AUTHORED DOCUMENTARY
FACTUAL
recognition in the UK and the US.” Netflix now has its commissioning team in the
UK and buoyed by documentary success, is not so single-minded about named directors. But the international scope still weighs in. “It feels like you need a bigger package for streamers and that’s everything - director, subject matter, access,” says Lawford. “It’s a slightly more commercial matrix.” Banijay’s Workerbee label recently announced
a multi-project deal with Oscar winning director Kevin McDonald, with a streamer feature doc waiting in the wings. Scripted directors pursuing a non-scripted
passion project is a sweet spot. “People have recognised that documentary is one of the leading narrative mediums of our time, bringing a flood of big names from fiction,” says James Rogan. BBC documentary series Uprising, which
charted the impact of the New Cross Fire and its role in the Brixton riots, saw Rogan share a directing credit with Oscar winner Steve McQueen. Uprising was a response to the killing of George Floyd, bringing a UK perspective to the Black Lives Matter movement. “We understood there was a moment of reckoning around race relations,” says Rogan. “When we think of films at Rogan Productions,
the first thing we think of is perspective. Who is telling the story and why.” Emma Hindley, lead commissioning editor at
Storyville, says: “I like to think at Storyville we are always championing vital subjects – great stories, brilliantly told is our overriding principle - even if the stylistic approaches of the film makers differ.” Recently, Storyville films range from Snow
Hnin Ei Hlaing’s feature debut Midwives, an observational film about the complex relationship between a Buddhist Midwife and her Rohinga trainee in Myanmar; Bianca Stigter’s debut doc, 3 Minutes: A Lengthening which gives a window into pre–Holocaust Jewish life in Poland, told solely through a small amount of archive and voices. Distinctive filmmaking means many different
things. “It might be in the tone of the film, it might be in the stylistic choice, it might be in how they handle contributors,” says Poppy Dixon at Sky. “Anthony Phillipson set a style with Liverpool Narcos, which straddles playful and sincere, blending observational shooting with stylised drama, and Benedict Sanderson, directing our follow up Dublin Narcos, has brought his own voice to it, really bringing out the characters.” True crime might not seem the clearest
place for authorship, but director/producer Liza Williams’ BAFTA winning documentary The
NORMA PERCY
It’s all about teamwork, says film maker Norma Percy, executive producer, Brook Lapping. “The authored documentary is a wonderful thing and its existence is what makes British documentaries special. But it’s actually a lie. Making television is a communal activity: one person can write a novel or a newspaper article, but to make a good documentary several people have to do their job superlatively. To make our recent BBC series Putin vs the West, the author was the series director Tim Stirzaker, producer/directors Max Stern and Lotte Murphy-Johnson, executive producer Lucy Hetherington, editors Toby Marter, Cathy Houlihan and Pierre Haberer, researcher Olivia Bernhardt Brogan, and even a little bit myself. What’s crucial to make a Norma Percy documentary is that the same team be involved from the beginning to the end of the process. In our case, it’s a long and laborious process. To make the series that we are known for, which let
viewers see what it’s like inside the room at the moments when the big international decisions are made, it takes time for research even to find a subject, and then preliminary interviews to find out what happened inside the room, even before we come to film. And then there’s editing: putting together people’s stories takes a lot more time than just writing a script and dropping in the odd plum of an interview. It’s absolutely crucial that the people who did the research are around for every stage down to the last minute. Is there a threat to serious documentaries? I’ve been doing my thing for 40 years and I think the fact that it’s still around shows that it’s a pretty hardy beast. But if there’s a threat, it’s the attempt to save money by lopping off people as you go or not hiring enough producer/directors from the beginning, and instead hiring edit producers who haven’t lived and breathed the subject for the last six months. Long live authored documentaries.” Norma Percy is series producer on the BBC’s Putin vs The West
Spring 2023
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