Hamish Mykura
Head of Documentaries and More4
Editorial Administrator: Jen Botting
Welcome to documentaries. We are looking for a wide range of different programmes; single films, series and events, and still have slots to fill for 2009 as well as many more for 2010 and beyond. This site gives information on what individual commissioning editors are looking for. Pitch ideas online, and watch our output!
First Cut
These are half-hour films by first time directors of stand-alone documentaries. First Cut has been a stand out success in the past two years, with a great range of authored films that tend to be imaginative and accessible, with great characters at their heart. Films have included the harrowing experiences of the family of the serial killer Levi Belfield, a musical about the journey from London to Edinburgh along the A1, and the tale of people obsessed by extreme home security.
Cutting Edge
This is Britain's foremost documentary strand, comprising individual films that reflect contemporary Britain and the modern world. These are usually hour-long films with compelling narratives and first-rate film-making. The Ambulance: Eight Minutes to Disaster, Killer in a Small Town, My Street and Would You Save A Stranger? are examples of strong recent films.
Documentary Series
This year, three of our major documentary series together make up our 'State of the Nation' project looking Britain's public service provision in 2009. The Hospital is about the burden placed on the NHS by young people, The Force looks at a small British police force dealing with crime that increasingly crosses borders, races and cultures. Benefit Busters is about profound changes that result from reforms to the welfare system. Our documentary series are marked by authorship and a distinct point of view, and often by anger and polemical argument too. We are also seeking popular documentary series with presenters and lively, provocative content.
Formats
The formatted series Secret Millionaire is an enormous success and we are very actively looking for more series that impact on the real world in a moving and entertaining way.
Events and innovation
The Family was an extraordinary experiment in 2008 that wired a house with cameras to observe an ordinary British family 24 hours a day. Now we are trying to build on that innovative success with a whole range of new and equally ambitious ideas and events.
International Documentaries
More4's increasingly highly-regarded True Stories strand showcases the very best international documentaries and co-produces many of them. We're looking for more than 40 films a year and this is the place where films of the calibre of Thriller in Manila, Afghan Star and Chosen find a home.
Arts Programmes
Arts programmes are commissioned by Jan Younghusband within the documentaries department and the outstanding feature-film Hunger and the forthcoming Big Art Project indicate the level of ambition of our output.
COMMISSIONING IN THE DOCUMENTARIES DEPARTMENT
Each of the commissioners in the Docs Department has overall responsibility for organising and overseeing a particular part of our output – however, the boundaries between these areas are flexible, and commissioners aren’t restricted to ideas in their own part of the schedule – so please don’t feel constrained about which programme you can bring to whom!
Simon Dickson
Deputy Head of Documentaries
Editorial Assistant: Jasper Hone
The output of Channel 4’s Docs Department has long been recognised throughout the industry as standing for originality and risk-taking in factual television.
In these challenging times, these core values are more important than ever, which is why I am excited to have been given strategic responsibility for originating and managing the Docs Department’s next generation of 9pm series.
For 2010, I’m mainly looking to commission programmes that fall into the following two categories: Formatted Documentary Series, and Popular “Blue-Chip” Documentary Series. I also want to say a word or two about what I consider to be the greatest area of opportunity for producers seeking a commission from Channel 4 Documentaries: Presenter-led programming.
FORMATTED DOCUMENTARY SERIES
To me, Formatted Documentary means anything which happens because of our intervention.
Smart Formatted Doc Series are urgently required for 2010 – ideas which promise “returnability” as a result of them being capable of being broken down into “closed episodes”, as well as those with a traditional serial narrative arc.
The jewel in our crown, in this category, is Secret Millionaire. A key part of my job is to be on hand to help you realise your ambition to come up with its successor.
We commissioned Meet The Natives, the 2008 Broadcast and RTS Award-winning three-parter which brought a tribe of South Pacific islanders to the UK, to study our savage and peculiar way of life.
And now we are busily piloting a variety of moving and inspiring high-concept formats, which we hope will capture the imagination of our audience.
We can never have enough good ideas coming through in this category. What’s next for this genre? I want to be pitched ideas that I find frightening, or make me laugh out loud. The key here is identifying the right territory, and tone – and aiming high.
POPULAR BLUE-CHIP DOCUMENTARY SERIES
With the recent launch of our year-long State Of The Nation season, we have begun to reclaim the territory of the long-form social institution ob-doc, and put it right at the heart of our output.
State Of The Nation kicked off with The Family. One British family… 21 cameras… 24 hours a day. The Family was a simple but audacious idea, delivered with conviction and aplomb. It achieved consistently high ratings across its eight-week run, and provoked much debate, not just about parenting, but about new ways of making television.
