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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Sports programming

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Ultimate Goal

Back of the net Sports documentaries have proved to be big business for stre streamers, with linear channels now in hot pursuit of their the own. But does the genre’s proliferation dilute qua quality and editorial standards?

B

By Clive Whittingham

W

ith the global popularity of sports and a growing audience enthusiasm for documentaries, it’s little surprise the content industry has put those two hands together, nor that it’s the streamers leading the way.

US tech giant Amazon has been a particularly prolific commissioner for its global Prime Video streaming service.

Premier League football team Arsenal were recently confirmed as the latest focus of its observational documentary series All Or Nothing, following North London rivals Spurs, fellow Premier League side Man City, Italian giants Juventus and Germany’s Borussia Dortmund into that strand, which began with the NFL in the US and is also set to expand into the NHL with a series on the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Amazon has also taken to acquiring similar series, including two seasons of Eleven Sports’ football doc Take Us Home: Leeds United. Tottenham Hotspur and Korea forward Son Heung-Min and F1 driver Fabio Alonso are among the individual sports stars to have had docs commissioned in their name.

It’s by no means just an Amazon phenomenon, though. Former England football captain David Beckham has

teamed up with rival streamer Disney+ for mentoring series Save Our Squad.

The former Manchester United man has also launched his own production company, Studio 99, which is behind forthcoming BBC2 docuseries Fever Pitch! The Rise of the Premier League, which is being distributed by All3Media International.

This trend isn’t necessarily new, particularly in the US, but it is particularly prevalent across Europe right now. Some of the reasons for this are obvious. There is huge audience demand for both sports and documentaries, particularly on streamers and pay TV services.

Sports often conjure some of the most compelling stories and narratives, which can drive great films and series.

And, put frankly, your docuseries doesn’t even need to be that good if it features a club with millions of global supporters like Juventus or Arsenal – that enormous captive audience is going to tune in anyway, as are curious fans of other clubs. It’s an easy subscription win for a Netflix or Amazon.

As Danny Goldman, MD of UKbased consultancy Goldbridge Media, says: “From a TV business perspective, a crucial factor in the rise

David Beckham in Fever Pitch! The Rise of the Premier League

of the sports doc is the ability of sport to act as a vehicle for global storytelling, which has become a key component of the modern TV landscape. Social media and digital connectivity have turned provincial stars into global icons. That increasingly dovetails with the international programming strategies of the streaming services.

Documentaries are a key battleground for viewer/subscriber retention.

“Alongside dedicated documentary channels and branded documentary programming strands, media companies like Sky, ESPN and Showtime have invested billions into live sports rights over the years for subscriber-acquisition purposes.

But as the market for live rights has become increasingly inflated, X

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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Sports programm programming mm min ing

Noah Media’s Finding Jack Charlton (top) and Amazon’s All Or Nothing: Manchester City (inset)

coverage of live sport has become more fragmented, and a single broadcaster can no longer dominate coverage in any major market in the way they could in the past.

“As a result, those broadcasters are using docs to continue to give their audience a reason to return to the service in between live sports coverage, a phenomenon that was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic that put so much live sport on hold. It was no surprise that ESPN pushed so hard for the accelerated release of The Last Dance in the US, for example.”

Get one of these sports docs right and they’ll still be talking about you in 30 years’ time. Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job, produced by Ken McGill, written by Patrick Collins, and made by Chrysalis for Channel 4’s Cutting Edge strand in 1994, is arguably one of the genre’s all-time high points. Granted fly-on-the-wall access to what the English Football Association hoped/presumed would be a successful qualifying campaign for the th World Cup in the US, the filmmakers actually captured the lmma unravelling of the team, and its unrave manager, manag set to a backdrop of rampant hooliganism and a hostile, unforgiving hoolig British press. Taylor’s “do I not like that” catchphrase is one of several from that catchp film that th have become part of everyday football footba lexicon, even in 2021.

John Joh McKenna is CEO and co-

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

founder of London-based indie Noah Media, which was behind Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager for Netflix, Finding Jack Charlton for BBC2 and Out of Their Skin for ITV, among others. These are sports docs on the face of it but they deal with other themes too, such as illness, dementia and racism.

“The fundamental is a good, dramatic, sporting arc leading to a big moment of jeopardy, exhilaration or disappointment. But we also always look for a human story off the pitch that a wider audience than just a sport audience can relate to. That’s vital.

Finding Jack Charlton had a couple of stories alongside his Ireland reign: him and his brother Bobby; and him and his family living with his dementia. We want more than just what happened in the sporting arena.

“On top of that, can you weave in narratives and keep people hooked in more than one way? Is there jeopardy?

