by Anthony Frajman
While the future of documentaries is already uncertain, due to an extremely difficult distribution and financing landscape, the sector faces an even bigger challenge with the ethical questions raised by the technology, which will impact every aspect of non-fiction.
Ahead of his AIDC session, Brave New World: Documentary and Artificial Intelligence, we spoke with optimistic producer Chris Kamen.
Your background spans producing, finance, distribution, legal and business affairs. What impacts have you noticed AI has had on the industry, from those perspectives?
“ChatGPT has become a pretty popular tool for helping with writing grant applications, making that a bit easier, writing treatments and proposals. And also, I think image generative AI is really becoming popular for image generation for pitch decks, because we can actually specifically brief, we want this particular type of image with the right type of tone, it can be often hard to find existing image references. So, AI is becoming a really great tool for creating just the image that you want. And then all the way through into production. I’m working on a film at the moment where, it’s a microbudget film, so we don’t have money to buy much stock footage, so we’re using generative AI video clips, because they’re free, or very cheap to make.
“On the audio side, voice cloning technology is really coming in now, because you can create amazing voice clones with not much audio. And so, I’m working on a film at the moment that’s going to have a lot of narration in it, and I think we are interested to explore the use of a voice clone during our editing process. Using AI is a really quick and easy way to create temp voiceover. And then, once it’s locked, we’ll go back to the original artists and get them to voice it properly in a studio.
“So, I think AI is quickly becoming a fantastic tool in the filmmaker’s tool set”.
Are you optimistic about AI, despite the issues surrounding its use?
“I’m an optimist generally, but, I’m a bit of a techie. I love technology. I love playing with new tools, and I’m excited by the possibilities that AI is going to really increase productivity across lots of industries, not just media production, but I think, with great power comes great responsibility. So, I’ve been reading and researching and learning about the problems that already exist and problems that we will confront in the years to come as AI gets more powerful.
“I think as a filmmaker, I really just am seeing a lot more tools that are coming that will help us be more productive and more effective and will help us raise production values. I mean, as an audience, there are questions about authenticity and accuracy and what can be trusted these days …
“So, this panel that we’re doing at AIDC on Sunday, we’re going to be looking at deepfake porn, abusive imagery, which is just another extension of revenge porn, sexual abuse more broadly. So, it’s a new type of sexual abuse and it’s already a really big problem. And, we need to find ways to combat people using this technology for these kinds of nefarious ends, that are really damaging to people.
“One of the big issues with AI, unlike other transformative technologies over the years, is that it’s inherently democratised, it’s cheap and easy to access. And one of the major reasons why it’s such a huge risk is how do we contain it? How do we control the use of such powerful technology?”
Would you say that the biggest challenge for you as a documentary producer is distribution, at the moment?
“I see it all as one. It’s actually financing, but financing is distribution. I’m currently making a Mongolian horse herding film called Winter Herd. And it is intentionally targeted for a global art house audience. And we’ve had many conversations with sales agents and international distributors, but no one’s willing to put money down on a table. It’s incredibly hard to finance a feature documentary, but that is because it’s very hard to distribute one. If there was a functioning distribution market for feature docos, then they would be able to put money on the table, but they can’t because the distribution landscape for features is bleak. As a filmmaker myself, I’m really focusing more on trying to win commissions and get commissioned content; from broadcasters and streamers, to get them to pay for stuff upfront. I think that has always been and still is the most viable business model.
“I think generally we’re blessed with incredible government support for filmmaking across the board. In terms for documentaries, I am concerned that documentary might be excluded from the streaming quota regulations that are coming in. I think that’s a big thing that the documentary communities should be focusing on…”
In 2022, Franklin became the second highest-grossing Australian theatrical documentary for the year. What did you learn from the success of Franklin?
“Even though Franklin was a success in our view, it’s only returned a bit of revenue; not enough to make the whole business model “sustainable” without lots of funding support. For me, it’s underscored that the business model for feature documentaries is just incredibly tough in Australia. I’d been working towards Franklin for seven years. When we were financing it, we were blown away with how successful the crowdfunding campaign went and how the community, all the original activists kind of came out of the woodwork to support the crowdfunding campaign, which was just beautiful. And that really set the film up for success.
