Back to it

I really should get my own blog and stop writing whatever is on my mind in the ones I keep for school but the stuff I'm thinking about is tied in.

The more I read Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture the more I see the importance of the current battles for copyright that have been simplified into a war on internet pirates. Lessig is able to provide the history of copyright in the legal precedents that shape its use and his argument is that "copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; copyright law today regulates both" publishing and the creative process of "building upon or transforming that work". (p.19)

It's interesting to see current examples of this, like the House of Cosbys which built upon the creative work of Bill Cosby in using the character he created of himself in popular culture. It's a shame they didn't choose to make the show the House of Pryors as they may have been able to avoid upsetting a living figure.

The other argument in Free Culture is that industries built around profiting from creative work through distributing it, marketing it and marking up the price on it are succeeding in "remaking the internet before it remakes them". (p.9)
Lessig discusses the way RCA kept the technology of FM radio they developed out of practice for as long as possible to avoid jeopardising their interests in AM radio.

An interesting development in the last couple of days demonstrates both of Lessig's arguments and relates them to television:

The United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization has called a last-minute meeting on June 21 in Barcelona, out of the normal diplomatic venues to try to ram through the Broadcasting Treaty. This treaty gives broadcasters (not creators or copyright holders) the right to tie up the use of audiovisual material for 50 years after broadcasting it, even if the programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed, or not copyrightable.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out because I wonder, if it comes into effect, would it mean that all the stuff I've put on YouTube will belong to them?

It's a wrap

Write a production report on your crew roles this semester and comment on your experience of the subject.

I've been thinking about TVP202 and reckon what I'll take away from it is a better idea of lighting and a little humility. After coasting through last year I found a group of skills I lacked in my primary crew role of director for a drama scene. Other roles I had were lighting assistant on another fiction group, camera operator on Ben's doco and assistant on Geoff's doco.

Directing the scene from Gary's House was the most challenging thing I've done since starting this course. I also spent more time working on it than anything other than blogs. While trying to plan the shoot my head began to hurt in ways it hadn't for years. It was impossible for me to visualise how to shoot the action, in part because I hadn't fully planned it. The other part was learning how it would look in the studio. It was interesting to compare the two fiction shoots I worked on, while their appearances are almost opposites they were both a bit bare. I understand studios are an ideal location as you can minimise the variables in the shoot, controlling the elements including (in theory) the people on and off the camera. In practice - and this is one thing I learned during my stint as acting manager this year - you can not hope to control everything. So, while mistakes were made, I learned a lot.

The exercise showed what set design can do for your frame and a sense of the scope of lighting. It would be beneficial to expand the lighting tutorial in the studio or set it as a task like the current camera exercise. More elaboration was needed of non-naturalism. I got the impression the set designers were in the dark about it too and, well, we know the actors weren't even allowed to discuss the idea.



As camera operator on the profile of artist Dennis O'Connor I appreciated Ben had picked a subject that should have been easy to film. But, while trying to keep steady pans over artworks, I was reminded of Glenn Steer's comment that camera movement needs to be disguised by movement on camera. After that I tried to stick to static shots of the artworks.

There were some problems on the second part of the shoot, the camera refused to white balance and the shots have a bluish hue. In a way I was glad the camera had a black and white viewfinder on the day because it would've given me a lot more stress knowing I couldn't fix it. The other advantage of the B&W viewfinder was it forced me to focus on composition. I found myself using the rule of thirds and occasionally fifths to frame the shots.

As assistant on Geoff's doco about kangaroos I wasn't sure what I should do aside from carry stuff around and hold the boom. There were a few opportuities to light and question interview subjects but most of the time I thought the assignment was doomed for not being in the Australian Story style. Now I've seen it come together I think Geoff has done a remarkable job, even if it's more in the style of Stateline. Jo thought his interview style was excellent. I think she did a great job herself, there would've been serious gaps without her quotes.

Aside from lugging gear, I offered Geoff a few different clips to consider but he thought they didn't sit with the style of the piece. Some were borderline broadcast quality as a result of being shot on a digital stills camera but it was footage he wasn't going to get, like this boxing match:



Overall, the subject was fun and it was great to be presented with a seriously challenging project. At times the course seemed to meander a bit, the doco on US cinematography was interesting but the insights were few and far between. Dunno what I would've shown instead, maybe something like Frontline to give an idea of the lengths people go to for their craft. Or maybe a series of close viewings of classic cinematography, clicking through groundbreaking sequences frame by frame and admiring the composition and lighting. Or maybe just more practical work, the immediate feedback of screening the camera exercises was excellent. It would've been good to get the peer assessment discussions flowing but at least the process wasn't as harrowing as how it had been described by students of a former lecturer in the course.

