Every Documentary Filmmaker Needs to Know This Statistic

Written by Nina Gilden Seavey

In 2002, I became the Founding Director of SILVERDOCS: The AFI-Discovery Documentary Film Festival. Up until that time, I had never run a film festival. Indeed, my only dealings with festivals was as an applicant—I was a documentary filmmaker for quite some time by then and had many films screen on the festival circuit.

But I had some additional experience that brought AFI knocking at my door. I was also a professor of film and the Founding Director of The Documentary Center at George Washington University. So, I had solid experience in launching a film organization and growing it. I had strong ties to AFI, which has had beautiful theaters in the DC area—first at the Kennedy Center and then at the art deco Silver Theater in Silver Spring, just over the DC and Maryland line.

AFI offered me the job of Founding Director of SILVERDOCS, and I took a leave of absence from GW for one academic year. That first year led to nine more during which I continued to serve as Executive Producer of the festival, having returned to my duties at GW and making my own films. During that decade, SILVERDOCS became the largest documentary festival in the US, screening 100 films in four theaters, accompanied by an industry conference, all of which unspooled over five days in June. It became a “must-attend” event on the festival calendar.

I learned a lot launching and growing that festival. At our peak, we had over 100 people working on staff in front of house and back of house, along with the efforts of 300 volunteers. We put on 50 social events including breakfasts, lunches, happy hours, coffee breaks, early parties, late parties and informal gatherings in between. In addition, we packed the houses with 30,000 film buffs for screenings and filled the seats for all of the industry panels. Because I have “big ideas” one year we shut down the state highway that runs through the middle of Silver Spring and thousands of locals jammed in to watch Tony Hawk flip upside down on a 50-foot half-pipe.

Mine was a big job.

But there’s one thing that I learned that stayed with me more than anything else I encountered in my decade at SILVERDOCS—one piece of information that transcended everything else I came to know. And it is this:

Every year we received approximately 2,500 submissions. Two-thousand of those submissions were, for a variety of reasons, significantly flawed. They either had technical issues that were impossible to ignore, or they were simply structurally or conceptually confused—a circumstance the film was never able to surmount. Those 80 percent of submissions were easy to reject.

The last 20 percent, i.e. 500 submissions, were in serious contention. But there were only, as in many festivals, a fraction of the screening slots available for those contenders. We screened 100 films, which amounted to 20 percent of the those in active consideration.

It was within those 500 films where difficult choices about content, style, form, memorable characters and filmmaker background would be made. SILVERDOCS was known for its A+ programming. But screening at a festival is nowhere near the end of the road for a filmmaker and his or her film.

Of those approximately 100 films that we screened, no more than 20 would achieve what would be considered “significant distribution,”—a theatrical, television, or streaming deal.

Think about that: only approximately 20 films out of 2,500 would achieve the goal that all of us in the filmmaking profession have—that our work be seen by large audiences at home and abroad. Gulp.

As a filmmaker I had never even fathomed that this was my competition. As a film professor, I never could imagine that my students would ever be able to surmount such a challenge.

I decided not to wallow in the hopelessness of those odds. Rather, I saw this statistic as a challenge. Could I get emerging and even mid-career documentarians to increase their chance of success? Could I locate those willing to do the hard work of upping their game and teach them to avoid the potholes that they, themselves, could not necessarily see? Could I get these filmmakers to become their harshest, but most productive, critic?

I wanted to create a more level—and larger—playing field. As a professor, I could only teach a finite number of students. But if I wrote a book, I could reach many more filmmakers and influence many more projects. Because I am a professor, writing comes naturally to me. Indeed, excellent publishers such as Routledge, Oxford, and MacMillan had already been after me for a long time to write an academic text on making documentary films.

Nina Gilden Seavey

I seriously considered my options. There are already some really good books out there about producing and directing documentary films. But I felt there was a huge hole in the marketplace. I found that, despite my entreaties to “do the reading” few students actually did it. The writing in these books is too dense and the ideas are too far removed from what students are interested in, which is their own films.

Even I, as a professor, felt that while these books were good for theory, I had a hard time connecting them to the students’ projects. Instead, I wanted a practical, every day, workbook that filmmakers could take out into the field and into the editing room. I wanted to take them out of their silos and engage them in a continuous dialogue as if I was sitting right there next to them. That book simply didn’t exist. That’s the book I wanted to write.

But the publishers didn’t agree. They wanted another long, discursive, (expensive) textbook. So, I said, “Screw it! I’ll do it myself.” And so, I have. In October 2024, I published The Documentary Filmmaker’s Workbook.

The Workbook is a sturdy, hard-cover, wire-bound book with clear, concise, explanatory text. It’s intended for filmmakers to write in it and take with them wherever the filmmaking journey leads.

It has an unusual design: it’s two books in one. On the one side is Directing Documentary. Then you flip it over and turn it upside down and it’s Producing Documentary. Because so many documentarians are both the producer and director of their films, I wanted their engagement with the book to be the two halves of a whole that are experiencing.

The Workbook contains writing prompts so filmmakers can link introduced ideas directly to their own project. There are budget exercises, and professional samples to access, and places to write random notes. There are quotes from established filmmakers and other knowledge-leaders to keep filmmakers inspired—because all of us have taken that long, difficult, journey to making great art.

The goal of the Documentary Filmmaker’s Workbook is to attack—directly and straight-on—that 20 in 2,500 statistic. But to do that, filmmakers need to up their game and not make the unintended but avoidable mistakes that get a film cast into the pile of 2,000 at the outset. And they need to never once forget what they came here to do: tell a great story. That’s actually tougher than it sounds.

If you, as a filmmaker, want to take this journey with me, The Documentary Filmmaker’s Workbook is available on Amazon or better, we’re offering a 20% discount if you purchase directly from the publisher with the Coupon Code: HOLIDAY2024 at checkout.

Together, let’s change that daunting statistic!

If you want to know more about me, my films, podcasts, and other publications go to SeaveyMedia.com.

Nina Gilden Seavey // ngseavey@gmail.com // seaveymedia.com // 301.523.7473