Bruce Peninsula, Ont.-based Inspired Planet Productions had to get creative with their distribution strategy to fit varied buyer demands for the nature documentary All Too Clear.

The TVO Original documentary is co-directed by husband-and-wife duo Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert. Narrated by Melnick, the doc uses advanced underwater drone technology from the New Zealand-based company Boxfish Robotics to explore how quadrillions of invasive mussels have impacted the Great Lakes’ ecosystem.

“The first funding we got was from the Trebek Initiative for a 20-minute short,” Drebert, who also produced the doc, tells Playback Daily. “We were able to convert that into support for longer versions … TVO wanted a series, the American broadcasters are looking for an hour. So, we’re just really adapting the content. We have to really fit what the demand is.”

In addition to the Trebek Initiative, the documentary received support from conservation-focused charities such as the U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy (which operates under the name Nature United in Canada) and Georgian Bay Forever. All Too Clear also received grants from Georgian Bay Forever, the U.S. and Canada bi-national Great Lakes Fishery Commission and Sudbury, Ont.-based science centre Science North. It was produced in association with TVO and with the participation of the Rogers Documentary Fund.

“When we first started working on this project, the technology is so new … it took a little more effort to get the funds together,” says Drebert. “We ended up making a bunch of partners that wanted this story told and saw the potential.”

All Too Clear is self-distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Inspired Planet with U.K.-based TVF International handling international distribution. The documentary was filmed over the course of more than 200 days, with 150 days of filming underwater. Production began July 2022 and ended in October 2023.

In the end, All Too Clear was split into four separate cuts.

The documentary was broadcast on TVO on Oct. 26 as a 3 x 50-minute series and is available on the TVO Docs YouTube channel and on TVO Today’s website. All Too Clear was also cut into a 90-minute feature for TVO to air at a later date, and has screened at festivals such as the Windsor International Film Festival.

The last two versions are a 60-minute film, created for U.S. broadcasters, and a 20-minute, super-wide permanent exhibition for Science North. A sale to a U.S. broadcaster is currently in the works and will be announced at a later date.

Another large part of the documentary’s strategy includes social media, as the pair have been uploading behind-the-scenes footage as well as promoting the doc and its various screenings on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

“These scientific organizations and fishing folk are reaching out to us now because they’ve seen our work on Instagram and they’re inviting us to conferences and to screen the film,” says Drebert. “Because we’ve been working on this so long and slowly trickling out fish footage, we’ve really gotten a dedicated following that is keen on the project.”

All Too Clear‘s promotion strategy was also bolstered by the discovery of a sunken ship, believed to be the Africa, which was lost on Huron Lake in 1895. The news of the cargo steamship, now covered with the same mussels the documentary is focused on, allowed Inspired Planet Productions to promote All Too Clear through its online buzz.

“As far as our work is concerned, we’ve never had anything go viral before,” says Melnick. “But, we made a conscious decision to harness the fact that there was this shipwreck discovery and we wrapped that into the movie afterwards.”

Image courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions