Talk about the Format
A few weeks ago, I hosted a lunch at the Sheffield Doc Fest. It was billed as being about how documentary makers can make effective use of the web. The vast majority of documentary makers were asking the wrong question:
how can I use the web to fund and distribute my documentary?
Let’s pretend for a moment that the web for documentary makers is YouTube. YouTube provides publishing, not distribution. You can get your content up and out there but you don’t get a ready made audience for it.
For distribution (an audience) on the web, you need pull. You need to be a content publisher that people seek out, subscribe to, share and respond to. As Seth Godin has been saying for a long time, it’s about tribes, about leading a movement.
The opportunity the web affords documentary makers is to build pull through the format. As we seen everywhere from the Camp Nou to the X-Factor, fans love to feel that they’ve co-created the narrative. The activity and sense of co-creation breeds advocates.
Providing opportunities for profound co-creation, be it through trans-media, non-linear or interactive documentary making, builds pull. Documentary makers and digital thinkers need to talk together about the format, not how to distribute it.
