Scott Gershin Takes the Audience on a Sonic Journey

interview and words for HPA 

Scott Gershin is an award-winning sound supervisor, sound designer, and mixer who has been a pioneer and leader in the film and gaming community for over three decades.

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After studying mixing and music at Berklee College of Music, Gershin was one of the first to use computers to edit and design sound against picture (using an Atari computer to design Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 1987).

From the mid-1980s, he became the main sound designer at Soundelux, working on award-winning films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Born on the Fourth of July, Glory, and Steel Magnolias during his first two years at Soundelux. In 1991, he established Soundelux Media Labs, later called Soundelux Design Music Group (DMG). His vision was to create a sound design think tank supporting multiple industries. In addition to his film work, Scott and his team also supported sound design for theme parks, commercials, music videos, and industrials (such as Nike) before lending his talents and entering into the interactive entertainment industry, expanding their services to include voice-over recording and casting, as well as music composition.

Scott has designed and supervised such films as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Maya & the Three, Nightcrawler, Pacific Rim, Hellboy 2, Chronicles of Riddick, Team America, Shrek, Star Trek, Blade II, Flubber, Heat, Braveheart, JFK, Home Alone, Cliffhanger, The Doors, Book of Life, Tarzan, and American Beauty, to name a few.

After 29 years and the sale of Soundelux, Gershin departed and joined and founded several divisions including Formosa Interactive, Sound Lab at Technicolor, and The Sound Lab, a Keywords Studio, contributing to more than 100 movies and the same number of video games.

He is credited with bringing film-quality sound into the interactive entertainment industry, including working with major game studios such as Riot, Capcom, Square Enix, Platinum, Microsoft, Sony Games, Activision, Tencent, NetEase, EA, Insomniac, and id.

Earlier this year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Audio Network Guild to add to his 13 MPSE Golden Reel Awards (close to 40 nominations), an Emmy (for Maya and the Three), a Lumiere Award (for his VR work), numerous G.A.N.G. and TEC Awards, and a BAFTA nomination for American Beauty.

With thanks to Scott Gershin for taking the time to talk with HPA.

You have described yourself as an ‘audio photographer.’ Can you explain what this means?
Where people will use a camera to capture a moment, my job is to collect audio snapshots or samples of the world around us. Anything that makes a sound—from animals to weaponry to vehicles, to banging objects together, to the sounds of people living their lives… A lifetime of collecting or recording sounds that can one day be used on a variety of movies and games to tell stories and create experiences. It’s my paint.

I’m constantly listening to everything everywhere I go, creating a mental database of the sounds of life—how they differ from city to city or country to country… cultural differences, technological differences. Such as how emergency sirens sound different in different parts of the world or something as simple as the sounds of children playing in a schoolyard or the way different professionals communicate, such as traffic controllers or police dispatch operators. Trying to capture the vernacular. To understand the similarities and differences of each area and generation within an area.

There are just so many wonderful sounds. Often, I will capture them and manipulate them to create something else. But one of the most effective uses of sound is silence—to create contrast between chaos and nothingness. A high-contrast black and white picture. Having an audience only hear themselves breathing. The sudden void of nothingness in a brief moment. When used properly, there’s nothing more powerful.

Do you keep a personal library of sounds that you’ve collected?
Yes! I have close to 5 million sounds now. Even if I am not able to capture a sound, I hear it in my head. So I can reference it later. For instance, I did the FX show Mrs. America, which is set in 1970s New York. Growing up in my early years in NY, I remember the sound of Greenwich Village and New York City. I remembered the sound of the city… I wanted to replicate what I remembered so you could even smell it. I wanted to capture and recreate what I remembered, including the accents, the sounds of the city, and the slang and vernacular of that era. I spent a lot of time with the actors in our loop group to capture that sound.

Whether I remember it or research it, I need to be able to capture that realism to be able to do justice to whatever project I’m on. That includes anything from regional dialects to the way people talk when displaying levels of aggression. Or cars. Or weaponry. Or anything. To me, sound is endlessly fascinating. I’m always listening, and I’ve always got the urge to grab clips and samples of life. I’m always listening to sounds and imagining how I can manipulate them.