In 2009 we will follow it up with a 10pm Family-style offshoot series, featuring an Asian family. And 2010 will see us broadcasting a new style of institutional access doc series, that features The Family’s key technological innovation (a multi-camera ob-doc “rig”) at its heart.
Other State Of The Nation Doc Series will include The Force, a strikingly pertinent and realistic ob-doc about the Police, The Hospital, a gripping NHS series with a fresh twist, and Benefit Busters, which anatomises our benefits system at a time of huge change.
Just like we were with The Trust, we have found ourselves “in the right place at the right time” with these series. This is due to the foresight and the imagination of the producers who brought them to us.
What social or personal territory do you want to inhabit, and document, over a period of at least a year? Whose eyes do you want to observe it through? What institution, or enmeshed network of institutions, do you want to see inside, and why? What tone of voice will your films have? Will they be funny? Will the central characters arouse ire and indignation in the viewer? Or will they see themselves reflected on-screen?
PRESENTER-LED PROGRAMMING
If there’s one area I feel we don’t get nearly enough ideas or pitches in, it’s the area of the presenter-led documentary. This applies equally to series and singles. Other broadcasters have been quick to realise that an engaging presenter (often an established one) can be creatively deployed within traditional documentary territory, with compelling results. Stephen Fry can bring an audience to HIV and AIDS… Terry Pratchett can help unlock the mysteries of Alzheimer’s for a mainstream audience… and Andrew Marr simply has to jump in a helicopter to encourage us to look at the world around us in a different way.
I’m determined that 2010 be the year in which C4 Docs re-invents the presenter-fronted Doc Series, and I would urge you to think hard about who we can enlist to help us achieve this.
Mark Raphael
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries
Editorial Assistant: Jasper Hone
What is my vision for the direction of the strand?
I want Cutting Edge to become synonymous with the best films made by the country’s finest and most promising film makers. I’m keen for the strand to make a bigger dent into the public’s consciousness.
I want to make ‘Risk Taking’ films that shed light on subjects we thought we already knew. ‘Provocative’ films that stir controversy, and ‘Popular’ films that thrill and excite large audiences.
But I always want the films to be modern, paced to engage, funny instead of po-faced, finding humour and excitement in the most surprising places. It’s vital that we give a window into the important issues in contemporary British life to the widest possible audience.
Popular: We’ve seen in the last 2008 run that for the right films there is a 3million plus audience, getting the films that appeal to this potential audience is the plan. I don’t believe that we have to sacrifice creativity or integrity to do so. It’s an intelligent approach to a tabloid subject. Subject areas that the audience care about, dealt with in provocative or surprising way, hit home hardest.
Risk Taking: I want to continue to commission bold ideas. These can be found in ‘concept’ films, where the narrative is built around the idea.Love, Life, Death in a Day, My Street, 8 Minutes to Disaster, and going further back, Wedding Days, The Bed, and Boys Alone all of these films have a central premise which carry the films narrative. They are innovative ideas that border on an experiment, but are completely original ways to look at subject matter. Cutting Edge has to continue this tradition; it is one of the best ways to ensure the strand creatively moves forward.
Provocative: I wonder if the strand does enough to engender a public debate? Commissioning some films that get people talking/arguing is something that each run should aim for. Films such as .My Foetus, Diana Witnesses in the Tunnel, The 7 Sins of England, placed in the middle of a 15 week run would inject some real noise and coverage, maintaining the momentum of the series.
I’d also want to keep tackling subject areas that felt new, and unknown. I think and awful lot of films retrace old steps. Sometimes this works well. Particularly when the film moves the subject matter on, showing new facets to something we thought we already knew. But often familiarity does breed contempt.
A film that promises to be different, unfamiliar and surprising, whilst still being an enticing proposition for the viewer is what will keep the strand ahead of its competitors. Its really is important to take risks in this strand, indeed it’s a bigger gamble not to commission ambitious ideas.
Sarah Mulvey
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries
Assistant: Jen Botting
10pm Singles and Series
My key priority is our 10pm output, which is now a vital part of what we do in prime-time, with tariffs that can equal those at 9pm. It’s an exciting space, not least because anything is possible here. I am looking to you to bring me your biggest and boldest ideas: please do not just think “documentary,” think cross-genre. If it’s not on the wish-list below, we still want it!
On Screen Talent
As a department, we have a real need for faces, and there is nowhere we want on-screen authorship more than at 10pm.