Foreign Correspondent

Write a personal reflection on a single camera production shown on free to air television. Include a researched observation with references.

Foreign Correspondent is one of a trilogy of established current affairs shows produced and broadcast by the ABC, along with Four Corners and Australian Story. The show draws on an extensive network of overseas staff - more than any other Australian network - and a Sydney-based research and production team. In the last 14 years they've produced more than 1300 reports from over 160 countries.

This week the show ran only two stories in their usual 45 minute slot, missing the 'soft' news style Postcard segment but giving extended attention to the political career of former cricketer Imran Khan and the impact of gas and oil extraction on Russia's northern Pacific island of Sakhalin.

Journalist Peter Lloyd must have taken every available opportunity in his interview with Imran Khan, from northern Pakistan through the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital and then at Khan's home. I counted quotes from seven different settings and also an interview with Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan's Daily Times. In addition, archival footage of Khan with former wife Jemima Goldsmith and his cricket career was used. The centre piece was an interview with Khan in a non-descript room, possibly a hotel, using that ABC trademark of a lamp in the background to balance the frame. The camera operator was Wayne McAllister.

Foreign Correspondent's contributor Eric Campbell presented the story on the energy industry that has rapidly developed in Sakhalin, north of Japan. He spoke with locals and also foreign workers, such as Ian Craig, the head of the Shell/Mitsui project. It was interesting that only Craig got his name written on screen but this may be because of the need for subtitles. It appeared Campbell was able to interview in Russian. The camera operator was Geoffrey Lye.

There was a much more pronounced style of editing in this second story. Where the first was quite naturalistic in presenting images to match the narrative with an unrushed pace of edits; the second used techniques such as timelapse to show the speed of the development of infrastructure and used a soundtrack in the style of Phillip Glass - a reference to the work of Godfrey Reggio. I noticed one shot using slow motion, as a group of workers walked from a construction site, many others were in fast motion. In parts and near the end the edits were very quick, again contributing to the sense of speed in construction of the Sakhalin energy industry and the disruption of life on the island. Archival footage was also used, such as images from after a Korean passenger jet was shot down over the island by the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.

I sent an email to Foreign Correspondent with a bunch of questions to see if I could learn more for this entry. Here is their response:

Dear Jason

Sorry we don't have time to answer all your questions. However generally our shoots take from a week to ten days. Sometimes two weeks if it is in a remote place or a story that means going to a number of different locations. A postcard (final cut around 5-7 mins) would be two or three days. Editing generally takes two weeks for a lead story, though sometimes for very topical issues we turn them around faster than that (but work over weekends and overnight).

The Sakhalin story was filmed on an Sx betacam and the sound gear was standard tv sound gear. There was around 10 hours of tape to edit from. The reporter is away on another shoot so I can't ask him how long it took to research. That's probably an impossible question to answer anyway because generally all of us research a number of stories at the same time and we are not just focusing on one story. Sometimes we spend months researching a story, but we are doing lots of other things simultaneously, such as logging tapes, supervising edits, writing scripts and organising graphics etc.

Regards
Marianne Leitch

Foreign Correspondent

Highlights

• Slomo Video, a festival with an interesting aesthetic: 100 one minute slow motion videos
• Video mashup: Ten Things I Hate About Commandments
• Article discussing why TV has the edge on film
• High Definition (cons)piracy?
  

More arse licking

The new copyright proposal from Attorney General Phil Ruddock has been widely discussed as a step forward. It accepts videotaping from TV and even means that ripping your CDs to your iPod is no longer a criminal act. However, it also contains proposals that have been widely condemned and rejected in the US:

It's funny: the Hollywood cartel couldn't get the US to adopt the Broadcast Flag, so they went and sold this bill of dubious goods to Australians. You'd think Australia would be smarter than that: it's pretty sad to be the easy-lay nation that Hollywood turns to when it can't convince America to put out.

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) set new ground for ensuring the influence of US goods in a foreign market, including the rights of cultural products like film and music and television. The Leader of the Opposition at that time, Mark Latham, called the Government "arse lickers".

One of the key issues in Ruddock's proposal is that the 'fair use' provisions now set personal use as a single viewing and attach penalties for not observing this. It means you can timeshift a program once, such as recording with a VCR, but you have to delete the videotape afterwards. It looks silly until you consider videotapes are on the way out and digital devices are taking their place - devices which may enforce this silly law.

As a parent I can imagine the result of letting a child watch a program and then having to tell them they can't watch it a second time.

