Boo!

October is the “spooktacular” month. Studios release their scary movies. Suburban homes vie for the title of best haunted house. Pumpkins and costumes are everywhere. Stores are stocked with sweet goodies, and little ones are preparing for the big night when they’ll fill their candy bags.

I, for one, ain’t hatin’ on Halloween expanding from one night to a full 31-day celebration. But I have to admit: when some things grow exponentially, they can get a little scary. The Paramount/Skydance merger that was just  finalized, for instance. We’ll have to address that in a future Dispatch. 

Last week was the deadline to submit a proposal to Black Public Media’s Open Call.

After canceling the Open Call last year in the wake of the defunding of public media, we weren’t sure we would be able to bring it back this year. But thanks to our generous supporters, we decided it was time.

Normally, BPM receives somewhere between 60 and 90 applications. From those submissions, five projects are invited to participate in PitchBLACK, and one ultimately receives our grand prize of $150,000 in production funding.

This year, we received 254 submissions.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR!

Now that is scary.

What it Means

I almost don’t want to talk about the odds, but I believe in transparency. With 254 applicants competing for five PitchBLACK slots, fewer than 2% will advance. And with one $150,000 grand prize, fewer than 0.5% of the filmmakers who applied will ultimately receive that award.

Those are terrible odds.

But rather than simply marvel at the number, I think we need to ask what it is telling us.

Why did we receive so many applications this year? We were only gone for one year. Are there significantly more people making films that center the Black experience? Did our communications team just do a crack job of getting the word out? What has happened to all the other opportunities filmmakers once relied upon?

Some or all of those things may be true. But one thing is undeniable: the decrease in support for documentary filmmaking is real. So is the increased competition to get independent projects in front of commercial streamers and other distributors.

That doesn’t mean makers stop creating. They don’t. It means the pot of available funding gets smaller while the number of projects seeking support keeps growing. It means some important films won’t make it to the finish line. Others will take twice as long to finish. And hundreds of makers—emerging and seasoned alike—will face an increasingly difficult path to getting their work made and seen.

I’m frustrated by these changes, and I’m sure many of our makers are too.

How You Can Help

BPM cannot fund all 254 projects. Frankly, there has always been less money available than there are worthy projects we wish we could support. But these numbers make the gap impossible to ignore.

They also remind me why we keep doing this work.

Black stories still need to be made. They still need to be seen. And the resilience, persistence and perseverance of the artists who tell them haven’t disappeared simply because the funding landscape has gotten tougher.

For those of us working to bring more resources into this ecosystem, the challenge is clear: we have to find new and more creative ways to expand the circle of support so artists can make their work, finish their work and get that work in front of audiences.

And that includes you.

If 254 submissions tell us anything, it’s that the need is here.

Please consider donating to BPM’s 1.8M Donor Campaign.

Help us meet it.

Happy Halloween. And here’s hoping next October, the scariest thing we have to talk about is the costumes.

Photos courtesy of Fields-Cruz. Statistical graphic data source: Center for Media & Social Impact. Banner Image, Adobe Stock.