Andrew Einspruch

March 2013

I attended this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference, and wrote a bunch of articles for Screen Hub. The bold line is the name of the session title. The paragraph that follows is the article I wrote for it.

Riding the Freedom Streams

AIDC 2013: alternative finance and distribution for documentaries. Do you want to be an enterprise ship or an independent scrappy kayaker? Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch donned a lifejacket and waded into a watery metaphor of business models.

Future Rights Model

AIDC 2013: from out of the wreckage, a Future Rights Model. If you can control your film’s distribution, you can control its revenues. Distrify is a distribution platform aiming to let filmmakers do just that, reports Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch.

Screenrights Lab/Ancillary Rights and How to Start a Franchise

AIDC 2013: ancillary rights, the devil is in the lawyer. So your show has just become a hit, and everyone wants to help you “exploit the opportunity”. That’s where the ancillary rights come in. If you signed a crummy deal, then someone else is going to get that money, reports Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch.

Documentary Distribution in a Digitised World

AIDC 2013: Digital Distribution, a Complex Way to Make Money. Digital distribution is the great hope for many filmmakers – a way to get material out into the world, either as a sole strategy, or as part of a hybrid or traditional distribution model. It`s just a hell of a lot more complicated than it looks.

Who Do We Think We Are?

AIDC 2013: Ruth Harley Lauds Australian Documentary. If a documentary represents a kind of picture of the world at a particular time and place, then CEO of Screen Australia, Dr. Ruth Harley, took the opportunity in one of the first sessions at this year’s AIDC to have a look at what kind of snapshots her organisation helped create in 2012.

Screenrights Lab: Keep the Pirates at Bay

AIDC 2013: Keeping the Pirates at Bay. The piracy horse has bolted. The only question that remains is what is to be done about it. The figures are compelling, but finding a solution still seems to be an elusive goal.

Screenrights Lab / Education Rights – Ensuring Profitability and Sustainability

AIDC 2013: Making Money Under the Education Kanopy. When you think profitability, do you think education sales? Kanopy provides the “Netflix of education”, and it’s a damned site more profitable than Quickflix.

Is Your Documentary a Format?

AIDC 2013: Ye Olde Complete Guide to Formats. Formats are a strong theme at this year`s AIDC. And if you have a format, and you want to strike a deal for it, what do you need to keep in mind?

The Australian Television Content Variety Hour With Your Host: The Ghost of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

AIDC 2013: Australian stories on Australian screens. The screen sector is up in arms about the dilution of Australian content on our TV screens. The title of an AIDC session was the whimsical Welcome to the Australian Television Content Variety Hour With Your Host the Ghost of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. But the content of the session was serious business.

The Never Ending Tail

AIDC 2013: long tail, teaching old docs new tricks. Sustainability can take more than one form in the documentary business. For smaller players, the long tail of distribution is your friend. Sue Maslin gives some useful examples of how you can make money from old catalogue.

Walk Off the Land After the Harvest

AIDC 2013: Walk Off the Land After the Harvest. A discussion of ethics in documentary making is a bi-annual tradition at the Australian International Documentary Conference. Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch reports on the session chaired by Screen Hub Editor, David Tiley.

Captain Ahab`s Motorcycle Club

AIDC 2013: Captain Ahab`s Motorcycle Club. Making a film about the embalming and display of American President Abraham Lincoln is a little eccentric. Doubling Estonia for Chicago might come across as just plain nuts.