Maybe we're seeing a paradigm shift in the way consumers view content. Consider how digital rights management (DRM) is incorporated into music and video files and players to limit their use. It's another step along the path from how DVDs won't let you skip the copyright warning and how knows where it'll end up.

..Law allows people to make copies of parts of copyrighted works for the purposes of critiquing or reviewing them.

"That's an exemption thwarted by DRM systems," she said. "The technologies are extending beyond the law they are supposed to uphold."

Increasingly, said Ms Charman, consumers were bumping up against DRM technologies as they use digital media such as downloaded songs.

She said that DRM was less about protecting copyright and more about creating a system in which people rent rather than own the media they spend money on.

"We think people rightly feel that once they buy something, it stays bought," she said.

Maybe before long we won't own anything more than the experience of it - after all, it's the thing that attracted the salesmen who established Hollywood. I forget the studio boss who said "Movies are the only thing you own after you've sold it" but the principle of owning a creative work has seen any number of artists shafted from deciding the fate of the fruits of their labours. Just ask John Fogerty. It's worth noting another piece of recent legislation before the federal Australian parliament proposed that artists collect a percentage of the resale of their works but this was knocked back.

I wonder how long before TV stations are undermined by producers seeking a greater share of profits by selling programs directly to consumers. Wouldn't it be interesting to subscribe to a show, receive it like a podcast and know you're directly contributing to it's continued existence? I've read fans of Star Trek franchises raised money to see them continue. A similar notion has been used to great effect by Crikey when they've been faced with a lawsuit. And, being appreciative of their efforts, I've handed over money every time.

Anyway, before I digress too far on my usual rant about online delivery, one of the key things missing from Australian copyright that's ingrained in the US bill of rights is free speech and especially the role of parody. Australia has provisions for comment as 'fair use' but, as I understand it, the use of copyright protected material for satire is still contentious enough that The Panel was taken to the High Court. The judgment came in their favour but it still means no one is likely to make something like The House of Cosbys in our fair land. (It's also a shame Bill Cosby has shown himself to have no sense of humour, Rolf Harris didn't take The Goodies to court when they used a similar plot device all those years ago.)

Another development that blurs copyright is mashing original material, sometimes from more than one source. It's an extreme extension of postmodernism and the freeplay of ideas in unlimited semiosis. Where art would think itself to be clever in alluding to a quotation or reference, a mashup like Brokeback to the Future gives almost full realisation to the idea there's a homoerotic subtext.



It's clever but would it qualify as fair use? This is where I think Australia's copyright is lacking. It's potentially threatening that we don't have a bill of rights but I think the lack of laws to allow subversion for comment are thin skinned. It's like how our defamation laws favour the claimant in that it's not in the interests of the powers that be to change the situation.

More importantly, it fails to recognise that consumers have changed the way the want to enjoy media. Passive viewing is so 20th century. Here's a great article on the issues surrounding this phenomenon. It is especially relevant as the UK copyright laws are similar to Australia's.

It's a shame the DRM options being pursued by vertically integrated pop culture/technology companies and now reflected in the proposed changes to copyright law all limit the ability to repeat or 'on broadcast' media such as television, video or music. Peer to peer marketing is all the rage at the moment for good reason. The commercial power of material with high production values relies on creating a mass market to attract mass market advertising. Without a large audience we may as well admit most of the stuff on television, the internet and in the stores will be American as the Australian market is being swamped by cheaper imports.

Mark Latham was right when he called the government "a conga line of suckholes". That might seem nasty but I reckon it's justified with this quote from my hero Lawrence Lessig:

From the beginning, government and government agencies have been subject to capture. They are most likely captured when a powerful interest is threatened by either a legal or technical change. That powerful interest too often exerts its influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The rhetoric of protection is of course always public spirited; the reality is something different. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age, but that, left to themselves would crumble in another, are sustained through this subtle corruption of our political process. (pp.6-7)

In this context it's interesting to look at who has made submissions to the Attorney General regarding copyright reform (and also the changes to the copyright technological provision measures required by 2007 under the FTA, which mean you can't hack a gaming machine you own - not just for playing pirated games but uses like cheap personal computing).
I was pleased to see CSU amongst submissions to the recent discussion paper, stating the following:

Charles Sturt University’s view is that the Act should be amended to allow format shifting for non-commercial, including educational, use of material that has been legally acquired.
[...]
Charles Sturt University’s view is: that the transformative use of works should be part of either a specific exception, or of a more general fair use exception; that specific attention ought to be given to the issue of orphaned works; and that no new statutory licences are necessary.

The first statement pushes the answer for timeshifting technologies, like VCRs and the new generation of digital recorders; while the second tackles the potential for us to comment on a commercial work through mashing or manipulating it.

