't you?

That's fun.

(soft music) - That's awesome.

(audience applauding) - Thank you for bearing with me.

Okay, so here we go.

So I just wanted to contextualize the panel a little bit.

So every year on TVFilm we interview the filmmakers and the topic of how to fund films, how to support their work, and, especially, when we're talking about independent filmmakers, that's always a topic.

So I think that was why I wanted to kick off doing this meetup to talk about that topic.

And we have folks here who run their own programs that support artists in the region and I really want everyone to know about how valuable these resources are for the community.

So I'd love if each of you could please introduce yourselves, it'd be great.

- Hi, I'm Galen Joseph-Hunter.

I'm the executive director of Wave Farm, which is located in Greene and Columbia Counties.

And I think we'll circle back to what it is Wave Farm does that might be of interest to you.

- I'm Mike Camoin, filmmaker with Videos for Change Production.

I wear many hats.

Founder of Upstate Independents over 25 years ago, and also celebrating 10 years of the Northeast Filmmakers Lab coming up this November, November 3rd through the fifth.

Thank you.

- My name is Bhawin Suchak, and I'm the co-founder and co-executive director of Youth FX, which is an organization in the Capital Region that supports young filmmakers between 10 to 25.

And we also have programs that are national programs as well.

I'm also a filmmaker.

I make documentaries and produce short films and all sorts of other things, so nice to be here.

Great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd too.

Thank you.

- And we have David Eisenberg joining us on Zoom.

- Oh yeah, hi, my name is David Eisenberg.

I'm the senior director of production at ITVS.

We're located in San Francisco.

Many of you may have heard of us.

In addition to running the series Independent Lens, which is an anthology documentary series that you might have seen on your local public television station, we fund documentaries for series across public media as well as we do development work with primarily documentaries and production.

We commission a certain number of projects a year and then we also have initiatives that focus on short form content as well.

- Thank you.

Now we do wanna keep this interactive, so I wanna know who in the crowd is a filmmaker.

Could you please raise your hand?

Okay, great.

And, Galen, you had a question about?

- Oh, well, who is making films as an individual artist?

- Great, that's awesome.

Okay, Mike, you had a question?

- Short films, let's go with short films first.

Documentary filmmakers, narrative features.

- Good number.

- Does writing features included, or just making it?

- Screenwriters.

Screenwriters, there you go.

- Did you say experimental, five or six people?

- And experimental.

- Cool.

- Got 'em all.

- Thank you so much, okay.

- Thank you.

- So could each of you please just talk a little bit about your organization or your programs that you offer for filmmakers and artists?

- You wanna keep going down the line?

- Yeah, we'll go down the line.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- All right, so Wave Farm is a little bit of an oddball, I think, at the table here.

We are not exclusive to film, we are inclusive of film.

We're a media arts organization as I mentioned, located in Greene and Columbia Counties.

We're focused on transmission art, so artists that are working with the electromagnetic spectrum.

We have a 30 acre art park.

We have an international residency program.

We have a full power FM radio station, and we have a fairly robust Regrant Program with the New York State Council on the Arts, which is why I'm sitting here.

It's called the Media Arts Assistance Fund.

And for individual artists, we have an annual deadline that provides up to $7,500 for the completion of a nearly complete media artwork, including film and video works, or up to $7,500 to publicly present that work with an eye towards New York State audiences.

And I think we'll get into it in a little bit how we've sort of massaged our guidelines in recent years to be able to really complement the NYSCA Support for Artists opportunity, which is, of course, distinct from the NYFA Fellowship opportunity, which maybe we'll touch on as well.

- Yeah, explain each of those things separate.

Mike.

- Do you happen to have the slide that I?

- Yes, I do.

- Maybe go to the second slide.

- Okay, do you wanna be on this?

- Sure, that's excellent.

So the Northeast Filmmakers Lab is celebrating its 10th year.

We've been supporting emerging filmmakers by offering them a three-day intensive in a lab environment surrounded by world-class expertise.

And, basically, over the three days we get filmmakers talking about their projects, meeting one-on-one with industry experts, and then there's a Pitch Contest, which is open up to anybody.

They gotta compete against everybody, their fellow lab fellows, and as well as anybody from the outside.

So if anybody's interested, I'd highly encourage you to enter the Pitch Contest.

This year we'll have over $10,000 in in-kind services available to the winner, including a complete screenplay breakdown.

And then our new sponsor, Largo AI, we're gonna on day two, we'll have a film talk about how can AI help filmmakers.

And part of that is gonna help answer this question about raising money.

And part of that is knowing your audience and knowing what you have, and relying on super intelligent programs to help us get to those answers faster and clearer because our competitors are gonna be doing it.

So that's day two.

Day three we're gonna be talking about regional filmmaking resources, something that all of us have been doing and sort of just cultivating the local scene, but doing that now with filmmakers who've traveled from outside of the area, who also wanna be a part of a supportive network.

So we're celebrating 10 years.

