Broadcast
Silverback Films reveal its ambitions for Netflix’s biggest
factual bet to date.
The current golden age of TV drama is well established but
does that halo now encompass natural history filmmaking? Alastair Fothergill
thinks so.
The former head of the BBC Natural History Unit, and maker
of Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet, has been running indie
Silverback Films since 2012.
Tomorrow comes the long-anticipated release David
Attenborough-narrated series Our Planet on Netflix.
“Natural history is going through a boom and there’s no
doubt about that,” he tells Broadcast. “New commissioners have come in,
including Apple and Netflix, investing a huge amount of money into the
business.”
He admits that where the boom, they may eventually be a
bust, but adds that the BBC, which has just sold exclusive SVoD rights to its
factual programming to Discovery for its upcoming service, is “going great
guns”.
He says: “National Geographic is likely to be an even bigger
player as a result of the Fox/Disney merger, so it’s clear that not only is the
whole industry in a rush to get into streaming but there’s a lot of money being
invested everywhere. That’s fantastic for a content producer.”
Fothergill founded Silverback with Keith Scholey, the former
BBC controller of factual, ex-head of BBC Studios Natural History Unit and
director of Disneynature films African Cats and Blue.
“Our USP is to do a few big projects well,” says Scholey.
“We tend to specialise in blue chip landmark natural history shows for TV and cinema.”
The bulk of these to date have been singles for Disney brand
Disneynature for theatrical. The latest of these, Penguins, co-directed by
Fothergill, premieres on 17 April. It also produced the 7 x 60 minutes
miniseries North America for Discovery in 2013 and Netflix’s order of the
eight-part Our Planet five years ago has helped to double the firm’s team in
Bristol to 80.
“It’s Netflix’s
biggest factual commission so far,” Fothergill says. “They are stepping into
new territory, but they’ve always carried BBC programming [including Planet
Earth II and Blue Planet]. They’ve tracked very carefully who has watched the
genre so they understand how audiences react to natural history.”
Global reach
Netflix wanted a “global landmark” show, he explains, and
Silverback’s pitch was to focus the entire series on the environmental
challenges facing the planet.
“The series is wildlife-based but when people watch they
will see how climate change is impacting the natural world,” Scholey says.
“We’re not presenting this in a finger-wagging way, but we and Netflix both
that the time was right to go into some detail about the challenges we all
face.”
The ability to reach a global audience with this message was
a strong enticement.
“I’ve done these big landmarks and I’ve been satisfied that
they’ve been very successful globally,” says Fothergill. “But I feel that Our
Planet is more than just a TV series, and that’s our ambition with it.
“Netflix’s influence on 16-30-year-olds cannot be
understated, nor can availability of the whole series at once in 190 countries
to over 140 million subscribers.
“The nature of co-productions done by terrestrial
broadcasters to finance their big series means that nobody, apart from Netflix,
can offer this global transmission at the same time.”
Equally important to the producers is the show’s
availability in perpetuity on the platform. Partnered with the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF), Silverback and Netflix have created an online destination to
accompany the series.
Leaving a legacy
Ourplanet.com is being funded by Netflix, run by the WWF and
populated Silverback content and the aim of being kept up to date for at least
a decade.
“Sixty minutes of documentary can only carry so much when
there’s a much bigger and urgent story around the issues,” says Scholey.
“No-one has dedicated so much resource to an online site supporting a landmark
series of this type.”
Fothergill adds: “It means you can have a conversation
between audiences and the series over months and years. That’s not been done
before. It’s very important for the conservation message and builds an audience
in a unique way. Netflix spotted this from the word go.”
With clips already screened to business leaders at Davos,
and to the IMF and World Bank, Silverback hopes momentum behind Our Planet will
continue to 2020 and the UN’s next major conference about biodiversity.
Further collateral around the show includes an augmented
reality ‘interactive globe’ experience destined for install in Singapore, New
York and the Natural History Museum developed with the WWF and Google.
The show itself has suitably blue-chip credentials. Largely
shot in 4K UHD, it has been mastered in 4K with a High Dynamic Range finish and
Dolby Atmos surround-sound track.
Filming involved 600 crew in 50 countries and a cumulative
3,500 days in the field – more than on any production the producers have been
involved with.
Technical breakthroughs include adapting a Cineflex
gyro-stablised gimbal to fit a snow machine tracking polar bears and recording
aerial materials in 4K from drones such as bluefin tuna attacking shoals of
anchovies in the ocean.
The success of the show will likely influence Netflix’s
future commissioning strategy with Silverback and with the genre overall.
“The first step is to see how audiences react to Our
Planet,” Fothergill says.
Beyond Our Planet
In the meantime, the indie is putting the finishing touches
to two series for the BBC. The Mating Game, a 5 x 60 minutes series for BBC2 this
autumn, is a “deliberately playful” sequel to The Hunt focussing on the
dramatic tension of male and female animal courtship rituals.
Then in 2020 comes another five-part series, Perfect Planet,
co-produced with Tencent Penguin Pictures, France Télévisions and The Open
University. It examines the forces of nature, from volcanoes to hurricanes.
“Traditionally those forces have been depicted as
destructive, so we wanted to a try and film those natural spectacles and to
explain that these are positive force for rejuvenation of a healthy planet,”
says Fothergill.
For Silverback and Netflix, the most pressing priority right
now is the battle for the Earth’s well-being is ensuring Our Planet lands
strongly on the SVoD service and gets the eco message out.
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