An award-winning documentarian, Roger Nygard has balanced humor and seriousness in films such as Trekkies and The Nature of Existence. Nygard has also directed TV series such as The Office and The Bernie Mac Show, and edited Emmy-nominated episodes of VEEP and Curb Your Enthusiasm. This article is excerpted from his new book The Documentarian, published by Applause Books.—M.M.
People often say to me, “I have a great idea for a documentary.”
My first thought is always: Yeah, but is it worth two years of your life?
They usually disappear when I reply, “That is a good idea. Can you put up two-hundred thousand dollars?” They are quick to spend your time and money, but not their own.
I’ve had a bit of luck talking investors out of their money. It helps if you clean up and put on a nice shirt and don’t make sideways, darting glances. Nobody invests in shifty people. Many “committed” investors talk a big game and then back out when it comes time to write a check. It’s a numbers game. A filmmaker has to be prepared to talk to a lot of rich folks. They’ve got plenty of money, and there’s no reason they can’t wager some on an exciting investment such as your movie. If you have that can’t-miss idea in your head and want to see a documentary get made, I’ll tell you what I would do.
Keep It Engaging
Consider the business aspect of your project. If you don’t pick a subject with wide appeal, you probably won’t get paid for the next year(s) of work. You might be making a glorified home movie—which is fine, if that’s your goal.
There are exceptions, such as Sherman’s March (1986), a film that wildly exceeded its limitations. It begins as a Civil War documentary but subverts viewer expectations as it metamorphoses into a personal character study of the filmmaker’s personal dating history and mental state. Britney vs Spears (2021)is an example of picking a topic with an obvious built-in core group. No matter what happens, with a famous subject, you know there is an interested audience.
First, choose a subject you like that will entertain and engage you. Your film will only inspire people if it inspires you first. Big laughs may not be what audiences expected when they selected my film Trekkies, a documentary about Star Trek fans. But audiences like being surprised. You can’t show them what they’ve seen before. Even serious documentaries have funny moments, because real life is like that.
Write a Proposal
Don’t pitch until you have figured out your film’s story, because story is what sells. My first step is to write a one-page synopsis, beginning with a logline — one or two sentences that concisely explain the entire story. Use bold and colorful descriptions. Describe the protagonists, goals, obstacles, antagonists, climax and ending. When any of these elements are missing, such as in a concept documentary, you may have to rely entirely upon a killer theme and a captivating core question that you will answer.
Keep it short. You need to excite people right away. If development and acquisition executives can’t quickly grasp the conflict and main characters, they can’t pitch it to their bosses. And a marketing department will struggle with how to sell it.
Investors and buyers don’t know what they want until you tell them. They are rooting for your pitch to succeed, because they want to get excited by a fantastic idea. They hope you will convince them because it ends their search. Approach with confidence, as if you are doing them a favor. You are going to fill their pockets with money and make them a part of something special.
Create a Pitch Deck
A pitch deck (aka lookbook) is a visual presentation that lays out essential information about your project, supported by enticing photos. Look at pitch decks from other projects. Yours can be a digital presentation using PowerPoint or InDesign, a pdf, or a glossy printed book to page through during a meeting. It can be anywhere from eight to 80 pages. It will answer the questions anyone interested in the film will ask. Include a title page, a logline, a page with a longer description, and a section with the characters.
If you’re pitching a series, break it down episode by episode. Present all the big moments, and perhaps a timeline. If it’s a vérité documentary, build up the colorful characters and scenes you plan to capture.
List similar, successful documentaries. How much money did these comps make? Who is salivating for your topic? Who will be your big interviews? How big is their (and your) social media following?
For investors, add up budget versus potential revenue streams, and show your investors a healthy share of the returns. A typical profit split is 50/50, with half the net income going to the investors and half to the filmmakers.
Prepare a Budget
Somewhere in your proposal is the bottom line — your financial ask. Think about everything you need to accomplish your goals and add it up.