Can you give us some examples?
I could grab the ‘whoosh’ of an airplane toilet being flushed and turn that into a weapon or a hurricane. With weaponry, I need to be able to capture the essence of a weapon at a volume that people could listen to without blowing their ears out. That’s tricky. At the beginning of my career, I worked with Oliver Stone on JFK and needed to be able to capture the fatal shots from Dealey Plaza. During production, they shot blanks in Dealey Plaza so I could hear the echo. With the technology at the time, I was able to replicate that echo, and every time that SFX was played, it started from a different perspective and a different place in the theatre.

These are all things that you find through experimentation and play. That’s the creative component of the job. It’s using your craft to enhance the project. Bringing the director’s vision to fruition. Figuring out how to make an audience giggle, cry, fear, awe, or think. Creating the sounds of 25-story robots and creatures in Pacific Rim by going to Long Beach Harbor and dropping 80-foot cargo containers on top of each other to create the sounds of their footsteps and punches. That was loads of fun.

Anyone wanting to do what you do seems to need the ability to tune their ears into the environment. Can you elaborate on your process?
I don’t hear any better than anyone, but I listen better than most. I refer to something I call your inner ear—the ability to hear and imagine sounds in your head. I’ve been such a fan of films, TV, and games my whole life. Watching thousands of hours and listening my whole life, I can hear shows in my head. It’s like playing music. You need to hear it in your head first before playing it. This is the same when I read a script or watch a rough cut. I’m able to hear and feel the movie in my head before I start, which helps guide me as to how I should approach the upcoming project. In addition, when I am starting my sound design, I’ll often try by making the sounds with my voice. The reason I do that is I’m trying to figure out how to make the sound. And also I’ll do that with clients to better describe what I am thinking… Words just don’t work… sometimes I need to vocalize it. It’s extremely helpful if I can imagine what that sound can sound like or remember what that sound sounds like in real life, to determine if I have recorded it and it’s in my library or if I need to record or design it.

The next thing needed is a good understanding of technology. I think of audio tools as paintbrushes that I can use to manipulate pitch, amplify, attenuate, modulate, or otherwise tweak in dozens of different ways. Then I need to figure out what I want this sound to now become, and equally important, when it should be used. I am constantly learning all the newest tools. Did I mention I love technology and those who create it?

On The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), I wanted to approach the design of the spaceships differently, so I had this idea to use guitars. I loosened the strings via a Floyd Rose, then used the whammy (vibrato) bar, tightening them up while I passed through a Marshall amp. I used it as an element to create the sound of the spaceship rising.

Another example was when I recorded a submarine. I found out the real sub was pretty boring, so I created the sounds of the sub from stuff at my home. The air conditioner blades became the engine, the rotating jets in my hot tub became the torpedoes (using an underwater mic), and the depth charges were me in a pool with my aluminum canoe. I blasted the canoe with air releases from the tanks underwater as well as hitting the canoe underwater with many objects, recording with an assortment of mics, including a hydrophone.

For Pacific Rim, I brought in Tina Guo, who’s a famous cellist. I had her scraping and manipulating her cello, playing below the bridge and everywhere we could think of—bowing and plucking—while processing it in real time and running it through a guitar modeler to create an element for the Kaiju’s vocals. Also using exotic synths, processors, anything that makes noise and sound.

People may not realize that you’re the voice of a lot of movie and game characters such as Flubber in Flubber, Herbie in Herbie Fully Loaded, Antie in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Reapers in Blade II, the Dragon in Shrek, and Dogfish in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, to name a few.
Even though none of these characters recite any words, they have to portray emotion. I like to use my voice and manipulate it in real time to create something new. Not human-sounding. A creature—big or small or cute—I use my voice to portray a character that can emote without words, creating the emotion of that character so audiences can understand that character. The illusion has to be perfect. If you know it’s me, I have failed. It must be a perfect marriage, a perfect blend that transcends to be that character. Then the illusion is successful. I vocalized Herbie in Herbie Fully Loaded. I get told a bunch that they didn’t hear my voice… I ask if they found Herbie endearing and cute. They say yes. I say, it’s just a Volkswagen bug… cars don’t sound cute. That’s when I know the illusion worked. It’s one of the things I love to do the most in my career and also the most challenging.

Does your creative process change if you’re doing a video game or a feature film, or are there more similarities than differences?
I find that the creative process in the creation of sounds between video games and movies isn’t actually that much different. Especially when you compare theatrical animation and video games. The design process is very similar.