Whether they are relative new-comers, re-launched into the mainstream, or household names ripe for reinvention, over the next year, we want more of our output at 10pm to be driven by on-screen talent who are capable of delivering real content, popular journalism and a provocative point of view.
It shouldn’t just be about immersing people in worlds that we know rate, it should be about using talent to reinvent a space. Who might we take where, if we are looking for a seismic, entertaining and iconoclastic clash of values or point of view? Which well-known faces have secret passions, guilty pleasures or a real zest for an adventure that they might pursue for us on-screen?
Stripped Events
I am looking for ideas that are big and interesting enough to take over a full week of programming at 10pm. Going Cold Turkey was a week-long event at 11pm which took a subject that has always been approached observationally - addicts coming off heroin - and dealt with it in a strikingly different way, by watching them do it live. Autopsy: Live was another example of something that felt both genuinely controversial, and purposeful. Are there other spaces, usually the preserve of observational documentary, which we can re-approach as live format or as factual theatre?
Or could the event week take the form of an attention-grabbing, show-not-tell constructed series? What might Shattered, our erstwhile format that deprived participants of sleep to unlock the secrets of what a good night’s shut-eye does for us, look like for 2009? What other areas of human behaviour could we examine through a “guinea pig” or constructed series that would tell us something compelling, and perhaps naughty, about the human condition?
Noisy “event” or audacious stunt one-offs welcome too. What’s the next .A Very British UFO Hoax
Big series
I would like to commission high volume series, both constructed and observational at 10pm, in 6-10 parts. Please note that we have only hour-long slots.
Dangerous Jobs for Girls was a well-made high-octane format that did well for us in this slot. There is no reason why we can’t do more formats at 10pm – how can we push the boundaries? What might .Chained or. Lost look like in 2009? I am looking for simple one-line propositions that have a genuine jeopardy or mischief, real danger and a large pinch of “you-can’t-do-that”.
I am also looking for the next iteration of the docu-soap. Steer clear of spaces colonized by late 90’s docu-soaps. My sense is that series are less likely to spring from a single precinct, unless this is a glossy or real access space, and more likely to be driven by big and engaging characters. What would .The Osbornes look like in 2009 at 10pm? I’m looking for a series that’s modern, popular, funny, compulsive, glossy and cult viewing.
Must-see Singles
There is still some room for noisy singles at 10pm, and there have been a number of truly unforgettable successes in the last year.
I am always on the look out for eye-popping films that take you into genuinely fresh and gently funny territory, like My Fake Baby.
I’m also keen to do more fast turn-around docs that are reactive to the tabloid or news agenda. In the last few weeks, we have had success with Snowstorm: Britain’s Big Freeze and The Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash. But we are also always on the look out for the next Surviving Gazza or Stalking Pete Docherty. I thought that Channel 5’s The Cheryl Cole Factor was a smart fast commission that shows, like What Really Happened, that you don’t require access to the celebrity to tell us something new and interesting.
If it’s in the zeitgeist or the headlines, and you have a good angle, access or the right face to take us there, bring it to me fast.
9pm Series
I commission across the breadth of our output in this area, from a forthcoming new constructed doc series that borrows from the philanthropy of Secret Millionaire and propels it into a perhaps even more personal space; to my forthcoming blue-chip series The Hunt for Britain's Sex Traffickers, which tells the inside story of the police's biggest ever crackdown on human trafficking within the UK sex trade.
Secret Millionaire, which I now look after, has been enormously successful at getting huge audiences to difficult social issues, and speaks to our burgeoning need for warm-hearted, non-conflict-driven constructed documentary. Nice could be the new nasty, and I would like you to bring me simple but surprising feel-good format thoughts for those bleak times ahead.
The recent success of Big Chef Takes on Little Chef again shows how a simple construct led by an on-screen talent can really work. Who might our faces be? And what worlds might they turn their knowledge or talent to?
In terms of blue-chip series, I’m looking for ideas and spaces that are messy in their moral vagaries, predictive rather than predictable of the public or social agenda, and have fractious human dilemmas, rather than current affairs premises, at their heart. Where are the innovations or fault-lines in social policy that might allow us to revisit landmark areas like education in a fresh way? Where is the individual most let down by the inflexible one-size-fits-all-ness of the system? Please bring me series that have something to say: a distinct, even polemical, point of view on social issues – whether that comes from behind the camera, or from adding an on-screen author.
I also look after both Born to Be Different, our longitudinal series about growing up with a disability; and My New Home, which documents the lives of three immigrant children; and would love your further thoughts on fresh propositions that offer us a child's eye view of the world.
Cutting Edge
I continue to commission into our Cutting Edge strand.
