INDUSTRY FOCUS: DOCUMENTARY

TEN4 gathers some of the most prolific figures in UK documentary around a table to debate the future of their genre.

Documentary in the UK is on the up. That's according to Brian Woods, a multi-Bafta-winning producer-director and founder of True Vision, a production company specialising in 'films that matter.'

Brian isn't the only one with cause to be positive. Rebecca Frankel at Channel 4's broadband channel FourDocs is at the coal-face, dedicated to nurturing and promoting the country's up-and-coming documentary-makers. Then there's Alistair Fothergill, an undisputed heavyweight of natural history filmmaking whose recent phenomenon Planet Earth, for which he was series producer, has already sold to 150 countries and shifted half-a-million DVDs in the UK alone.

On the other side of the pitching process is Meredith Chambers, commissioning editor for documentaries at Channel 4 - responsible for the popular Cutting Edge strand, amongst other series. "Documentary is often seen as the poor relation of entertainment," he laments. "But at best, it can command huge audiences. And it can do something that other genres can't - stay with you profoundly, at least for a while, often for years, and sometimes forever."

If you're looking to break into the highly-selective world of documentary you'll need to take the initiative. Rebecca Frankel, having accumulated development and production experience herself, became part of the team running FourDocs - a dedicated online portal allowing anyone to submit, view and rate four-minute documentaries, and potentially progress onto on-air projects for Channel 4.

She's keen to stress the importance of personal motivation. "There are too many people that want to make documentaries, but not enough good people. If you're good your talent really does get recognised, and FourDocs is a great resource that's being underutilised."

Aside from peer-to-peer feedback, if you're good enough there's a direct route into making 3 Minute Wonders - the short weekday slot after Channel 4 News - and each month two filmmakers with the greatest potential meet with Sarah Mulvey, Meredith's fellow commissioning editor, responsible for a 30-minute new talent strand on the Channel.

"If you can prove to people that you can tell a story in a short space of time, on primetime television, you're stood in good stead for a bright future," asserts Rebecca. "But we need more names in the hat."

If Rebecca's job is to grow talent for Channel 4, then Meredith brings in the harvest. As an experienced commissioner with a production background, he holds the purse strings. "One of the main jobs of documentaries is not to tell stories, but to find new ways of telling stories," he proposes.

"Take Jamie's School Dinners. If someone had come to me saying they had an idea for a series about child nutrition and obesity, I wouldn't have been interested. But by finding a new method, a new format, the next explosive way of communicating a story, you've got yourself a hit."

"The hardest part of getting a commission is having that great idea," agrees Brian. "If you've got one it should sell itself. Loads of people have ideas but a lot of them are crap, or have been done to death. Really good ideas are very rare. The problem is - and I think commissioning editors would agree - most of us spend most of the time desperately trying to sell mediocre ideas."

It's a sad fact that there are hundreds of companies and individuals submitting countless proposals for a limited number of slots. On the bright side, at least there's a bigger canvas in the digital marketplace. "More4 and Channel 4 are committed to docs," says Brian with optimism. "All the main BBC channels are doing docs, especially BBC Two and BBC Four. Even BBC One is doing them."

He knows this only too well, with recent film Evicted - a BBC One commission, presenting homelessness through the eyes of a child – scooping another Bafta to add to his collection this year. "Serious documentary about social change and real issues will continue to be made because there’s demand for it. Huge demand. And as long as the BBC and Channel 4 have a public service remit, then it'll continue to be made."

The BBC aren't abandoning their public service remit any time soon, and despite impending cashflow issues, Meredith is adamant that Channel 4 will continue to serve as a major buyer of broadcast documentaries - so now's as good a time as any to get into the business.

"We're going to get less rich rather than richer," he concedes. "The world is changing, and with advertising revenues down we're going to have to be more choosy and careful with the money and long lunches. But the last thing you do is cut into the core things that make the Channel important."

Not that it's going too badly at the Beeb. Brian's won awards for both broadcasters, but Alistair's firmly flying the flag for the public sector. His track record is robust to say the least.

