Looking at Time, Brandon Lavoie

A panel of experienced filmmakers will come together to discuss their creative methods for short documentary production – focusing on cinematography, editing, and visual storytelling for capturing the essence of big stories in short format. Taking into account the development of online distribution platforms and Op-Docs, we will explore how new technologies and distribution methods are connected to creative practice.

Addressing the editorial challenges involved in short filmmaking and screening segments of stylistically varied and innovative projects, this discussion will be geared towards both filmmakers and short film enthusiasts.

Panelists:

Jenny Horwell (moderator) joined DocHouse as producer in 2012, organising weekly screenings of documentaries in London cinemas. In 2015 the organisation opened Bertha DocHouse, the documentary cinema based at the Curzon Bloomsbury. As well as her work at DocHouse, Jenny has programmed the documentary shorts for four editions of the London Short Film Festival, since 2013, selecting work from open submissions. Before all that, she spent several years working at film festivals and events, and produced promos, trailers and videos at Matter Productions.

Liam Saint-Pierre

Born in Blackburn, England, Liam’s background was in stills photography and as a documentary camera operator, where he worked with the likes of Shane Meadows at Warp Films.
With a desire to tell stories, Liam’s path naturally led to directing,where his skills as a versatile filmmaker allowed him to create beautiful and intimate imagery across a variety of mediums. His cinematic style mixed with a tender realism and subtle humour translates into different genres, with story telling always at the heart. Initially this was in documentaries, but a focus on narrative has been translated into music videos, short films and commercial work. His films have been selected to screen at numerous international film festivals, including Raindance, LSFF, Sheffield Docfest, DOC NYC and many more.

Chloe White

 Chloe is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer based in London. Her short films have screened worldwide at festivals as well as on the Guardian, BBC3, London Live, and BBC Radio 4. Chloe is interested in character-led documentaries and has made films on a diverse range of topics (lobster fisherwomen, female genital mutilation, self-marriage, launderettes, an atomic bomb survivor and elder transgender women) but has a special interest in female-related subjects.
Chloe also runs a production company called Whalebone Films, specialising in films for NGOs (Save the Children, WaterAid, Oxfam) and arts organisations (National Theatre, Barbican). Through this work Chloe has travelled around the world filming in over 25 countries.

Marc Silver

Marc works worldwide as a filmmaker and director of photography. His first feature length film ‘Who is Dayani Cristal?’ premiered at the Sundance Festival 2013 where it won Cinematography Award: World Cinema Documentary and the Amnesty International Best Documentary award 2014. His second film ’3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets’ about the murder of Jordan Davis premiered at the Sundance Festival 2015 winning U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact. It was shortlisted for an Academy Award and broadcast on HBO.

Marc’s rich portfolio includes documentaries, concert visuals, art installations and branding. He has created content for the BBC, Channel 4, Universal Music, The Guardian, The New York Times, Amnesty International, UNHCR and collaborated with artists such as Gael Garcia Bernal, Nitin Sawhney, Michael Nyman, Jamie Cullum, Ben Okri, Matthew Herbert and Cirque Du Soleil.

Marc is currently working on a new film about ayahuasca, neuroscience and global drug policy. He is Creative Director of The Filmmaker Fund.

Gemma Atkinson

Gemma Atkinson is an award-winning producer and director, with ten years experience of making documentaries through her production company Fat Rat Films. Her films have been screened at major festivals internationally (AFI Silverdocs, LSFF, Doc/Fest) broadcast on BBC, C4, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and the New York Times. She is in production on her first feature documentary What We Leave Behind, an intense character study of a grieving undertaker, scheduled for release in Autumn 2016. She directs and produces documentaries around the world for various NGO’s including Amnesty International, Oxfam and The Elders.She is a co-founder and director of the hugely successful screening and networking event Doc Heads, playing to packed screenings for over 6 years.

Please note that this is a one-day workshop that will run on consecutive days.

Photography projects require money. Many photographers produce work at their own financial cost. There are, however, plenty of funding sources available from different organizations. These organizations are ready to support image makers providing funding for research, creation, production, travel and living expenses.

There is a definitive technique to grant writing, learn this and strengthen your chances of reaching the top of the pile.

Donald Weber, an award winning photographer and a member of the VII Photo Agency, will show you how. He has been a successful recipient of many grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Lange-Taylor Prize, The Duke & Duchess of York Prize, the Magnum Foundation’s Emergency Fund Grant and multiple Canada Council for the Arts grants in the last few years. He’s used the funding to create multiple award-winning projects, on his own terms and own time.

Synopsis:

1) The Proposal. Don will examine some award winning proposals, including his Guggenheim Fellowship, Lange-Taylor and two Canada Council grants. We will also look at other award-winning proposals, including Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and other contemporary artists. We will look at why he wrote what he did and why it was successful. We will talk about the overall structure of writing a proposal, breaking it down into simple steps.

2) The Portfolio. After the proposal, an integral part of a successful grant is the portfolio and the editing of the photographs you choose. We examine what to look for and how to make the portfolio support your proposal.

3) The CV. Many people underestimate the power of a strong CV and its impact on a successful grant. We will discuss what makes a strong CV and how to turn your ordinary CV into extraordinary.

4) The Grants. Don will show various websites and calendars that list grants and their deadlines. We will also look at websites that help you in the preparation and finding of grants that apply to what you want to do.

