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Your Friendly Friday Low Down
→ RecDek Studios’ first feature doc - SOSCuba Premiere’s in NYC! We like to keep a few things up our sleeve here at RecDek and over with our family at Misfit we’ve Co-Produced a documentary which is having its world Premiere at DocNYC on November 13th. If you’re a RecDek Member and in NYC there'll be a fewwww happenings that weekend you may wanna be a part of. https://www.recdekhouse.com/
→ RecDek’s Hang5 - our new publication launches! A super quick what to watch from the community recommendations and culture in general. Bloomin’ love abita culture. Look out for that landing in your inbox #reallyquitesoon.
→ You Can See Everything - we dissect the hype for this super doc doing the rounds, below.
Now then, on November 13th in New York a story lands on the big screen in the Big Apple about a modern revolution, the setting of the story is Cuba, a country known for defining international relations in the 20th Century, and in the news again right now.
Directed by Hugo Perez, SOS Cuba follows a ragtag group of artists, rappers and misfits who staged the largest political uprising in Cuban history against a communist regime that did everything it could to silence their art, their dissent and their freedom of expression. It is, at its core, a story about defiance in the face of insurmountable odds.
RecDek co-produced this one and the community of filmmakers involved could not be closer to our hearts.
If you’re in New York the weekend on the 13th grab a ticket before it sells out → https://www.docnyc.net/film/soscuba/
And if a New York after party is something you would raise eyebrows at, its a RecDek House Member event → https://www.recdekhouse.com/
Been chatting about marketing documentaries a lot of late. Question is: how did A24 make a three-hour documentary the most wanted ticket of Autumn? (/THE FALL) - we dissect that in this week’s watchlist pick:
ONE FOR YOUR RECDEK WATCHLIST
You Can See Everything
This is a 174-minute documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. On paper, that’s a hard sell. More like a dare. Then, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film pulled the biggest documentary opening in over twenty years - north of $15 million on fewer than 1,000 screens, 2,000-plus sellouts, lines round the block, and a second weekend that went up. It’s cleared $45 million against a $7 million budget. These numbers belong to a different genre entirely.
So how did A24 do it? The foundation seemed to be secrecy. The film was shot in secret over four years - Holmes invited the pair to document her life a month before she reported to prison - and nobody reallly knew it existed until a single hush-hush screening at Telluride over Labor Day. A24 then inverted the usual logic: rather than sell you on what’s in the film, they sold you on seeing it before anyone could tell you what’s in it. “No spoilers” became the entire campaign. In a culture that spoils everything within the hour, engineered mystery is a scarce commodity.
From there, they trusted the film to be the marketing - that good old trick. Make something people can’t stop talking about and let the audience handle distribution for free! So simple. Rumours flew about a berserk swerve, crew losing access and a mystery performer of sorts, with the studio refusing to confirm or deny. Every possible detail became another reason to see it, in a room, with strangers. I booked it on Nathan Fielder’s name meeting Elizabeth Holmes!
They opened in 855 theatres - a huge footprint for non-fiction - it blew up, then they pushed to 2,600-plus the following weekend once the momentum was undeniable. No panic-wide release, no sports-TV ad spend by all accounts. Let demand set the pace.
And your know what helps? It’s meant to be really good. Critics calling it a reinvention of the form, awards types floating the first-ever Best Picture nod for a documentary. Seventy per cent of opening-weekend buyers were under 35, A24 has, once again, cracked the demographic everyone else is chasing.
Now, could it be the hype is partly studio-stoked, the near-religious way some viewers describe it - a touch convenient?! But both things can be true, a genuinely singular documentary and a masterclass in demand engineering.
Here’s the kicker for us lot, though: it doesn’t even open in the UK until November 20. Which means the most talked-about film of the American fall lands here pre-loaded with a month of mystique.
If you wanted a case study in how discovery actually works, not an algorithm serving something up, but people desperate to be in the room, this is it. The machine didn’t make this happen. The whispering did. And that is what, in many ways, RecDek stands for too. We can’t wait to see it.
Finally this week, a huge final thanks to our sponsors of our events over the past couple of weeks! RecDek House saw 16 films screen in Shoreditch and it rounded off a year’s worth of RecDek Houses. We could not do it without some incredible humans and companies that support us in our support of the industry. You’ll want to know these brands so you could say you found them first.
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Catch you next time OK.
Ed
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