Are you bringing something new? What is your film breaking or revealing?

What’s new for the audience here?

It has to have all of that for it to be a good sports doc, and if it’s missing any of that then I would argue it’s possibly not at the right level.”

Different narratives are also key to Adam Hopkins. He’s executive producing BBC2’s Fever Pitch! The Rise of the Premier League for Story Films, which is working with Studio 99 on the football-focused project, and says it was more than just the goals and the talking heads that drew the company to the idea.

“On the doc side, Story Films has a reputation for trying to produce a definitive version of a documentary

There are more and more docs around sport and, as long as there are really good ones lan landing regularly, the genre will stay relevant and kee keep growing.

“

John McKenna Joh Noah Media Noa

on any particular subject, taking the temperature of Britain,” he says.

“We were looking at what we could do from 20 or 30 years ago that could be a window on the world now where the seeds of change, globalisation and commercialisation were sown.

The Premier League is now the most watched league in the world, but it started in 1992 as an unproven breakaway and a risky venture on the back of football not being very popular, well invested in, well marketed or well looked after during the 1980s. It’s now obvious that sport and business go hand in hand, but that wasn’t always the case.”

“Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job probably set access docs in this field back about 25 years because every time you tried to get into a football club, they’d fear you were going to make them look stupid,” says Danny Fenton, CEO at Zig Zag Productions, which has been behind The Next Jamie Vardy (Sky), Ultimate Goal, (BT Sport/Insight TV) and The Garms Dealer (Channel 4/Insight TV).

“It made clubs and individuals very risk-averse. I know the English Football Association and [national team manager] Gareth Southgate had numerous approaches about doing a fly-on-the-wall with England during Euro 2020, which would have been fantastic viewing and would have ended up being a really positive thing, but the risk you take is you film and the team are knocked out of the competition early.”

Those fears have, perhaps, been tempered by the large fees the likes of Amazon have paid clubs for access, at a time when crowds have been locked out for more than a year by the pandemic, putting huge dents in income, gate receipts and corporate revenue. But does that make for a good documentary?

“The best football access docs, for me, are things like Sunderland ‘Til I Die [Netflix] and The Four Year Plan [BBC2] because they have X

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AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Sports programming

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Zig Zag’s The Garms Dealer

Some of the obs docs can feel quite sanitised. The nature of the deals means there are substantial fees paid to the club for the access, and they then put stringent restrictions on filming. You can feel the hand of the producer quite close to the ones around the big clubs.

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Danny Fenton Zig Zag Productions

The Last Dance focuses on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls

unfettered access and they start out being one thing and then, through longitude of filming, they evolve into something else,” Fenton says.

“Sunderland ‘Til I Die was originally planned as a doc about a triumphant return to the Premier League. Instead, it turned into a demise into League One and, in fact, that was a brilliant story.

My view is that some of the obs docs can feel quite sanitised. The nature of the deals means there are substantial fees paid to the club for the access, and they then put stringent restrictions on that filming. You can feel the hand of the producer quite close to the ones around the big clubs – Spurs and Man City. Juventus, in particular, felt like a club corporate video.

“It is important to have a broadcaster and a recognised external producer to give you a dispassionate viewpoint.

Where it’s murky or muddy is the Leeds or the Crystal Palace ones where the club themselves fund a documentary with no broadcaster on board at the beginning and then they sell it to a broadcaster at the end. You don’t have that dispassionate editorial point of view and it turns into what used to be the end-of-season club video.”

Veteran documentary producer Corey Russell was hired by Canada’s Cream Productions to lead a Cream Films documentary arm last year.

He’s since produced Nike’s Big Bet, about the Alberto Salazar scandal in athletics, and is also behind the Toronto Maple Leafs instalment of All Or Nothing, which he’s keen to play with a straight bat.

“You have to be responsible with the access you get,” Russell says. “There are things that happen in private and, when you have this kind of access, you can’t take it for granted and just broadcast everything that happens.

There has to be a level of trust. There is full editorial control, but there is stuff

you know, through discussions with the team and the league, where you just can’t break that trust.”

But is simply getting access to a professional sports club enough to hang a documentary on? Are we going to get to a point where every Premier League club has had its own version?

And once that happens, can we look forward to All Or Nothing: Grimsby Town in the not too distant future?

Director Mat Hodgson, co-founder of London indie Ad Hoc Films, got his big break with The Four Year Plan, a feature obs doc that started off as the story of three of the world’s richest men (Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal) buying one of Britain’s most destitute football clubs (Queens Park Rangers) to lead it back to the big time during a global financial crisis, only for the whole thing to blow up in their faces in an at times farcical comedy. Hodgson has since gone on to produce boxing docs Night of the Fight: Hatton’s Last Stand and I Am Durán, and another football doc The United Way, which was picked up

by Sky Documentaries.

