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Outreach Journal: Outside Looking In

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Posted on July 22, 2002

Outreach Journal

Having just completed my coursework at Columbia University film school, I was looking for experience on a documentary film project. I was hired as the Outreach Coordinator of "Outside Looking In", and it has been a great learning experience for me.

THE FILM

"Outside Looking In" is a documentary about three American families brought together - and at times pushed apart - by transracial adoption. Specifically, the film explores families where white parents have adopted black children. The 56 minute film is unique in its approach - being part autobiography and part journalistic documentary. The personal aspects of family, race and identity are examined both as emotional issues and as sociopolitical issues. Directed by Phil Bertelsen and Produced by Katy Chevigny and Dallas Brennan, "Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America" is a presentation of the Independent Television Service (ITVS). The film is produced by Big Mouth Productions, Inc. with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Black Programming Consortium.

"Outside Looking In" was sponsored by ITVS and broadcast in certain cities throughout the United States. ITVS provided an interactive Web site and much needed publicity.

MOTIVATION

Big Mouth Productions' mission is to make social issue documentary films and to make them available to the audiences they are meant to reach. The drive behind our Outreach and Distribution work is to increase the life of a film. Usually, when a film broadcasts that is the end of the film distribution. We work to make sure that audiences who missed the film because the film was not broadcast in their area, the film never made it to theatrical release, or an audience missed the film when it aired, have an opportunity to see the film. Outreach is also an important and useful instruction tool for parents, educators, social workers and activists.

Outreach Goals

The Big Mouth Productions' In-House Producer, Dallas Brennan, gave me a list of their outreach goals:

Increase VHS sales via in-house distribution
Produce a study guide to distribute at screenings and online
Create an interactive Web site
Organize community screenings, especially in Illinois, Arizona, and New Jersey and New York, where the film was filmed
Have a college and university tour where the filmmaker can speak to the students after screenings

TIPS

So, all of that said, I have assembled some tips on things that made our campaign successful. I gained these insights through simple trial and error. Steal freely:

1) Find your partners. The obvious slant for a film about transracial adoption is to approach adoption organizations. Our partners were extremely helpful and we were able to organize outreach events, both large and small, at various adoption organizations. Our partner organizations: KINNECT, Bridge Communications and The Evan B. Donaldson Institute have sponsored screenings and put us in touch with other adoption professionals who might be interested in the film.

2) Create an advisory board. "Outside Looking In" had an extensive board that varied from enthusiastic , young people to the bigwigs in the adoption world. A good board can help with outreach in several ways. Our board participated in screenings, sponsored screenings, and spoke on panels. They also acted as a broad-based public relations team in a way, by spreading the word about upcoming broadcasts and screenings.

One example of a board member who took initiative in our campaign is Michelle Hughes, Co-Director of Bridge Communications. Michelle was interviewed in the film and serves on the "Outside Looking In" advisory board. She acted as part of the panel at a screening event and sponsored a "get-together" for transracial adoptees before the screening. In addition, she provided names and fax numbers of various child service organizations in Chicago to spread the word about the screening.

3) Build a Web site. Not just an informational site but one with the capacity for people to post things as well. We had two Web sites. A more informational site on Big Mouth Productions' site (www.bigmouthproductions.com), and a more interactive site though ITVS, one of our main funders and presenters (www.itvs.org/outsidelookingin). Once people tuned in to the documentary or went to a screening, they were able to respond directly to the filmmaker on the site through discussion boards. The site became a way for people to communicate with one another about issues of identity. In addition, the "Resources" page allowed us to give names of books and Web sites for visitors to refer to for more information about transracial adoption and issues of identity. This is useful if you do not have a study guide to provide people.

One Web site success story is our screening in New Mexico. Miriam Rand from Family Matters, a private adoption agency in Albuquerque, saw the film on her local public television station. She posted a request for more resources and after a series of emails, Miriam sponsored a screening thorough her agency, Family Matters. The moral of this story is to use the Web site as a communication tool between yourself and the general public. The dialogues created can be valuable and if nothing else, informative.

4) Budget for outreach from the beginning. Everyone says this and it seems like a good idea but it rarely happens. It could be as little as $1,000. We started out spending only a few hundred dollars until we had managed to sell enough tapes to conduct some more outreach. It is not complicated to organize screenings for free but you want to have a small slush fund for publicity or any fees that come along. Getting from screening to screening costs money and you at the very least want to try to reimburse people for any small expenses they incur. Don't forget office expenses like postage, copies, stationary and telephone calls.

5) Find a new audience. Though informative, after a while, many of the events at adoption organizations became a bit like preaching to the converted. Mainly, parents who have already adopted transracially attend these events; and though the film is helpful for them, many of them might have gotten access to the film on their own.

Another goal of ours was to reach audiences who might not have even thought about adoption in any specific way before. Our niche became multiracial and African-American organizations on college campuses. Phil Bertelsen, director of "Outside Looking In", had some ties to multiracial organizations so his contact got us a screening and panel at the 6th Annual Pan Collegiate Conference on Mixed Race Experience at Cornell University. Several multi-racial students at these colleges and universities are transracially adopted so the film was of a particular relevance. They also hooked us into a network of students who later approached us to bring the film to their university. That conference peaked the interest of other conference organizers who approached us as well. University organizations really embraced the film and since the filmmaker is young, the students related to him. The conferences were able to pay for Phil's travel and expenses (for the most part) and to provide an audience.

6) Reach out to your friends, family, next door neighbors. My friend in business school did not seem a logical fit for helping me organize an outreach event but since he lived in Chicago, I thought he might know of someone who could help us out. It turned out that he was the President of The Black Management Association at Northwestern University and they had money available to organize a screening during Black History Month.

CHALLENGES

I am still working on "Outside Looking In" outreach and have been for seven months. There are things that I would like to do to bring the film to a bigger audience but lack of money and time makes it hard to create new outreach initiatives outside of the screenings and panels already in place. Fundraising from foundations has been another difficult task. We would like to expand our outreach campaign to: African American churches, gay and lesbian couples considering adoption, and children who have been transracially adopted. These initiatives are hard to implement without more funding. We did not have a large outreach budget, but we did have a Web site and much needed publicity in place because of ITVS funding.

SUCCESSES

We have organized sixteen screenings all over the United States with three additional screenings coming up. However, we all agree that the audience's response to the film has been the most gratifying. The most touching responses are from parents who have recently transracially adopted. Many have said that they have not had a resource to look to about transracial adoption, identity, ethnicity, race and family. By seeing a film like this and possibly responding to the Web site or meeting Phil, these parents could have a dialogue about these subjects in a new and exciting way. People like these have helped the outreach campaign to be very targeted and therefore more successful.

I am proud that I can say I was instrumental in offering this film as a tool for some of the most fascinating and important conversations that I've been a part of. And as someone who wants to make documentaries, I now have a sense of how I could make a work like this and get it out to a large group of people. I think that is more than I even imagined I could do.

If you would like to organize a screening of "Outside Looking In", please email us.