In a theatrical environment, I’ve got a controlled linear medium in a dark room played back in numerous formats—Stereo, 5.1, or Atmos. I use those spatial formats to their fullest potential. I’m able to playback material at certain volumes and move them around the room to enhance whatever scenario and scene we’re trying to create. I like to take into account the life of the movie. Where it might play in a theatre for 4–10 weeks, it will live the rest of its life in a smaller playback medium like your home theatre, TV set, or headphones. I try to take into account how sound will translate to other mediums—how the dialogue is going to be heard and how it’s going to translate against a full mix.

In gaming, I am creating sounds and mixes that will play back in a user-defined perspective. The player controls perspective and panning and how sounds will mix against other sounds based on gameplay. The audio playback format is similar to TV and movies played in a home environment. In the sound design for film, the sounds are edited in a linear format and will playback exactly the same every time you watch it. In games, the sounds are created and designed as elements that get played back based on how the player interfaces with the game. A keystroke can trigger a sound such as a weapon; a joystick can move the character forward and reverse, left and right; and the sounds being played back that aren’t controlled by the player are triggered based on how the game is progressing or the decisions the player is making. Those sounds and music are being used based on numerous factors… where every time you play the game you’re getting a different variation of the whole soundtrack and the mix.

But at the basic level, when sound designing a creature, a weapon, or an object, it is very similar in both formats. How it is used is very different. Also, in linear formats (film, TV), I am considered post-production. In gaming, I am considered production because I am making assets for a game that, at a later date, will be integrated into the game.

Does sound for film bleed into games or does sound for games influence the sound of film?
Right now, games and film are very much locked in creatively. For instance, video game developers grew up on Star Wars, The Matrix, or other action, science fiction film classics, and they want that sort of experience in their games. Many people from the game world have a deep appreciation of film sound. Even outside of science fiction or combat games, you have more dramatic games which now inspire great TV—The Last Of Us, Arcane, Fallout, Resident Evil are glowing examples. I think where comic books created generations of IP, moving forward I believe games are now taking that space. Both the movie and games industry are in the business of making IP that can be viewed and played on all formats. That’s where, I believe, we’ve been heading. Both mediums are great forms of entertainment.

Is the craft of sound design threatened or enhanced by AI?
Put it this way: we pay a few hundred dollars a year for subscription to Pro Tools, but that’s nothing compared to the technology needed to do visual effects. If you look at budgets on tentpole projects, they’ll spend $100 million on VFX and $400,000 on sound editorial. It’s the other end of the scale. So if it costs $10M to invest in training a decent AI tool for sound, you’ll never make a return on your investment. For that reason, I’m not worried that the art of sound will magically disappear with AI.

AI can also play an important role in aspects of our process. For example, if we’re recording dialogue on location in a big noisy city, often you’re plagued by the background noise. There are already technologies that will clean that dialogue up and make it usable, but AI will take this capability to the next level—enhancing syllables, D’s, S’s can be enhanced to better hear them. Bringing forward mumbled dialogue will be an option. Better ways to blend production dialogue and ADR. These are the tools being created now.

I’m not a big believer in AI as the boogeyman coming to replace my job. I believe and hope AI is going to create better toolsets to help us save time and allow for more creative time. But I am speaking from the point of view of sound design. The use of AI to replace actor dialogue or to automate scriptwriting, etc.—that’s another matter entirely. A lot of discussion is being had in these areas. And I support controlling the use of AI to not replace performers and artists, but to create tools to enhance what we’ve been doing—such as file searches, cleanup and restoration, organizing assets, spotting against picture, creation of pan-able objects following pixel clusters, applying EQ profiles on other sound files, “better EQ matching,” etc. It’ll just be better and more useful plugins.

Do you have a personal favorite of all the titles you’ve worked on?
I’m proud of the diversity of work that I’ve done. I haven’t been pigeonholed to a single genre or style. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best creatives in the business—to tell a diverse style of stories, emotions, and experiences. To make an audience laugh, fear, cheer, and think.

There are projects that define and accent periods of my life—my first movie Honey, I Shrunk The Kids; my close relationship and work with Guillermo del Toro; my experiences with Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Jorge Gutierrez, Wolfgang Petersen, Sam Mendes, John Hughes, David Twohy, and so many more. I was very fortunate early in my career to be exposed to filmmakers who wanted to use sound as a style, not just to create realism, but to create emotion.