"I originated the Really Wild Show, which has just stopped, but it ran for twenty years," he begins. "I made a crazy film called Bird Brain of Britain, about intelligence tests for birds - you may laugh, but it got 16 million on Easter Monday. I developed live broadcasting for natural history. Then I did the first ever live broadcast from underwater. Then I did Blue Planet, then Planet Earth."

One of the best things about picking the brains of this select group of Griersonian gurus is their years of hands-on experience at the summit of their field, and it's fair to say that potential natural history filmmakers would do well to hang on Alistair’s every word.

"I'd highly recommend getting in at the BBC," is his frank advice. Alistair got his first break in children's television and worked upwards - and remains a passionate advocate of the medium for cutting your teeth and getting hands-on experience across a wide range of areas early on. Working in natural history, by contrast, is extremely highly-specialised.

"Most of our people have a degree or even a PhD in animal biology, and then get trained in filmmaking," he reveals. "If you're filming an elephant, you've got to know how it'll react to you." And if you want to have free rein, you're drinking at the wrong water hole - wildlife filmmaking at its best is extraordinarily expensive.

"For something like Planet Earth, actually only a third of the money comes from the BBC. Another third came from Discovery and the final amount from a Japanese broadcaster. This is standard for natural history filmmaking - budgets differ hugely from other documentary sub-genres.”

Much of this boils down to time. "You can shoot an average doc in ten days, but we spent two thousand days on Planet Earth. There's a massive amount of risk - I'm talking five-week shoots where you do not film a frame. That would kill most budgets, but the starting point for this project was to go big. Bigger than anyone ever had before."

But sackfuls of cash and HD stock by the skip-load aren't prerequisites for making an impact in documentary, as Meredith and Rebecca attest. "You can make a great documentary about something mundane or highly specific, or you can make a bad doc about some pressing social issue with a seven-figure budget," reflects Rebecca.

"Make the viewer think a different way about something that they thought they knew everything about," chips in Meredith. "The best films make you realise that you can't think the same way about an issue again. That's what I mean by sense of purpose - and you don't need money for that." Good documentary, they agree, is emotional and entertaining in equal measure.

So what's the future of the documentary genre, and is it an area worth leaping into? "Absolutely," says Meredith without a flicker of hesitation. It seems like an especially attractive proposition for those who think creatively about filmmaking, and are always developing new means of delivering information.

"If you asked people where they thought documentary would go five years ago, before Wife Swap and Faking It had been made, the answer would not have been formatted documentary. They came out of nowhere, and suddenly everyone was doing it. Supernanny found a way of addressing parenting and infant behaviour again and again in an interesting way. I hope there's a really exciting new method around the corner."

This is what commissioners want. So if you've got an idea for a fresh doc that will not only engage but entertain in a new or unique way, then you're on to a winner. But what do you do with that idea?

"If you're just starting out and haven't won a commission before, then I'm unlikely to be interested. I'm about taking risks, but I want high-quality films from people I know will do a good job," stresses Meredith. "If you've got a good idea, your best bet is to take it to an established production company and see what they think."

Brian agrees. "You can benefit from their experience and find new, improved ways of packaging your concept and selling it to a broadcaster. And you get the production expertise of seasoned professionals. That's the way to go." Or there's always the direct, grass-roots approach - submit a FourDoc straight away, and filter into Channel 4 from the ground up.

Zooming out for a moment to look at the wider picture, box office success for the likes of Spurlock and Moore has opened up a lucrative new market for cinematic documentary. Alistair for one is soon to cash in on the hotly-anticipated feature-length release of Planet Earth, simply titled The Earth - out in October 2007. Far from dying, the genre is evolving and strengthening all the time.

"I find it exciting when someone sits in front of me and comes up with an idea to do something in a new way, or just has a new idea," concludes Meredith. "It's as simple as that. And there's no reason why ideas can't come from the bottom - they don't have to be coming from RDF or Endemol. I'd rather they came from individual filmmakers, because then you might get more individual films."

LINKS

www.channel4.com/cuttingedge
www.channel4.com/fourdocs
www.truevisiontv.com
www.bbc.co.uk/sn

Text: Rich Payne