{"id":15826,"date":"2021-03-10T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2021-03-11T08:57:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T13:57:40","slug":"tom-jennings-takes-an-archival-look-at-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/tom-jennings-takes-an-archival-look-at-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Jennings Takes an Archival Look at History"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Tom Jennings talks to <\/em>TV Real about his company 1895 Films and making documentaries using archives that play like narrative films.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jennings has written, produced and directed some 500 hours of programming on topics ranging from politics to religion, history to crime, sports to mystery and travel. He\u2019s had a front-row seat to the evolution of the documentary business\u2014and the TV industry at large.<\/p>\n

Jennings was working as a reporter in Los Angeles in the late \u201980s to mid-\u201990s, around the same time that the cable industry was taking off in the U.S. He started writing for documentary television, and his writing led to producing, which led to directing, which led to Jennings starting his own company, Tom Jennings Productions, in 2004 (he built out the business, now known as 1895 Films, in 2012). \u201cWhen I first started as a writer\/producer in the late \u201990s\/early 2000s, it was one of the best periods of my life because back then, the cable industry, which I was writing for almost exclusively, didn\u2019t have a ton of inventory. I went to crazy places, like Easter Island in the South Pacific. Back then, because they needed a lot of content, it was enough to just tell a good story. How it\u2019s evolved to now is that if I went to any of the networks and said, How about Easter Island? They would say, Why are we going there? Give us a reason; what\u2019s the point? You really have to find a purpose now in the story that you\u2019re telling. Is it contemporary? Is there some new information? Have you found new footage? You have to be more specific and precise in pitching ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documentary form, he says, seems to be hotter than ever at the moment. \u201cOne reason is that it\u2019s less expensive than dramatic or episodic television. Also, the audience is starved for the genuine story. When the networks were doing heavy re-creations of, say, John F. Kennedy, I would joke that I wanted to see the real<\/em> Kennedy! This actor is fine, and I get why they\u2019re doing it, but I wanted to see if we could tell the same kind of story but with real footage. That\u2019s what led me and my company to go down this path of creating films out of archives that play like narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n

This production style, though not the only one that Jennings and 1895 Films uses, is somewhat unique. \u201cVery few companies do our style, but the networks love it,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember early on, when I started pitching these, I\u2019d say, There\u2019s no narrator and there are no interviews. And the network executives would shake their heads and say, We can\u2019t do it like that; it\u2019s impossible. I\u2019d say, it\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennings adds that archive programming is popular because \u201cpeople want to experience the real thing, but they want to be entertained too, like they\u2019re watching a movie. The bar is higher now, but the opportunities, especially because of streaming, seem to be almost limitless. The doors are open everywhere, it\u2019s just about finding the right fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that he\u2019s been inspired by new storytelling and production techniques, including the use of animation and rotoscoping used in the documentary Tower<\/em>, about the 1966 shootings at the University of Texas at Austin. \u201cFor the first five minutes of watching that documentary, I hated it. [Laughs<\/em>],\u201d Jennings recalls. \u201cIt slowly started to wash over me, and then I thought it was so clever. It was inspired! People who were familiar with the story probably already knew most of the images from the past, but they took them and made everything feel brand new. As we pitch directly to networks and streamers and sell them on an idea, it\u2019s much harder to sell them on an idea like that because it\u2019s so far out there. But it\u2019s certainly something we consider almost every time: should we rotoscope this? I wonder if they would buy it! I hope there are more opportunities to do things like that in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The topics covered by 1895 Films run the gamut of the factual spectrum, with projects such as Apollo: Missions to the Moon <\/em>for National Geographic and MLK: The Assassination Tapes<\/em> for Smithsonian Channel, for which it also produces the award-winning The Lost Tapes<\/em> series. But there is a common thread that unites them. \u201cWe do mostly history-based programs,\u201d Jennings says. \u201cI love history and always have. I was a newspaper reporter, and they say that journalism is the first draft of history. We try to tell stories that people think they know, but we\u2019re going to show them images, let them hear sounds and allow them to experience it in a way that they have never seen or heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recounts the resounding success of 1895 Films\u2019 Diana: In Her Own Words<\/em>, which used taped interviews with the Princess of Wales recorded by Dr. James Colthurst for biographer Andrew Morton. \u201cMorton had released a few snippets to NBC News in 2004, but he had never let anyone have the tapes to do a documentary,\u201d Jennings recalls. \u201cWhen I called him and asked about the tapes, he said, \u2018Get in line! You\u2019re about the 2,000th producer who has asked me for them.\u2019 I told him we were going to do it differently: there\u2019s no narrator, there are no interviews, there\u2019s no one talking about what Diana was like; we\u2019re just going to use Diana to narrate her own story. After a long pause, he said, \u2018No one has ever asked me to do it that way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The film came out on National Geographic in 2017, timed to the 20th anniversary of Diana\u2019s passing. As there were a slew of other docs commemorating the event (including one on Channel 4 in the U.K. that even shared the same name), Diana: In Her Own Words<\/em> made little noise in its initial release, Jennings says. \u201cA few years went by, and the film had been licensed to Netflix. Then, The Crown<\/em> season four came out, all about Diana. Netflix still had our documentary and decided to pair it together with The Crown<\/em>, and suddenly tens of millions of people around the world were watching our documentary. The response that our film got three years after it was made was unbelievable!\u201d<\/p>\n

This, he says, is testament to the fact that certain characters from the past and certain stories have worldwide resonance in ways that go beyond basic understanding: \u201cPrincess Diana is one of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cWhat we are finding in proposing ideas is that if we pitch to a U.S. cable network, they have a very defined brand, they are looking to a U.S. audience to be the main place where they want people to watch the program. If we pitch to a streaming platform, like Netflix or Amazon, they are [trying to be] everything to everyone everywhere. It depends who you\u2019re pitching to for how wide a throw you need. A lot of U.S. cable networks still want things that appeal to anyone, anywhere, but they are trying to be true to their brand. Whereas when we as producers go to the streamers, it better be something that could appeal to someone in Australia or Italy or the United States; they want it to travel the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Tom Jennings talks to World Screen Newsflash about his company 1895 Films and making documentaries using archives that play like narrative films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":15827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,69],"tags":[5398,3947],"class_list":["post-15826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-1895-films","tag-tom-jennings","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nTom Jennings Takes an Archival Look at History - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/tom-jennings-takes-an-archival-look-at-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tom Jennings Takes an Archival Look at History - 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