Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her column, Outside the Frame.
Following up on my series exploring great documentary websites (read part one and part two), I promised to explore the cost of producing a documentary site (great or otherwise — they all cost money to make!).
The filmmakers' website for POV's Bronx Princess
Not surprisingly, folks were hesitant to share numbers with me; so, I decided to put together a survey, which allows for (a) anonymity on a potentially sensitive subject, and (b) easy collection of data from a larger pool of filmmakers. I hope you'll take survey, and share it with other filmmakers. I'll accept responses through October 4, and report back with results and analysis soon after that.
Click here to take the survey.
Talk About This
Obviously a website can be done for no budget (or as they say at Sundance) so you might like to qualify the title/intro with the question "How much does it cost to make an EFFECTIVE website?", and the term effective should be defined in terms of what will be achieved? Will you establish targets against which it can be measured. I am really interested in this issue and every documentary maker should be too, as with a good website we could, in theory, break free of the dead hand of distributors and TV kommisionars
by Rupert Wolfe Murray at 6:51 PM on October 8, 2009