We’ve spent many hours writing, we’ve been through several rounds of editing, we’ve submitted all our proofs and approved all the images, and now here it is! I’m very happy to share the publication date for Breaking Into Factual TV: Your Career Companion.
Exclusively for blog readers, you can get 20% off the book with the code SMA33.
Happy reading!
I have some rather exciting news to share…this blog is about to become a fully fledged book! A month ago I signed a publishing contract with Routledge. Over the next year or so, I’ll be turning these blogs, which have charted my personal journey through television, into a guide to working in TV. It’ll tell readers how to get jobs in TV, what to look out for, as well as tips on how to be the best at each job.
I will be reaching out to my colleagues in television for contributions, especially to cover the TV genres or roles in which I have less experience. The result will be an essential handbook for anyone trying to break into factual television.
If you would like to contribute to the book or offer your thoughts on important points I should cover, please reach out and let me know! This book is meant to be a collaborative effort to make this career path more accessible for new entrants.
When I produced The Runaways, an improvised comedy troupe, they used to follow certain improv rules in their rehearsals, which helped them to structure their off-the-cuff comedy. One rule was called ‘yes, and’ – meaning ‘receive someone else’s suggestion and build on it’. Another rule was called ‘don’t drop the baby’, meaning ‘don’t derail the scene that everyone has carefully built just because you think you have a better idea’. These rules encouraged the team to bounce off each other and build a funny scene within a short space of time.
But every now and then, they would build a scene where it was actually funnier to break the rules. They could only do this because they had already built up such a good discipline by following the rules and they were so familiar with each other that they could break those rules and still bounce off each other. Breaking the rules, at this point, was not a failure, but an innovation.
The same applies to filmmaking. There are three basic rules, a formula, if you like:
If you consider all these factors, and apply creativity to the third, then you’ll have won at filmmaking. Completed it mate.
That’s what I thought until I saw this film.
It’s extremely rare for this much trust to be placed in pure creativity, but I think this film proves that when that happens, it yields the best results.
Here’s to breaking the rules.
There’s a growing demand for traditional TV producers in other industries too, particularly in corporate communications. TV producers have an advantage here over PR or advertising agencies, because we know how to tell a compelling, entertaining story that keeps people in their seats and leaves them wanting more.
The basic principle of making corporate communications is the same as traditional television – you establish what the story is, you identify the audience, and then you structure that story to make it attractive and appropriate to the audience. But corporate productions tend to be a lot shorter than broadcast – 5-10 minutes maximum, rather than 30 minute to 1 hour broadcasting slots. This is great for me, because I’m really keen to work on more short form content!
Another big difference is the communication challenge. In TV, we choose and pitch our own stories based on what we think will make the best TV programme. Of course in the corporate world, the stories are already chosen for us – and our challenge lies in the way we tell that story.
I’m really enjoying this new challenge. I’m learning new things every day, and am excited to see where this will take me next!
Every director has a different way of going about interviews. But in this blog, I’m going to share with you the method that’s worked best for me.
Once you’ve written the beat sheet or shooting script, you can use that as the guide for your interview questions. At this point I head into Excel and write down in a spreadsheet all the questions that I’ll need to ask my interviewees to cover all the story points in the script.
Then in the columns next to the questions, I put the initials of the interviewees. I’ll go down each interviewee column, and highlight the box for that question if I think they’ll give me a good answer for it. Different interviewees will have different specialisms – you can’t ask everyone everything, otherwise you’ll be there for hours, and you’ll have too much material at the end. Instead, work out which questions your interviewees will be well suited to and target your questions accordingly. However, do make sure that each question is covered at least twice, that way you’ll have multiple options in the edit, and it means if one contributor doesn’t answer your question the way you’d like, you’ve got another chance to get the material you want with a different contributor. Once you’ve done all that, your matrix should look something like this:
As I interview each contributor, I drag their column next to the questions and annotate it as I go through. If they give me a good answer for that question, I’ll put a little x in the highlighted box. If they don’t give me a good answer, I’ll leave it blank. If it’s an answer that’ll do but I think I can do better with another contributor, I’ll write OK. And if they give me an absolute zinger of an answer, I put WOW!