My commissions speak to my taste for simple but provocative propositions that challenge our assumptions, tell us something compelling about contemporary Britain, and most importantly take us somewhere surprising.
Sleeping with My Sister was a television first, following two adult-sibling couples locked in present-tense Romeo-and-Juliet taboo relationships; Bobski the Builder was a witty and revealing piece of social anthropology that took a look at immigration through the prism of the building trade; while my forthcoming concept film Wall Street takes a snapshot of the recession, meeting people who live and work on some of Britain’s twenty-three Wall Streets.
I would love you to bring me tabloid stories that can be told with broadsheet values and a twist, as with Sleeping with My Sister; single narrative character-films that take us into little-seen, or high octane, worlds, as with A Boy Called Alex or A Very British Storm Junkie; and fantastic access to intriguing comic spaces, or complex celebrities, as with Sunday Sport: Sex, Lies and Aliens or Molly Dineen’s portrait of Geri Halliwell, Geri.
Aysha Rafaele
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries Editorial
Assistant: Avi Grewal
I commission First Cut, single films for Cutting Edge and am also hoping to commission some 9pm and 10pm series this year.
FIRST CUT is a half hour documentary strand for new directing talent. There are 20 films in total in the year. They play pre-watershed at 7.35pm on Friday nights on Channel 4.
FIRST CUT is a director led strand. It is useful to see it as the younger, more mischievous sibling of our flagship primetime documentary strand CUTTING EDGE. Directors making FIRST CUTS should have the ambition and storytelling skills to graduate eventually to that coveted strand.
To that end I am looking for directors with ‘fire in their belly’. It is my desire to discover and nurture the great documentary talent of the future. FIRST CUT is the place for them to make passionate, engaging, energetic, insightful films.
I am looking for a range of ideas and styles – from the quirky/eccentric (Break in and Make my Day /Squirrel Wars: Red v Grey) to the news related access driven (My Dad the Serial Killer/Soldier Girls) to the wildly madly ambitious (.A1: The Road Musical) to the conceptual/authored (.In Search of Mr Average/The Hunt for Britain’s Tightest Person) to the simple brilliant idea led (Being Maxine Carr) to the social observational documentary at its most deeply poetic and urgent (Shopping the Family / Watch me Disappear)
I am keen for the strand to feel like a true reflection of contemporary Britain – both in casting and in the variety of subject matter. The most powerful films tell us something about who we are, here and now, at this moment in history and I would like to commission films that have some sense of urgency in answering this question – who are we? Whether that’s to do with family dynamics, community (or lack of it), class, sexual politics, the food we eat, the obsessions we have, the clothes we wear, the objects we covet etc.
Directors need to be either enthusiastic hungry experienced APs who ideally have worked alongside some of the best director talent or be so full of ideas and energy and visual flair that I cannot help but give them a film. Whether you are an AP or a film school graduate I am most excited by people who have a keen understanding of television grammar – who watch documentaries with passion and a critical eye – and who can talk to me with authority about films they have loved and how they would want to make theirs. I want to give films to directors who love and understand the medium of telly, who ‘get’ the rigours and demands it places on directors and understand the possibilities inherent in the medium and who want to push at those possibilities – but never with a contempt for their audience. The best directors understand this – and that should be the aspiration.
For Cutting Edge proposals and Series ideas I am currently working with a small number of companies but over the year will be open to developing relationships with others.
TBA
Commissioning Editor Arts and Performance
Assistant Avi Grewal
This area covers the core arts, classical music, dance, jazz, the performing arts and visual arts. We commission single documentaries, series, performance films and live events.
When submitting ideas to us it is important to remember that our particular remit is to innovate. We like to make interesting work if possible which pushes the boundaries of arts television with an emphasis of original ideas, and formats which communicate the arts in an entertaining way.
Our main slots at the moment at Sundays at 7pm and weekdays at 9pm. We also like to support new talent and diversity, and in everything we do, to try to think beyond the usual space of arts television to create films and series which inspire and in many cases make a difference beyond the screen.
We do not mark anniversaries just for the sake of it. But being in the moment and feeling current is important. Partnerships with arts organisations are also important to us, and we like to create TV ideas which reach out in the world of the arts and not just on the TV screen.
We continue to be keen on good journalism and original thinking. We are always on the lookout for new presenters and exciting new opinion and intelligence about the arts. Many of our bolder ideas need a great deal of discussion and development. So it is always worth presenting first thoughts for big ideas even when not totally formed.
3 Minute Wonder
We are not commissioning 3MW at present. This situation will be reviewed in late 2010. Please check this website for updates.
