HeyJaredGetting Personal with Doug Block
Reflections and hard-earned advice on making personal documentaries, first-person storytelling and producing for film.
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- Sep 23, 2026
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- Jul 8, 2026
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The Making and Selling of “My Omaha” (opens the original)
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Given that my Substack is called Getting Personal and is devoted mainly to personal documentary filmmaking, I’ll take a major leap and assume my faithful readers are interested in learning more on the subject. Either you’re making a personal doc of your own, thinking about making one or innocently wandered over here without knowing how or why (if so, welcome and I know the feeling).Now that My Omaha — a “staggering”1 personal doc I produced with
Free NYC preview screening of MY OMAHA on Sept 29 (opens the original)
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To all my wonderful paid subscribers to Getting Personal.In advance of the October 5th premiere of My Omaha on national PBS, director Nick Beaulieu and I will be hosting a special “My Omaha” preview screening on Tuesday, September 29th at the Tribeca Screening Room in lower Manhattan, and we’re holding a few seats for our loyal Substack subscribers. I’l… Read more
How I Got My First Documentary Funded (opens the original)
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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFor the next few weeks I’ll be reminding my loyal readers that Nick Beaulieu’s powerful personal doc “My Omaha,” which I produced with Nick, will be premiering on PBS’s Independent Lens on October 5th. The film is about what happens when the political divide in this country literally, and movingly, hits home for Ni
The Art of (Not) Getting Funding For Your Doc (opens the original)
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Every filmmaker I know has been saying that it’s harder to get funding these days than ever, and it’s true.1 Part of me has to smile, though. I’ve been making films for almost 40 years and funding has always been hard. Yet somehow, by hook or by crook, indie filmmakers — and especially documentarians — find a way to get their films made. It’s just taking longer. A lot longer. Case very much in point, my latest and greatest documentary project, which has taken a full decade long, and counting.<a
Pardon This Interruption (opens the original)
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Tuesday morning I was hard at work putting the finishing touches on an epic Substack post when Lucy texted us that her water broke, three weeks before her due date! Some impatient little bugger just couldn’t wait to see her new family.<img alt="" class="
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