by Andrew Einspruch
Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.
The heretical statement came from Andrew Pike, MD of Ronin Films during a session called “Education Rights – Ensuring Profitability & Sustainability”. At the Australian International Documentary conference, dedicated primarily to making docos for television, Pike compared making TV doc to an extreme sport. “Like whitewater rafting, it is full of pitfalls. It is full of people shouting opinions at you about which direction you should go and how you should manage your affairs. It’s an area with a high adrenalin rush, and a lot of exhilaration. There’s high emotion when you get a pre-sale, and high emotion, despair, and doom when you get knocked back.”
By contrast, Pike called the education market the “unglamourous area of the film industry,” devoid of red carpets, billboards, bright lights, or posters with your name plastered all of them. “It is an area for worker bees,” he said. But worker bees can turn a profit.