Head of Documentaries and More4
Editorial Administrator: Jen Botting
Welcome to documentaries. We are looking for a wide range of different programmes; single films, series and events, and still have slots to fill for 2009 as well as many more for 2010 and beyond. This site gives information on what individual commissioning editors are looking for. Pitch ideas online, and watch our output!
First Cut
These are half-hour films by first time directors of stand-alone documentaries. First Cut has been a stand out success in the past two years, with a great range of authored films that tend to be imaginative and accessible, with great characters at their heart. Films have included the harrowing experiences of the family of the serial killer Levi Belfield, a musical about the journey from London to Edinburgh along the A1, and the tale of people obsessed by extreme home security.
Cutting Edge
This is Britain's foremost documentary strand, comprising individual films that reflect contemporary Britain and the modern world. These are usually hour-long films with compelling narratives and first-rate film-making. The Ambulance: Eight Minutes to Disaster, Killer in a Small Town, My Street and Would You Save A Stranger? are examples of strong recent films.
Documentary Series
This year, three of our major documentary series together make up our 'State of the Nation' project looking Britain's public service provision in 2009. The Hospital is about the burden placed on the NHS by young people, The Force looks at a small British police force dealing with crime that increasingly crosses borders, races and cultures. Benefit Busters is about profound changes that result from reforms to the welfare system. Our documentary series are marked by authorship and a distinct point of view, and often by anger and polemical argument too. We are also seeking popular documentary series with presenters and lively, provocative content.
Formats
The formatted series Secret Millionaire is an enormous success and we are very actively looking for more series that impact on the real world in a moving and entertaining way.
Events and innovation
The Family was an extraordinary experiment in 2008 that wired a house with cameras to observe an ordinary British family 24 hours a day. Now we are trying to build on that innovative success with a whole range of new and equally ambitious ideas and events.
International Documentaries
More4's increasingly highly-regarded True Stories strand showcases the very best international documentaries and co-produces many of them. We're looking for more than 40 films a year and this is the place where films of the calibre of Thriller in Manila, Afghan Star and Chosen find a home.
Arts Programmes
Arts programmes are commissioned by Jan Younghusband within the documentaries department and the outstanding feature-film Hunger and the forthcoming Big Art Project indicate the level of ambition of our output.
COMMISSIONING IN THE DOCUMENTARIES DEPARTMENT
Each of the commissioners in the Docs Department has overall responsibility for organising and overseeing a particular part of our output – however, the boundaries between these areas are flexible, and commissioners aren’t restricted to ideas in their own part of the schedule – so please don’t feel constrained about which programme you can bring to whom!
Simon Dickson
Deputy Head of Documentaries
Editorial Assistant: Jasper Hone
The output of Channel 4’s Docs Department has long been recognised throughout the industry as standing for originality and risk-taking in factual television.
In these challenging times, these core values are more important than ever, which is why I am excited to have been given strategic responsibility for originating and managing the Docs Department’s next generation of 9pm series.
For 2010, I’m mainly looking to commission programmes that fall into the following two categories: Formatted Documentary Series, and Popular “Blue-Chip” Documentary Series. I also want to say a word or two about what I consider to be the greatest area of opportunity for producers seeking a commission from Channel 4 Documentaries: Presenter-led programming.
FORMATTED DOCUMENTARY SERIES
To me, Formatted Documentary means anything which happens because of our intervention.
Smart Formatted Doc Series are urgently required for 2010 – ideas which promise “returnability” as a result of them being capable of being broken down into “closed episodes”, as well as those with a traditional serial narrative arc.
The jewel in our crown, in this category, is Secret Millionaire. A key part of my job is to be on hand to help you realise your ambition to come up with its successor.
We commissioned Meet The Natives, the 2008 Broadcast and RTS Award-winning three-parter which brought a tribe of South Pacific islanders to the UK, to study our savage and peculiar way of life.
And now we are busily piloting a variety of moving and inspiring high-concept formats, which we hope will capture the imagination of our audience.
We can never have enough good ideas coming through in this category. What’s next for this genre? I want to be pitched ideas that I find frightening, or make me laugh out loud. The key here is identifying the right territory, and tone – and aiming high.
POPULAR BLUE-CHIP DOCUMENTARY SERIES
With the recent launch of our year-long State Of The Nation season, we have begun to reclaim the territory of the long-form social institution ob-doc, and put it right at the heart of our output.
State Of The Nation kicked off with The Family. One British family… 21 cameras… 24 hours a day. The Family was a simple but audacious idea, delivered with conviction and aplomb. It achieved consistently high ratings across its eight-week run, and provoked much debate, not just about parenting, but about new ways of making television.