“You should never come at a documentary from a purpose of, ‘This thing exists so let’s capture it,’” Hodgson says. “What framework exists around it, or ecosystem within it? That’s what you’re looking for.

Impossible Job was more than a flyon-the-wall doc about England; it said things about our press, expectation, pressure. The Four Year Plan was about ownership of football clubs, community treasures and hubs being taken in different directions by rich people. It wasn’t just, ‘Let’s land the cameras at QPR for four years and see what happens’ – there’s a reason we chose that story and felt there was something emerging there.

“Now I’m confused over where it’s going. Access has been so trumpeted as everything, but it’s not enough on its own. Access as a silver bullet doesn’t necessarily get what we need in the long run.”

Fenton picks up: “I got contacted by a French club, not one of the top ones, offering all access, assuming everybody would want to pay them because everybody heard about the money Man City and Spurs got. We are reaching fatigue point – how many football obs docs are people going to want to see?

“One thing we take for granted in the UK is the power of the Premier League internationally. The Leeds doc sells really well, I suspect the Palace one will as well, and there are 180 territories taking the BBC2 Premier League doc from All3Media. For Premier League clubs, there is maybe more potential.”

So where could this genre go next?

More and more obs docs with more and more clubs and individuals? And is buyer hunger for this content a double-edged sword for producers – additional places to sell to, but extra competition and clutter to cut through?

“There are more and more docs around sport and, as long as there are really good ones landing regularly, the genre will stay relevant and keep growing,” McKenna says. “The danger is, if there’s a proliferation of sports docs that are not as good, people may become tired of them. There are many potential buyers, from the BBC to Apple TV+ and Discovery+, so the genre is hopefully here to stay, and we have to make sure our contribution to it is at the top end.”

Hodgson believes there’s some mileage to go in the multi-part obs docs at clubs, regardless of whether that’s a good thing. “The Four Year Plan, if it were made now, wouldn’t be a film.

We’d have been told to spin it into a series,” he says. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I could have made it as eight parts and it would still have been entertaining, it would have made us more money, but I’m not sure. The Four Year Plan was a one-off filmed over a long time; now they’re filmed over a shorter period of time and it’s longer content. That says a lot.”

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SVOD PROFILE: Shelter

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Inspired Architecture: Permanent Camping

Building Shelter SVoD start-up Shelter is offering viewers passionate about architecture and home design an alternative to ‘reality-style storytelling.’ By Gün Akyuz

L It’s more artistic, creative, original, thoughtful content than the reality-style stuff. The other thing is that you never get to see into these homes enough. They’re all about these homes and yet you never really get to explore them.

“

Dustin Clare Shelter

aunched in July 2020, Shelter is available content distributors and partners such as established internationally and has been steadily ramping up publications Dwell and Green.

The duo says Shelter’s partnerships with international its slate of original and acquired programming across series, feature docs and shorts. The service debuted distributors are also helping it to expose countries and with 200 hours and now offers over 300, and is currently cultures to new ideas.

“We’re bringing in content from Canada or creating preparing and rolling out many more.

For Shelter’s founders and creators, married couple and commissioning original content in South America or Dustin and Camille Clare, the service is the outcome of bringing in shows we haven’t seen from France and the their joint passion for all things architecture and design, UK, and vice versa,” says Dustin.

Shelter’s goal is to offer a wide reinforced by their first-hand range of viewpoints, he explains: experience of home renovation.

“You want to hear all these varied Drawing on their background – views because they’re all valid. the duo met on the set of Australian Moreover, you’ve got architects scripted Foxtel series Satisfaction who really want to connect to and went on to produce, act in a bigger population, and let and distribute New Zealandthem understand that what they based feature film Sunday – the do is also an artistic, creative couple spotted “opportunity in the endeavour. We’re helping to streaming space. Both Camille and I maybe bridge some of those gaps love architecture, design and home,” to what’s accessible.”

Dustin says.

Affectionately dubbed In particular, they spotted a gap ‘Netflix for design nerds’ by for a curated service offering quality the Australian press, Shelter is programming around architecture currently available via a range of and design. According to Dustin, subscription options, including its many existing shows within that recently introduced annual rate of space are “very disparate and A$79.99 (US$59.90). varied in quality” and dominated by While no subscriber numbers “repetitive, reality-style storytelling.” Camille and Dustin Clare have been released, a major “We’ve committed to original programming from the get-go and we want to be ramping development this October will see Shelter move from its up and making more of that original exclusive content,” launch technology platform partner Shift72 to Vimeo says Dustin, noting that Shelter is keen to work with OTT. This will allow it to offer TV apps across Apple TV, Amazon, Fire TV, Roku and Google TV, boosting its growth filmmakers from all over the world, as well as Australia.

