Q&A with SundanceTV’s Sarah Barnett

NEW YORK: Sarah Barnett, the president and general manager of SundanceTV, talks to World Screen about celebrating, sourcing and nurturing original storytelling from the channel’s unique perspective.

WS: How did your original-production strategy come about?
BARNETT: SundanceTV had been doing some pretty cool unscripted work for a while when I got this job leading the channel. Unscripted was going in a very loud, noisy, sort of reality direction and it didn’t feel [like] that was the right direction for Sundance, which had just been bought by AMC Networks, [the parent of] AMC. Mad Men was really taking off when Sundance became part of the family. The more we talked about this, the more we really believed that narrative storytelling was the way forward for this brand. SundanceTV could distinguish itself in the TV world by telling the same kind of bold and daring stories that the Sundance Film Festival has fostered through its birthing of independent film. It obviously took time to get there, but once we decided that was the right route, once we got the investment, we were off and running with this idea of trying to be as remarkable in television as the Sundance Film Festival has been in film.

WS: Even though the channel has rebranded, have you remained faithful to Robert Redford’s original mission, which was celebrating creativity?
BARNETT: Yes. I would never think to speak for Bob, but he is very supportive of where we are going. One of the things that I am always inspired by, in terms of his body of work and what he continues to do, is that baked into his mission is this idea of change and evolution. And yet he holds really firm to certain unchanging, underlying values, one of which is to seek out distinct storytellers and put their work out there, and that is what we cleave to here.

WS: What balance do you seek in the series you air? You’ve had slower storytelling styles with Top of the Lake and Rectify. The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni even wrote about those series, referring to the uniqueness of “Slow TV”.
BARNETT: The Slow TV column was a tremendous tribute to the kind of shows we were doing at that point and may continue to do in some ways. We are not wedded to any particular idea. Often we tend to work with makers who have a very singular vision, and the pace and style of the show are dictated by their vision. Sometimes that can be slow and sometimes, in the case of The Honorable Woman, although it is lingering, there is a lot happening. One Child is a limited series airing in November. It is a very contemporary, very clear-eyed look at China—beautifully shot, it feels almost documentary in its intensity. And next year we are going to be airing Babylon, a Danny Boyle TV project, which is quite funny. The defining thing for us in any project is really less what it’s about, or even how it’s told, but mainly that both of those things are informed by somebody who has a really strong vision in their storytelling.

WS: How do you balance the series you wholly own with those you co-produce and acquire?
BARNETT: We do seek a balance. We’re not as rigid so as to have percentages. Wholly owning something is its own journey. In that situation you can nurture the piece; we develop a lot, and work with the writers. Co-producing and acquiring have their benefits too, not least the ability to react quite quickly. You can be surprised by something, and have the agility to be somewhat opportunistic. So for SundanceTV right now, certainly from a business model point of view, we see merit in having the flexibility to be able to move between the different ownership structures.

WS: Would you give some examples of how you have marketed your originals?
BARNETT: Given our background and shared DNA with film, we’ve launched quite a few shows in a way that has really leaned on our film partners. For the miniseries Carlos, we shared windows with IFC Films. We took the first run, but they put it pretty quickly into theaters. That was tremendous and it really helped create buzz about that property because, if you think about it, Carlos was five-and-a-half hours long, in many languages, and to an American audience was not an obviously commercial property. Yet it really began to brand Sundance in television and it won a Golden Globe. Some of that was helped by the fact that we benefited from the film attention and the film side benefited from the TV attention. It was a step ahead of the conversation and really entered the mainstream discourse around the intersection of film and television.

Then Top of the Lake was the first TV project ever to formally screen at the Sundance Film Festival, which was a great platform for that project in particular and for SundanceTV in general. Similarly with Rectify, prior to airing it on our channel, we released all six episodes of season one in two theaters—which was somewhat unusual. They played to packed houses. We also aired the first two episodes on about 18 different independent movie screens throughout the country. We have found some success in going to a place that feels quite logical for a network like SundanceTV and really leveraging the expectations and the positive associations that our audience makes with cinema.

WS: A lot of film talent is moving into television. How are you benefiting from this migration?
BARNETT: Talent, talent, talent! That is what is informing this incredible vitality in the medium of TV, along with a few other things that are driven by technology. When I look at the world on SundanceTV, I think about everybody from Olivier Assayas [director of Carlos] to Jane Campion [director of Top of the Lake] to Ray McKinnon  [creator of Rectify] who came out of independent filmmaking, to Maggie Gyllenhaal [star of The Honorable Woman] to Aaron Guzikowski [creator and executive producer of The Red Road]. Looking forward, we will have Babylon, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Brit Marling. It doesn’t get more “indie darling” than Danny Boyle and Brit Marling! Talent is moving into television because they are realizing that along with film it’s a tremendous medium in which to tell the kinds of stories they want to tell. I was struck by how Jane Campion talked about the canvas of television and how you can tell a different story in eight hours than the story you tell in two-and-a-half hours. What I love about film talent moving into TV is that they bring some of those executional qualities that make TV so great. They are quite cinematic in terms of how they think, not only in cinematography but also in casting, editing and scoring, and I think that is to TV’s benefit.

WS: Does the channel’s original series strategy impact your choice of films? What kind of movies do you want to offer your viewers?
BARNETT: For sure it all goes back to the source. Some of the qualities that we look for in our originals—great storytelling and a somewhat different point of view—we still look for in the films we air. They are either recent small indies like Safety Not Guaranteed, or bigger indies like Black Swan and Sideways. We look for good lead-ins, the stuff of regular linear TV: we try to schedule films leading into our originals that we specifically think are going to let an audience flow from one into the next. But the general film strategy is informed by the same criteria that inform our originals strategy, namely great indie storytelling.

WS: How does the channel remain connected to the Sundance Film Festival?
BARNETT: Very much the way it always was; there was never any formal connection. The channel grew out of Redford’s mission with the Sundance Institute and the Festival came from that. Then he looked around and said, It’s great that there are 40,000 people who come to Park City every year, but how do I get this content to a national audience? And this was at a time that cable was booming.

We are all very collegial. We sponsor the Sundance Film Festival, and we are very proud to support that. We are involved with their first Episodic Story Lab, which is a new lab they set up to look at storytelling in the world of television. We’re really nicely aligned in our businesses. Our media are different but we really line up when it comes to the kinds of filters we bring to the work.

WS: Is Redford involved in any way in the selection of content for the channel?
BARNETT: I absolutely bring him up to speed with what’s going on. He’s a big fan of Rectify and The Honorable Woman. I tap into his expertise where I can. He enjoys having conversations with me and with my head of programming about what we are doing on a big-picture level and also about specific projects. He still lights up when there is any conversation about content, whether it’s a show that is on air, or whether it’s purely about development. He is, through and through, a content guy.