Tonight I attended an event, The Truth About Non-Fiction Filmmaking, organized by the San Diego Filmmakers. While I attended on IGDA business, I became intrigued with the filmmaking process.

On the panel were speakers Nick Nordquist, Wolfgang Hastert, and Paul Detwiler. Nick has won multiple Emmy awards and owns Industrial Strength Television. Wolfgang Hastert is a prominent and award-winning documentary filmmaker who lectures at University of California, San Diego. Paul Detwiler works as a marine biologist and creates documentary films for nonprofit organizations.

Since there was no agenda, the discussions ranged from their approaches to finding topics, to producing documentaries without preaching to the choir, to their preferences regarding film and video, and eventually to the topic I found most interesting: financing and distribution.

• Nick Nordquist said that ventures such as YouTube aren’t particularly encouraging; however, he expressed positive thoughts about local San Diego company Veoh.
• Wolfgang Hastert said that his films usually cost around US$3,000 per minute with the total budget being around US$120–130,000. His financing for documentaries is usually derived from a single major production company. He also shared a story that emphasizes why entrepreneurs should be prepared with their thirty-second elevator pitch.
• Paul Detwiler described his approach to filming documentaries as directed by a cause whereas Nordquist described his approach as one of chance. There needs to be a reason, a purpose, for creating a documentary.

Basically, it’s all doom and gloom for documentarians. The traditional distribution model is dead, and digital distribution has yet to take off. They are caught in the middle of a transition, the eye of a storm, where earning a living as a documentarian is difficult. All of the speakers work in other fields, such as education and general video production, to support themselves.