We're actually gonna kick it off with a mixer this Friday.

Sorry, not this Friday, but November 3rd with honoring Rich Lovrich.

And if you know him, he's been an icon of support for all of us artists, so he's gonna talk about living as a creative artist, making a living in the area and where he's been, where we are as a region, and what he calls the AI apocalypse that's coming.

So I think it's gonna be a great discussion.

I hope everybody can come out.

- Bhawin.

- So AI's gonna fund our films and then kill us.

- Yes.

- Can't wait for the future.

- Dig into that a little bit later.

- So my name is Bhawin as I said, so I'm the co-executive director of Youth FX.

I'll just share a little bit about what we do.

I know some folks here are very familiar with our organization.

We're based in Albany, New York, but we're a national organization.

We've been around for 15 years, and we really focus primarily on film education, teaching young people about the art form, learning how to do all different aspects of production from development, screenwriting, acting, editing, producing, the whole nine yards.

And then the other things that we're really excited about, is that over the last, specifically, over the last seven years, we've kind of expanded into working with emerging filmmakers.

So we have several programs that have kind of come outta Youth FX.

One is called NeXt Doc, which is a national fellowship for documentary filmmakers, ages 20 to 25.

We have created a production company called Rogue FX, which essentially is a program that enables young people who are going through our programs.

So after they kind of graduate past the high school age, and now with some of our emerging filmmaker programs and Workforce Development programs can actually be on productions and get paid and learn what it means to be on commercial productions, documentary productions, short narrative productions, music videos.

And the cool thing about that program is it also enables the organization to build in a revenue stream.

And part of what we're really proud of is that we don't charge for any of our programs.

They've been free for the entirety of our organization's existence.

And is really important for us because our primary audience that we're trying to really work with and build skills, and amplify their voices is young people of color, specifically in communities that just have never had these types of opportunities to learn.

Film has kind of an expensive entry point because of the equipment, and because some of the access to some of the tools, but it costs nothing to write.

It costs nothing to be able to just kind of come up with ideas.

And so our kind of vision is to really enable young folks who have these incredible ideas and stories to tell, to be able to make them come to life through the art form of film.

So the other things that we do also is a brand new program that we started in 2021 called Arts2Work, which is a Workforce Development program where we train for a full year 12 fellows.

They're actually given full access to Adobe Premier Final Draft.

We give them laptops.

It's kinda like this concept of what if you gave people all the access and the resources and the support and then kinda paired it with future mentorship and opportunity.

So during that program, this is, again, also for 20 to 25-year-olds, that kind of emerging filmmaker stage of your path, but we're able to put them on film sets.

They all worked on "Mother's Milk" which was a film that was shot in Albany in summer of 2022.

They all got a chance to work on their own independent documentaries.

One of them actually was screened on TVFilm.

We're really proud of that.

And they also got a chance to build their reel and their resume, develop websites, all these different resources we've provided for them.

So part of what we're trying to do is also build a film kind of ecosystem here in Albany.

I think folks like Mike and other, I mean, people like Mike, I mean, there's so many great filmmakers and folks in the audience who are working on that idea and how do we kinda build that ecosystem.

We need to train people and they need to be ready for the opportunities that could come.

And also to me even more important, they have to make films and we have to be able to provide that access.

So one really important part of our program now that we developed over the last two years was we even have a gear lending program.

So if you're an alum of our program, you can borrow cameras, you can make your own films 'cause the goal again for us is we're trying to cut out those access points that really create barriers to people being able to make films and bring their vision to life.

I'll just name one more really exciting program that just kicked off last week.

It's called Script Lab.

It's an invite only program for six alums of our programs who have been either Arts2Work or Youth FX filmmakers.

And this is six filmmakers that we selected to develop a short film script.

We're partnering with some of our friends in the industry like Nikyatu Jusu, Nijla Mumin, and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte to offer mentorship as well, but one of the scripts we're actually gonna give a $25,000 co-production budget and shoot it in the summer, or sorry, in the spring of 2024.

And we're gonna be developing those scripts over the next eight weeks.

And I think one of the things that's exciting about that is for us to be able to take the access that we have to support funders, filmmakers, and how do we kinda make that happen in the city of Albany.

And part of that money, that budget is to hire crew.

And so make sure that we're paying people 'cause, obviously, all of you here, and I know some of you guys have been on TVFilm, and make incredible films with practically nothing.

So how do we start seeing that there's this real value in filmmaking as a cultural entity, and something that we have to kind of build in this community is the importance of film, 'cause I think in Albany in the Capital Region, I think we need to develop a little bit more of a kind of understanding of how important and how widespread when you make films, the impact can be on different people, different industries.

So we're just kind of hoping to really cultivate this young group of people, but also expand out and see them kind of through their beginning stage of the career and make sure that they have a level of success.

- Yeah, it's been an honor to be able to screen the work of filmmakers that are in Youth FX programs, or graduates of the program and just be a part of that culture building with WMHT being another conduit for people being able to see those films, yeah.