The key issue throughout all of this is that copyright is not being defended by artists, it's being tightened by the companies that distribute their works. There's an industry built around hyping, manufacturing and delivering art to consumers and it's threatened by the consumers becoming artists in their own right now the technology exists to bypass other avenues. You no longer have to build a reputation as an artist to display your clever appropriation of a cultural product and you no longer have to get a record contract to have your songs heard by the masses and get screwed like John Fogerty. And, as Hugh said in the last week of term, you no longer need television stations to broadcast your work. We have the tools and, if you've got the skills, what are you waiting for?

STOP THE REPRESS!

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Newsflash

Some interesting links:

• Experiments with one second advertisements
• Soderbergh trials more alternatives to Hollywood
• NBC counter viral videos by providing material online
• Seeking 50,000 investors for a million pound film (and offering input)

Wow

You Tube is going to make TV Production blogs a lot more interesting!

It's all news to me

Compare and contrast a news story from local news with one from national news. Pay particular attention to duration, composition and technical elements. Make comment about the overall difference of the news stories.

Weeks ago I managed to get in front of the TV to see the local Prime news in Wagga and the ABC national news. The lead stories on both followed similar formats in having an introduction from the news reader, an address from the journalists direct to camera at or near the end and both were around 2-3 minutes in length.

Prime followed the delay of a retirement village development in Henty due to a protected pine tree. That this story also made the front page of the local newspaper says a lot about the focus of the local media and their demographic.

Reporter Hayley Corbett gathered responses from four people, three were elderly investors outraged that a tree was threatening their futures, and the fourth was a phone interview with a spokesperson for the catchment authority. There didn't appear to be any file footage used, none was acknowledged at least.

The piece suffered from a hum throughout, perhaps an unbalanced audio cable, it didn't surface again in the bulletin. The vision relied on a number of shots of the location of the proposed village, the reviled tree, the streets of Henty and the interview subjects. The composition used mid-to-close shots and pans through the cutaways, starting and ending on a held shot.

The ABC led with the story of Private Kovco leaving Iraq. Matt Brown's reporting included an interview with an ADF commander and vision of the military send off. The camera was set up a long way back from the proceedings, picking out a range of shots of the soldiers attending and the coffin by using a telephoto lens. Given the glare of Iraq they struggled a bit to get detail of the priest waving his hands over the casket in the Hercules' bay but they were successful in getting close ups of Australian and British soldiers looking contemplative. There was a dynamic moment when American black hawk helicopters took off nearby although it seemed a little extraneous to the story.

The editing differed from Prime in using static shots but the telephoto lens would have made it difficult and probably a bit wrong to use pans. That sort of movement might have come across as a bit disrespectful for the tone of the piece too I guess.

The resources of the ABC were demonstrated when, after Matt Brown made his address to camera, the story continued as Juanita outlined the response in Kovco's Victorian hometown. There was footage of his former school and soundbites from his former headmaster and then a press conference in Canberra by the Prime Miniature John Howard.

This week I observed an interesting comparison between two rival live broadcasts, Today and Sunrise, both covering the unfolding drama from Beaconsfield. The approach of the two shows was very different, despite the similarities in format and in using an outdoor set. Today used a telephoto lens flattening a small section of the top of the mine and warm lighting with almost black background in the early morning, while Sunrise had a wider angle showing more of the axle above the mineshaft in the background and less lighting, allowing light from the sky.

Both had live interviews and no doubt Today thought they had scored by securing the father of trapped miner Brant Webb, while Sunrise spoke to an ambulance officer. However, Webb senior was not particularly expressive and Karl doggedly attempted to have him open up for 15 minutes, eventually succeeding in getting footage of him wiping away tears with inane statements like "he must come from good stock". I wasn't surprised to see Nine were using edited snippets of the interview in the news bulletin that night but it still seemed like ordinary television with little to say other than the obvious. And it seemed Nine were approaching the event like a funeral.

In contrast, Sunrise collected a succinct report of the miners current circumstances from someone who had talked to them and could detail how they were holding up and the few luxuries they had been able to receive. Sunrise also managed to fit another story into the same amount of time, including an interview with Peter Beattie about an obesity summit in Queensland.

It's no wonder Sunrise has taken Today's audience. As much as the events at Beaconsfield are highly dramatic, a lengthy and somewhat manipulative live interview on a news/entertainment show first thing in the morning is not great television. One wonders whether the combined coverage of the networks of this lengthening story is approaching overkill but perhaps I'd look unkind in saying I'm over it already.