There are three budgets you could work with: the core budget, the total production budget, and the investor (or buyer) budget. The core budget contains the lean-and-mean hard costs. What unavoidable expenditures will it take to finish? You may be able to persuade the crew to work for free (or deferred salaries). But there are expenses you can’t avoid, such as equipment purchases, hard drives, travel costs, and film festival submission fees. Even if you put a film on credit cards, you still owe that money.
As different as all my documentaries were, their basic hard costs (not including deferments) were similar, between $120,000 and $145,000. Maybe you can do it for less if you own a camera, mics, a computer for editing, and if there is no travel involved. (But be sure to budget for purchasing copies of my book for your entire crew.)
Though Trekkies cost $120,000 in hard cash, the total budget was $505,937 when all deferments were paid. When you add to your core budget what it will cost once you pay off deferments, plus any other financial promises, you will have your total production budget. You won’t be in “profit” until you pay off all your obligations. Include your own deferment.
One downside to crew deferments is that you usually have to promise larger amounts than their normal salary when a crew agrees to this gamble. When negotiating deferments, remember to treat them like real money. As easy as it is to be generous with money that doesn’t yet exist, the goal is to have that money in the bank someday.
A deferment is different from a profit share. Never give anybody a share of profits (aka back-end points) if it can be avoided. Otherwise, when you have a successful film, you will be married to these partners for life. Filmmaker Les Blank once advised me, “Be sure to cap it off.” When Blank made The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1968), he owed Hopkins a share of royalties forever. He said, “I gave him a percentage. The guy’s been dead for years, and I’m still paying his wife.”
Most films never get into profit and deferments are never paid, so the number that matters most is hard costs. However, contracts and paperwork are ready for when you do hit the jackpot. With a film that takes off, you are in the rarified position of paying everybody and putting smiles on their faces. If you don’t have contracts in place ahead of time, you will likely experience the worst buzzkill of your life (and accompanying lawsuits) when everybody disagrees on what they deserve.
When I approach investors (or networks/platforms), I provide them with budget No. 3, the investor budget, which adds appropriate salaries for the above-the-line director and producers, a built-in profit for the production company, and contingencies. A feature-length documentary budget for cable or a streaming platform normally ranges between $750,000 and $1 million. It can be much more if the film has a large crew and lots of research and effects. How do I justify asking for $1 million? Because if I am going to spend a year (or more) of my life dedicated to finishing a film, I need to be appropriately compensated with a full-year salary.
Film agent Glen Reynolds says most documentaries he sees are in the $200,000 to $400,000 budget range, and “to go beyond that is pretty gutsy. If you convince someone to give you $1 million to make a documentary, you’re probably someone who’s made two or three movies in that budget range that worked before. Maybe you have workshopped it at the Sundance Lab so you have a certain percentage chance of being in Sundance next year.”
When your first documentary hits the jackpot, and you get offers to move up to the big leagues, budgets rise. The five-episode series The Comedy Store (2020) cost about $1 million per episode. The Last Dance (2020) cost closer to $2 million per episode. The eleven-part BBC series Planet Earth (2006) advertised a production budget of $25 million, or $2.27 million per episode. That project took five years, with 2,000 shoot days and over 200 locations. The more you shoot, the more it becomes about media management. Everything starts to balloon. More cameras, more operators, more editors, more assistant editors, more storage, everything is multiplying.
When budgeting a documentary for cable or a streamer, categories are calculated in percentages. Whatever the budget, 30 percent comes off the top for the above-the-line recipients: production company, producers, director, star talent, and sometimes a writer. Everybody else is below-the-line, from cinematographer to office staff to editor. Shooting gets 20 percent. Post production, clip licensing, and music (whether composer or library) are 40 percent. Licensed songs would be separate. An edit burn rate of $10,000 per week is not unusual. Depending on the quantity of clips and archival footage, licensing could be huge, or it could be zero. The last 10 percent goes to office, legal, and miscellaneous.
