S3 Ep4 Nobody puts baby in the corner! Conquering Breast Cancer - powerful stories and where to find them

Funding challenges, finding great stories and getting your film over the line. All in the day of the life of a documentary filmmaker!

I've been deep diving into the backstory of creating Conquering Breast Cancer, a film 10 years in the making to help you understand the journey in making a film.  Along the way you've been hearing about many different aspects, but in this episode I'm taking you through 

- How you find amazing stories.  

- A unique strategy for achieving your goals.

- How I met Hugh Jackman!!! (thanks to the unique strategy) 

- How you get a film funded.

- More on the experience of living with breast cancer

There's so much to explore and I hope you find this episode helpful.

Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is not medical advice and you should always consult with trusted medical professional for any medical concerns you have.

There is a resource page on the www.conqueringcancercampaign.com website with links to credible websites for more information and support services for breast cancer. 

If you're interested in seeing Conquering Breast Cancer on the silver screen in Australia from June 2026 - you can book tickets at https://conqueringcancercampaign.com/conquering-breast-cancer-au/

This episode includes comments from incredible people featured in Conquering Breast Cancer: including Sandra Sturgess & Dyna Eldaief

The host of the Documentary Filmmaker is Sue Collins.  

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:02

Dirty Dancing's Johnny Castle may have made the iconic declaration that nobody puts baby in the corner. But sadly, that's what we had to do with the Conquering Breast Cancer film for quite some time because we just could not find finance to keep it going. You're listening to the Documentary Filmmaker podcast, and I'm your host Sue Collins. And if you've been listening to the past few episodes on the making of Conquering Breast Cancer, then I left you in Ep 3 on a cliffhanger. With no finance, we had to put the film on ice, so to speak. We kept busy, we went away, and we made a couple of new films, one called Conquering Cervical Cancer and another Conquering Skin Cancer. And you might be wondering how we got them financed and through production, but still had the breast cancer story on hold. And I'm sure you've heard that timing is everything, and it is. Cervical cancer had had major breakthroughs with the combination of screening and vaccines making it possible to eliminate. Imagine that, the first cancer in human history that could be completely solved. And in skin cancer, immunotherapies were proving to be a game changer with remarkable results, like some metastatic melanoma patients finding no evidence of disease after treatment. There was enormous hope for the future for both cervical and skin cancer, and I think that that made them much easier to fund because there was a lot of motivation to get those stories out into the world. And then finally, we started to get some traction pitching the breast cancer story. Pitching had never really stopped, but we were finally cutting through, and our first big funder came on board. And so our next dilemma was how do you dust off the archive after a few years and pick up where you left off? Would the women we'd been working with still want to be part of it, or had they just completely given up on us? To start with, I had to make some phone calls. Hey Dinah, remember me. So about that DOCO project, did you still want to be involved? And so on. And to my relief, everybody agreed to stay the course and continue to be involved. Although I do think they thought I was a hopeless case by this point and nothing would ever really happen. But in the long and the short, we were up and running again. And next was to round out the stories. A lot had actually happened in the breast cancer space over the past few years with new treatments and drug therapies. Many women with metastatic disease were living a lot better and a lot longer, not to mention some very promising research projects that were underway. There was a lot to talk about. And interestingly, a group who were big supporters of our film Conquering Skin Cancer had gone along and watched it when it came out in cinema. And they were from a regional health organization, and along with their work in skin cancer, they also play a big role in breast cancer patient care, and they asked us if we had plans for a breast cancer story. And what did I say? Well, here's a little something I prepared earlier. Okay, not that, I did not say that. But I did say, yes, why do you ask? And it turns out they had a patient in their network who they thought could be a really good candidate for a film on breast cancer, and that's how we met Sandra.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

So if you were if you were to be talking to people who are not familiar with breast cancer, and especially not metastatic breast cancer, what would you want them to know about breast cancer?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Look, it's something that can affect anyone, um, any age. There's different types of breast cancer, and a lot of people don't realise that. I found out since I've become metastatic, and people have said to me, How did you not know that? But when I had early breast cancer, I did not know that 20 to 30% of women and men, there's a few, you know, there's a small percentage that get breast cancer, um will end up being metastatic. And that's just something that we do not know. The focus is on early breast cancer and prevention, and I understand that, but you know, things things likely are changing a little bit. Um, the metastatic um community is starting to get more vocal. We're standing up for more research funding.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Sandra is a really wonderful person, and we had a great morning filming with her and also her dragon boating ladies out on the Newcastle River. If you ever want to meet an impressive group of women in action, head out to watch some dragons abreast cruise. Finding powerful stories is an interesting thing in and of itself. So, how do you find really important and powerful stories? Look, sometimes stories are shown to you, like this example I've just explained with Sandra. And sometimes they come to you, like in the case of Dinah. Remember how she called me out of the blue and this whole film got started in the first place? Hi, it's who speaking.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Uh hi. Um, my name's Dinah. I'm actually a high-risk woman for developing breast cancer.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