- Yeah, we love TVFilm, it's like a great platform for so many filmmakers locally, so.

- Thank you.

David, could you please just give us a quick overview of some of those funding opportunities you mentioned earlier?

- Yeah, definitely.

So the main opportunities that the general public has to apply to our funding come through our Open initiatives.

We have generally three calls per year.

Two of those are our co-production calls, which if you go to itvs.org you can check out information about how to apply and what the schedule is, but we generally run two calls for funding for long form production, documentary films who, you know, are filmmakers who are interested in producing for public television, and are looking for a substantial amount of production funding.

You can apply to the Open Call initiative and if you're selected we'll end up in co-production with you.

And we really consider our funding not to be a grant because it isn't, but it's production licensing in a co-production kind of relationship.

So we're very interested in focusing on not only how to develop the content, but develop the artists who are bringing projects to us and really to make sure that there is that open avenue between the community of independent documentarians in the United States, and the public television series that we work with.

The third Open Call for funding that is available generally every year is our Diversity Development Fund.

We are reassessing sort of the schedule this year.

So I would definitely keep an idea, or I'd keep an eye on our website to see when we're gonna offer that, but really that's focused on providing opportunities for filmmakers of diverse backgrounds who are working on diverse subjects to come in and get sort of seed money to begin putting the project.

You're taking your project from a more conceptual space to a place where you have the materials that would be necessary to be able to pitch the project to funders like us or other funders who are working in the public television space.

So, again, that's the very hands-on relationship that we have with filmmakers for that initiative as well.

We are, also, I mentioned short form, we do have short form funding opportunities right now.

They're by commission only.

So we're tracking projects that might serve sort of the very specific needs that we have as far as being a distributor to the public television system and sort of bringing them in for funding now.

We have done Open Call for short form projects in the past.

We're very much considering ramping that up as early as by the end of this year again.

Through that we have historically through that initiative looked for series projects.

So individual short form projects that might start out, we could develop a pilot and then we're really looking for projects that potentially have serious potential so we can offer them as a batch to our distributor, which is PBS Digital.

- Thank you so much.

And later I think we'll also get into, Bhawin, your film "Outta the Muck" was a recipient of one of those programs.

- Right, yeah.

- Yeah, so we'll come back to that later.

So, Galen, I wanted to talk to you again about the NYSCA opportunities.

I think that the Regrant Program might be one of the first programs that local filmmakers might come into contact with if they're searching around the NYSCA platform, what might be applicable to their projects, but there's also some limitations to that, so could you talk a little bit about what is supported by that?

- With the NYSCA support for artists versus MAF?

- Correct, yeah.

- So as you may or may not know, NYSCA sort of redesigned what used to be referred to as IND the program, and called it Support for Artists a couple years ago, and streamlined the application so it's a flat grant of $10,000.

Has anybody applied to NYSCA Support for Artists in the audience?

- Not at all.

- So if you apply regardless of whether or not you're successful, you may not apply the next year to that opportunity.

Regardless of whether or not you were successful the subsequent year you can apply to MAAF for Artists.

So theoretically if you're successful all around, you might get 10 grand from NYSCA Support for Artists one year.

You're creating your piece, maybe you're almost finished or maybe you've finished, and then you come into Wave Farm MAAF and you get an additional $7,500 either to bring that to the completion point, or to bring it to the public audiences.

So we're very excited about trying to work together to leverage the amount of funding available.

It's also great that if you were unsuccessful with NYSCA Support for Artists the next year, even though you're not eligible to apply directly to NYSCA, you can still apply to MAAF for Artists.

MAAF for Artists is distinct because it's not a production grant.

And if you're thinking about applying to Wave Farm, there's like a slide at the beginning of the page for the grant opportunity the other slide.

Yeah, so this is just like a little screenshot.

So if you go to wavefarm.org, go to grants and services, go to NYSCA Regrants and then click on MAAF Artists.

It's not a long page, but there's, like, 12 really key eligibility points that will save you a lot of time and headache and heartbreak, hopefully.

So your project really has to be near completion.

It has to be at least 75% of the way done.

And, also, for any interdisciplinary artists in the room, media arts really has to be the core discipline.

So we accept applications that are in arts and science, film and video, media installation, media performance, immersive media such as AR, VR, AI and gaming, physical computing, new media and sound.

So sometimes we get applications that are really a theater piece that has like a media component and that's not gonna work.

That's really fundamentally a theater piece.

We need it to be media art centric.

I think that's the biggest piece of advice I would give is that completion piece and the media specificity piece.

- Thank you for clarifying that.

I think that when you look at all these programs, you need to very carefully review all of these eligibility guidelines.

And the other one you mentioned earlier was the NYFA, which is a completely different grant as well.

- Right, and also just I am not a NYSCA staff member.

I'm a Wave Farm staff member.

I'm also very much not a NYFA staff member, so.

I just brushed up on the guidelines this afternoon to be able to say something to you.

