Factual Festival: Doc commissioners demand riskier TV ideas Four of the UK’s leading documentary commissioning editors today called on producers to pitch them riskier ideas that ‘break the rules’ and are ‘more maverick’. Speaking at the Televisual Factual Festival, senior documentary commissioners from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky repeatedly called for shows that were different and surprised viewers. Celia Taylor, head of factual at Sky Celia Taylor, head of factual at Sky, said that simply hiring big name presenters to front factual shows wasn’t enough for Sky viewers who paid for their service and “needed to feel good about paying for it”. Taylor stressed that she wasn’t simply after famous faces “wandering around somewhere.” She added that she was after shows that had an unexpected twist on a subject, had heart and a confident sense of irreverence. “Funny, funny factual is massively successful for us,” she added, citing Karl Pilkington’s The Moaning of Life or Greggs: More than Meets the Pie. She said the Moaning of Life was the most successful factual series on Sky, saying the reason that it resonated was that it was both funny and honest. “Karl can go to Pyramids and say, ‘That is a bit of a dump.’ And that is ok.” Taylor said that producers had recently come to Sky with two major talents attached to projects, but that Sky had turned down the ‘predictable’ ideas. “We won’t just go with the obvious to chase ratings. It’s more about loving our content…Just hiring big names isn’t necessarily going to do it. “ Taylor added that Sky1 ‘really needed returnable series at 8pm’ but wanted producers to come with innovative ideas that weren’t just about traditional pre-watershed subjects like cooking. She also highlighted the opportunities for producers on Sky Atlantic, Sky Living and Sky Arts. Sky Atlantic, for example, has just launched its Documentary Films initiative, backing 12 features docs a year by acclaimed film-makers like Errol Morris. She said not all the films needed to be made by well-known directors – but that if you are a first time film-maker you need “to come with the right production company and distributors.” ITV controller of factual Jo Clinton-Davis Meanwhile, ITV controller of factual Jo Clinton-Davis suggested that the factual team at ITV had changed its outlook since the arrival earlier this year of new director of factual Richard Klein. Echoing Sky’s Taylor, Clinton-Davis said that “the bulk of what we do is not presenter led”, citing ITV’s commissioning of access docs about prisons as well as docs like The Zoo, the upcoming Births, Marriages and Deaths and the Up series. She said ITV had to use presenters in a “sparing, smart and symbiotic way” – and that presenters worked best on the channel when they could genuinely enhance a subject, like Paul O’Grady: For the Love of Dogs and Women Behind Bars with Trevor Macdonald. She said that Macdonald complimented the subject by “mediating our emotions” in Women Behind Bars. Clinton-Davis said that ITV was “open to landmark subjects”, pointing out that Wall to Wall is currently producing a major series on adoption. And she said that ITV is “talking about factual drama and what it might feel like” on the channel. “We want stories that reflect things that are happening in Britain today, and that tell us about way we live now.” Clinton-Davis said she liked to receive pitches for programmes where the idea could be explained in a one-line email. “What is really good is to have a clear title and proposition… Always try and look at its proposition and define its USP, so it becomes the core of it…The best documentary is then complex in the unfolding and telling.” When she received an idea for a show, Clinton-Davis said she asked herself the following questions before deciding whether to commission or not: “Why now, why does it matter, what is it significant, why will people watch, what will make it punch through – and those are the questions you should ask yourself.” She said ideas should be able to appeal to a very broad demographic on ITV, where the tone of most shows is “onside and inclusive” with “humanity and an all encompassing nature.” Channel 4 deputy head of factual Nick Mirsky Channel 4 deputy head of factual Nick Mirsky stressed that the broadcaster is looking for raw, edgy docs that are embued with a sense of drama and that often played with the form of film-making. “What we very often look for is taking documentary as close to drama as you can,” said Mirsky, citing Educating Yorkshire. “It sort of feels as if the production team there have found the natural drama that exists in real life.” He said The Murder Trial and 999: What’s Your Emergency displayed similar elements of drama in their production. He added that “rawness and edginess is quite attractive to us. If you are watching Bedlam, it feels like you are really there and inside the lives of the patients at Maudlsey hospital in quite a vital, raw way.” Mirsky added that “form matters quite a lot.” He said the Channel 4 factual team thought a lot about new ways of making documentaries that feel fresh and different. He cited Dogging Tales and the animal masks that contributors used to hide their identity as an example of a show that sought new ways of telling a story. Mirsky said he was open to heavily formatted ideas, whether more fixed rig shows or brand new formats. But, whatever the format, it has “got to be an instrument for getting us closer to a truth about life.” “I think that what people want from us is a bit more risk,” said Mirsky, adding he was interested in ideas that were “dangerous or experimental - we are really here to listen to brave ideas, risky ideas, things that people might think is off the wall.” Emma Willis, head of documentaries, BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 Emma Willis, head of documentary commissioning for BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4 also said that she was after “things that people feel are different.” She said BBC4, under new channel editor Cassian Harrison, wanted “access ideas that give you a flavour of what is going on in contemporary Britain” that could be “tough or enjoyable.” In a sign that BBC4 is looking to refresh itself under Harrison, she said that although channel has enjoyed success with archive and history shows, BBC4 wasn’t just interested “in the near past of the very far away past.” On BBC4, she said, film-makers can explore subjects in a more detailed way than BBC2, and can meander and go off on tangents. BBC2, she stressed, was broader in its outlook and was performing strongly – echoing BBC director of TV Danny Cohen who called BBC2 the “stand out factual channel in the UK” at the Televisual Factual Festival today, adding that it needed to find the next Great British Bake Off now that the series was moving to BBC1. Seeking to explain the difference between the two channels, Cohen said: “If BBC2 is looking at the universe, BBC4 is looking at the atom.” Willis also said there was a lot of opportunity for documentary makers on BBC1. She said the channel had had success with Nick and Margaret: We All Pay Your Benefits and Wheelers, Dealers and Del Boys. “But I know that what we have got to do is build a real documentary story on that channel.”
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 16:46:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015