Eye for interestment

Alan Moore is credited with stretching the boundaries of what comics cover. He brought a literary sensibility to their themes and wasn't afraid to make the characters perversely human. His politics are a bit unusual but Moore kept the sense of magic even when the stories were deeply cynical, like V For Vendetta. His Jack the Ripper book, From Hell, is better researched than many and probably the single greatest comic ever in my estimation.

Anyway, I'm introducing Alan Moore because I was researching him online and found a document that's alleged to be a pitch he wrote for a fairly extensive reimagining of the DC comic book universe. It draws on the direction taken by another progessive comic writer, Frank Miller, and this quote prompted me to think about the relationship between television and film because TV is mostly serialised like comics:

As I mentioned in my introduction to Frank's Dark Knight, one of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended. An essential quality of a legend is that the events in it are clearly defined in time; Robin Hood is driven to become an outlaw by the injustices of King John and his minions. That is his origin. He meets Little John, Friar Tuck and all the rest and forms the merry men. He wins the tournament in disguise, he falls in love with Maid Marian and thwarts the Sheriff of Nottingham. That is his career, including love interest, Major Villains and the formation of a superhero group that he is part of. He lives to see the return of Good King Richard and is finally killed by a woman, firing a last arrow to mark the place where he shall be buried. That is his resolution. You can apply the same paradigm to King Arthur, Davy Crockett or Sherlock Holmes with equal success. You cannot apply it to most comic book characters because, in order to meet the commercial demands of a continuing series, they can never have a resolution. Indeed, they find it difficult to embrace any of the changes in life that the passage of time brings about for these very same reasons, making them finally less than fully human as well as falling far short of true myth.

Reading this was one of those eureka moments for me, I suddenly realised why a film like Gladiator has a resonance beyond what a similar TV show like Hercules could muster. Okay, maybe that's not a fair comparison but Moore's quote is still an interesting observation that may have some parallels with narratives in media other than comics.

The other thing I've been interested to see Alan Moore discuss in the press is his unhappiness with having people film adaptations of his work. He runs the risk of looking petulant but it's rare to see someone argue that the pride in the work and his original vision is more important than financial gain.

Creative Commons

I've been excited by the idea popularised through Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons licences that copyright needs to be opened up rather than restricted further now that the tools to create and manipulate media are becoming more accessible. Stuff like 'Dare to Share' is a bit of a geeky slogan but it captures the joy I get out of putting something online and generating a response like a remix from someone I haven't met. This interview with Lessig gives a good summary of how he arrived at his views and this video clip articulates the importance of his argument. I also like how Lessig practices what he preaches, with his book Free Culture available under creative commons licence.

There are a couple of interesting campaigns currently underway that aim to further promote this debate:

• iPods for Senators
  
• Alternative Freedom trailer

Japanese TV

Does Japan produce the most innovative television? Seriously, it might be a bit peculiar by Western standards but check some of these shows and tell me if you can think of anything comparable on TV anywhere else:

• Game show based on behaving in school library
• Outrageous girl band TV show
• Outrageous suicide TV show
• Outrageous octopus TV show
• Blog of other Japanese TV clips

Stay tuned

The US ABC network has taken a bold step towards IPTV by offering shows, including Lost and Desperate Housewives, for free online - provided you also watch the ads. These shows are currently available for purchase (to US citizens) on iTunes without the ads, so this is an interesting experiment to see how networks can continue to purchase content in the face of growing piracy through filesharing.

It seems to miss the point somewhat by focusing on the US since there is much more incentive for viewers in other markets to want to download pirated shows to overcome the delays in their broadcast. But the idea of forcing viewers to watch the ads shows where the priorities of these stations lie. More recently there have been a couple of wild suggestions about how to ensure advertising remains interesting to viewers without having to force them to watch it - a tricky task given the popularity of TiVo and the rise of DVRs. TiVo have proposed replacing old commercials in recorded shows and I think this missing the point unless advertising are going to increase the entertainment or relevance of commercials. A more interesting idea, especially given the focus on realtime production in our course, is that of Mark Cuban who has proposed live commercials.

I'd guess the next step is advertising tailored to the viewer. This would require logging on to watch TV via the internet and the data you share through registration to do this would dictate what ads are best for you. It's kind of a scary proposition but not that different to how advertising campaigns currently work. I'll be scared when the magnetic resonance imaging experiments currently being used to see how people instinctively respond to ads lead to ads that really are irresistable. Then again, a study I read about today says your brain is actually less active watching TV than when asleep. No doubt they'll find ways around that too.

In the meantime the viral approach of making commercials entertaining enough people want to share them with friends has been reasonably successful, especially for irreverent beer commercials. Carlton's Big ad attracted millions of viewers but there was some debate as to whether this translated into increased sales.

