When director/producer Ric Esther Bienstock got the call about an ebola outbreak in Zaire days before the story hit the press, she phoned Elliott Halpern and Simcha Jacobovici at Toronto’s Associated Producers whom she had worked with on The Plague Monkeys, a documentary on past cases of the deadly virus which aired on a&e.

The team called up cbc Witness, pbs Nova and Channel 4 in the u.k. ‘We said, so you liked the other film, well here’s a real outbreak, do you want in?’ explains Bienstock of the three-way financing of Ebola: Inside an Outbreak, nominated for five Geminis.

This scenario is far from typical on the documentary production scene, but it does point to some growing trends cited by nominees in the Best Science, Technology, Nature and Environment Documentary Program category.

From Bienstock’s perspective, most of the signposts spell good news for the genre. First off, Witness, a primetime doc series with more of a socio-political slant, bought the science-focused Ebola, and Bienstock says she’s noticing that science films are no longer relegated to narrow niche market slots but are finding primetime, mainstream windows as the general audience’s appetite for world science/health information increases.

‘In the past it was a tougher sell to get science films on tv, but now there’s a surge of info programming on conventional broadcasters,’ she says.

Of course, the fact that the ebola epidemic was a major news story helped get it to air. But Bienstock points out that a&e was involved in the The Plague Monkeys before the movie Outbreak and media stir over the virus.

She sees new opportunities for science docs, not just on specialties such as Discovery and The Learning Channel where you’d expect to find them, but also on other broadcast outlets as science/health information becomes an increasing focus in their lineups.

But Peter von Puttkamer views programs like Ebola as in-depth news stories and says that the opening windows for newsy and softer, human-interest stories are coming at the expense of hard-hitting, provocative docs which are seeing doors slammed shut.

According to the Vancouver-based producer, the specialties are looking only for infotainment-type docs. ‘The environmental stuff I’ve seen is all about watching grizzly bears and exploring national parks,’ he says. ‘They are just selling pretty images.

‘A distributor told me that a genre called `jaws and claws’ is hot – that’s big animals eating little animals,’ continues von Puttkamer.

Environmental films which explore injustices and point fingers at big corporations and governments are particularly hard sells, he adds, and private broadcasters are being pressured by corporate interests not to air some of these programs.

Von Puttkamer’s $75,000 Heart of the People, also nominated for best science, technology, nature and environment doc, explores a First Nations community’s effort to restore its depleted salmon stocks and devastated ecosystem after years of commercial plundering. The film aired on The Knowledge Network, picking up $15,000 from its production fund, which has since seen further budget slashing.

He says regional public broadcasters and the cbc have been the mainstays for his films during his 16 years producing documentaries and the trend to dismantle them is a serious threat to aggressive forms of filmmaking.

Echoing this sentiment is recently retired The Nature of Things producer John Bassett. He recalls a project on the forestry industry which the program sought bank sponsorship on until customers threatened to close their accounts. The film went ahead, relying only on cbc funding.

‘That’s why our public broadcaster is so important,’ explains Bassett, whose Food or Famine is up for a Gemini. ‘If public broadcasting is whittled down to the point it’s ineffective, this type of doc will be stifled. It’s often the only voice for voices which aren’t popular with the establishment, industry and government.’

The financing of Ebola from three territories points to another growing reality – the heavy reliance on international sales as funding from traditional sources like Telefilm Canada, the cbc and the National Film Board dries up and tax credits and production funds are unable to make up the loss.

Financing projects solely through Canadian sources is virtually impossible, the producers agree. The going rate for science/nature docs at the Canadian specialties is $15,000 to $35,000, says von Puttkamer, so most indie producers are forced to piecemeal their financing together – starting with a Canadian licence, scrounging what they can from funds and tax credits, and then tapping into foreign markets.

Gone are the days when von Puttkamer could shoot a film and hope to make up budget shortfalls after production. Rates on acquisitions are falling, he says, ‘and the broadcaster that might have given you a $30,000 or $40,000 licence fee is prepared to give you $6,000 to acquire your show.’

Licence fees are substantially higher for science/nature programs at foreign broadcast outlets, with bbc and Channel 4 offering between $150,000 to $300,000 and a sale to a&e garnering anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000.

But the competition in these markets is stiff and the road to an international sale is especially tough for newer producers without a strong track record, says Bienstock, admitting that the relatively easy presale of Ebola was based on the success of the internationally acclaimed Plague Monkeys.

Not only are indie documentary filmmakers turning to coproduction, it is also becoming the only way cash-strapped public broadcasters are managing to scrape together the costs of making docs.

Stuart Beecroft, producer of tvontario’s Gemini-nominated The Living Tides of Fundy, says the film used the last of ‘the holy fund’ at tvo before the worst onslaught of budget cuts, and even this project involved financing from Discovery Canada and the New Brunswick government.

He doesn’t think tvo could produce the $120,000 film today. ‘I see in-house documentary production at tvo as finished,’ says Beecroft, which is why the educational broadcaster is exploring international coproductions as a lifeline.

In fact, Tides of Fundy, which examines the effects of the world’s highest tides on people and animal life, was based on footage gathered for The Global Family series, a coproduction between tvo and Japan’s nhk.

The issue of content integrity is often a contentious area in documentary coproduction wheeling and dealing. Bassett notes this is particularly true in critical, investigative docs where differing political interests and program philosophies can sometimes come into play.

The reality, he says, is that ‘there are pluses and minuses to these deals and you often have to compromise a bit and take the money.’

He adds that while pbs’ Nova and The Nature of Things have developed strong coproduction ties based on a shared public broadcaster mentality, working with private organizations has proven more difficult. A coventure between The Nature of Things and National Geographic was a case in point, he says: ‘They wanted to play it safe, and didn’t want to be controversial.’

But tvo and nhk have found what Beecroft calls ‘a marriage made in heaven.’ tvo shoots footage in Canada and nhk in Japan and then they swap material and each makes their own cut.

Money and content quality are the weighty factors on the scale and doc producers are caught in a difficult balancing act as funding sources shrivel and broadcast windows open and close in niche markets.

‘It’s an interesting challenge,’ says Beecroft. ‘Producers have to be more and more resourceful while also keeping content credibility. These programs don’t come cheap and there’s a lot of people chasing the same pie that’s being cut in smaller pieces. ‘