While headquartered in Northern Rivers, New South prospects.

Shelter’s first original series, six-parter Inspired Wales, Shelter’s international footprint is attracting subscribers from several other continents as well as Architecture, created with Jim Lounsbury and featuring locally, says Dustin. “Mexico and South American uniquely Australian dwellings, has already reached a countries have surprised us. South America, Spain and the second season and spawned a spin-off.

One of its episodes, Inspired Architecture: Permanent Spanish are really passionate about architecture,” he says.

Shelter was already well into the planning stages before Camping, was also screened at a number of international the pandemic, with deals being lined up with international film festivals. A second 30-minute spin-off, Permanent

SVOD PROFILE: Shelter

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Camping 2, has been released and season two of Inspired Architecture (6x15’) is due to launch in October.

A benchmark for Shelter’s output has been shows like Channel 4’s Grand Designs, says Dustin. The pair’s focus is on sourcing this level of quality content along with its growing slate of Shelter-created original content.

“It’s more artistic, creative, original, thoughtful content than the reality-style stuff,” says Dustin. “The other thing is that you never get to see into these homes enough.

They’re all about these homes and yet you never really get to explore them. That always annoyed Camille and I.” Adding her voice to the frustration about the overemphasis on the “personal drama” aspect of reality TV in design-related shows, Camille says there’s also a need for more practical information from architecture and design magazines. “How does the kitchen connect through to the living space? How is this house functional for a family?

How do they actually live here? We wanted more and we knew we could deliver it.”

Shelter’s originals expanded to include series like Architecture on the Edge (6x15’), shot in Chile and launched in April, and its upcoming series Tiny Spaces (4x15’). Meanwhile, at the pre-production stage is original Sanctuary: Byron Bay (6x15’) while Follies (4x15’), its first UK-based production, started shooting at the beginning of August and is due for delivery in the first quarter of 2022.

The series looks at the UK’s architectural follies, offering a humorous viewpoint and “a fresh take on some of the eccentric architecture that can be found in the UK,” says Camille.

Produced and directed by Andrew Spicer for Shelter, through his prodco Fairholme Films, Follies also involves Rory Fraser, who wrote a book on the topic, informed by his masters in philosophy and architectural history from the University of Cambridge.

Shelter’s shortform originals in particular are cutting through, Dustin observes. “We’re discovering with our audience that for a lot of our originals we’re really punching at that 15-minute mark, because people can really engage with that medium-length content where you get a strong narrative out of it. It’s not repetitive and you can commit to 15 minutes,” he explains. “With an hour you’ve really got to sit down at the end of the night and digest it, but people are loving that 15-minute time.”

“The fact that it’s ad-free as well can’t be underestimated,” adds Camille. “People just don’t want ads in their lives these days, if they can help it. It’s worth

people paying a small fee every month to not have ads.”

Shelter’s acquisitions also aspire to variety and includes titles like All3Media’s The Art of Architecture S2, Restoration AU from pubcaster ABC and Room to Improve from Ireland’s RTÉ.

Examples of its latest purchases, available from September, include Iconicity, a US feature-length (1x128’) road-trip doc from 2020 profiling the Southern California desert and its fringe communities of artists and radicals. It has also licensed 10part French culinary series Taste Hunters S2 (10x52’) and French lifestyle magazine show Design Touch (15x26’).

But older library titles, such as Aussie pubcaster ABC’s Dream Homes, are also generating traction among subscribers.

“We’ve picked up some great shows, like Homes by the Sea and Homes by the Med with Charlie Luxton – he’s a great presenter and has done a few seasons of them,” notes Dustin. “They might be a bit older now, but people still love them because they’re high-quality and well made, and audiences still want to go back and rewatch [Charlie].

There’s a lot of value in creating something that’s quality.

It just goes to show that it will last.”

With the rise of streaming services opening up second, third and fourth windows for such content, “it’s great for rightholders and good for the economy,” he argues.

The duo’s advice to external content suppliers and filmmakers is that Shelter does not look for “strictly conventional” projects, whether in run time or format.

Meanwhile, Shelter is yet to venture down the coproduction route when it comes to its originals. “The great thing about building a subscriber base is that you have more control over the content you want to make, how you fund it, when you fund it. It just gives you a bit more freedom,” Dustin explains.