Other online options might include Democracy, a program that looks promising and offers a kind of syndication model for online content by blending filsharing and podcasting. And I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the appeal of old content, look at the Beware of the Blog and you'll find a rich and varied vein of old VHS digitised for the web (and some new stuff too)

The big trend in marketing is to engage audiences in promoting your product so I'm impressed with the BBC's competition to redesign their site. I'm even more impressed by their timeshifting service for viewers (well, I guess UK residents do pay a licence for TV) and also the experimental portal that may in future offer access to their archives. The other thing they're doing that's interesting is positioning as a platform for amateur and semi-professional content, a la myspace.

Anyway, you can see why I'm excited by the idea of online television because it's uncharted territory combining familiar media with new modes of delivery and nobody is quite sure how it's going to work without upsetting existing players in the transition - another difficulty for the BBC.

Every Australian Story has Four Corners ; )

Compare and contrast Australian Story with another documentary focused program, highlighting production techniques and scripting.

Australian Story has been very successful for ABC and continues to show their strengths in investigative journalism. Crikey have rumoured the commercial stations are pursuing copycat shows. The style of the show is personal history told seamlessly with very high production values. This week the show continued the tale of Phil Evans, a Brisbane music student who had his fingers removed from one hand during a home invasion. The program used a variety of materials, including interviews, news footage, footage of news crews gathering the footage, home video shot by Phil and his father Mark during the recovery in France (often direct to camera), concert footage, other overlay and enough of those kind of ambient sequences to make me think they'd done a full recreation of the assault in the first episode.

Another strong element was the soundtrack and, when I think about the importance of music to this story, I wonder whether they could've gone further. The music used was largely diagetic and I guess that's the documentary approach. Since watching the episode I've wondered whether using a musical theme, that makes the most of the emotive qualities of Phil's chosen instrument the saxophone, could have given the piece more resonance. Actually, the whole tone of the episode was quite restrained. They didn't dwell on the tears, perhaps they're not as important when they're joyous.

The scripting on Australian Story must be an interesting process. No doubt the producers have a clear idea of the narrative going in to interviews and probably have, in mind at least, the quotes they need to develop the story. One wonders how often they've had to book follow-up shoots to collect additional sound bites. I'd also be curious about how they set interviewees at ease. It's obvious the camera is set up a bit back from the interviewer and unobtrusive but, what body language does the interviewer use to generate the response? The seamless presentation of Australian Story hides some of the context in which it's produced but I guess that's part of creating a tight narrative. I admire the way they fade to black to draw attention where they've edited interviews.

There's a lot to compare between Australian Story and Four Corners. Both are ABC productions (although Four Corners screens a lot of material produced by Canadian, British and US counterparts), both get a lot of press for the information they contribute regarding current events, and both do a great job of making investigative journalism into good television. The contrast in the techniques they use to do this puts emphasis on their approaches. Where Australian Story takes soft approach and is sympathetic to those who appear, Four Corners uses the classic model of the investigative journalist uncovering the truth.

Four Corners this week presented a piece made by BBC Channel Four about the trade in sex slaves from the Ukraine to Turkey. Overall the camera work had lower production values because it would have been a lighter camera for the travelling required. Many scenes were shot handheld. They also used footage shot at night (although it didn't show much gain) and on hidden cameras, including one sequence where they managed two camera angles without arousing the suspicions of the interviewee.

Where the lighting in Australian Story interviews is bold to the point of drawing attention to itself, lighting in this doco was largely single source. The production gave an impression as gritty and depressing as the subject matter. This gave it a sense of honesty. Some sequences had washed out colour balance, in another you could see a reflection to indicate the camera was in a car with an extreme zoom. Footage showing purported smugglers and even sales of slaves were grainy by virtue of being surveillance footage.

There was little soundtrack music and, again, I guess it would be a bit improper for a documentary to use a device so strongly associated with drama and escapist entertainment. Perhaps it would be considered insensitive and crass but I thought bits where Viorel was pursuing the pimp Apa or meeting his wife Tania would've been heightened. The sequence with the other Tania was sad enough without music to need to manipulate the audience further.

The scripting contrasted to Australian Story through the use of a narrator. This female voice was never embodied on camera and it undermined something about the sincerity of the piece. The story required subtitles and this also put more distance it seemed. But I guess it was a Ukrainian story packaged by the BBC and shown on the ABC half a world away.

The greatest contrast between the two shows I think, is the sense in which the seamlessness of Australian Story is like sitting in on the conversation; while the gritty documentary on Four Corners was an unflinching investigation that put a very proper emphasis on the slavery rather than sex. Even so it has led me to think it's a bit exploitative.

