Why Write a Proposal?

Writing forces you to clarify the organizational and thematic analy sis made during research and prepares you to direct the film. The sustained thinking it takes to write something acts to prime you. Then you can catalyze and capture materials that really add up to something and not just impulsively collect what may or may not take shape during editing. The proposal also reveals how ready you are to fulfill the conditions of making good documentary. Your film should:

• Tell a good story.
• Make human truths, both large and small, emerge through behavioral evidence, not just opinion or verbal description.
• Present a personal, critical perspective on some aspect of the human condition.
• Inform and emotionally move the audience.

Like gripping fiction, the successful documentary usually incorporates:

• Well-placed exposition of necessary information (facts or context placed not too early or too late).
• Interesting characters that are actively trying to get, do, or accomplish something.
• Events that emerge from the characters’ needs.
• Dramatic tension and conflict between opposing forces.
• Suspense—not people hanging off cliffs, but situations that intrigue your spectators and make them anticipate, wonder, compare, and decide.
• Confrontation among conflicting persons, factions, or elements.
• A climax in the tension between opposing elements or forces.
• A resolution (happy or sad, good or bad, satisfying or not).
• Development in at least one main character or situation.

If these criteria may seem too close to fiction, view one of your favorite documentaries and decide what its dramatic ingredients really are.

Write and rewrite your proposal until you have made it succinct, free of redundancy, and effortless to read. Funders know that thin and muddled writing promises thin and muddled filmmaking. A good proposal, on the other hand, demonstrates that you’re ready to meet the implicit expectations of documentary itself, that you really understand the genre, and that you know what you are doing as a director.

This chapter and the two that follow cover the work you’ll need to do to turn this information into a documentary proposal.

Steps Toward the First Draft

1. Check your working hypothesis for its currency (see Chapter 21, Advanced Research).

   

2. Review ingredients.
   1. List the action and behavioral sequences. Can you envisage a coherent observational film with these alone? This is a litmus test for how cinematic your film is or how much it depends on speech as narrative guidance.
   2. Audition. Using video very informally (if you use it at all), talk with those you’re considering for the film. Ask no searching questions—keep those for when you shoot.
   3. Don’t push yet. Avoid being intrusive or divisive. Listen to what your participants suggest and reply in nebulous terms. You want to delay all decisions till as late as possible.
   4. Casting. Watch the tape (if there is one) with a few trusted friends to see how well potential participants come across. This is analogous to casting.
3. Refine the proposal.
   1. Rewrite the working hypothesis if new people and information have altered its basis, and determine where your thematic purpose is leading. Skimping on this will leave you unsure, and you could end up shooting everything that moves.
   2. Narrow the focus, deepen the film. Tightly focused films that go deep are better than broad, generalizing films. What’s central, and what can you ditch from the periphery?
   3. List the points your film must make so you forget nothing important when you come to direct.
4. Define the premise.
   1. Write a three-line description. If you can summarize your film and its purposes in three lines and people react to it positively, you may be ready to direct it. If you can’t, you aren’t.

Documentary Proposal Organizer

Using Project 2-DP-6 Advanced Proposal Helper (in the Appendix) will now help you flush out the basics that you’ll need to write a proposal or develop a prospectus package. Think of its categories like the pigeonholes in a mail sorting office. A well-researched film has something substantial and different in most pigeonholes and, most importantly, nothing duplicated between them. The Proposal Helper is particularly helpful for longer and more complex works, which often contain more plot and developing issues.

Funding Organizations

The Independent Television Service (ITVS) Web site is a mine of information on how to apply and what independent films have recently been funded (see www.itvs.org and go to “For Producers”). The site gives valuable hints on writing a better application. For information on the PBS series POV, go to www.pbs.org/pov/utils/aboutpov_faq.html. Their call-for-entries Web site is www.pbs.org/pov/utils/callforentries.html#callforentriesk. Many important American independent documentaries get made through these program portals, which are inundated with applications. Because of this, they expect makers to initiate documentaries rather than seek funding at the proposal stage. ITVS and POV ask producers to apply with a substantial amount of the footage or a long edited version.

Specialized Web sites are also a mine of information on making documentaries for television. Because so many applications are abysmal, what they recommend is intended to parry the most common mistakes and misunderstandings. An ITVS regional jury on which I once sat for 3 days found only 6 out of 140 applications promising. Two of those we chose (which ITVS in the end failed to support) went on by other means to become quite famous independent films. The moral? Organization and vision are as visible on paper as well-meaning muddle.