In 2009 we will follow it up with a 10pm Family-style offshoot series, featuring an Asian family. And 2010 will see us broadcasting a new style of institutional access doc series, that features The Family’s key technological innovation (a multi-camera ob-doc “rig”) at its heart.
Other State Of The Nation Doc Series will include The Force, a strikingly pertinent and realistic ob-doc about the Police, The Hospital, a gripping NHS series with a fresh twist, and Benefit Busters, which anatomises our benefits system at a time of huge change.
Just like we were with The Trust, we have found ourselves “in the right place at the right time” with these series. This is due to the foresight and the imagination of the producers who brought them to us.
What social or personal territory do you want to inhabit, and document, over a period of at least a year? Whose eyes do you want to observe it through? What institution, or enmeshed network of institutions, do you want to see inside, and why? What tone of voice will your films have? Will they be funny? Will the central characters arouse ire and indignation in the viewer? Or will they see themselves reflected on-screen?
PRESENTER-LED PROGRAMMING
If there’s one area I feel we don’t get nearly enough ideas or pitches in, it’s the area of the presenter-led documentary. This applies equally to series and singles. Other broadcasters have been quick to realise that an engaging presenter (often an established one) can be creatively deployed within traditional documentary territory, with compelling results. Stephen Fry can bring an audience to HIV and AIDS… Terry Pratchett can help unlock the mysteries of Alzheimer’s for a mainstream audience… and Andrew Marr simply has to jump in a helicopter to encourage us to look at the world around us in a different way.
I’m determined that 2010 be the year in which C4 Docs re-invents the presenter-fronted Doc Series, and I would urge you to think hard about who we can enlist to help us achieve this.
Mark Raphael
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries
Editorial Assistant: Jasper Hone
What is my vision for the direction of the strand?
I want Cutting Edge to become synonymous with the best films made by the country’s finest and most promising film makers. I’m keen for the strand to make a bigger dent into the public’s consciousness.
I want to make ‘Risk Taking’ films that shed light on subjects we thought we already knew. ‘Provocative’ films that stir controversy, and ‘Popular’ films that thrill and excite large audiences.
But I always want the films to be modern, paced to engage, funny instead of po-faced, finding humour and excitement in the most surprising places. It’s vital that we give a window into the important issues in contemporary British life to the widest possible audience.
Popular: We’ve seen in the last 2008 run that for the right films there is a 3million plus audience, getting the films that appeal to this potential audience is the plan. I don’t believe that we have to sacrifice creativity or integrity to do so. It’s an intelligent approach to a tabloid subject. Subject areas that the audience care about, dealt with in provocative or surprising way, hit home hardest.
Risk Taking: I want to continue to commission bold ideas. These can be found in ‘concept’ films, where the narrative is built around the idea.Love, Life, Death in a Day, My Street, 8 Minutes to Disaster, and going further back, Wedding Days, The Bed, and Boys Alone all of these films have a central premise which carry the films narrative. They are innovative ideas that border on an experiment, but are completely original ways to look at subject matter. Cutting Edge has to continue this tradition; it is one of the best ways to ensure the strand creatively moves forward.
Provocative: I wonder if the strand does enough to engender a public debate? Commissioning some films that get people talking/arguing is something that each run should aim for. Films such as .My Foetus, Diana Witnesses in the Tunnel, The 7 Sins of England, placed in the middle of a 15 week run would inject some real noise and coverage, maintaining the momentum of the series.
I’d also want to keep tackling subject areas that felt new, and unknown. I think and awful lot of films retrace old steps. Sometimes this works well. Particularly when the film moves the subject matter on, showing new facets to something we thought we already knew. But often familiarity does breed contempt.
A film that promises to be different, unfamiliar and surprising, whilst still being an enticing proposition for the viewer is what will keep the strand ahead of its competitors. Its really is important to take risks in this strand, indeed it’s a bigger gamble not to commission ambitious ideas.
Sarah Mulvey
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries
Assistant: Jen Botting
10pm Singles and Series
My key priority is our 10pm output, which is now a vital part of what we do in prime-time, with tariffs that can equal those at 9pm. It’s an exciting space, not least because anything is possible here. I am looking to you to bring me your biggest and boldest ideas: please do not just think “documentary,” think cross-genre. If it’s not on the wish-list below, we still want it!
On Screen Talent
As a department, we have a real need for faces, and there is nowhere we want on-screen authorship more than at 10pm.