Edit a Sizzle Reel
Now that you have your budget and pitch deck, start shooting. Don’t wait for somebody to validate your idea. You will validate it by making it real. Create a sizzle reel, a visual sample of your idea edited together from footage you’ve shot, stock footage, photos, animation, graphics, or clips borrowed from other movies and YouTube. Make it dynamic. With some initial footage, you can create a visual sample of your terrific idea. If you don’t have any footage, you can create a “mood reel,” made entirely from borrowed footage, cut together to present a feeling of what your project will be like.
Set Up Pitches
Never speak as if you will make your film – you are making the film. When you talk about it, call it a project, not a pitch. Sometimes, you have to start filming, and as you work toward your goals, others will join because people like getting on board a project already in motion. Plus, you will get a sense after your first interview if your idea is a winner. When you feel it, you can sell it.
Marina Zenovich, director of 2008’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, says: “If you have a great story, with compelling characters, with access, something no one else is doing, you can probably sell it.”
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Don’t hit up your funding sources before you are ready. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Wait until you can answer every question: story, profilees, budget, marketing, and distribution. Then you are ready to approach funding sources: streamers, networks, production companies, investors, foundations, dentists, friends, parents, corporations, grants, and charities. If you are represented by an agency or production company, they will set up meetings.
Executives don’t get fired for saying no; they get fired for saying yes to the wrong thing.
How to Make a Documentary: Ken Burns, Rachel Grady, Davis Guggenheim, Sam Pollard and Michael Tollin on Pitching
Ken Burns advises: “Underwriters have to feel confidence in your sincerity. Given my reputation, I suppose I could walk into a streaming service or a premium cable and get what I need to make a $30 million ten-part series. But they wouldn’t give me ten and a half years, which was what it took to make The Vietnam War. They would have wanted it in two to three years.” At the beginning of that series, Burns credits and thanks nine foundations and 14 other entities and individuals for contributing funding. Burns needs the ability to change direction, as he continually researches, so he utilizes grants and the public broadcasting model to avoid “intercession by the so-called suits.”
Rachel Grady, director of 2006’s Jesus Camp, advises that in a pitch, “Never tell them there’s any chance it will be boring. Keep it engaging. There needs to be a reason for people to keep watching. The most important thing is to believe in the story from the bottom of your heart; and usually, if you do, it’s contagious.”
Davis Guggenheim, director of 2015’s He Named Me Malala, 2015, tries to get buyers to feel his excitement: “I want to immerse them in what it might be like to watch the movie. Whether that means me talking and gesticulating or cutting a ten-minute series of scenes that can immerse them in the story.” He waits until he finds a project that makes him enthusiastic. “
Michael Tollin, executive producer of 2020’s The Last Dance, advises: “During a pitch, always take yes for an answer. Some people just keep talking; shut up already. They said, ‘yes,’ they’re nodding vertically. It looks good. Get out too early rather than too late.”
Sam Pollard, director of 2020’s MLK/FBI, was hired by a company called This Machine Filmworks to co-direct a documentary with Charles Blow about his book The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto (2021). The production company set up meetings with ten streamers over two weeks. The story was about African-Americans reverse-migrating to the South to recapture political and economic power and collectively dismantle white supremacy. They had a pitch deck that they sent to the streamers beforehand. Pollard says his simple secret is to come up with a pitch they’re going to fall in love with. “They have to love the idea, but they also have to love you.”
The pitch was carefully organized and choreographed: who would go first, who would go second, and what each would say. Blow talked about his vision when he wrote the book, and he and Pollard described conceptually how they would turn it into a film. HBO quickly bought the pitch, and the documentary aired in 2023, titled South to Black Power.
In a pitch, expect buyers to ask every question you would ask, and be prepared for their objections.
Discover What Buyers are Looking For
Your job is to surprise and excite the executives. According to Davis Guggenheim, “The streamers are content hungry for a great piece of material, and when it comes up, they battle for it.”