Camille adds: “What it really comes down to is freedom and being able to work with our directors in that way, to just say, ‘We love your idea, go for it, the sky’s the limit.’ We don’t want to have to constrain them and we don’t have to, so it’s the ideal way of working.”

From top: Acquired US road-trip doc Iconicity, Shelter original Architecture on the Edge and French culinary series Taste Hunters

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CONTENT C CO ONT N ENT ECONOMICS: Natural history

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

New Forest: The Crown’s Hunting Ground

Keep it natural Is natural history perfect for a pandemic, with small crews in remote locations, or a logistical cre nightmare riddled with travel complications? nig

By Clive Whittingham

S

o many of the stereotypes of natural history filmmaking would seem to make it TV’s ideal genre amid the pandemic. Small crews in the world’s most remote locations, far away from centres of infection. Perfect.

However, before Covid-19 hit, the genre was already grappling with the contradiction of spreading the climate emergency message while flying people and kit around in jets. Add to that the headaches that come with quarantines and travel restrictions and it could turn into a costly nightmare.

“It’s both,” says Tom Hugh-Jones, creative director for natural history at UK- and US-based genre specialist Plimsoll Productions, the firm behind Night on Earth (Netflix) and Hostile Planet (Nat Geo). “Once you’re actually out on location, it’s probably the dream genre. However, I can’t think of another genre that has so many different trips to different countries to plan, which has proved a logistical nightmare.

“Quarantine is a huge factor. You’re often looking at it both when you arrive there and when you return to the UK. The costs are endless, really, but we have found a few workarounds. Using more local crews has been a real asset.”

Hugh-Jones does add, however, that the genre’s suitability for family co-viewing, at a time when many

have been stuck in their houses longing for a connection to the natural world, makes it a worthwhile endeavour.

Carlyn Staudt, global general manager of Canada-based Blue Ant Media’s Love Nature, has also been grappling with the pros and cons of natural history’s economics.

Her network has teamed with US pubcaster PBS on the Sean Bean-narrated Osprey: Sea Raptor, a blue-chip 1x60’ doc that wrapped production recently and is being taken out to buyers at Mipcom by Blue Ant International.

“If you look across the slate, we’ve been trying to diversify it into singlelocation shoots where you embed a small crew for a long period of time, because that’s where you can capitalise on the situation and isolate from the craziness of the pandemic,” Staudt says. “If you’re doing a multilocation shoot across the globe and flying crews in and out, that’s where it gets complicated. Making sure your programming slate is diverse enough and has enough different types of production has really helped us weather that storm.”

Sarah Cunliffe, founder and CEO of UK indie Big Wave (New Forest: The Crown’s Hunting Ground), says the small size of some crews has made it a “brilliant genre for Covid filming,” but

Big Wave’s The Great Hammerhead Stakeout involved setting up a lab in an underwater tent

adds that the company has struggled with travel restrictions that come, go and change at short notice.

“There is no doubt getting people around the world is a real challenge.

We managed to get three international films made last year but it was hairy.

Just as you thought you had access into Canada, it closed down, and that happened a lot. The costs of keeping everybody Covid-safe and quarantining are substantial as well.

That could be the new way of the world. Remember you’re filming outside, though, so that’s another thing in its favour.”

Stephen Dunleavy, founder and CEO of Bristol-based Humble Bee Films, which delivered the ambitious Life in Colour for the BBC, Australia’s Nine Network and Netflix, adds: “When Covid first hit, I thought natural history would be really badly affected because of the travel. As time went on, we put some projects on ice and X

We’ve been trying to diversify our slate into single-location shoots where you embed a small crew for a long period of time, because that’s where you can capitalise on the situation n and isolate from m the craziness off the pandemic.

“

Carlyn Staudt dt Love Nature

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CONTENT ECONOMICS: Natural history

Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Plimsoll Productions made Hostile Planet for National Geographic

From top: Keith Scholey, Samuel Kissous, Sarah Cunliffe and Stephen Dunleavy

In some ways, Covid has fast-tracked ngs that were always things ming down the line, coming ether it’s the need whether to work with a greater eater diversity of people from ound the around rld or reduce world ourr carbon footprint. otprint.

“

Tom m Hugh-Jones Plimsoll soll Productions

worked out how to get through. We do often film in quite remote places and if you can get good crew in those areas filming remotely you are away from big populated areas and could carry on.

“The dynamics of how Covid is spreading in different countries are changing all the time. As you begin to focus on a country in Africa that might open up and be successful, it can suddenly evaporate because of an outbreak.”