What attendees have said about the workshop:

“This workshop is a good investment, it paid for itself when I received my first grant a couple months later.” Brett Gundlock, photographer and member of Boreal Collective

“Don really does a good job of getting the main points across in the time allotted. The grant writing course is an obvious choice for anyone who is interested in doing independent work. Its not easy to get one of these things, but Don clearly knows how to do it and keeps no secrets.” Aaron Vincent Elkaim, a recent recipient of a Canada Council grant

“Thanks for the very inspiring workshop! I can really see now what went wrong so far, and what to do differently from now on. I’m pretty sure there will be a grant soon!” David de Jong, Photographer, Amsterdam

“If you ever take a workshop in how to get more and better grants, Donald’s is the one. He is that rare photographer who has managed to live and pursue projects for many years primarily on grants.” Bill Crandall, Photographer, Washington, DC

Former student Uwe Martin has won three separate grants totaling 16,000 Euro ($22,000) since taking the Grant Writing Workshop in Berlin.

Jared Soares received a Puffin Foundation Grant after completing the workshop in Washington, DC.

Aaron Vincent Elkaim won a $20,000 grant after taking the workshop in Toronto.

Brent Gundlock won $5,000 from the Ontario Arts Council. Peter Di Campo has won many awards and received two Pultizer Center grants totaling over $25,000 after completing the workshop.

Several other students have also received awards, prizes, been shortlisted and furthered their careers after taking the workshop, helping them preparing their proposals, edit their proposals and craft a better CV.

Wednesday 21st November saw the World Photography Organisation hold the first PhotoTALK event at the Frontline Club; a new series of talks which will take place around the world.

Chaired by Stuart Smith of SMITH design, the panel for PhotoTALK with WPO: The Funding Game consisted of Canadian photographer Donald Weber who recently won first prize in Current Affairs for the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards; World Photography Organisation Academy member photojournalist Carol Allen Storey and World Press Photo winning photojournalist Laura Pannack.

Weber started things off by talking about how applying for grants has changed the way he works:

“It’s turned me into a writer, I certainly wouldn’t call myself a writer but writing about my work has forced me to articulate my ideas in a stronger way… If I’m able to say exactly what I’m doing not only does it allow me to get a grant or apply for a fund but it also allows me to contact a magazine, or a gallery and say this is what I’m doing, this is why I’m doing it and this is why frankly you should be giving me money to go and do it.”

Pannack who has worked with charities such as Save the Children then spoke about making the most of the time that she was given access to people on a trip to South Sudan with Oxfam International

“I knew they were funding my trip so I really wanted to take advantage of it and I really wanted to work with them and just go out there and find more stories. When you’re given that access and given that funding you just have to run with it and be like ‘wow, I’m out here I just have to find everything.’”

Allen Storey, who left her job as Creative Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing for Chanel six years ago to take up a career in photography and now works with NGOs, spoke about how access was the most important thing for her when she was starting out:

“I knew I was going to fund it myself and the most important thing was access so that’s how I got started… I would not have been able to get commissions [with Save the Children and UNICEF] which allows me further access to the kind of work which I want to make without having a portfolio of work showing and illustrating that I’m prepared to bust my ass to go out there and work hard.”

A discussion then stemmed from questions put forward to the panel from the room and on Facebook.

Allen Storey answered the question ‘How do you know who to approach for funding if you’re a fine art photographer?’

“You have to also ask yourself ‘Who else would be interested that I could share this with?’… And that’s really important because at the end of the day publishers will say to you…’Who is going to buy this book?’…How you approach that, how you put your body of work together, how you organise it and the story behind it is all part of how you’re going to position it and get it out there. The most important thing to have in your own mind when you’re talking to people… is that they’re going to ask you ‘Why should I support this project?’ And you should be able to respond to that in a very sincere and convincing way.”

But there are less structured routes to funding, as Weber found whilst on an expenses only trip to Kosovo in 2009 with the Organisation for Co-oporation and Security in Europe:

“It was a six week assignment to go and photograph the first independent elections of Kosovo…’We’ll pay for your flight, you’re food’ that’s essentially all it was. I still wanted to do it because I wanted to go to Kosovo…but I needed to find a way to make a little bit of money. I was driving by [the National Library of Pristina] and thought that’s an archive, this is a brand new country, what’s the point of an archive, it’s about history… So I went in there, I said this is who I am, this is what I’m doing, this is what the project’s about. I’d made some cheap prints at the local print shop and gave it to them and said you guys should really own this because this is a part of Kosovar history… I ended up selling 12 pictures.”

Pannack:

“I think that for me defines funding…I don’t think there’s an answer to funding. As photographers, if we want to shoot something we’re going to go and shoot it and we’ll find the money, we’ll work in a bar or do what ever we want to do. I think what Donald is saying is that he used his initiative. He looked at the main question: who does this interest? Who is this going to benefit? Is it going to benefit a museum, is it going to benefit a world organization, is it going to benefit a major brand and then approaching those people and saying ‘look, I have something that you might want and I need some dollar to pay my rent right now so lets do an exchange.”

This PhotoTALK will provide insights into obtaining funding for photographic projects. Experts and practitioners will hit the key points about grants, bursaries, crowdfunding and more – what they mean, how to find funds and what to think about.

The discussion will cover how to consider formulating your work and vision to help fund your project, adopting a slightly different, carefully researched, way of thinking at the pre-production stage. Although often perceived as an impossible task, there are actually many places that are great for sourcing funding for photography.

Come and join the conversation with:

Canadian photographer Donald Weber, who recently won first prize in Current Affairs for the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards, and runs regular work shops on funding photographic projects.

World Photography Organisation Academy member and award winning photojournalist Carol Allen Storey.

Laura Pannack, a World Press Photo winning photojournalist.

Moderated by Stuart Smith of SMITH design.

This event is organised by the World Photography Organisation.