So the NYFA Fellowship, as you may know, they cycle their disciplines.

- Yeah, just to clarify, that is New York Foundation for the Arts.

- Right.

- Yeah, and I didn't mean to put you on the spot on that one.

- Oh no, it's okay, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't inappropriately representing myself as something I'm not.

- Right, I think it's good to make the distinction and you being overseeing with the MAAF, that's good distinction, yeah, thank you.

- So the NYFA Fellowship is also NYSCA money, just like the MAAF opportunity is NYSCA money.

NYFA is eight grand.

It is not project specific.

It cycles the disciplines, but the reason it's worth mentioning right now is their upcoming opportunity includes film and video, which it won't again I think for three years or something.

- Right, it goes on a cycle, it's not period.

- Also worth noting 'cause I was kind of like, oh, that's interesting, when I two hours ago looked at their guidelines.

If you are a collective, or like a team of filmmakers or artists applying to NYFA, all of your members have to be New York State residents and have to prove that to NYFA.

For Wave Farm, there's a primary applicant and that person has to be a New York State resident, but kind of on that tip, the Wave Farm opportunity is really about funding individual artists, maybe an artist collective, but it is not about funding a large team that's producing a long form documentary film that's six figures.

That's not what this program is geared towards.

- Thank you.

Yeah, and it's also good to just clarify that, and we're talking about people who submit to TVFilm, it's also oftentimes like a single artist and they might be eligible for something like that.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, great.

Bhawin, so I did wanna revisit, speaking of much larger budgets, talking about "Outta the Muck" could you talk a little bit about how you found the grant opportunity of funding for that film, and how that connects to ITVS as well?

- Yeah, so "Outta the Muck" was a feature documentary that I co-directed and co-produced with Ira McKinley.

This is our second film that we worked together on.

And we started the project in 2015 when we were kind of finishing and touring and screening our first film together called "The Throwaways" which got zero funding.

We made it to the finals of some things, and if anybody here is a documentary filmmaker, I mean, it's a serious hustle to try and figure out how to get funding for your projects.

And I think that the majority of documentary filmmakers when you're starting a project is you really need to figure out a way to start production in some form, even if it's just getting some kind of sample footage and starting to really write.

I think the big thing is starting to really flesh out your idea and work on that, so.

Luckily, we had a little bit of funding through some screening touring that we were doing with our first film.

And we were able to get down to Florida and start filming, which is where "Outta the Muck" takes place, which is where Ira's family is originally from.

And so when we got down there, we started to really think about, what are some of the things that we wanted to capture in order for us to put together a sample reel because that's what most grants that we were applying for needed.

Now the one that didn't need a sample reel is documentary Diversity Fund, which David mentioned, which was actually the first thing that we applied to.

So initially we did not get the diversity documentary fund, but we were, like, really well scored, so there's a lot of people review it.

There's a panel and you get kind of like a score.

We didn't get the notes from them, but we knew that they were excited about the project 'cause they had said, "We want you to apply again.

You didn't get it this time."

So that's another thing, it just takes time and a process.

So we really had to just hustle for the first six months of that film producing.

And we actually ended up getting another funder to come onboard first, which was the Southern Documentary Fund.

They gave us $10,000.

And then once, this is kinda like the challenge of funding is that often when you get funding you can get more funding.

I mean, it's really like kind of a natural process because I think funders are looking for films that they know can be successful and can get to completion because inevitably if you're funding a project, you wanna see it be made.

And I think that's one thing that a lot of people say, how do you kind of kick off that process?

And I think, again, DDF is a great example of a fund that you don't need any footage.

You need to really think about your writing.

You need to be serious about your budget.

That's one piece of advice I give a lot of young filmmakers is don't write budgets that are like, oh, I can do this for $5,000, because that's a signal to a funder that you don't really know what you're doing because budgets have to be done in a way that really show that you as a producer understand the process it's gonna take to get your film made.

And if you're making a feature length documentary, our budget was, total budget was around $575,000, but then once you get in the room with people who are like, oh, well, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, this is gonna cost that much.

The budget even creeps up a little bit.

Now I wanna be clear, we did not raise that much money total because at the end of the day we had to cut some corners.

COVID happened.

I ended up editing the film, which was not intended to be the case.

The positive of that is we didn't have to raise money to pay an editor, but essentially Southern Documentary Fund led us to the second round of DDF.

We got into DDF, which is the Diversity Documentary Fund that David mentioned.

And then we again applied twice for Open Call.

We had a really great supervising producer at the time.

Her name was Monika Navarro.

She's now with Firelight Media.

And Monica was very, like, serious about getting this film ready for Open Call which was her words that she used.

She says, "Your film is not ready, your project's not ready.

It needs more work, you need to work on this, work on that."

So she gave us a lot of advisement.

And that's the other thing I would say to people is have people on your team that you're talking to that are willing to give you honest advice.

- Absolutely.

