Hello From the Doc Challenge Producer

I'm excited about this documentary challenge, but I'm also a little nervous about it. Making a non-fiction piece scares me a bit. But I guess that's part of the excitement. I'm also flying out to Vietnam the day it's due. I planned this trip to The Mother Land around this doc challenge! Hopefully, I won't be too burnt out!

-----Original Message-----
From: info@documentarychallenge.org [mailto:info@documentarychallenge.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 3:19 PM
To: Nguyen, Tony
Subject: Hello From the Doc Challenge Producer

Hello Doc Challenge Filmmakers,

With the competition approaching in just over 2 weeks, we hope you’re getting everything together for your wild five days of filmmaking! So far there are 100 teams from 15 countries participating with more signing up each day. (But not too many – so you’re chances aren’t bad!)

All of the Doc Challenge forms (releases, team rosters, etc) will be on our site by the end of the week. Please print them out and be sure to turn all of them in with your film:

http://documentarychallenge.org/filmdocs.htm

Below are some Doc Challenge filmmaking tips.

More emails to follow,

Doug Whyte
Doc Challenge Producer

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1. Plan well. Set a schedule and stick to it as best you can. Remember - 15% of teams in competitions like this do not make the deadline. This includes “Experienced teams.” So yes, it could happen to you.

Find out when your post office or FedEx store closes. Give yourself plenty of time for outputting the video, and getting the film shipped with a March 10, 2008 postmark. Computer crashes happen all the time. Small last minute glitches have caused teams to be late.

2. Test your equipment ahead of time. Make sure everything works.

Since many teams work with borrowed equipment coming from many sources, we suggest that you check your whole system. Shoot 5 minutes of footage with the mic you will be using, digitize it, do minor edits, fix sound levels, and make sure you can output to a tape.

3. Make sure you have the correct tape stock for your submission tape (standard def miniDV or DVD). After the contest starts, the first thing your editor should do is lay down 5 seconds of color bars and tone, 5 seconds of black, your slate (team, city, title, genre) then 2 seconds of black and YOUR FILM.

4. Sound problems are the most common technical problem.
a. Find someone who knows how to do sound b. Test your sound gear with your camera and editing system in advance c. Make sure you have good audio levels on your final tape

5. Do as much as you can ahead of time — researching potential subject matter as well as securing equipment, team members, and locations. Don’t forget to also buy and prep the food for your crew (if needed).

6. Make sure you have the required theme in your film. The theme can be as simple as one reference to it or one question asked about it. Or the entire film can be based on this theme. This is up to you, but in the end, the judges need to be able to recognize that you addressed the theme. If they can’t find a reference to it, your team will be disqualified.

7. To ensure the films were made within the required time frame, each team must prove the date the film was made by adding a time element to the film or credits. Feel free to be creative, but make sure that it is obvious to the judges. If the judges have a hard time determining the time element, the film will be disqualified. An example of an accepted time element: The main subject is holding a newspaper and the date is large enough to read. This can be done in the credits of the film so as to not affect the flow of your film.

8. Begin editing early. While you shoot, have a runner take completed tapes to the editor, who can start digitizing and logging your footage as well as editing the rough cut.

9. Don’t be afraid to edit your film. Most teams err by using the entire 7 minutes when they could have told their story in less time. We have found that films with a TRT of 5 minutes or less have more of a market than longer films.

10. If your film is another language besides English, you MUST subtitle it in English. Failure to do so will result in the judges not being able to understand your film.