Are there more reliable ways to secure funding other than seeking investors, grants, studio financing, lender and completion deals and personal funds?
Well, the way most cable documentaries are made is with co-production financing from the network, which might come under the heading of “studio financing,” I suppose. The network (say, Discovery) puts up perhaps 60% of the budget, with the production company or its investors putting up the balance in anticipation of making it back (along with a profit, of course) in ancillary sales such as foreign markets, home video, etc. This is the end of the business in which I’ve made my living for the last eight years. I don’t know much about funding public television or film festival docs. I wish I did, actually.
