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CHAPTER 4

BUILDING COMMUNITY:

FROM KICKOFF TO LAUNCH

1. When you commit to making a film, plan a kickoff meeting to help launch it.

2. A community of supporters can help you get the film right, get the film done, and get the film out.

3. An “interest group” attracts people who care about the film and/or you.

4. A “core group” is a small circle of people who are by your side for the whole journey — until the movie is complete.

5. If you can, create a trailer before the kickoff meeting.

As soon as I commit to making a film, I plan a “kickoff meeting.” This is a gathering where I lay out my vision, my goals, and my resources for a few people who are interested in the subject and perhaps already know my work. This gathering is an informal salon, where we crack a bottle of symbolic champagne on the bow of the film. My public declaration of intent literally launches the project. Making this commitment out loud lets the universe know I am serious!

By holding a kickoff meeting, you also tell yourself that this project is real. Making this “vow” to yourself, with witnesses, will help keep you going and give you momentum as your idea moves from fantasy to reality.

Among the hurdles to cross in making a documentary film are:

Getting it right (aligning yourself with your own vision);

Getting it done (working with a team);

Getting it out (reaching viewers).

A supportive community will help you do all of these by reflecting your intention back to you.

They can help you get the film “right” through their ongoing feedback and suggestions.

They can help get the film “done” by volunteering, contributing time, helping you to raise money, and working with you to pull together other resources that you need to make the film.

They can help you get the film “out in the world” by being there when you launch it, and by showing it to others. Your community will create the first links in a chain of hands that might reach around the world.

Holding a Kickoff Meeting

The first thing to do is to set a date, and decide on a space. Choose someplace comfortable where you can serve light refreshments and talk with people. Most of my kickoff meetings have taken place in my own living room for less than twenty people. However, several times I brought together more than a hundred people for the kickoff.

Once you confirm a date and reserve a space, things are set into motion. Committing yourself publicly will also act as a spur to keep you going. The people who come will surely ask you every month or two, “So, when will the film be ready?”

You may wonder how you could hold a kickoff meeting before you have actually begun to make the film! The kickoff meeting is your statement to yourself and to the world that you are making a commitment and will follow through on the film project.

When you invite people to a kickoff meeting, explain that this is not a fundraising event. If a few guests offer to make a donation, acknowledge their interest, take their names, and tell them that you will talk to them soon, when you are ready to discuss financial details. (See Chapter 7 for a description of fundraising.)

Ideally, a kickoff meeting plants the seeds for a broad base of support later.

Getting Ready for the Kickoff Meeting

1. Prepare a simple one-sheet that gives an overview of the project, including your ideas for outreach and distribution to give to everyone who attends the meeting. People who want to learn more, to donate, or to volunteer, need this description to decide whether or not to get involved. Include an e-mail address and phone number for those who want more information.

2. If you have the time, inclination, and resources you might build a simple website describing your project. Even just a home page is helpful.

3. If you have some footage, from your own filming or another source, you might prepare a trailer, a short piece, no more than ten minutes, that gives your guests a sense of the project.

Making Your Presentation

Begin the meeting with an informal greeting. If the group is small enough, perhaps ask guests to introduce themselves. Once people are settled, if you have a trailer you could show that to start.

Trailers are usually between three and ten minutes long. When you create a trailer, be sure to use the strongest, best-shot images you have. Select footage that is compelling, and which communicates your vision.

The function of a trailer is to draw people in.

If you don’t have any footage yet, you might want to do some shooting before the kickoff meeting. Before you make a trailer, it helps to write a treatment, to guide you. (See Chapter 6 for a description of treatments.)

After the trailer ends (if one is shown), speak candidly about why you chose this subject. Even if your presentation is understated, your passion is what will attract people to your work. Hearing you talk about your commitment is what will touch people. Just as “truth inspires passion” in the filmmaker, it will do so in others as well. Let the evening build as people are drawn into the project. If you have a vital idea, the film will start to have a life of its own. Encourage questions and answer these as fully as possible.

After the presentation, serve light refreshments. Having something to eat and drink is a way to let people know how much you appreciate their time.

Your Follow-Up

As the evening winds down, thank people for coming and make sure they give their names, phone, e-mail, etc. Possibly start to get commitments on a sign-up sheet. Invite people who want to work more closely with you and with the project to make a note of their desire to participate when they give their contact information. After closing the meeting formally, mingle with the people who are slower to leave. Some of them are still deciding whether or not to be involved.