- It's great to hear from your cousin or your mom, or your best friend that your film is great, but in a way if someone can't offer you actual critique that's gonna help you build your skills, build your project up, that's what you really need.

You need someone that's gonna be honest with you to the point where it's pushing you to be a better and stronger artist.

And so that funding from DDF opened the doors to Sundance, to Ford Foundation, we got JustFilms.

And then it finally led to the full production, not a hundred percent full, but a significant production fund through ITVS.

I mean, David and I have sat in many conversations and meetings about budgets.

Honestly, I absolutely loved working with ITVS.

A lot of people have a hard time with all the restrictions and the kind of ways that they make you kind of like map out and account for your project.

I thought it was an extremely important learning experience as a filmmaker to understand how I would say ITVS is probably the most kind of like, maybe you can correct me, David, or not, but kinda like the most audited and accountable funder out there because it's federal funding.

ITVS is the only money that comes through CPB, which is funding your WMHT and PBS.

They're the only federal funding for filmmakers in this country.

And you gotta remember, a lot of countries have major film funding that happens.

Like you think about someone like Bong Joon-ho who did "Parasite."

His funding came from the Korean government, right?

There's filmmakers getting funding and we don't have that, which is unfortunate and we need to support artists in this country way more than we do.

So ITVS to me is like a beacon, like they are like champions for filmmakers.

I think the ancillary support that they gave connecting us to people who were in the field to give us advisement was huge.

And we were really lucky to have some great producers like Sam Pollard who's just really incredible.

He's, like, doesn't produce many films now because he's doing his own work, he's so busy, but Sam was our producer and that was really helpful, but that funding from ITVS was what made us realize, okay, we now can fully focus on our film.

And I think, again, that's the beauty of having funding is it allows you as an artist to not be in that hustle mentality and start to refocus on the craft and on the film that you're actually making, which is what we should all be doing.

So I think it was really important to get Open Call for many reasons, but I think the biggest reason obviously is for us to then be able to focus on our film.

And we worked with Shana Swanson, who was our supervising producer and she was incredible.

And, again, just constantly helping us and supporting us in the process, but then also helping us to understand all the accounting.

And by that I mean, like, literally the money piece, but then how are you keeping track, keeping timelines, deliverables, all those kinds of things.

And then the beautiful thing about ITVS is it led to having our film be selected to air on Independent Lens, which was a really incredible experience to get a national audience.

And, again, another shout-out to PBS.

We actually got our demographics, our numbers.

When you are picked up by a streamer, you don't get any access to who watched your film, how many people watched it.

We literally got a full 20 page report about exactly who watched it, how many people at each station.

So it gives you a sense of where's your film really landing, where are people really responding to the work.

So I think it's important for filmmakers to understand, also, that David mentioned it's not a grant.

This money is a co-production, so you have obligations as a co-producer and deliverables that you have to adhere to, but we got funded and we weren't broke at the end of the process.

And I think that to us was a really huge, important deal for us, so, yeah.

- Yes, I do wanna pivot it to David.

I hope you're hearing all this 'cause he's really being complimentary of you.

- I've heard Bhawin say very, very nice things about us before and I can tell he was getting very animated.

I can't say I heard it all.

I really appreciate.

- You've heard it before, you've heard it before, yeah.

- Yeah, so David, could we go back to what Bhawin was saying.

It's just when it comes to public television, there is just a lot of accounting for.

Could you explain how the work that ITVS does with filmmakers is different from other grant programs so to speak?

- Yeah, no, definitely.

And I mean that's part of the reason that our funding, in addition to the accountability that we need to have to our funder, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, just the general expectations of transparency that public television expects, and the public expects out of public television really informs our process, like.

I think that when we were like a young organization, not that I was around for that, but I've certainly heard the stories.

I think we very quickly leaned into a space where we used that as an opportunity.

We knew that our filmmakers were going to need to be able to account for the money that we were sending to them, that we would have sort of heightened expectations for making sure the films that we fund get on the air and actually get distributed and that they are of high quality because we're trying to get them on sort of the most premier placement in public television.

And so, yeah, we sort of leaned into that, those requirements as an opportunity to really build a production and development apparatus that centers on, like, making sure that filmmakers have the tools and skills that they need to keep a project organized.

Making sure that, like, we are working with them to get them to understand production best practices, setting realistic timelines, making sure that their films are sort of legally buttoned up under the hood, and all that stuff sort of serves double duty that we then by providing that support we make sure that the films that are in our pipeline are of high quality and aren't gonna run into trouble on public television, but also that we are supporting the filmmakers that we work with to help advance their skills and their career.

And that's actually in the production department, one of the things that we're most proud of in terms of the relationships that we hold with the filmmakers who receive our funding and our co-production partners.

We love those relationships and we try to meet filmmakers where they are and provide them the tools and support that they need to get their skills and their process up to the next level.

- Yeah, thank you.

And what we do at WMHT is just a small shop.

Like, so we're talking about our own guidelines are pretty stringent I think also for some of the same reasons that ITVS is also.

