Puppies, Parades and Planning — Finding Distribution in Park City
Alumni Spotlight: Dana Nachman
Slamdance: Can you tell us a little about Pick of the Litter and how you came to make this film?
Dana Nachman: Pick of the Litter is a competition documentary about a litter of puppies that we follow from the day they are born until they make the cut to become Guide Dogs for the Blind… or get cut from the program. We followed the dogs for 22 months. It was a roller coaster ride, we never knew what was going to happen when we were out shooting, we were always on pins and needles praying that all of the dogs wouldn’t get booted before we finished shooting. It was stressful! Our goal was to make the film as dramatic as we felt the reality of the situation was as we were shooting. It seems when audiences are watching this, that we achieved our goal. There are a lot of cheers, sniffles, oohs and aahs along the way so we are thrilled with the outcome.
Your first time at Slamdance was in 2015 with the premiere of Batkid Begins: A Wish Heard Around the World, which was also one of the biggest deals ever made in Park City. Not only did you get distribution for Batkid, Warner Bros’ New Line bought the rights to make a feature film produced by and starring Julia Roberts! How was it being back at Slamdance this time around having had the experience before? Did you prepare differently for your premiere in Park City this time?
It was so great to be back! It’s hard enough to get into Slamdance once, let alone twice, so I feel very fortunate. I know people usually hear whether or not they are accepted or rejected by Thanksgiving week, so when we hadn’t heard either way, I was bummed out for sure! But then I got a call the first week of December and Peter (Baxter, President of Slamdance) asked us to be opening night! So we were thrilled! Now we had to do a mad scramble to finish the film, we had to do all of our post with the holidays in the middle and because we found out after all of the Sundance and Slamdance films most of the rooms for post were already taken… but we begged and cried and got it done!
It was a little less stressful the second time around because I knew what to expect, I had screened Batkid in the same exact room, and I had the memories of the amazing Slamdance audiences, and they were exactly the same, cheering and laughing throughout the film!
Pick of the Litter was the very first sale made in Park City in 2018! Besides having a great film, what steps did you and your team take that you think may have helped you seal the deal?
We were so thrilled that our film was the first sale out of Park City and that it could be a Slamdance film was even better! Three cheers for the underdog!
One of the main things we did, which I think helped us, was actually something we also did for Batkid. Our agents (the awesome guys at Submarine) put together industry screenings the week before, one in NY and one in LA. They invited many of the buyers and some key press as well. I’m not sure how many people even attended the screenings, but it gave our team a chance to send out links to distributors who showed interest. This gave us a great leg up once it came time for the official world premiere. We also held a doggie parade that started at the bottom of Main Street all the way up to the theater. That got a lot of attention for the film. So I guess it was a combination of grass roots things like the parade and making sure the film didn’t get lost to buyers in all the Park City hoopla.
What advice would you give to feature documentary filmmakers or filmmakers in general on finding distribution for their indie films in today’s media landscape?
It’s a really tough question and distribution is always a crap shoot. Pick of the Litter is my fifth feature and I have also made three shorts. I have been fortunate to find distribution for all of them but I have a lot of war stories!! I would say be straight with yourself about who your audience is before you start making it. If you think there is a built-in audience then you are probably right. If the subject matter is super esoteric it could be tough.
I would make sure you really think through your film fest strategy. Go for the big festivals where distributors and sales reps can see it (I have had the best luck at Slamdance and Toronto.) If that doesn’t work, and your film is amazing you can go to smaller festivals, hopefully rack up a lot of awards, and that’s a way for people to notice you too. Another thing you could try, is making a short, get that into festivals… that could help you and your idea get noticed too.
What new things did you learn about filmmaking and about yourself while making Pick of the Litter? Any filmmaking war stories?
Pick of the Litter was an interesting project for KTF Films because my partner Don Hardy and I had taken a break from co-directing before making Pick of the Litter. After three films together I went off to make Batkid Begins and he Made Theory of Obscurity. When we came back together to make Pick of the Litter I really appreciated the way that we, as a team, can come together and make a film with120 days of shooting and 10 months of editing just the two of us. We had help for sure, but the lion share of the work was done in house — and a very small house indeed! This is great because you really get to flex your filmmaking muscles with an ultra small crew… you just jump in and do everything as the director. This becomes a lot of fun! And efficient too.
One of the most unexpected issues for this film was we underestimated how hard it would be to keep up with the dogs once they got to training. They walk so fast! So Don devised a new rig and outfitted us each with one. It consisted of a small Sony camera on a gimble on a monopod. This allowed us to keep up with the dogs and capture everything that they were doing in a smooth and up close with a dog’s eye view.
Our biggest problem/war story on this film was the constant rain. It was the rainiest winter California had seen in many years, and of course most of our shoots were outside. This made for some tense times. We tried to keep the cameras dry and the lenses clean but after one day where we didn’t get any usable footage after several hours we decided we were not going to try shooting in the rain anymore. We would sit in the car until we got a window to shoot or we would beg Guide Dogs to switch their training around so that we could shoot on days without rain.
For your screenings at Slamdance, your team utilized a cool app to make the film accessible to audience members with disabilities. Can you talk a little about it and your thoughts on disability-friendly filmmaking in general?
Yes, Guide Dogs for the Blind introduced us to the great company called Actiview. Actiview allows visually impaired, blind, hard of hearing and deaf people to access audio description, closed captioning and louder dialogue tracks on their cell phones. Once the app is downloaded on the phone the person can just click on Pick of the Litter and when the movie starts in the theater the tracks that the person needs will sync up with the film. All the person needs is their phone and their earbuds.
I love this concept. It means that the theater doesn’t need to do anything special in order for this to work, it is all built in once the film is on the app.
I learned so much about this issue from working on this film. We had done closed captioning on our films before but had never given the issue much thought. Closed Captioning was a line that we were obligated to deliver on previous films, so that’s what we did. With this film, we knew that it was essential that the visually impaired community could take in this film as well as sighted people and the way to do that was with a great descriptive audio track. The track is basically a narration where the narrator describes what we are seeing on the screen. That narration gets tucked into the spaces where there is no dialogue. We had heard from the people at Actiview that some of their clients said when they first tried out the technology on a Disney film that they wept because they felt like they could really see the film. So that was enough for us, we were in.
In the film, some puppies who didn’t make the cut would be put up for adoption to other families. How would one go about adopting a puppy that was a (failed but still incredibly lovable) participant of the GDB training program?
I know, I want one! It’s very difficult to get one of the “career changed” dogs! If the dogs don’t make the cut for guide dogs there are many other organizations that Guide Dogs for the Blind partner with and a lot of the time the dogs are appropriate for other non profits, such as Dogs for Diabetics, companion dogs or police dogs. After that, the dogs are offered back out to the puppy raisers. If they don’t want the dog there is a long wait list of people who are looking for a “career change.” So, it’s worth a shot to get on the wait list but the dogs don’t come up for adoption very often.
Pick of the Litter hits theaters August 31st! To learn more about the film and find a showtime near you, visit: www.pickofthelittermovie.com