The Treatment

The treatment, like the proposal, is one more salvo in getting a film made. It exists to convince a sponsor, fund, or broadcasting organization that you can make a film of impact and significance. While the proposal presents its argument rationally via categorized information, the treatment evokes how an audience will experience your film on the screen. It’s a short-story narrative that excludes any philosophical or directorial intentions. To make one:

• Restructure the information in the proposal as a chronological presentation, allotting one paragraph per sequence.
• Write an active-voice, present-tense summary of what an audience watching the film will see and hear from the screen.
• Write colorfully so the reader can easily visualize what you see in your mind’s eye.
• Where possible, convey information and evoke your characters by using their own words in brief, pithy quotations. Put supporting material on your DVD “reel.”
• Never write anything you can’t produce.
• Keep within the specified page count.

Budget Planning Form

In the early stages, it’s useful to use a worksheet to compile high and low figures as optimistic and pessimistic approaches (see project box). This should keep you from underestimation. Add a 3 to 5% contingency percentage without fail at the end to cover the unforeseen, such as bad-weather delays, reshoots, additions, or substitutions. Submit your final budget, or a budget summary sheet, using a professional budget software program. The industry standard software is Movie Magic ™, which is expensive and overkill for most documentaries. Less pricey Once you’ve entered all your information, you can update any element and have the satisfaction of seeing changes reflected straightaway in the bottom line.

The Prospectus

This presentation package or portfolio communicates your project and its purposes to non-filmmaking funders, who may be quite task oriented. The League of Left-Handed Taxidermists wants to know how Stuffing Badgers will be useful to them, how much it costs, and (invariably) why it costs so much. The prospectus uses many of the funding proposal categories and should be succinct and professional. It should contain:

1. Cover letter—Describe the nature of the film, its budget, the capital you want to raise, and what you want from the addressee. Only if you are targeting many small investors can this be a general letter; otherwise, write a customized letter to each specific individual. Be careful not to promise different things to different people.
2. Title page—A good title does more than anything at this stage to arouse respect and interest. Evocative photos or other professional-looking artwork in the prospectus will also improve your presentation’s persuasiveness.
3. One liner—Provide a simple, compact declaration of the project. Examples:
   • A theater director goes to live as one of the homeless so she can knowledgeably direct a play about homeless people.
   • Marriage is examined as seen in the ideas and play of 7-year-olds from across the social spectrum.
   • Three people of different ages and backgrounds relive their near-death experiences and show how profoundly their lives have changed since.
4. Synopsis—Briefly recount the documentary’s intended story in a way that captures its flavor and style.
5. History and background—Explain how and why the project evolved and why you feel compelled to make it. Here you establish the strength of your commitment to the story—important because nobody finishes a documentary unless they have a strong emotional investment in it.
6. Research—Outline research you have done and what it shows. Here you establish the factual foundation to the film, its characters, its context, and your authoritative knowledge. If special cooperation, rights, or permissions are involved, show you can secure them.
7. DVD “reel”—A 3- to 5-minute, specially edited trailer that proves the characters, landscape, style, and other attractions to which you lay claim. This is your chance to let the screen make your argument with a strong sequence or a montage of material. Among the multitude of applications, your “reel” should be of distinguished material and make its points rapidly. Package it attractively, divide the material up into chapters, and include an overview list so users can effortlessly navigate. Make absolutely sure the disk plays on a standard player from beginning to end.
8. Budget—Provide a summary of expected expenditures. Don’t understate or underestimate; it’s amateurish and may leave you funding the film’s completion yourself.
9. Schedule—State the approximate shooting period (or periods, if shooting is broken up) and preferred starting dates.
10. Résumés of creative personnel—In brief paragraphs, name the director, producer, camera operator, sound operator, and editor, and summarize their qualifications. Append a one-page résumé for each. Aim to present a professional, exciting, and specially appropriate team.
11. Audience and market—Say for whom the film is intended, and outline a distribution plan to show convincingly that the film has a waiting audience. Copies of letters of interest from television stations, channels, film distributors, or other interested parties are very helpful here. Present a plan for educational follow-up so the film can be used by special constituencies. Most funds require this.
12. Financial statement—If you have legally formed with others into a company or group, make an estimate of income based on the distribution plan, and say if you are a bona fide not-for-profit company or are working through one, because this may offer investors tax advantages that they can claim against their contributions.
13. Means of transferring funds—Supply a letter for the investor to use as a model that makes it easy to commit funds to your production account.

Every grant application is potentially the beginning of a lengthy relationship, so your prospectus and proposals should convey the essence of your project and its purpose in a clear, colorful, individual, and impeccable way.

A working documentary maker has many irons in many fires and must often write proposals based on partial research. Master the fine art of minimizing your uncertain ties. Once the project is deemed feasible and funds secured, research and development can begin in earnest.

Going Further

The following book is intended for fiction films, which elaborate documentaries can come to resemble:

Maier, Robert.G. Location Scouting and Management Handbook. Boston: Focal Press, 1994.