So I wanted to go and talk about a little bit more about the independent film scene in the area with Mike, and you've been around it for a while and just could you give a quick background and then I wanted to talk about kind of taking that next step with what you do in the Filmmakers Lab to take people from that short film to maybe the bigger project or the dream.

- Sure, thanks Catherine, and thanks again for having us all here.

I started with a film called "Inside the Blue Line" which actually made its premier thanks to a decentralization grant that brought it here to WMHT.

And out of that we started the Upstate Independents Network because I knew I needed to be surrounded by other people who knew more.

I really didn't know anything about this industry.

And one of the things that we did is we stuck together and we put some pressure on the local government.

I don't know if you guys remember, in the early 2000s there really wasn't anything here.

There was Saratoga Film Commission, and our network because of our database, we were able to put some pressure and they expanded to become the Capital-Saratoga Film Commission.

And our story was that pay attention to what independent filmmakers are doing.

That was happening in other places in North Carolina.

It was certainly happening in Montreal.

Just the voice of the independents and being creative and then finding government to respond to us and our needs.

Fast forward to today you have the Capital Region Film Alliance plus Adirondack, and it's just tremendous.

They really get the importance of us as independent filmmakers in our region.

Kind of what you were saying, Bhawin, about bringing that to a culture.

I've always said if you have a movie theater in your hometown, you're actually doing really well up in the Adirondacks.

It's really important to have just an Adirondack theater that can play and watch movies, and that's where "Inside the Blue Line" premiered, again, thanks to a grant.

So I wanted to just share a little bit about that.

The other part of your question was where do we go?

- Taking things from the short film to a longer form project.

Could you talk a little bit how you've worked with filmmakers at the Lab on that, and what do you need to take your project to that next level?

- Part of it is for filmmakers, they come for three days.

They communicate to their peers and industry experts what it is that they think that they're cultivating, working on.

And what they find out is that they really need to focus in on how they communicate what they have.

And we ask them questions about who the audience is.

And so they haven't thought about that a lot of times who their audience is and that's gonna help them go to investors, write a grant, to be able to communicate and articulate what it is that you're trying to say.

We end that with a pitch process.

Let me just back up.

The other part of the Lab is on day two they meet in eight to 10, one-on-one meetings with industry experts, whether it's an entertainment attorney, a casting director, someone who knows how to break down budgets, all different aspects of production.

And so they're being asked questions about how to go and advance their project.

The big benefit is, I think, is that they gain confidence in being able to articulate, taking something that might be in their heads, they might have worked in isolation.

So this is like the first time that they're actually talking to other people.

- David, I see you nodding your head.

And I think, yeah, that's sort of like with the conversation that Bhawin, you would have had to have with ITVS and other partners to the film, and like you said, kinda having some shots already, or some ideas to show people what it is you're trying to work on.

- I don't know if you want.

- Just like getting filmmakers like we were on last night, Chris Schiller is one of our founding members.

There's a filmmaker who wants to show us his entire work and we really don't need that.

Like, just for them to learn that.

Make three great minutes.

We're really quick studies.

We understand what you're trying to say or do and we can help you, but you're not aware of where you're going.

And so just getting filmmakers to move in that direction from I need an audience now, to, no, you need to think about the business of filmmaking.

You need to think about how are you gonna put the artwork, and all this.

You have to do everything today.

I mean, you have to figure out how to make a poster.

So there's just so many aspects before people get to watch your movie so you can prepare it for an audience that's dying to see it.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

I hear AI makes great posters.

- Who's that?

- I said AI.

- Oh they do, like, they can make them in three minutes.

- I'm messing you.

They make terrible posters I've seen some of them.

- No, so just let me just clarify with Largo.

- I'm just messing with you.

- No, Largo, so this is important because this is not about writing a screenplay or anything.

- Right, right, right.

- They've canvassed over 10,000 movies and found patterns and things like that that can help us with a documentary you see.

Okay, here's who the audience is gonna.

Okay, you got this age group, this demographic, here's where they live, and it's just incredible.

- Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's definitely use for.

- The balance.

- But I mean, I think the big thing I just wanted to touch on which relates to this and I think sort of relates to funding through grant, and what you mentioned about researching is a level of work that we can do outside of the actual practice and art form of making films is building relationships and doing research.

I mean, the amount of time I researched and spent finding out who do I need to talk to at ITVS?

Where are these people gonna be?

Am I gonna be in some kind of a situation, maybe at a film festival, or some kind of other convening, a lab?

Like that's why I said is the lineup out yet because I wanna know who's gonna be there.

That's the way my mind thinks.

- Right, you wanna network.

- 'Cause I'm like who is there that I wanna network with?

How do I wanna plan my opportunity when I get into these spaces?

'Cause I think it's really important to learn, first of all, networking just in general, and this is a great example, like, I don't know how many people here know each other, but it's an opportunity to find out like, oh, what do you do?