And I'm sometimes you're connected to people from organizations that you're working with who have big networks and communities and can help you identify suitable candidates. And sometimes you print out a picture of a famous person like Hugh Jackman and you stick it on your office wall. And then every day when you get to work, you turn to the image and you ask the universe to make it happen. I'm talking about getting an interview, that is. If you haven't seen our film Conquering Skin Cancer, then you probably don't know what the heck I'm talking about. The story is that we knew that Hugh Jackman had had skin cancer and that he would be a really strong story to include in the film. But how to get in touch with him? We tried writing him a letter and sending it to his agent. We tried asking every single person we were connected to if they had any contacts with him. We tried messaging him on social media, we asked, we asked, we asked. And eventually, one of the people we interviewed for the film turned out to have a personal connection to him and put the request forward on our behalf. And from there, we were contacted and able to navigate a suitable time and location to do an interview. It actually did take months to line it up and a trip to the other side of the world to do the interview. And we got allocated a 20-minute time slot in an insanely expensive hotel in London where he was on a press junket for the new Wolverine movie. We had to rent a hotel room in this very, very fancy hotel to do the interview. But because we'd been given a two-day window of when we might get this 20 minutes, we had to book the hotel room for multiple nights. At this hotel was an eye-watering $3,000 Aussie dollars per night. But luckily, once we got the time and the date all locked in, we were able to, thank goodness, cancel and get a refund on the additional nights, meaning we only had to pay for the one night in the end, which was frankly still a bit of a budget buster. So the stakes were very high to get that interview smack on. There could be no, oh my god, I forgot to hit record, or uh, the camera wasn't rolling, none of that. It had to be perfect. We were flying across the globe, it was crazy expensive in the hotel, and I have never been so nervous in my entire life. We set up about three hours early, checked all the cameras and microphones about 35 times, and then about 10 minutes before Hugh Jackman was due to arrive, I just got that awful, sickening feeling. Because it hadn't even occurred to me to that point. What if he cancelled? We got a text message from his team asking if we'd really flown all the way from Australia to do the interview. And that just completely freaked us out. We totally unraveled. We were thinking, oh my god, what if he's thinking of cancelling? And he's just saying how much effort we'd really gone to and whether he should actually turn up. But thank God the doorbell rang, and standing there was a really serious-looking security guard. And then from behind him, in walked Hugh Jackman.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

How's it going?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Hi, I'm Sue. Sue! Love to meet you here. Hi, Sue.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

You guys flew in. We did. That's huge. Thank you, Sue. Are you moving this or you want to? Yeah, we got also Mike here, if that's all right. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this, guys. We are thrilled. If you could pop that in your pocket. When did you get in? Uh, we've been here for two days. Um, all right, Hugh, thank you so much for doing this. My pleasure. This is gonna help a lot of people, I think. So very thankful. And uh so can you tell me about your skin cancer story? How did you identify something was up and what happened next?

SPEAKER_02 9:24

And the rest is on film. The interview went without a hitch. He was amazing, probably the most incredibly easy to interview person you could possibly imagine. So it can happen. And I still think it was putting his picture on the office wall and asking the universe every day for months that actually got it over the line. Say what you will. But cycling back to conquering breast cancer, we gathered a lot of really incredible stories by this point, covering everything from prevention, high-risk women's stories, early breast cancer, screening and treatment, and metastatic disease. So what next? Apart from figuring out which stories would make the cut, which I've got to say, they all do because they're all just absolutely incredible women who shared their stories with us. And this is where the significant amount of time we'd been in early production really came into its own. We were able to follow up with women we'd interviewed some 10 years earlier and learn where they were now and what decisions they'd ultimately made. It has been, we're trying to figure it out before, I think 10 years since we launched this start on this film.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

So it's quite a longitudinal story now. So it'd be great to recap with you a bit.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yes, it's be it has been a while. Thank you so much for doing this. It's great to see you. I can't actually believe it's been 10 years. And lots of last years.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

You kind of look exactly the same. So um it feels like it wasn't anything like that amount of time. Um, but when we met ten years ago, I I think it was 10 years ago. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, you were just sort of at the start of your career. You knew you had a family history of breast cancer. You when you see the film, let me know if you think the longevity was a benefit to the storytelling. And in case I hadn't mentioned, Conquering Breast Cancer is out in Australian cinemas this month of June. And we've concluded post-production, and the film is classified. The DCP has been delivered to the cinemas, and just in the nick of time, because the premiere is actually tonight. And I'm so excited I can't even tell you. It's that kind of crazy, weird, nervous excitement where you actually can't tell if you're feeling anxious or excited or happy, and you just keep rambling. So that's what's going on here right now, I can tell you. So please do get along to the cinemas and see it. It will be out in cinemas very soon near you. And by the way, we did manage to get the film fully funded just in time to finish it all off. And I actually think it's easier to get funders on board towards the end of production because they know it's done. It's a done deal and it's gonna happen. So there's a lot of confidence from them. So that's a really big lesson. The fear of missing out for funders is actually an effective sales technique, believe it or not. There are so many stories I haven't shared with you in this behind-the-scenes peek into the world of documentary filmmaking, but I hope you do go see the film and that this podcast has helped you with your own journey into filmmaking, or perhaps you've learned something about breast cancer. And if there are any areas you'd like to know more about, please reach out and leave a message or DM me on Instagram at either the Documentary Filmmaker podcast or at Conquering Cancer Campaign. Because next episode, I'm gonna dig into publicity and promotion and how do you get an independent film out into the cinemas. Do you need a publicist? Do you need a distributor? I'm gonna dig into all of that and tell you a little bit about how we go about it. So until next time, happy filmmaking, and you've been listening to the Documentary Filmmaker podcast, and I'm your host, Sue Collins. And if you want to see Conquering Breast Cancer, head to www.conqueringbreastcancer.com.au for session times and locations. And also there's a resources page there where you can find lots more information. If anything about this discussion on breast cancer has raised concerns or issues for you, you can find credible sites by clicking through to the resource page on conqueringbreastcancer.com.au. And also just a reminder nothing I say in this podcast is intended as medical advice. So if you have any specific medical health issues, please go and speak to your trusted medical professional. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice. Alright, speak soon.