Gerry Flahive is a documentary producer at the National Film Board of Canada in Toronto. His projects include Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us, the forthcoming Offstage, Onstage: Inside the Stratford Festival, and the coproduction McLuhan’s Wake.

Before the images come the words.

They might come in the form of a proposal or a polished, spoken pitch or even a short, enticing e-mail. But words are usually the first thing created on the road to making a documentary film.

How you present those words and best represent your wonderful documentary idea is critical to your success in persuading broadcasters, funders or prospective production partners to share your vision, give you money or at least meet you at Starbucks.

Andy Thomson, executive VP, Alliance Atlantis Television Production, says it succinctly: ‘A good documentary proposal is one that enables the reader to visualize the final product. A bad documentary proposal is one that tries to justify why the film should get made.’

At the NFB we receive a very broad range of proposals – hundreds each year – from both emerging filmmakers and the most experienced documentarians. We read them all, but it is surprising how often some basic elements are missing, even from the most seasoned applicants. Broadcasting and independent production colleagues have had similar experiences.

No one wants a lot of paper up front, but the challenge, as VisionTV’s director, independent production Alberta Nokes indicates, is to demonstrate artfully what you want to do. ‘Ideally, the outline or treatment should be succinct, hook me in the first paragraph and be as engaging as the film itself would be,’ she says.

Hilary Armstrong, senior producer/commissioning editor at CBC’s Witness looks at three things when considering a proposal: ‘What’s the story? Is it a good fit for us? Who’s pitching it? Highly produced, 30-page proposals with glossy pictures are wasted on us. We’re looking for a central, well-focused story idea. And if that can’t be conveyed in a page or two, chances are it isn’t ready to be hatched.’

The following are suggestions to consider before that trip to Kinko’s to get the Cerlox binding for your latest proposal.

Pitch a film, not a topic

There is little point in recycling last Thursday’s headlines into a proposal. There are lots of topics out there, and lots of variations on them: a disease most people haven’t heard of (but should have), a historical figure most people haven’t heard of (but should have), a trend most people have heard of (but don’t care about it). If you’ve thought of it in five minutes, many other people have, too.

Try this first: go out for coffee with your smartest friend and see how many documentary film topics you can come up with in 15 minutes. See what I mean?

Why is it a movie?

This might seem a rude question, but it is surprising how many proposals are not obviously proposals for films, other than that they have been prepared by filmmakers. I have some ideas myself – such as the use of pneumatic tubes to deliver mail in Manhattan in the early 20th century – that I’d like to explore in a creative medium, but most shouldn’t be documentary films.

Some proposals would be terrific radio docs, current affairs items, newspaper articles, or websites. All are considerably cheaper than documentaries, and most offer the author more direct control. These avenues might even be a good first step to exploring your idea, even if you ultimately want to present it in a documentary proposal.

So, what’s the movie?

Research is important, but you don’t need footnotes, Dewey Decimal System numbers and a Rhodes scholar bibliography in your proposal. Your research should explain and illuminate, but ultimately the proposal has got to get to what matters most: what’s the movie?

Many proposals never get that far, drenched as they are in facts, and perhaps thinking that such artistic details as treatment, style, point of view and character selection are bound to come out in the development phase. But we are interested in filmmaking, not the production of monographs, and need to judge a proposal by its potential to become a film.

The wish list of Bob Culbert, CTV VP of documentaries, isn’t unusual: ‘I welcome a page, or two max, that captures the essence of the story, the compelling nature of the characters, any time-sensitive issues, the research done, the proposed treatment and the key figures in the creative team.’

What don’t you know

about your film?

I’ve rarely seen a proposal that was the precise blueprint with which to start production. People understand what ‘development’ means in the dramatic feature world, but it is a critical element in documentary filmmaking, too.

So additional research, partial shooting, and ‘casting’ should be outlined or at least referred to in your document. (For director Catherine Annau’s Just Watch Me, we went through hundreds of prospective interview subjects before settling on the eight who made it into the film.)

TVOntario’s Rudy Buttignol, creative head of documentaries, drama and network, says he prefers ‘a brief proposal that makes me want to ask, ‘What happens next?’ A successful proposal results in a serious one-on-one meeting between seller and buyer. It’s in that one-on-one that I expect a filmmaker to tell me what they know and don’t know about the story they want to tell.’

Finally, remember that anyone in a position of programming proposals has to say ‘no’ much more often than ‘yes.’ So don’t take ‘no’ as banishment to permanent exile. And as Andrew Johnson, commissioning editor/producer of CBC Newsworld Rough Cuts, advises: ‘If you get a ‘no’ from me, it’s perhaps wise that you don’t accidentally c.c. me, like someone did recently, with a letter to a colleague ranting about what a ‘@#&!!%&*#@ decision’ I had made.’

-www.nfb.ca