Whether they are relative new-comers, re-launched into the mainstream, or household names ripe for reinvention, over the next year, we want more of our output at 10pm to be driven by on-screen talent who are capable of delivering real content, popular journalism and a provocative point of view.
It shouldn’t just be about immersing people in worlds that we know rate, it should be about using talent to reinvent a space. Who might we take where, if we are looking for a seismic, entertaining and iconoclastic clash of values or point of view? Which well-known faces have secret passions, guilty pleasures or a real zest for an adventure that they might pursue for us on-screen?
Stripped Events
I am looking for ideas that are big and interesting enough to take over a full week of programming at 10pm. Going Cold Turkey was a week-long event at 11pm which took a subject that has always been approached observationally - addicts coming off heroin - and dealt with it in a strikingly different way, by watching them do it live. Autopsy: Live was another example of something that felt both genuinely controversial, and purposeful. Are there other spaces, usually the preserve of observational documentary, which we can re-approach as live format or as factual theatre?
Or could the event week take the form of an attention-grabbing, show-not-tell constructed series? What might Shattered, our erstwhile format that deprived participants of sleep to unlock the secrets of what a good night’s shut-eye does for us, look like for 2009? What other areas of human behaviour could we examine through a “guinea pig” or constructed series that would tell us something compelling, and perhaps naughty, about the human condition?
Noisy “event” or audacious stunt one-offs welcome too. What’s the next .A Very British UFO Hoax
Big series
I would like to commission high volume series, both constructed and observational at 10pm, in 6-10 parts. Please note that we have only hour-long slots.
Dangerous Jobs for Girls was a well-made high-octane format that did well for us in this slot. There is no reason why we can’t do more formats at 10pm – how can we push the boundaries? What might .Chained or. Lost look like in 2009? I am looking for simple one-line propositions that have a genuine jeopardy or mischief, real danger and a large pinch of “you-can’t-do-that”.
I am also looking for the next iteration of the docu-soap. Steer clear of spaces colonized by late 90’s docu-soaps. My sense is that series are less likely to spring from a single precinct, unless this is a glossy or real access space, and more likely to be driven by big and engaging characters. What would .The Osbornes look like in 2009 at 10pm? I’m looking for a series that’s modern, popular, funny, compulsive, glossy and cult viewing.
Must-see Singles
There is still some room for noisy singles at 10pm, and there have been a number of truly unforgettable successes in the last year.
I am always on the look out for eye-popping films that take you into genuinely fresh and gently funny territory, like My Fake Baby.
I’m also keen to do more fast turn-around docs that are reactive to the tabloid or news agenda. In the last few weeks, we have had success with Snowstorm: Britain’s Big Freeze and The Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash. But we are also always on the look out for the next Surviving Gazza or Stalking Pete Docherty. I thought that Channel 5’s The Cheryl Cole Factor was a smart fast commission that shows, like What Really Happened, that you don’t require access to the celebrity to tell us something new and interesting.
If it’s in the zeitgeist or the headlines, and you have a good angle, access or the right face to take us there, bring it to me fast.
9pm Series
I commission across the breadth of our output in this area, from a forthcoming new constructed doc series that borrows from the philanthropy of Secret Millionaire and propels it into a perhaps even more personal space; to my forthcoming blue-chip series The Hunt for Britain's Sex Traffickers, which tells the inside story of the police's biggest ever crackdown on human trafficking within the UK sex trade.
Secret Millionaire, which I now look after, has been enormously successful at getting huge audiences to difficult social issues, and speaks to our burgeoning need for warm-hearted, non-conflict-driven constructed documentary. Nice could be the new nasty, and I would like you to bring me simple but surprising feel-good format thoughts for those bleak times ahead.
The recent success of Big Chef Takes on Little Chef again shows how a simple construct led by an on-screen talent can really work. Who might our faces be? And what worlds might they turn their knowledge or talent to?
In terms of blue-chip series, I’m looking for ideas and spaces that are messy in their moral vagaries, predictive rather than predictable of the public or social agenda, and have fractious human dilemmas, rather than current affairs premises, at their heart. Where are the innovations or fault-lines in social policy that might allow us to revisit landmark areas like education in a fresh way? Where is the individual most let down by the inflexible one-size-fits-all-ness of the system? Please bring me series that have something to say: a distinct, even polemical, point of view on social issues – whether that comes from behind the camera, or from adding an on-screen author.
I also look after both Born to Be Different, our longitudinal series about growing up with a disability; and My New Home, which documents the lives of three immigrant children; and would love your further thoughts on fresh propositions that offer us a child's eye view of the world.
Cutting Edge
I continue to commission into our Cutting Edge strand.