Having all the questions there in the chart adds a certain amount of flexibility to the interview – if you feel they might be suited to another section, you can skip down to that section. Equally if they’re doing really well, you can throw in bonus questions. And having notes from each contributor to hand means you can adjust your other interviews accordingly, making sure that you’ve got great material for each of your talking points. The chart format means you don’t have to write out all your questions every time either, and it’s very easy to personalise them for each contributor!
As I say, everyone has a different way of doing it. This method might not work for you, but it’s working well for me! Let me know if you have another way of doing interviews.
Having worked on several drama-docs during my career, I can attest that the balance between the two elements is a tricky one to get right. Netflix has recently made a sterling effort to nail it, with several epic drama-doc series. In this blog, I’m going to look at three of these series on Netflix right now: Roman Empire, Rise of Empires: Ottomans, and Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan.
Each one of these has taken a very different approach to the expert interviews, which intercut with the drama and partially narrate it. While most of the budget on these projects tends to be spent on the drama, it’s important to get these interviews right as well – it can be jarring if there’s a clear difference in production value. Some of these drama-docs tackled the expert interviews better than others…
First up, let’s look at Roman Empire. This was produced by Stephen David Entertainment (part of Banijay Group, a US based production conglomerate), and told the story of the Emperor Caligula. Although it could never measure up to the brilliance of the HBO/BBC series Rome, its cast of contributors was well put together, drove the story along well, and delivered some great takeaway soundbites. The shooting style was very traditional: a warm background with soft focus, plenty of space in the shot for the interviewees to talk into, bright coloured shirts contrasting against pale faces.
Next, it’s Rise of Empires: Ottomans. This production by Karga Seven Pictures (LA & Istanbul) delivered a compelling storyline with an engaging cast of characters and fantastic drama sequences with excellent special effects. But the interviews really let the show down. While their cast of contributors was diverse and interesting, it was a very small pool of experts, not all of whom delivered the story in a way that best fit the drama. This necessitated several awkward fast cuts between the three (!) different angles on which the interviews were shot. This was also one too many angles – the back of the head shot in particular caused me several raised eyebrows during what was otherwise a very enjoyable show.
Finally, let’s look at Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan. Cream Productions in Canada produced this bloody tale of military might that made modern Japan. They opted for a plain black background for their interviews and decided to make them all black-and-white – a style which very effectively complemented the heavily saturated colour palette of the drama, but which only worked because all of their interviewees were either white or Japanese. As well as an over-representation of the pale, male, stale demographic, they cast the contributor net extremely widely indeed, with several different voices narrating each event in the series. As a producer, this struck me as overkill, but when I turned to my partner on the sofa next to me and asked him if he was bothered by it, he said no. A lesson for us producers then – what matters is the content, not the contributors.
Overall, Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan had the best interview shooting style, in my opinion. But even that couldn’t make up for a weak drama storyline. It looks like Netflix has yet to nail the drama-doc completely!
For the last three weeks, my Friday nights have been spent watching the last thing I worked on before lockdown: Sound of TV with Neil Brand on BBC Four. It’s an exquisite journey through the familiar soundtrack to our lives, characterised by the music that underscores society’s primary form of entertainment. It was a privilege to work on, too: I was part of a team of exceptionally talented producers, all of us feeling lucky to be working with the nicest presenter in television. This production also marked my first brush with scriptwriting – I was tasked with researching Episode Two, and took the opportunity to write a rough outline of a script for it, which became less and less rough as the rushes came back and I was able to play with the beginnings of an edit script. After my contract ended, curatorship was handed over to a brilliant edit producer, Lucy, but when it came to the screening I was delighted to see that some of my script did make it through the rigorous editing process! It was a tricky episode to structure – jingles, channel idents and advertisements were all bundled into the episode together – but the spinal column of the episode followed the logical and chronological structure that I had planned out in my version of the script. I feel now that I can move forward with renewed confidence to the next step in my career.
Ah so this is where it gets trickier. Filming drama requires more people than filming documentary content. And during a pandemic, people = danger. But, you’ll be relieved to hear, there were a number of ways we mitigated that danger.