Oh, I shoot, or I'm an actor, or I'm a writer 'cause I think the one thing right now is that this is a time when we can make work collaboratively and collectively that is really incredible and high quality without needing tons of money if you have the right connections and the right people to work with, but at the same time, if you wanna take that next step, you have to understand what the best pathway is because it's not like you just said, some people are like, oh, I wanna send you my film, but it's like, no, I wanna see a sizzle reel.

I wanna see a trailer.

I wanna see a teaser, whatever it might be because people are also really busy.

I mean, there's people who work in these spaces and these industry positions who are dealing with like, hundreds of emails a day.

What's gonna make yours stand out?

If you build a relationship with them and they know who you are first.

Some people in this room who understand that and know that it takes a lot of time before you can kind of breakthrough in some of those spaces, but you have to have a strategy and an approach.

It's like there's so many talented people in different art forms but as filmmakers.

And I think the people that make it through are the ones that are really smart and hardworking and actually strategic about what do they want and start to think about it.

And I will say that in this area, I'm gonna tell you, we've met so many, there are so many talented people in this room, in the area that are making films that are artists.

And it's about how do you network with each other and build collaborative relationships?

Because one of the things here, too, is that because it's a smaller marketplace you can use that as an advantage as well because there's a lot more spaces and opportunities.

I'll say that one thing, when people come here to make films from outside the area, they're incredibly impressed and amazed by the amount of talent that's here.

And in a way a lot of them are like, well, how come there's not more films being made?

And I was like, well, there's just not a lot of support, and I think like one thing that I've talked about.

- So can I just jump in then?

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's the reason why I started the Lab.

- Yeah, exactly, right.

- Because there was one filmmaker production that just tanked the confidence in independent film.

This is going back because they didn't finish their film, and then financing disappeared, and the region became skittish about.

I was thinking about this.

Has anybody made a feature film besides Miles over $250,000 where the money came from the region?

- I don't think so, not to my knowledge.

- So I mean, the Capital Region is capable of that, but it's skittish.

That's one of the things that we tried to do was address our business sense and our creativity because we saw that the region had just lost confidence in this.

There's too many great stories that need to be told though.

- Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you go down just even, 30, 40 miles south of here there's a thriving film industry.

- Well, yeah, and Galen lives in the Hudson Valley to pull you in.

- Yeah, you know about that.

- Yeah, and obviously there's a great arts community down there and not only filmmakers, but also the media artists that you work with.

And sometimes there's like that, almost like that big valley between us, like the Capital Region and the Hudson Valley sometimes they don't talk to each other, and sometimes it's hard to get people up here or vice versa.

So yeah, it's an ongoing conversation, yeah.

- Yeah, and hosting things, conversations like this are helpful.

I know, Bhawin, you do a bit of traveling down below.

We're excited about now we're seeing New York City filmmakers come up to our Lab, and because it's small and intimate, they really get a lot out of it.

So there's this interesting thing going in terms of Downstate and Upstate and this exchange, and being able to go on and make your movie.

- I would just say that having an out of New York City address is actually quite an advantage when applying to Wave Farm and NYSCA because the application pool is so city centric and the mandate is geographic diversity, so.

I think it's well worth the time to pursue those two opportunities if you have an application that's eligible.

- Yeah, and that's a great point because the funding that WMHT gets from NYSCA, we specifically address in our application that the funding is for Upstate.

And we're specific about that because we know that NYSCA has that priority of the geographic diversity.

And we happen to be in the Capital Region, so we are focused on Upstate, and we do define that in our guidelines.

I think it's starting in Dutchess County, but don't quote me on that, but we do specify it.

So I do wanna start wrapping it up.

Do you guys wanna give a final word on just what might be some advice that you have for folks applying to your various programs?

And then we could open it for questions.

- I would say look at the past grantees press releases to see what kinds of things have been successful, but that doesn't mean that something totally different won't succeed.

I would say read the very simple guidelines, which will take you, like, 15 minutes carefully and then email with a question.

And we welcome emails with questions as long as they're not already answered in the guidelines.

- Just to piggyback on that, I was thinking today, like, I wanna give instructions to whoever I'm speaking to, to read my instructions three times because we get submissions, and you can see early on people who pay attention to the guidelines.

And it's really helpful 'cause they're gonna be successful 'cause they're listening.

And then there's those who just go right through them and say take my movie and they just, they're not paying attention.

It's like you've gotta slow down and reread the instructions.

I'm sure from a grant standpoint it's like a red flag, you know, so pay attention.

- Yeah.

- Definitely.

- I mean, I'll just say for just general advice, stuff that I've been really trying to share, which I think is a few things.

One is just be really authentic and honest and real about who you are and tell stories from that place because that's what's gonna make you a great storyteller.

I think the other part, too, and you mentioned it is be proud of where you're living and where you're from, and look at the environment around you.

And there's stories everywhere.

I think sometimes people are reaching out and looking for something, you know, stories out there, but there's a lot of incredible stories right here.

