Eyes on the World

Current-affairs documentaries that help put complex world issues into context are always in demand.

Stuff happens, to recall the words of Forrest Gump.
 
And it keeps happening, meaning that the one genre that documentary filmmakers will never have to worry about exhausting is current affairs.
 
To take it one step further, some of the worst stuff that happens makes for some of the most successful current-affairs documentaries. Turmoil in the Middle East, earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and tsunamis, global climate change, wars, the miners trapped in Chile, terrorist attacks—these were the subjects of multiple documentaries last year and this year.
 
Many of those documentaries come from public broadcasters with well-funded news operations and mandates with more emphasis on explaining recent events than on turning profits. But when the events are global in impact, the public broadcasters’ commercial arms bring the documentaries to market.
 
Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDF Enterprises, sees high demand in the international marketplace for programs that help viewers understand events like catastrophic accidents and terror attacks.
 
“We always call them background stories,” he says. “They are more in depth, with more details. If you know the background, you know it better than if you just knew the event. There is always an interest in the market for profound analysis.”
 
UNIQUE INSIGHT
Coridass says today’s viewers aren’t as interested in what he calls “classical documentaries that explain things,” but they will respond to a strong, well-told story. “We know there are terrorist forces in the world and there are ecological problems,” he explains. “The question is how you present it. Are you able to bring something really interesting? Our job is to present it in a way that is new, exciting, that offers new insights and information and that brings new techniques. I wouldn’t say there is something that always works. It depends on your approach and the making of it.”
 
The BBC has earned a global reputation for its current-affairs coverage, much of which is made for its Panorama programming strand, sold internationally by BBC Worldwide.
 
“There is a market for those big global stories,” says Tim Mutimer, the senior VP for sales and distribution in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for BBC Worldwide. That doesn’t make current affairs an easy sell, though.
 
“It’s one of the most difficult genres we sell,” Mutimer says, “in that current affairs does differ from country to country. Where we have success is in those global stories, and by making really good programs that stand out and can sit alongside programs that are made in each country. Sometimes the resources we have mean that we can do something that they can’t.” BBC Worldwide has sold Panorama docs in more than 70 territories over the years.
 
A third major-market public broadcaster, NHK in Japan, is a big player in current-events documentaries.
 
RIGHT ON TIME
NHK puts a premium on timeliness, according to Kazumasa Iida, the head of international program development. “Our audiences look to NHK for further explanations about what they hear in the news,” Iida says. “So, our in-house team produces current-affairs programs as timely as possible to answer the audience needs.”
 
At the same time, NHK isn’t shy about tackling subjects that might only have limited appeal internationally.
 
“NHK also produces many current-affairs programs on topics that are not necessarily receiving the highest interest,” Iida says. “There are always important subjects or social issues surrounding us, such as foreign affairs, an aging society, welfare, unemployment, etc., that the public should be aware of.”
 
Unlike the public broadcasters, who have a mandate to produce for the home market first, commercial entities have to focus first on the broader, international appeal of the current-affairs projects they produce or acquire, and give some consideration to shelf life.
 
Michael Cascio, the senior VP of production for National Geographic Channels, has to take into account that National Geographic has channels serving 168 different territories.
 
“Most of our programs are meant for National Geographic internationally or, if not our channel, they may show up elsewhere”—on a co-production or presale partner’s channel. “We try to make our programs available to all our channels. And, if we do a current-affairs program, we want to be sure it can repeat. We’re not the news and we don’t want to be. It has to be deep enough to repeat and live well.”
 
MATCH POINT
Cascio sees current affairs as a natural match for the National Geographic brand. “If you look at the magazine, there’s always some contemporary piece on what’s happening, say, in Pakistan,” he says. “The brand does allow for current affairs in several categories—actual events happening now, and certain types of events warrant a deeper look.”
 
Another category is world issues that are ongoing and need a spotlight or amplification, presented often under the Inside rubric. “We got access to Guantánamo and went inside,” Cascio says. “We did a co-­production called Inside the Koran, which looked at Islam today and the interpretations of the Koran. We did Iran and the West, an inside look at the changing relationship since the revolution in 1978. Those are issues that fit right into the sweet spot of National Geographic. They give a more in-depth look at issues of relevance.”

Richard Propper, the founder and president of the documentary distributor Solid Entertainment in Los Angeles, calls current affairs his most interesting category. As a distributor of other people’s films, Propper’s first concern is with international appeal and he rejects some 95 percent of the films he sees either on grounds of quality or because he doesn’t see a market for them.
 
“Something that’s always been popular is a story that has to do with law or the breaking of laws,” Propper says. “People wrongly convicted, justice docs. The challenge is finding good ones. Current affairs have to stand above the daily static of information. It has to be in depth; it has to have a point of view; it has to be well researched. What we look for are stories that aren’t part of that normal, daily static of information.”

As a pure distributor of documentaries, Propper is attentive to a program’s shelf life. “Docs related to ‘ripped from the headlines’ events and new movies that are just out have very short shelf lives,” he says. “I don’t want a film that’s old news. We look for films that straddle a big range. Timing also plays a part.”
 
Current-affairs filmmakers face several challenges, including time constraints, shelf-life issues and tight budgets. On the plus side, though, they can be relatively inexpensive.
 
The need to be timely generally precludes use of expensive CGI effects or dramatic re­creations. And while producers aspire to high production values, the acceptance of home video, cell-phone video, You­Tube clips and Skype transmissions on the air today make it easier to incorporate such content into current-affairs programs.
 
“We’re a high-def channel,” says BBC’s Cascio, “but if there is available video that works, in these categories that’s what it’s all about. We did an interesting project on Hurricane Katrina five years later, where we took home-video footage and patched it together in a way that made you feel you were there and you hadn’t seen it before.”
 
Shelf life is an inherent problem with current affairs, naturally. “When thinking of shelf life, the best way is to find the universal message,” NHK’s Iida says. “Instead of just focusing on the issue, we try to focus on the background—why and how it all occurred, which usually gives us a more universal approach to the subject.”
 
Budgets can vary widely, with broadcasters like BBC, ZDF and NHK willing to spend lavishly on important stories and independent producers counting every penny.
 
Propper has seen current-affairs docs come in with budgets as low as $25,000, but many he handles are ten times that. “There are some fantastic films being done now, and probably more of them because the technology is so inexpensive,” he says.
 
Cascio points out that current-affairs docs often require a lot of planning and shooting, which can drive up costs. “We did a show on the counterterrorism force in New York,” he notes. “We followed them for eight or nine months, including New Year’s Eve.”

Coridass says ZDF’s budgets are almost as high as for big dramas, ranging from €200,000 to €1 million euros an hour. “Sometimes producing current-affairs programs is like gambling on the stock market,” he says.       

A longer version of this article appeared in the MIPTV/MIPDOC 2011 edition of TV Real.