Executives may have seemingly arbitrary reasons for turning down a pitch. Sometimes, they’re looking for a specific type of content that fits an algorithm. Other times they’re looking to work with people or directors they think are hot.
Michael Pollard says: “Unless you have some major celebrity, or it’s a true crime story, it’s difficult to raise the funds. If you have a true crime story, it’s almost like money in the bank.”
Liz Garbus says that when she made 2022’s Harry & Meghan, she wasn’t purely interested in them as celebrities — but their fame didn’t hurt: “I was interested in what their journey told us about colonialism, history, and the figure of the biracial American coming into this organism that has been part of empire, and now commonwealth, for hundreds of years. The streamers are certainly pushing toward celebrity. And I think for us as storytellers, it’s about trying to find the meat on the bones that make it worth us showing up for work.”
Garbus also warned not to try to predict what streamer executives want, citing the 2022 Academy Award-nominated film All That Breathes as an example. It’s hard to figure out why a documentary about trying to save injured birds in New Delhi works. “Would you say streamers would be interested in such a film if you pitched it on paper? No,” Garbus says. “But it was at Sundance and then nominated for an Oscar. It’s a quiet, gorgeous film. And through the efforts of two brothers, you learn so much about a different world. It’s about a thrilling arc. It’s about unforgettable characters. It’s about a visual style that’s different. So, I don’t think anything should be off the table.”
Locate Financing Sources
There are not many second-time film investors. Most learn their lesson the first time: It is a difficult business in which to profit. A sole investor is the ideal situation. It’s easier to answer to one master than several investors with differing opinions. When you accept an investor’s money, try to stipulate that they are passive investors with no control over business or creative decisions.
Rachel Grady says when she develops projects and looks for money, “we do what everybody does; we go to the streamers. There’s a lot of financing now in private equity. Everybody’s trying to get into the nonfiction game. The hard part is coming up with the idea. The selling of it is not as hard as it used to be.”
Glen Reynolds points out one problem with streamers: “You usually have to have already made a film with them before you can make another film with them. And it’s tough to break in. They don’t like to take risks on unproven filmmakers.”
The owner of a film is usually the person or entity that provides the money. However, filmmakers can hang on to ownership (and creative control) if they negotiate well. If you can’t keep 100 percent ownership, negotiate to be a co-owner with the financier or other partners. Ideally, you want the revenue stream to flow directly to you first and then to your partners. You
don’t want to be chasing them for your share of the financial waterfall; better if they have to chase you. If you are not an owner and the owners go bankrupt or disappear, you might find yourself out of luck.
You can only accept investors’ money once you have a place to deposit it. You first need to create a legal framework, such as a corporation, LLC (Limited Liability Company), or partnership because banks usually ask for documentation before opening an account in the name of a business. Then this entity that you create (and own) will own the film.
Don’t get too far ahead and form an entity before you need it. It creates a lot of yearly paperwork and is an expensive annoyance if you set it up too soon. Depending on your state, you may also need a business license. Research the process thoroughly. Ask your attorney and accountant for guidance. Be ready to set up your business framework the moment you confirm the first investment check is real.
It’s notoriously difficult to make a living as an artist. So, should you gamble precious time and resources making a documentary? Yes! Why? First, there has never been a better time to get into the business. There are more buyers and outlets than ever before. Second, those who express themselves creatively live a better, more stimulating life than others only immersed in non-creative endeavors.
Do you want to spend your life moving papers from one tray to another, chasing numbers on a grid, or loading boxes into a truck? (On second thought, you’ll do all those things while making a film.) A documentary is a creative statement designed to be shared, like a sculpture, a painting, a poem, a book, or an architect’s plan. Human beings are imbued with a need to express themselves. Express that creativity bursting to get out of the documentarian inside you — and get paid for it.
Main image: Author and documentarian Roger Nygard making his film The Truth About Marriage. Photo by Roger Nygard