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TV REAL
think history is coming back. I can feel it from the conferences [we attend]. I’ve spoken with different broadcasters and they’re thinking of expanding a bit the place of history in their schedule. In Europe we still have some strong public broadcasters who want to invest in big history stories. When they see the successes of, say, the HBO series on the Roman Empire, they say there is an appetite from young audiences to go back to history, but we have to find narratives, find angles in the history to have good characters.” GOING BACK Built to last: New from Terranoa is the two-hour The Twilight of Civilizations, produced for ARTE.
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has shifted emphasis from history to current events and issues lately, but Christina Rogers, the organization’s head of sales, says there is still a market for history and NFB is doing these programs selectively. “The international public channels still like those kinds of documentaries,” she says. “There is no mandate to do X number of history docs a year.We’ll do them based on what comes our way that we think will be of interest to Canadians and to an international public as well.” Rogers acknowledges that some commercial channels are swinging away from documentaries, as HISTORY is doing in the U.S., in search of viewers. “The U.S. is the leader because viewing habits are changing so rapidly,” she says. “But it’s starting to happen elsewhere. Channels that are ratings-based and advertising-based need to find ways to get people to tune in at specific times, and often reality programs, the way they’re structured, say in a competition format, make you want to tune in at a certain time. The commercial channels are not doing so much of those traditional historical documentaries anymore, but we still do have a demand from the public channels all over the world.” THE FRENCH WAY
NFB had critical and commercial success with Paris 1919, a $2-million film on the peace-treaty negotiations that followed World War I. “It was a little unorthodox when it came out in 2009 because there was so much dramatic reenactment,” Rogers says. “You see that a lot more lately.” Rogers sees audiences as more demanding in that they want to be entertained. “The buyers are seeing that and they’re looking for things that are both entertaining and informative,” she says. Docs that are “character-driven,” she says, are particularly important to a lot of NFB’s buyers. At the Paris-based Terranoa, Isabelle Graziadey, the head of international sales and acquisitions, says the company isn’t selling as many history documentaries as it did ten years ago. Nevertheless, she is trying to ramp up the company’s slate of history docs. “I’m trying to recover a bit what was lost in our catalogue in these kinds of shows.The interest I’m seeing in history is in the big re-creations, which is a big hurdle because of the cost,” she says. “But I 460
World Screen
Graziadey is currently selling The Twilight of Civilizations, two hours produced for ARTE that tell the stories of the collapse of the pyramid-building era in Egypt and of the Khmer civilization in Cambodia. “I felt it is answering something that hasn’t been on the market for a long time,” she says. “It’s serious science. And you’ve got animation to [illustrate] the world the people were living in and a lot of CGI to show the size of these cities and the engineering behind the pyramids.They make it entertaining and visually striking.You have to make it entertaining; you have to wrap the science around a really nice visual style to present big stories.You have to make it look up to date and not like something we did five years ago.” Frédéric Wilner and Saléha Gherdane directed The Twilight of Civilizations. “Every producer today has to know how to make it cheap and look expensive,” Graziadey says. “Invest the money in CGI and the things you want the audience to be captivated by. Don’t spend too much time shooting. Be very sharp on the editing and have experts hands on so you can save a lot of time and money.” Another French production company, Gedeon Programmes in Paris, is betting on big, blue-chip history documentaries. Robert Salvestrin, the head of international presales and co-productions at Gedeon, says there is demand for programs with a more entertaining sensibility. “People are trying to avoid old-fashioned styles. Reenactments are more scripted now to be more entertaining. That’s what they are asking for now in France—blue-chip, fully scripted history drama. They are using screenwriters borrowed from fiction with [advice] from expert historians to add a new perspective.” That was the approach Gedeon took with Paris, The Great Saga, a co-production with Planète+ and Dassault Systèmes. “We have been working with two authors, one from fiction,” Salvestrin says. “It’s fully scripted for prime time. People are still looking for big history shows for prime time.” A 52-minute version will be available for international sales. The audiences that look for historical docs, while they may want production values enriching the storytelling, definitely want accurate information.That is the fine line producers and broadcasters of the genre must walk—making these programs factually correct and fun to watch. 10/12