“There are huge challenges trying to get a niche documentary into cinemas because there are few exhibitors that will support an indie doco. You’re fighting tooth and nail to get placement on screens in the first place, and then to get decent slots at those sites. You’re really up against it trying to do a theatrical release. But it sets a film up for other platforms.
“You have to be really smart and surgical with your marketing spend. We worked really closely with our distributor, Bonsai, to make it a success. We were super involved in the marketing and publicity impact campaigns. And, when it works, it’s a virtuous circle between publicity and marketing and impact. It’s all achieving the same ends, often distributors don’t care about the impact side of it all. They just care about the marketing side. So, it can be hard to align sometimes, but on Franklin, we were very much in synch and it all went really well.
“I think it underscores the importance for producers and filmmakers to be involved in the marketing of their films. And producers should really understand how to market their film, who their audience is, and how to reach them. Because often, distributors, especially with niche audiences, are looking after many, many films and they don’t have the time or resources to go really bespoke on every film release. Whereas, producers have spent a lot more time with their film and their subject matter and the audience and thinking about the audience. I think often producers can really zero in on the right type of niche audience and how to get to that audience.
“We were able to deliver a mailing list and an audience to our distributor. And, the way I see distribution, the way I think producers and distributors should work together, is that I think it’s the producer’s job these days to not only know who your audience is, to have already started growing that audience whilst you’re making the film. It doesn’t have to be a very big audience, but you need to have started to identify, whether it’s on social media or building an email list, or having a website, at least starting to build the seed of what that audience is going be. So that once you get to the distribution stage, you can work with your distributor to go, ‘okay, here’s our audience. This is how we can get to them’. And then ideally, all your distributor has to do then is just put money into the machine and, and scale it up. I think that’s how filmmakers and distributors can really work well together; the filmmaker brings the beginnings of an audience to the table, and then a distributor comes and applies their resources just to make it bigger.”
How important is it that documentaries are included in streaming quotas?
“I think it’s vital that documentaries are included in the streaming quotas because there’s a double whammy happening. As audiences move away from broadcast to streaming, the nature of streaming and algorithmic programming is it allows more niche content to be programmed on a streaming platform for a global audience. So, there’s more opportunity, I think there’s more opportunities for quality documentary on streaming platforms. And that’s hastening the decline of documentary on broadcast platforms. So, people complaining that the traditional broadcasters are commissioning less classical, quality premium documentaries, and there’s more of an emphasis on the lowest common denominator for broadcast because they’re losing audiences. They’re desperately just going for lowest common denominator and going for more reality or more celebrity driven stuff or more formattable stuff where you can run out hundreds of hours of a concept.
“So, there’s less room in that broadcast market for quality one-offs or limited series. But inversely, the opportunity is growing in the streaming space because once-offs and limited series can perform quite well on streaming platforms because having to choose something on a streaming platform means you’re going for quality. Whereas when you’re just flicking through channels of free to air, you just go for whatever catches your eye and you’ll watch it. That’s why it’s even more important that documentary is included in the streaming quota so that Australian filmmakers have a seat at the table and can have reasonable chances of pitching ideas into those global streaming platforms.”
Are you optimistic about the landscape for documentaries, despite the challenges?
“I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years now, and it feels like the Australian industry’s always been in crisis. I feel quite immune to the cries of crisis because it’s the norm for me. I’m just constantly looking for the opportunities and I think the opportunity for us is to participate in the global English-speaking market. And the rise of streaming and the rise of global streamers is the embodiment of the globalisation of the industry and the opportunity for us Australians, to have a crack at that global market.”
What else is on your slate?
“I work part-time at CJZ and I work part-time at Media Stockade. And I’m excited to be developing a number of projects at Media Stockade. So, there’s Winter Herd, which is a co-production with Repeater Productions in Adelaide and will launch at MIFF in 2025. And then, there’s FORTITUDE, which is a documentary about the space industry that I’ve been working on for a couple of years with Torsten Hoffmann. And that’ll come out this year probably on streaming platforms.”
Brave New World: Documentary and Artificial Intelligence is on at ACMI Cinema 1, 10:30 – 11:30, Sunday 3 March 2024.
