![]() But branded content is our bread and butter.”įifty years ago, a cartoon or short film often screened before features in movie theaters. “They draw attention from the branded world. ![]() The Times pays only a few thousand dollars for the short films it showcases, but the publicity the paper provides, including full-page ads, provides visibility and promotion worth millions. “Breakwater originals are our marketing budget,” says Dawn. The Queen of Basketball (2021), which was widely viewed on the New York Times Op-Docs site, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short at the 94th Academy Awards, marking the first Oscar for both Breakwater and the Times. “Today we have a full-time staff of 19 and they look considerably different.”ĭawn attributes the company’s success to Ben’s “unrelenting commitment to excellence and the special quality of the films we do.” Breakwater films have screened at over 130 film festivals, including Sundance, SXSW, Telluride, Tribeca, and DOCNYC, and have been shown on major platforms for short documentaries. “When I started here six years ago, it was just me and four or five guys in their 20s who were friends at USC,” says Dawn O’Keeffe, vice president of finance, whose own children were about the same age. Today, the genre is experiencing an unexpected revival. Eleven years later, the 32-year-old filmmaker has become the most prominent practitioner of the short documentary film in the U.S., a category that not so long ago the Academy of Motion Pictures was thinking of eliminating. The father-and-son-constructed seawall survived the powerful storms of the Atlantic and so did the fledgling endeavor. The name also represented his desire to protect the creative process and “the integrity of the stories we tell,” as well as his aspirations for the company. Ben named his company in honor of a seawall, “a protectorate against the open ocean,” that he and his father built in his native Nova Scotia when Ben was 12. A few of his USC friends helped when needed. This meticulous attention to detail is one of the reasons the company has been able to thrive in a rapidly changing media environment where movie theaters are closing, studios are making fewer films, and streaming services and cable channels are reluctant to commission documentaries that don’t involve a celebrity or grisly crime.īen started Breakwater in 2012, shortly after graduating from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he was a cinema and media studies student, not a production major. Together, they explore the sound, music, composition, color, and editing choices in the documentary, what Ben calls “the attention to all the small decisions that make a good and elegant film.” It’s clear from his hour-and-a-quarter presentation that craft, “the artistry you need to capture what is true and beautiful,” is an essential element of a Breakwater movie. The members of his company eagerly respond to the questions Ben poses. Like the film-a dialogue between the composer and his grandfather-this is a conversation, not a lecture. “What’s the unconscious question we’re planting in the audience’s mind in the very first shot we see of him? What are we promising the audience?” “How do we feel about Kris here?” he asks about the composer’s introduction in the movie projected on the screen behind him. The new and veteran staff members cram the two rows of reclaimed movie theater seats and spill onto a couch and chairs to hear Ben break down his approach to storytelling, part of his continuing effort to ensure his production team understands the principles of a Breakwater film. These pieces probe the creative decisions, financial structures, and talent development that sustain their work-in the process, revealing both infrastructural challenges and industry opportunities that exist for documentarians.įifteen people crowd into the tiny screening room of Breakwater Studios to listen to its founder, Ben Proudfoot, dissect A Concerto Is a Conversation (2021), the 13-minute, Oscar-nominated short documentary he co-directed with composer Kris Bowers. Making a Production is Documentary 's new strand of in-depth profiles featuring production companies that make critically-acclaimed nonfiction film and media in innovative ways.
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