Samuel Kissous, president of Parisbased indie Pernel Media, had a planned project for France 5, due to be filmed in the Brazilian Pantanal, fall through and be replaced with a domestic project on giant hamsters in Alsace. Who’s Afraid of the European Hamster? solved the travel issue, brought a quirky story filmed in a true crime style to screen, and will be distributed by Beyond. Production companies have been finding workaround solutions like this for 18 months, and it will be interesting to see how many become permanent fixtures in a genre that’s often at the forefront of innovation and new ne tech.

As Kissous says: “I don’t think of that’s the [Covid] as going away, th problem. For a time, we thought it would be a pandemic, pandemic then it would stop. It doesn’t doesn seem that it’s stopping. We have to learn to live and work wo with it somehow. Probably until a very high percenta percentage of the population is vaccinated, it vacc will come back ag again and again. We’re going to have to live with potential variants and moments in the year ye when the virus comes back back.”

Local crew crews come up time and tim

again when discussing natural history shoots in 2021 and beyond, bringing more diversity and solving issues around too much air travel and Covid restrictions in one go. But there are drawbacks and other suggestions too.

“We are digging deeper into who is positioned where, what their skills are, can they get kit,” says Humble Bee’s Dunleavy. “Some countries are limited in the specialist training that natural history camera operators tend to have.

There will be occasions when you want your specialist camera operator filming bird flight, for instance. Where possible, we want to tap into local talent and help nurture them. It’s about trying to get a balance and put climate at the top of that.”

That need for a specialist affects this genre more than most. Big Wave recently completed The Great Hammerhead Stakeout for Discovery’s Shark Week, which involved setting up an underwater laboratory in a tent structure, where divers could live and work for a prolonged period. “In that scenario, we did move our specialist crew there and I wouldn’t have made that show without that expertise and people I trust to make it because it’s too hazardous,” says Cunliffe.

“We have been able to direct a number of contained shoots, with scientists in a lab, remotely. We were able to have remote access through Zoom and direct the piece like that.

That’s definitely going to be a way forward in some situations.”

Hugh-Jones has been taking it a step further at Plimsoll. “The ability to operate cameras remotely is really exciting,” he says. “The tech to place cameras in a situation long term and have control of them from around the world is going to be a real game

changer in what we can capture.

That tech will allow us into difficult-toaccess places and be there for longer to see those really rare moments and behaviours animals only display when they’re sure nobody is watching.

“In some ways, Covid has fasttracked things that were always coming down the line, whether it’s the need to work with a greater diversity of people from around the world or reduce our carbon footprint.”

There are few better authorities in this area than Keith Scholey, a longtime BBC executive who left to form the now All3Media-owned Silverback Films in 2012 and has been behind hit series such as Our Planet for Netflix and, more recently, The Mating Game for BBC1.

“It’s been like chasing a wild horse for the last year and it’s all adding to the cost of the show. But it’s more about the wear and tear on people.

Hotel quarantine is not something I would advise for your mental health,” he says.

“Local crews is a trend that’s here to stay. The industry will never be the same. Obviously, not flying all over the world is a good thing. All prodcos have become far more aware of their carbon footprint, especially in this area where we’re preaching change. Using drones instead of helicopters is good for that as well.

“The next round of stabilised miniature cameras will allow us to do big things. There are big developments around filming in the dark. But the main trend with all of these things is that it’s becoming cheaper. The cost of tech will not be a barrier soon, and that will change a lot. Throughout the developing world, people will be able to set themselves up in this space.”

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Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Three-year plan HiddenLight Productions Johnny Webb

Johnny Webb, CEO of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Sam Branson’s multi-genre prodco HiddenLight, outlines his company’s ambitious plans. By Clive Whittingham

I

t’s been a growing trend in the US for the big names of film, TV, sport and politics to launch their own production companies to tell stories they’re passionate about. In December last year, it was the turn of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton to follow Barack and Michelle Obama, Will Smith, Reece Witherspoon, LeBron James and others in that direction.

HiddenLight enveloped Sam Branson’s Sundog Pictures and its CEO, former Virgin Media TV MD Johnny Webb, moved across to run the company and lead the unscripted efforts, while former MGM president Roma Khanna is charged with building a scripted team for the company in LA. If I Could Tell You Just One Thing, which Sundog produced previously as a special for YouTube with Priyanka Chopra, was relaunched as a four-part series on the platform fronted by Patricia Bright. In scripted, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s book The Daughters of Kobani has been acquired for adaptation.

Of the founder’s aims Webb says: “They are very passionate about elevating people’s stories. The name was very carefully chosen. Everything we do will be driven by great characters. It’s about finding characters with extraordinary stories but also with their own light they’re bringing to a situation, be it hope, resilience, or love, in the darkest of places.”

