Conceptual Connections

TV development

Production Company

•Production•Development

Production Company

• The creative director

• Responsible for getting further commissions for the production company

• Head of development• Development producers

Production company

• Which genre?

Documentary genres and subgenres

• Nature documentary• Travel documentary • Reality documentary• Investigative documentary ……..

• Hybrids:-• Docufiction• Mockumentary • Docudrama

Docudrama

• AKA• Drama-documentary• Dramatised documentary• Fact based drama• Faction• Dramatic reconstruction

subgenres - docudrama

• ‘is a staged documentary, using either actors or non-professional performers, sometimes including the actual participants’

Kevin Jackson’s The Language of Cinema.

Docudrama • Film

Docudrama• TV

Film vs TV

• IDEA ---PRODUCT --- AUDIENCE

• IDEA --- AUDIENCE---PRODUCT

• TV needs to think about, episodes, commercial brakes, timing, pacing in parts, running time, transmission slot, watershed, style and target audience a little more than film (serialising).

subgenres - docudrama

Why?

SecretsInaccessible Danger Past

Definitions change/adapt/evolve

Ideas

• Historic event?• Current event?• Why would viewers want to see.

Pitching your idea

• What do you need to consider?

• Channel• Audience• Genre• Timeslot/length • Story• Budget • Talent

Talent

• Production company/producer• On screen talent• Off screen talent

The director/cinematrogopher

• Can bring a big name to a pitch (James Strong – United/Broadchurch)

The director/cinematrogopher

• Can assist in development in some cases eg treatment.• Has views on casting

• ‘The director’s work really starts after the programme has been commissioned with the script’

Neil Rawles (9/11-State of Emergency, Britain's Boy Soldiers, Inside Waco, Animals)

The writer/director

• Can sometimes assist in the story development (Andrew Grieve – Wire In the Blood, wrote and directed Rome)

Docudrama

• Is it a genre you want to develop ?

Further reading

• Paget, D (2011). No other way to tell it: Dramadoc/docudrama on television (2nd ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press

• Rosenthal, A (1995). Writing docudrama: dramatizing reality for film and TV. Boston, Mass.: Focal Press