FACTUAL FOR A NON-LINEAR AGE FACTUAL TV
It is a trope of drama that you will have flashbacks and flash forwards. It’s a trope of drama that will show a sequence from one person’s perspective and then get it repeated from another person’s perspective in a sort of Knives Out murder mystery kind of way. It’s a trope of drama that you have multiple cameras where you get to see different reactions.” Increasingly, shows that are ordered by the
National Geographic International team, based in London, will find their way onto Disney +. Long running title Europe from Above, from Windfall Films, has added dynamism by moving through seasons and using clever drone photography, mapping aerial photography with shots taken at different times, to reveal dramatic changes in the same scenery. And for that Disney+ audience, Europe at Christmas aims to appeal to the shift in viewer profile. ”Now we have a family audience on Disney+, to do something a little shmaltzy on Nat Geo, something warm and family, we can really go for that now,” says NGI commissioner Carolyn Payne.
NATURAL DRAMA At the BBC, head of Specialist Factual Jack Bootle, also speaking at the Wildscreen Festival, shared that iPlayer data shows natural history series – with closed episodes - performing differently to drama. “Viewership declines more steeply than drama, there’s a more precipitous drop-off, very obviously there’s no compelling reason to continue watching.” BBC Studios NHU is working on six-parter
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INTERNATIONAL
Whether it’s for the Disney+ channel or the Nat Geo channel on the Disney+ service, the shift to linear has led to a reassessment for the National Geographic International slate. Simon Raikes, commissioning editor for National Geographic International, speaking at Sheffield Documentary Festival earlier this year, says it’s had them thinking “quite deeply about form and story-telling…. In the past Nat Geo has made really good shows, but they felt led by a specialist factual mindset, educational, didactic, a degree of homework.” Facing into 2022, “presenter is a dirty word…We want to go on a journey with a host and sit on their shoulder,” he says. “Frankly, we’re looking for thrillers, character-led stories, really compelling. Docs in a specialist factual space.” One of their core returners is Drain the Oceans. Now in season five, it’s been running for eight years and clocked up over 70 episodes
of ocean floor discoveries. “It began its life before people knew what streaming was,” says Raikes. “The first runs of Drain the Oceans - in the context of the new landscape – felt slightly old fashioned, with a top-down voice over…. a slightly specialist factual feel to it,” describes Raikes. “A lot of contributors imparting information and talking science, it didn’t feel there was a human narrative involved.” The solution was to inject that missing human narrative, “to make it a show about the people making the discoveries rather than the discoveries themselves.” The new iteration of the franchise has characters telling the story of what they did or what they are doing, step by step. “The talking heads have become protagonists, the heroes of their own stories.” Commentary is stripped out, “the audience experience it like a streamer documentary. You feel like you’re on a roller coaster ride.”
Winter 2022
televisual.com
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