It started as early as the writing process. The director had to construct drama reconstruction scenes in which all the characters were a safe distance apart and never passed each other anything directly – without making it look odd!
Then when it came to the precautions on set, we made sure we provided plenty of hand sanitiser and disposable masks. In fact, the focus was so much on sanitiser that the other outdoor set staple, suncream, was overlooked, prompting a rush to the nearest Tesco as crew members started to grow pink! Any food on set also had to be in single use packaging, or individually wrapped. Many cast and crew members simply brought their own lunches, as it was easier and safer. This actually gave the team a certain amount of flexibility – we could eat lunch when it was convenient and keep working, rather than stopping at a specific time.
I worked on one indoor set and one outdoor set. From a safety perspective, an outdoor set was preferable as it meant there was plenty of airflow and we could gather in larger groups. However, it did mean that there weren’t any of the usual comforts of indoors – which I did miss, particularly when the weather was windy and drizzly!
We did our best to stay safe while carrying out our jobs to the best of our ability. In practical terms however, it was difficult not to end up closer than 2m to colleagues, or to touch things other people had touched without sanitising. While it’s great to have guidelines, it will be much better when the threat of the virus is gone.
The next instalment in my ‘making telly during a pandemic’ series! The last post was about how to conduct in-person interviews safely – but what about interviews that have to be conducted remotely? Well, the short answer is that Zoom comes to the rescue.
We used Zoom to direct the interviews, rather than record them – the recording quality on Zoom isn’t good enough for programmes other than the news. So a camera operator would set up the camera(s) and background and sound, then prop up a laptop at eyeline height for the interviewee. Then they would hop on a Zoom call with the director, and the interview would begin.
In principle, it works very well! In practice however, there are down sides to this system. First of all, the goodwill dynamic between interviewer and interviewee is lost – the small talk at the beginning, the shared jokes, the body language. The interview becomes much more clinical and much less of a conversation. Second of all, it’s difficult to direct the shot with the camera operator. One DoP had a piece of software which enabled him to share the shot directly from the camera onto Zoom, which was fantastic – so the director could both monitor the shot and direct the interviewee! However, not all DoPs are equipped with this software. With or without this functionality, the interviewee would certainly get Zoom fatigue after a while. It’s a real problem! It takes so much more effort to interact effectively with a computer screen than with a real person, it turns out.
Filming actuality remotely also becomes much more of a trust exercise. Usually, the director would brief the camera operator in advance, send a shot list and hope that the footage that came back was what they wanted! However, this worked fine for the most part – suggesting that perhaps there is a tendency to over-produce on some productions in normal times.
On the other hand, troubleshooting becomes much more protracted when it’s done remotely. Issues that could probably be sorted out very quickly, just by having extra bodies in the room, take longer to solve because the DoP is on their own, having to think about the filming aspect AND solve any problems that come up.
So while directing interviews via Zoom is certainly a viable option, my conclusion would be that directing interviews in person is always preferable!
As promised, here’s a blog post on how we conducted filmed interviews during lockdown. The first problem we had to overcome was finding a filming location. Usually, we film interviews in studios, pubs, libraries, or offices – anywhere that has a certain amount of depth, some interesting things to put in the background and is relatively quiet. However, all our usual filming locations were closed, with no confirmed reopening date. So we had to think outside the box.
Once we’d found a suitable location, the next challenge was to ensure that we had as few people in the room for the interview as possible. Only those who were needed to set up and operate the camera equipment were present, and directors would call in via videolink to conduct the interview.
As additional precautions, we all wore masks when we were less than 2m apart, had large bottles of hand sanitiser available at all times, and thoroughly disinfected the camera kit. The production also ensured that we didn’t have to take public transport to the location.
So far, so good. But these clinical precautions removed the all-important human element from interviews. The small talk beforehand, the informal explanations, the jokes, the body language – all these valuable subtle interactions were removed from the process, which strained the relationship between interviewee and interviewer. That plus the inevitable technical difficulties – dodgy connections, forgetting to mute, forgetting to unmute, sound problems – made the whole experience of conducting interviews via videolink much less productive.
trail to tv 