Diversity forms a huge part of the company’s mission. It came out of the gate with a straight-toseries order from Apple TV+ for Gutsy Women, inspired by Hillary and Chelsea’s bestseller The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. The pair will host the show themselves but it features a diverse cast of trailblazers in front of and behind the camera.

“Diversity was something we were very considered and strategic about when putting the Gutsy Women team together,” Webb says. “There are eight

If I Could Tell You Just One Thing

People think because it’s Hillary and Chelsea it’ll be earnest and political. Well no, it won’t be. It’ll be smart, substantial, surprising and everything will be entertainment first. We won’t shy away from current affairs and issues but it’s a piece of TV and storytelling.

“

Johnny Webb

directors for 10 episodes and diversity is incredibly important to us in those choices.

“It presents its challenges, because there aren’t enough people coming through. So for us it’s not just to be about having intent for inclusivity and diversity, it’s also about taking matters into our own hands.

We’re trying to bring in people straight from college and develop and hang on to them. That’s tricky in a freelance environment where people jump from project to project, but if we’re serious about it that’s the only way to do it.”

The company has bases in London, New York and LA. The unscripted team is predominantly Londonbased and Webb says the UK’s programme rights ownership situation remains the most attractive anywhere in the world, “at least for the time being.”

But the bulk of the company’s work is currently being done in the US, where a clear strategy for coproductions is emerging.

“One of the things I think is really different between the UK and US is the US is much more of a coproduction market,” Webb says. “Coproductions between indies are much more common. One might bring the idea, another talent. Already we’ve got four projects that we haven’t announced yet that are all coproductions with other companies, one British and three US. Yes, there’s an impact on the bottom line because you share revenues, so it needs to feel big, you need the volume and the tariff to make it worthwhile, but there is a lot of benefit in joining forces with other brilliant creatives and talents to do the best work. I can see it as a big trend for us.”

As well as getting to grips with the bigger budgets and longer production times on scripted, Webb is looking forward to the company confounding preconceptions about what it was founded for.

“People think because it’s Hillary and Chelsea it’ll be earnest and political. Well no, it won’t be,” he says.

“It’ll be smart, substantial, surprising and everything will be entertainment first. We won’t shy away from current affairs and issues but it’s a piece of TV and storytelling. It’s got to do all of those things. I hope in three years’ time what people will say is, ‘It’s so much more than I expected from HiddenLight.’ It’s more fun, more light and shade, more surprising, more entertaining and we’ve got fingers in more pies than people imagined.”

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Three-year plan Woodcut International The Beverley Allitt Tapes

Koulla Anastasi

UK-based Woodcut International is plotting a move into factual entertainment formats whilst hoping the boom in true crime content continues. By Oli Hammett

A

mid the recent boom in factual content, Woodcut Media last year created a distribution arm dubbed Woodcut International and established a second UK office, Woodcut West, in Bristol. The latter was formed via a merger with Paul Wooding’s Spark TV, which, like Woodcut Media, is part of UK production group Anthology.

“Paul and his development team were a natural addition with all their experience and they fit right into the Woodcut stable along with Woodcut International. The distribution side has been incredibly helpful in that it has expanded the range of programming that we’ve been able to take to market,” says Woodcut Media’s director of business development, Koulla Anastasi.

As well as allowing the business to step into other areas, the move into sales has made it a bigger player in the global market, according to Anastasi, the former director of programming for Crime + Investigation and Lifetime at A+E Networks UK who joined Woodcut in 2018.

“The transition into a sales business meant that we were doing what we’d always done, just on a grander and more formal scale,” she says. “Being in sales also means we’re much more in control of our own IP while being able to maintain our relationships with distributors. But for our production process, it makes much more sense for us to be able to see who our wider broadcast partners are going to be.

We’re able to support production at a much faster rate than we had been, and we don’t fall foul of the sales cycle.”

The plan is to expand beyond the UK next, increasing the number of international commissions the company gets. Having two prodcos, Anastasi says, has doubled the number of contacts Woodcut has.

Another consequence of working with Wooding

We’re strong believers in building your reputation.

Factual entertainment is much more difficult as a genre to get right, and our broadcasters will attest to that. We’re slowly dipping our toes in the water.

“

Koulla Anastasi

and Spark TV has been that Woodcut’s ambitions have grown. “What Paul has focused on previously has been at a much higher scale than what we do.

His background in natural history is a great string to our bow, and his work uses a lot of visual effects or even explosions in a live format. We’d love to give it a go,” she says.

Anastasi is realistic yet optimistic about moving into more entertaining factual content. A format, she says, is the Holy Grail for any production company and Woodcut is developing in that area. While we shouldn’t expect quizshows, the company is working on observational documentaries that are lighter compared with the usual Woodcut fare, like The Beverley Allitt Tapes on Sky Crime.