And I think the other piece I would just say is create work with people that you know and trust and can be fully honest with each other so you can build each other's skills.

And, again, like that level of critique, because I see a lot of people getting kind of fluffed up by their friends and they say, oh, I'm the best cinematographer.

I'm the best actor, this and that, but I'm just like, but you're just really only asking like three people for advice.

Like, you wanna really get your skills up.

You have to be honest with each other.

And I see it, I see people build their skills and it's the long game.

It is not something that you're gonna hit.

It's a lot like the lottery.

Yes, one or two people will breakthrough immediately, get noticed on social media or something like that, or have a film kind of breakthrough, but it's a long game and you really gotta stick with it, but, again, work with people that you really trust and enjoy working with.

I always tell the story, Barry Jenkins, people know "Moonlight" and all the incredible work he's done, but Barry Jenkins works with the same cinematographer and producer that they met freshmen year at college.

And they're in their 40s now making films, TV shows and all that together because they built a trusting, authentic relationship with each other and they just rock with each other, and that's the relationship that's gonna make them, you know, continue to be successful.

So that's what my advice is.

See the people around you as people that you could work with for a long time.

And if you enjoy that and you have a trust relationship, then those are the people you wanna work with.

- Certainly.

David.

- Yeah, I mean, I would underline what everybody has said before me on the panel.

I think, paying attention and really understanding, particularly like grant applications and what the specific instructions are for each of those opportunities.

And then also developing your own creative community, like people that are around you that you can actually sort of help workshop your idea with before you start approaching folks for funding because I think one of the things, and we just went through the preliminary selection process for our most recent round of Open Call over the last couple of days.

And I can tell you out of the 300 or so applications we received, the 25 that we were able to sort of put to the finalist pool, they had one thing in common.

And this tends to be consistent across our rounds of funding.

The ability to articulate a clarity of vision about your project, really at any stage.

Like, whether that's just at development, being really laser-focused on developing a clear premise and, like, knowing how you're gonna move to the next steps from that, or if you're in a place where you're turning the corner into production, especially, with documentaries.

You're not gonna end up with the film that you planned to make at the beginning of the process.

Like I think probably you can count on one hand the number of people that have actually been able to deliver that.

And I betcha they all work in, like, day of air news, but being able to understand and think out from where I'm at, this is how I want to approach the film, these are the characters I wanna bring in, this is the story I wanna tell.

And then also like, this is the wishlist of costs that is gonna get me there.

And to be able to stand in that space with directorial authority, that is what's gonna distinguish your project, particularly from, like, a large pool, like, of applicants, like the ones that we see.

- Thank you so much.

So we're gonna wrap it up.

Thank you all so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- I did wanna give you a quick moment to say what's the best way if somebody wanted to contact you, but then also be in the hallway and maybe be available to answer questions.

So would you let us know what's the best way to contact you?

- Sure.

Well, the guidelines say info@wavefarm.org, but that makes its way to me eventually anyway.

And it's Galen, G-A-L-E-N, @wavefarm.org.

- Okay.

- And you'll find me at cinemaexchange.org.

If I could put one more plugin for our Pitch Contest.

- Quick one.

- People hesitate to do that, but please apply to the Pitch Contest.

We'll offer you a free film talk, whichever one you wanna come to as a bonus for being here tonight, so thank you.

- Thank you.

- And so you can find me just my email's really easy.

It's my name, B-H-A-W-Y-N @youthfx.org.

And like I said, I mean I'm definitely down to share resources if people have questions they wanna follow-up and check out our website 'cause you could watch Youth FX films on there.

I do wanna plug that "Outta the Muck" is still available on streaming through PBS Passport, which is a membership VOD, which if you subscribe to it and you do it, you're actually supporting your local PBS station, so.

And it's very affordable.

It's $5 a month and you get access to tons of great documentaries and TV shows from PBS.

- That's cool.

- And "Outta the Muck" is one of them.

So if you haven't seen the film, please check it out.

I'd love to hear what you think of it if you watch it.

- Yeah, and David, best way to contact, ITVS, or you, or?

- Yeah, definitely, you should, if you have questions about our funding initiatives, or anything that I've talked about in terms of the way we work with filmmakers, itvs.org is the best place to go on the internet.

If you have questions specific to how we work with co-production, or how the application process works that you can't get answered there.

Yeah, you can reach me at david.eisenberg@itvs.org and that's spelt like it's spelt in the materials that you've received about this panel today.

- Yes, thank you.

And I do think that this is just the beginning of a conversation.

You saw we had a little bit of technical difficulties.

We're still figuring it out, but if this was something that you enjoyed, and you wanna give us some feedback I have a survey.

I would really appreciate if you could fill it out.

Let us know what you think.

You can also email me.

My email is crafferty, R-A-F-F-E-R-T-Y @wmht.org.

My card is also out on the table just so you know, and get in touch with each other, like we were talking about networking.

And our panelists will be in the hallway and thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

(audience applauding) (upbeat music)