The Cost of Docs

Key Findings:

• The cost of documentary making continues to rise. Prices have risen across all 18 categories. Travel is the cost increase cited by most respondents (65%) with production crew (61%) and post-production costs (53%) coming 2nd and 3rd. This ongoing escalation of costs is the main reason for The Whickers to increase their top funding award from £80K to £100K.
• The net outcome is that less than a fifth of respondents (18%) perceive that they have been paid fairly for the time and effort they have poured into their documentary making. One said “I couldn’t afford the rent during filming at one point, so was sleeping on friends’ sofas.”
• Brexit appears to be having more of a long-term impact on documentary making than predicted by the previous survey. The opposite appears to be true of COVID-19.
• Respondents seem to have fallen out of love with online pitching. This represented a popular option at the start of the pandemic, with 57% then saying they would recommend this as their preferred option. That figure has now plummeted to 13%.
• There are high levels of frustration with the documentary funding application process. 2022 has seen a surge in the number of failed applications. 31% of all respondents who have applied for funding have received none whatsoever, a rise of 8%. Some see a geographical bias with one saying “There’s a massive gap between the access to funding between developing countries and the West.”
• Now only 39% say their documentary is ‘not available to a paying audience’. Just a couple of years ago this figure stood at 63%. Despite this welcome upsurge in the number of documentaries that are being shown at film festivals, there is little evidence to suggest these festival appearances subsequently generate sales or lead to distribution deals. This is a point frequently highlighted in verbatim comments, with one respondent adding that “there needs to be a move towards alternate forms of distribution”.

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Key Findings:

• 45% of those surveyed say that COVID-19 had already had a massive negative impact on their ability to work and threatens their future as a documentary maker.
• Less than a quarter of documentary makers (21%) are able to pay themselves a wage for their work.
• Costs are rising and this year only 18% say that they are making their documentary for less than £10,000. Last year that figure was 31%.
• 94% of documentary makers now apply to funds, institutions and foundations for financial assistance. Three quarters are successful to some degree.
• There has been a 14% rise in films designed for the big screen, for theatrical release or for the international festival circuit.
• Nearly a fifth of co-production deals don’t work out.
• The most commonly cited challenges were over rates of pay and feedback, lack of diversity and the toxic presence of exploitative practices around internships and corner cutting.
• The main three suggestions on how the industry could best be improved included an increase in access to funding, greater diversity behind and in front of the camera and more support for distribution and exhibition.

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Key Findings:

• 32% of respondents rely on savings to support themselves whilst making documentaries whilst 30% rely on financial support from family and friends.
• 71% felt they had not been paid what they consider an appropriate wage on their most recent documentary
• The average time spent on a funding application is 8 days
• 52% of respondents claim to be self-taught and only 26% attended a short course on documentary. Just 32% had obtained a postgraduate documentary qualification.
• The biggest rising cost concerns this year include archive (32%), attending pitches and film festivals (51%) and post-production costs (36%)
• This year saw a big boost in documentaries being made for an online audience: 61% compared to 39% in 2017. Whereas 46% of respondents had worked on a documentary that has been broadcast on TV.
• Brexit is starting to become a concern with UK-based respondents with 14% fearing that travel would become more difficult

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Key Findings:

• Unlike last year, when TV was a far more common outlet than Film, this year they were virtually tied at 42% and 44% respectively.
• 41% of documentarians are supporting themselves by living off savings.
• Only 14% of documentary makers were properly paid for their time.
• The most common amount of money which documentary makers applied for was between £20,000 and £50,000.
• Roughly half of applicants were unsuccessful in their funding application and others received less than they had applied for.
• The most common financial consideration for documentary makers is still travel, cited by 70%, whilst the number citing equipment hire has dropped significantly (from 72% to 33%).
• Of 18 categories where we asked whether costs had risen or fallen, more respondents said that they had risen in 16 categories.
• The expenses which had risen the most, according to our respondents, were travel and post-production. The most frequently cited expense being cut back was staff costs.

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Key Findings:

• Respondents taking part in our first survey had the broadest range of experience of any year with the time taken to ‘complete their last doc’ taking between ‘8 days’ and ’33 years’. 40% said their last film was feature length (60-90 minutes) Only 25% of these films were under half an hour.
• It was also the year that we had the highest ever percentage of respondents, nearly 9 out of 10 (87.4%) saying they had not been paid for their work. Whilst 28% said they did not expect to get paid, as they were working ‘for love’ or ’to learn’, 65% were disappointed. The two most common reasons given for lack of renumeration was ’the budget was too tight’ or ‘we failed to get funding’.
• Two doc makers who were prepared to be quoted said “I put every last penny into it. I am still paying of the debts 4 years later” and “Documentary filmmakers often auto-exploit themselves, paying crew full rates when they don’t pay themselves. It makes it difficult to build a sustainable living out of directing documentaries.”
• The ‘Big ticket items’ affecting cost were international travel, 68%, which always comes up as a major cost issue, and equipment hire, 71.2%. Over the years equipment has become less of an issue whereas ‘money to pay an expert editor’ has taken over as a major cost concern. This may reflect a move towards more films being ‘created’ in post-production.
• The dramatic reduction over the years of money being spent on equipment hire seems to correspond with the threefold rise in filming on smart phones. In this survey only 8% relied on smart phone footage. This figure rose each year reaching 24% in 2021 before dropping back slightly to 18% in 2022.

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Key Findings:

• 54% say that the cost-of-living crisis is seriously jeopardizing their ability to continue making documentaries.

• This is the same percentage as those who say they had mental health issues when making their last documentary, while 38% of those who say they need support also say they cannot afford it.

• 5% of respondents say they have already left the business due to the cost-of-living crisis, whilst 4% say they have been unaffected.

• Since the first Cost Of Docs survey there has been an almost fivefold increase in the number of documentary makers who take part-time jobs in an unrelated industry to make ends meet.

• Only half as many are managing to complete their documentaries in under 6 months (14%, down from 29%).

• More than half of respondents (59%) now say that they learn their skills “on the job”.

• There are signs that documentary makers are valuing their time more. In 2022 just 2% said £60,000 would have been a fair wage for the time and effort they put into making their documentary. Today that figure is 15%.

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Key Findings:

• Funding continues to be the biggest concern for both English and Arabic speaking documentary makers
• Only 13% of English speaking independent documentary makers were able to take a wage from their production fund.  Arabic speaking respondents were slightly better at 27%.
• The ‘quick turnaround’ documentary is dying out!  It’s taking longer to make documentaries for most people with the general time scale increasing from 6 months to 2 years, to 2 to 5 years for English speaking respondents.
• 34% English speaking respondents say that they need mental health support but cannot afford it.  Only 19% Arabic respondents perceived ‘wellness’ as an issue.
• 91% of English speaking respondents reported feeling safe in the documentary industry which is good news. However, only 44% of Arabic respondents replied the same.  But we should note that 30% of Arabic respondents did not answer this question.
• The Cost of Living crisis continues to impact on our respondents but we can see a drop from 54% last year to 44% this year that say this is having a ‘major impact’

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Key Findings:

• This is our most international survey ever, with 73% of respondents from outside the UK.
• Clear consensus that costs were rising, with travel and crew costs particularly soaring. The only exception was translation costs, which stayed broadly the same.
• For the first time we asked about the use of AI – half of documentaries are already using it. The most common use is for translation.
• Only 21% of documentary makers felt they were adequately paid for their work.
• Less than a third now feel the documentary industry is a safe space, with power imbalance a concern for 63%.
• There has been a major decline in documentaries finding a paying audience, with only half now able to do so.

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