The greatest similarity between both shows is worth stating too: they're both non-fiction narratives. Both programs create a story out of a sequence of events and, in a sense, they're rewriting the historical record. In Australian Story they tell the classic tale of overcoming an obstacle. If the narrative had been the pursuit of justice it would've changed the tone of the piece entirely because no one was actually convicted for the assault. It probably wouldn't make good television either.

It's a question of relativism I suppose but once I began question what shapes the scripting in these stories it left me feeling cynical and a lot less empathetic to the characters. I think some of this is because television can be an incredibly emotive medium and analysing the narrative structure reduces this effect. While revealing it's construction.

Like Crikey but totally US

Hey Bruce, here's a link that hangs off something quoted below that might be FYI: Cynopsis. Do a search by date and you'll see it contains jobs, industry movements, ratings, etc.

I reckon it's a bit boring to want to subscribe to it. Not nearly enough like Crikey to be entertaining and the context is a bit far removed but I guess it's important because of the market it covers.

Statement of intent

While studying at ANU for my last degree I made a friend who I'd bounce ideas off before writing essays. He's still one of my closest friends and I really value his analysis. I asked him what he thought distinguished reality TV from documentaries and he said it was the prizes.

I've been wondering about this. A documentary like The Good Woman of Bangkok contradicts the idea as the central character, Aoi the prostitute, is sleeping with the film maker Dennis O'Rourke and appearing in the film in order to receive the rice farm he has promised. There isn't the competitive element you find in reality TV but there's the same lure of a substantial return.

Maybe the difference between docos and reality TV is the producers create this kind of a competitive environment? Maybe there's an analogy in the contrast between ethnography and psychological experiment. The way ethnography uses participant observation to pursue some ideal minimally intrusive submersive experience that seems empathatic; while psychology always seemed to me to entail telling people one thing to gauge another and leaving you feel somewhat cheated by the limited scope it was really recording. Makes sense to me anyway.

Questions of intent

One idea from my last post is starting to bug me: what distinguishes documentaries from reality TV?

The old fashioned answer would be that one is highbrow and aspires to something more noble than the other but, ultimately, both manipulate participants to meet the expected outcomes of the producer(s). They're both forms of entertainment and, if you take a cynical view of something like the sexploitative approach of Big Brother last year, both genres aspire to make an impact beyond entertaining. In fact, Big Brother had an impact in parliaments that any honest documentary maker would love to achieve - issues of professional credibility aside.

I reckon the key issue is intent. Producers of reality TV have an obligation to engage their audiences financially, whether it's SMSing the show or purchasing the CD or responding to the sponsors and advertisers. Documentary makers aspire to engage their audiences in thinking and, potentially, responding. This is where it gets shady when you think about documentaries that attempt to influence. Perhaps reality TV is more honest by virtue of being obvious about it's intentions? It'd be like finding out that Supersize Me was developed after an informal proposal to KFC!

Content with intent

Your blog topic for this week is to research the proposal/pitch for a doco - how to write a proposal and whom to send it to.

While my previous post gives the impression it is becoming easier to have your documentary footage screened on television, I'd guess the budget for stations to actually pay for documentaries is shrinking. This would follow the diminishing budgets provided by the federal government for the ABC and SBS; and it is the public broadcasters who are most likely to screen documentaries:

SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) are major purchasers of Australian documentaries.

The ABC's online information is particularly helpful to producers of television documentaries, including many contacts. (However, the style of the page suggests it may be a historical document so I'd check contact details in advance of addressing the proposal)

The ABC also provide a thorough description of what should be in a proposal:

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROJECT
Initially, we prefer short submissions, 2-4 pages. That way we can respond quickly as to whether we have interest in the idea, and if it's a priority for the current slate.

This should include:
* A short synopsis;
* An outline of the concept in terms of how you conceive it working on screen;
* An idea of the audience and strand it is targeting;
* Additionally, you should list the key creative talent on board the project (and include CVs), and outline whether you are after development funding or pre-sale

SBS Independent outline a similar format for proposals on their website.

For proposals being sent to other broadcasters there may be different requirements. Anna Kelvie advises keeping to the minimum page length outlined by the ABC but other online resources outline and utilise a much longer format.

Another interesting online resource is this proposal checklist. While it's not specific to documentaries it gives some sense of what may be important to the person evaluating and, thus, better inform the proposal planning process.

Aside from the importance of writing an engaging and succinct proposal, the document must address the funding required. The ABC pages previously cited distinguish between informal, formal presale and acquisition proposals.

