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Unscripted ambition is rising –and so are budgets
Image: I, Sniper for Channel 4.
There has never been more opportunity for producers of non-scripted content, and outrageous ambition is suddenly an option, says Arrow Pictures co-founder John Smithson.
We’re living through a booming global television drama market, fuelled by the insatiable demand of the streamers. Ambition, production value and star power are soaring, as are the budgets necessary to deliver at this level. And global audiences are lapping them up.
What’s exciting for producers of non-scripted content is that boom time is coming to our world.
Despite the challenges of working under Covid restrictions and going through seismic changes to our business as the balance of power shifts from linear to streaming, there has never been more opportunity for producers. Outrageous ambition is suddenly an option.
The first signs are in the specialised world of natural history. Budgets were already high, due to the unique challenges of filming this genre.
Now SVOD has become a super catalyst, pushing the creative bar higher and higher and swelling budgets to an unprecedented level.
The very good news is that other parts of the nonscripted landscape are now in line for super-sizing.
It’s already happening with sports documentaries, from the Premier League to Formula 1. They have become the flavour du jour. The access costs are eye-watering, but audiences want them and directors, skills honed on hours of outside broadcast documentaries in hospital wards or prison cells, are suddenly behind the scenes with sporting mega-stars.
There’s a similar movement in the worlds of celebrity, music, and entertainment. Access and rights are crucial but there is nothing like a big fat budget to prise open the access door.
The inexorable rise of premium content is impacting the more traditional worlds of factual output. Here there are banker territories that have never gone out of fashion.
True crime, especially in a series format, has massive appeal and will only get bigger as a genre.
Producers are now scouting the factual landscape looking for the next classic to put on steroids, be it UFO’s, dinosaurs or pyramids.
Underpinning this gold rush is the rise of the box-set. The streamers have programmed us into the joys of binge viewing and ideas that a few years ago would have been green-lit as a single are now working as multiple episodes. No producer is going to turn down making six rather than one episode.
Just before you rush to set up your new shiny factual indie, some words of warning.
The higher you get up the food chain the tougher it gets. You’re competing with hundreds of great projects.
Companies with the talent and track record are always going to be in pole position. Just as with scripted, the costs of development are soaring. In most cases the producer picks up the tab, and far too often the project never flies. There used to be a nurturing culture for independent producers. Forget it now, it’s a tough world. If the magic you promised in the proposal does not make the final cut, you’re in trouble.
But read the market, find the elusive idea everyone wants, deliver the ambition and quality and feel that warm glow of creative satisfaction and financial reward.
An Oscar-nominated and Emmy awardwinning producer, John Smithson is a co-founder and creative director of Arrow Pictures.
He was an Oscar nominee for Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, a film he originated and produced. His theatrical documentary Touching the Void won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film and broke box-office records.
His documentary credits also include Sherpa, The Beckoning Silence, The Falling Man; Deep Water, Time Travel with Stephen Hawking, and Thrilla in Manilla. His latest projects are I, Sniper (pictured) for Channel 4 –a six-hour serial over four years in the making –the minute-by-minute account of the 2002 Washington DC Sniper case, and Positive for Sky Documentaries, marking Britain’s 40-year struggle with HIV/AIDS.
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