ATTRACTING A SUPPORT GROUP

Following the kickoff meeting, some of the people who attended will probably offer to help. Others who believe in what you doing will join these people as the project moves forward. They might volunteer their time and talents, make donations, organize screenings, and much more. I refer to people who want to help in these ways, and who are drawn together mainly by the content of the film, as an “interest group.”

One of my most helpful interest group communities came together when I was producing a series of films on the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia. At that point, I was overwhelmed by a hundred hours of interviews and meetings in a language I don’t speak, Amharic. I was relieved and grateful when an Ethiopian faculty member at Stanford heard about the project, called, and asked if he could help.

I told him what I needed and he invited local Ethiopians to attend a small gathering where we they could see footage and discuss the project. A week later a dozen Ethiopians arrived for a kickoff meeting at my home. They included a radio producer, a social worker, a magazine publisher, several school teachers, and quite a few people from the computer industry — programmers, engineers, designers, and managers.

As they introduced themselves, I could see that what had seemed impossible was beginning to come together. Ethiopia was thousands of miles away, and yet here we were, in my living room, preparing to collaborate. I showed them footage we’d shot recently in Ethiopia.

They, in turn, talked about how helping was a way they could to do something about AIDS in Ethiopia. That night gave birth to a thriving interest group.

They — and another forty Ethiopian-Americans they helped recruit — became our colleagues in everything from translation to helping fill a thousand-person theater for the premiere of our series about AIDS in Ethiopia.

Your Interest Group

Your strongest pool of volunteer support will usually come from the communities most affected by your film.

With Why Do These Kids Love School? I had dozens of people with progressive, alternative views on education that helped me in every way. For Motherhood by Choice, the reproductive rights activists from across the country were by my side, all the way.

I was able to complete the film Woman by Woman (filmed in India with interviews in Hindi) by attracting a group of East Indian volunteers living in the San Francisco Bay Area who translated and transcribed dozens of Hindi interviews. When I needed perspectives on the subtleties of what the Indian villagers were communicating, I asked those who had lived in villages to watch the work-in-progress and give me feedback. They gave us invaluable candid suggestions, and carefully alerted us to be sensitive about certain cultural taboos.

Members of the interest group may be part of the community you are documenting (as the Indians and Ethiopians were), or because the topic of your film addresses a subject they care about (with the reproductive rights activists). Sometimes they are simply friends who want to be involved in what you are doing. When the time comes to publicize screening events, the people who have been helping on the films are the first to buy seats, and sell tickets to their communities.

Your Core Group

During production, some of the people in the interest group may want to make a deeper commitment to you and to the project, They join you in your journey, and stay with you until the end! These people are ideal candidates for what I call a “core group.” (See Chapter 8, Your Core Group.)

The core group is your “inner circle” of people who will be by your side — emotionally and practically — throughout the project. Core group members may work with you on a daily basis on the production, or they may just hold your hand by phone and e-mail. My friends Dania and Marilyn became part of a core group for my first film on women’s rights. At the beginning of the project, they both sent letters — without my asking — to their own friends and family, inviting people from their circles to contribute to the film. Together they raised enough to do the first several shoots. They saw what I was doing, and offered to help.

Five years later, when the third and final film in the women’s rights series premiered at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Dania and Marilyn were among the first to RSVP to the big-ticket special reception before the screening. That kind of loyalty is what a core group provides — people who support you all the way!

COMMUNITY

A variety of people will come and go as the project continues — good friends might help out when they can, family members you know you can count on will show up when you need them, fellow filmmakers, crewmembers, interns, or some of your volunteers are there, some for a day, some for years.

It is physically possible for a filmmaker to “go it alone,” but that doesn’t seem to be best way to make a movie. Most of us need and somehow put together a collaborative community of people who, in different ways at different times, become a team.

KEY POINTS

Three of the main challenges to making a documentary film are getting it right, getting it done, and getting it out.

A supportive community will help you do these things.

Before holding the kickoff meeting, consider preparing a trailer that communicates your vision.

A kickoff meeting is where you commit yourself, publicly, to producing and finishing the film. Making this commitment lets the universe know you are serious! This affirmation at the beginning helps give you the energy and support to finish the film.

From the beginning of your project, invest some of your time in building and sustaining a community that can grow with the film.