My commissions speak to my taste for simple but provocative propositions that challenge our assumptions, tell us something compelling about contemporary Britain, and most importantly take us somewhere surprising.
Sleeping with My Sister was a television first, following two adult-sibling couples locked in present-tense Romeo-and-Juliet taboo relationships; Bobski the Builder was a witty and revealing piece of social anthropology that took a look at immigration through the prism of the building trade; while my forthcoming concept film Wall Street takes a snapshot of the recession, meeting people who live and work on some of Britain’s twenty-three Wall Streets.
I would love you to bring me tabloid stories that can be told with broadsheet values and a twist, as with Sleeping with My Sister; single narrative character-films that take us into little-seen, or high octane, worlds, as with A Boy Called Alex or A Very British Storm Junkie; and fantastic access to intriguing comic spaces, or complex celebrities, as with Sunday Sport: Sex, Lies and Aliens or Molly Dineen’s portrait of Geri Halliwell, Geri.
Aysha Rafaele
Commissioning Editor, Documentaries Editorial
Assistant: Avi Grewal
I commission First Cut, single films for Cutting Edge and am also hoping to commission some 9pm and 10pm series this year.
FIRST CUT is a half hour documentary strand for new directing talent. There are 20 films in total in the year. They play pre-watershed at 7.35pm on Friday nights on Channel 4.
FIRST CUT is a director led strand. It is useful to see it as the younger, more mischievous sibling of our flagship primetime documentary strand CUTTING EDGE. Directors making FIRST CUTS should have the ambition and storytelling skills to graduate eventually to that coveted strand.
To that end I am looking for directors with ‘fire in their belly’. It is my desire to discover and nurture the great documentary talent of the future. FIRST CUT is the place for them to make passionate, engaging, energetic, insightful films.
I am looking for a range of ideas and styles – from the quirky/eccentric (Break in and Make my Day /Squirrel Wars: Red v Grey) to the news related access driven (My Dad the Serial Killer/Soldier Girls) to the wildly madly ambitious (.A1: The Road Musical) to the conceptual/authored (.In Search of Mr Average/The Hunt for Britain’s Tightest Person) to the simple brilliant idea led (Being Maxine Carr) to the social observational documentary at its most deeply poetic and urgent (Shopping the Family / Watch me Disappear)
I am keen for the strand to feel like a true reflection of contemporary Britain – both in casting and in the variety of subject matter. The most powerful films tell us something about who we are, here and now, at this moment in history and I would like to commission films that have some sense of urgency in answering this question – who are we? Whether that’s to do with family dynamics, community (or lack of it), class, sexual politics, the food we eat, the obsessions we have, the clothes we wear, the objects we covet etc.
Directors need to be either enthusiastic hungry experienced APs who ideally have worked alongside some of the best director talent or be so full of ideas and energy and visual flair that I cannot help but give them a film. Whether you are an AP or a film school graduate I am most excited by people who have a keen understanding of television grammar – who watch documentaries with passion and a critical eye – and who can talk to me with authority about films they have loved and how they would want to make theirs. I want to give films to directors who love and understand the medium of telly, who ‘get’ the rigours and demands it places on directors and understand the possibilities inherent in the medium and who want to push at those possibilities – but never with a contempt for their audience. The best directors understand this – and that should be the aspiration.
For Cutting Edge proposals and Series ideas I am currently working with a small number of companies but over the year will be open to developing relationships with others.
TBA
Commissioning Editor Arts and Performance
Assistant Avi Grewal
This area covers the core arts, classical music, dance, jazz, the performing arts and visual arts. We commission single documentaries, series, performance films and live events.
When submitting ideas to us it is important to remember that our particular remit is to innovate. We like to make interesting work if possible which pushes the boundaries of arts television with an emphasis of original ideas, and formats which communicate the arts in an entertaining way.
Our main slots at the moment at Sundays at 7pm and weekdays at 9pm. We also like to support new talent and diversity, and in everything we do, to try to think beyond the usual space of arts television to create films and series which inspire and in many cases make a difference beyond the screen.
We do not mark anniversaries just for the sake of it. But being in the moment and feeling current is important. Partnerships with arts organisations are also important to us, and we like to create TV ideas which reach out in the world of the arts and not just on the TV screen.
We continue to be keen on good journalism and original thinking. We are always on the lookout for new presenters and exciting new opinion and intelligence about the arts. Many of our bolder ideas need a great deal of discussion and development. So it is always worth presenting first thoughts for big ideas even when not totally formed.
3 Minute Wonder
We are not commissioning 3MW at present. This situation will be reviewed in late 2010. Please check this website for updates.
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