Cost of Docs 2024 / 2025 Results Published
We have just published, in partnership with Sheffield DocFest and Al Jazeera Documentary, our seventh annual Cost of Docs report.
For the first time our survey was made available in Arabic as well as in English, increasing our scope and enabling us to compare and contrast the concerns of English and Arabic respondents.
As Ove Rishøj Jensen, Head of Co-Production Forum at FIPADOC said in his interview with Business Doc Europe “We often have these very abstract discussions about the documentary industry, but the Whickers do this yearly report, which is all about the facts”
In addition to our work funding and supporting emerging talent around the world, we seek to champion documentary makers and to amplify their voices in the industry as a whole. The initial aim, back in 2016, was to ensure that our main funding award, now £100,000, was still the game-changing amount that we wanted it to be. Since then, we have added new questions to continue evaluating and confronting the challenges faced by filmmakers in uncertain times.
If quoting from this report, please credit The Whickers. Contact in**@wh***********.com for any queries or to request a copy of the six previous editions of the Cost of Docs report. Written and designed by Curtis Gallant, Jane Ray, Denise Barren and Sam Stone for The Whickers and Marie Fahmy for Al Jazeera.
Here is a small selection of the key findings below:
- Funding continues to be the biggest concern for both English and Arabic speaking documentary makers
- Only 13% of English speaking independent documentary makers were able to take a wage from their production fund. Arabic speaking respondents were slightly better at 27%.
- The ‘quick turnaround’ documentary is dying out! It’s taking longer to make documentaries for most people with the general time scale increasing from 6 months to 2 years, to 2 to 5 years for English speaking respondents.
- 34% English speaking respondents say that they need mental health support but cannot afford it. Only 19% Arabic respondents perceived ‘wellness’ as an issue.
- 91% of English speaking respondents reported feeling safe in the documentary industry which is good news. However, only 44% of Arabic respondents replied the same. But we should note that 30% of Arabic respondents did not answer this question.
- The Cost of Living crisis continues to impact on our respondents but we can see a drop from 54% last year to 44% this year that say this is having a ‘major impact’