My impression is that an informal proposal would outline the proposed subject and request funding for development or production. It would be like a 'cold call' in terms of offering the sale of a product and stating your qualifications to deliver. If you already have contacts with executive producers, you may be able to skip the informal process. A broadcaster, like the ABC, may fully or partially cover the cost of production and I'd guess this would be a formal presale. This commitment can open other avenues of funding, such as the Film Finance Commission (FFC) or the financial interest of foreign broadcasters, who "generally only consider projects which have an Australian pre-sale":

Before approaching networks and overseas markets, it is important to examine the FFC's requirements noted in their Guidelines. Producers who have contacts in the domestic and overseas film community, and whose work the potential financier knows, can send proposals at almost any stage of development. However, for producers who are not known, it is advisable to send the broadcaster a presentation package as an introduction to the project...

Here is a checklist of items that should be included in a presentation package:
* title of the project
* contact details
* project copyright holders
* estimated length, gauge/format, genre
* production budget estimate
* estimated production and completion dates
* synopsis: one-line, one-paragraph, one-page
* principal crew plus short biographies
* brief director's statement about the style of the production and why it is interesting/relevant
* financing (including details of any other pre-sale offers)
* a short treatment

The final type of proposal, the acquisition proposal, must rely on having a finished documentary. If you've already funded the production and are not desperate to recoup costs, I'd guess there are other avenues to explore such as film festivals to build interest before approaching distributors and then broadcasters.

Before concluding this blog I'd like to raise other issues related to proposing a documentary that interest me. Ownership of the final product and rights for screening would require thorough consideration and, undoubtedly, some sort of contractual negotiation. This might seem an obvious statement but I'm thinking how some documentaries change direction during production. An example is the film Some Kind of Monster, which began filming as a documentary about Metallica recording an album but went on to find critical success beyond the audience of fans for whom it was originally envisioned. There's a turning point in the film where the documentary makers have to discuss with the band whether to proceed but I wonder what the executive producers had to do?

This next point returns to issues from my previous post. With the internet and other media now available there are more ways to promote a documentary and also enhance it so I'd expect a proposal should include strategies to capitalise on these. The ABC expect online rights, including segments and transcripts and commercial stations are also moving in this direction; but many new avenues for content will open as broadcasters eventually embrace and exploit the legislated move to digital. (I consider taxes well spent when the ABC are able to explore many things the commercials stations can't or won't tackle.)
The ABC might not list all the possible permutations for documentary content in their proposal information but Duane Varan, director of the Interactive Television Research Institute at Murdoch University, believes they are important:

"If you go to the BBC and you are pitching a linear documentary you are at a huge disadvantage, because the BBC is looking for content which it can use across its diverse platforms. If you pitched a concept that is rich with the opportunity to exploit content interactively, then you have a leg up." (Quoted by David Crowe in Coonan's perfect road map to the past, Australian Financial Review, 18-19 March, 2006.)

Other online options being explored by documentary makers include offering raw interview footage for review or to adapt and reuse under Creative Commons licensing; or how content is being licenced by the Discovery Channel to Google for their Google Earth service.

The subject matter of the documentary may lend itself to other broadcast formats, such as music clips or advertising, so there may be potential to cross-sell the program. I think one of the reasons the documentary genre has enjoyed increased popularity in recent years is because it shares something in common with reality programming. Reality TV has thrived on product placement and utilising new technology such as the internet and SMS. Maybe we'll see Documentary Idol, a TV show about producers pitching proposals where viewers pick the documentaries they'd like to see?

Anyway, this isn't entirely academic, the opportunities for savvy documentary producers to capitalise are being encouraged. As the AFC's website states:

The integrity and infinite possibilities of the form demand your creativity. Explore the greats and experience the new.

Free content

Ten would like you to be our roving reporter!

Recently channels Seven and Ten have been offering to broadcast material submitted by viewers, whether it's SMS, MMS or emails of footage, pictures or text messages. Ten's news director Jim Carroll said some footage of cyclone Larry they received from viewers was of broadcast quality and both Ten and Seven screened submissions in news bulletins. Yahoo7 have also published it online.

I'm sure you're thinking it would be exciting to have your footage screened nationally but it's worth reflecting on the deal they're offering, here I quote from Crikey.com.au:

Ten News Director Jim Carroll acknowledges that anyone who submits material to Ten using the new service will not be paid. Or to use his quaint phraseology, the material will be submitted “on a glory basis”. The reward is meant to be seeing your images used on the news.

Meanwhile, the fine print on the deal specifies that anyone submitting content grants Channel Ten a “perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, unrestricted world-wide licence to use, and license others to use, your footage.”

In other words, if you send them anything it becomes theirs. They own it. You might not even be able to put it in your portfolio.

This is a dodgy deal.