The key thing, according to Anastasi, is patience and Woodcut is looking to slowly blend genres like factual and entertainment to make something broader. “We’re strong believers in building your reputation,” says Anastasi. “Factual entertainment is much more difficult as a genre to get right, and our broadcasters will attest to that. We’re slowly dipping our toes in the water.”

Expansion into other genres doesn’t mean that Woodcut plans to stop making its bread-and-butter programmes. True crime series such as Sky’s World’s Most Evil Killers and More4’s Surviving a Serial Killer are gripping audiences who are fans of crime dramas like Line of Duty and Bodyguard.

Anastasi sees this lasting, as there will always be true stories that lend themselves to the screen. In recent years, though, high-end true crime series have often found themselves housed on SVoD platforms such as Netflix, leaving many traditional broadcasters playing catch-up.

“The past 12 months have shown us that factual is as popular as ever,” says Anastasi. “Maybe not linearly, but Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime Video is an eye-opener that’s given me newfound respect for the farming industry. That’s indicative of what factual content can do for a story that’s not well known. For channels, look at the success of Sky Docs in the UK. The high-budget shows they have make me feel sure factual isn’t going away.”

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Channel 21 International | Fall 2021

Born Mucky

Development slate

Big Little Fish M

ark Procter and Steve Jones launched London-based indie Big Little Fish in 2019 with ambitious plans. Both had worked together as commissioners at Discovery Networks International, and Jones at pay TV broadcaster Sky before that, but their crossing of the divide was obviously complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pair got a 10-part factual entertainment series, Born Mucky, away with their former employer Discovery’s freeMark Procter to-air network Quest in the UK, (left) and and successfully delivered during Steve Jones lockdown. But they’re looking forward to pressing ahead in earnest as we head towards 2022.

“We’re developing specialist factual through to factual entertainment and everything in the middle – we’re an out-and-out unscripted production company,” Procter says. “Inherently, because of our experience, we have a global outlook. Everything we’re developing, we’re asking: ‘Does it travel? Does it resonate internationally? Is it a format we can sell?’”

As-yet-unannounced projects in production include a series of specialist history documentaries for a UK broadcaster and a mini truecrime series for an international SVoD service. Several other ideas are also in paid development.

“Obviously we’re looking at the kinds of genres we know there’s an appetite for: paranormal, engineering, science, crime and investigation, history, biography,” Procter says. “We’re also interested in new tech. I’m a bit of a Luddite, but we’re looking at lots of new ways of making and experiencing content, and part of our business will be looking at that. We’re entering a period over the next couple of years where there is a real need for longform content of a good quality,

Former Discovery Networks International commissioner Mark Procter discusses the UK indie’s post-pandemic plans and the genres he’s developing in.

By Clive Whittingham

but there might be a shortage of cash. We’re looking at disruptive plans for how we can become content creators rather than just producers for hire.”

Over the next six months, the company will also reopen discussions that were taking place prepandemic over potential third-party investment.

It was part of the digital-only cohort of the UK’s IndieLab scheme – which aims to improve production companies’ business plans and make them more investable – and Procter is keen to see that bear fruit over the coming months.

With that same business hat on, he’s more cautious about delving too enthusiastically into the trends for specials, one-offs and two-parters that have proved buzzy because of their success, particularly on Netflix and the recently launched Discovery+.

“One thing we are finding at the moment from channels and VoDs in general, and one of the things we’re careful not to take on too many of, are one-offs and two-parters,” he says. “They’re so intense and very labour-intensive. We won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but the trend at the moment seems to be for noisy, cut-through one-offs. And while they tend to be a reasonable tariff if you have three or four at the same time, it’s almost like having three or four series without the same economies of scale.

“I’m looking at some of the things on VoDs and thinking, ‘These are great, but where’s the returnability and where’s the economy of scale for a small producer?’ It’s fine if you’re Raw TV and one of the big boys, but we’re mindful that if we have three or four single films in production, they’re labour-intensive.”

And a familiar complaint from producers, exacerbated by commissioners’ desperation for proven concepts that can work in a lockdown, relates to the current trend for rebooting old formats with new hosts. “I’m a bit grumpy at the revival of old formats,” Procter says. “As a new producer without a stable of tried-and-tested formats in our locker, it is getting my goat a little bit.

“I’m as nostalgic as anybody, but I see some of the shows coming back and think they were great and no doubt they will be great again, if you can bring something new to them. But bringing them back for the sake of it feels like a missed opportunity for the rest of us.”