What is your goal as a sound designer?
The aim is to try to create a feeling, an emotion, or a reaction—whether that’s making little kids giggle or making people feel uncomfortable. In Alive (1993), I made the plane crash so loud in the theater because I needed to create a sense of audio deprivation after the crash. The only way to do that is through contrast. Using guitar wood and organic elements to bring to life a wooden puppet and allow it to capture the hearts and minds of an audience—to take them on a journey of thought and reflection.

With all the mediums that I work in, you try to get the audience to buy into the sound emanating from that element or character. I don’t create sounds and designs “looking for a movie.” I start with a blank canvas. I take cues from the filmmakers. I read the script. I see the way it’s cut. I see the way the actors are performing within it, and that gives me—as an enthusiast who loves movies—a feeling. How do I contradict or support that feeling? What tricks, tools, and techniques do I have that can enhance that story in ways that don’t break the illusion? You shouldn’t notice the person behind the curtain. Pace and rhythm and pitch all feed into it.

To me, making a movie or a game is similar to being in a band. Everybody has some part to play, and when it comes together and it locks in, then it’s magical.

Fire and Ice: The Extraordinary Career of Racing Legend Aryton Senna

interview and words for RED Digital Cinema

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Senna recounts the extraordinary life of Ayrton Senna da Silva, the iconic Formula 1 driver who transcended motorsport to become a global symbol of courage, talent, and relentless determination.

The six-hour Netflix series traces his rise up the ranks of the FIA Championships with stunning cinematography, including white-knuckle racing scenes captured by Azul Serra, ABC (Association of Brazilian Cinematographers), and Kauê Zilli, ABC.

The show spans four decades of his career which ended in tragedy at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Showrunner and director Vicente Amorim and director Júlia Rezende marshaled a largely Brazilian crew and often simultaneous shoots over seven months on location in Brazil, Argentina, Northern Ireland and Uruguay.

“When we realized the scale of the project we decided to split the cinematography into two,” explains Serra (New Bandits, A Small Light). “We put all the drama that happens outside the car in a different category from all the action on the track while ensuring that both felt part of the same project.”

With extensive use of a LED volume and location work, logistically, it was easier for the production to manage the schedule in separate sections but there was a creative logic too.

“Our directors and showrunner wanted the show to have really bold visuals,” Serra says. “We took that a stage further by differentiating the racing sequences to feel crisper, sharper and, if anything, more hostile to the flesh and blood of the drivers. We contrast that with narrative scenes which feel a little softer, with a hint of glamor and more depth of field.”

Serra's choice of camera for the race sequences was not simply subjective regarding image quality but multi-faceted. “I felt in this case that RED cameras were more versatile for filming the racing performance. F1 cars are so low to the floor that there is limited room for us to grip so the weight and size of the KOMODO was essential for us to rig multiple bodies as crash cams.

“Another key consideration was capturing shots for VFX. Since VFX will always want plates in the highest definition the KOMODO 6K S35 sensor and 8K large format of V-RAPTOR was important. We also valued the variable frame rate for slow motion photography and especially important for capturing extremely fast action was that both cameras offer a global shutter for undistorted images.

“To be clear, we are not recreating a video game. We wanted the audience to be embedded in the performance so that every time we cut to a race they have this feeling of being in the cockpit with him.”

The Oscar y Juan Gálvez racetrack in Buenos Aires effectively served as the main studio for live action race shoots. The production team dressed the track for multiple different racetracks including Suzuka (Japan), Imola (Italy), Estoril (Portugal) and Silverstone (UK), over different periods, augmented by VFX.

While KOMODO was rigged on the race cars, V RAPTOR was the A camera for filming race sequences from the track, pit lane and from a follow-car. “We always used V-RAPTOR as the first option with KOMODOs playing the second, third and fourth camera rigged to the cars,” Serra says.

When it came to shooting in the LED Volume on stages in São Paulo, Serra adhered to this shooting style. Second unit DP Cory Geryak joined the camera team here to share his experience shooting virtual production.

“It was really clear for us that we had to use exactly the same mentality on stage as on the races including camera positions and angles,” Serra says. “We didn't want to use impossible movements or have the feeling that the camera was somehow flying around. It was always to emulate that the camera was gripped onboard the car. Our mentality was to approach both real and virtual worlds exactly the same way. So, we retain the same shutter speed, the same slow motion, the same visual parameters and positioning for KOMODOs and V-RAPTOR.”

Layered on top of the visual design was a set of four looks to subtly represent different phases of Senna’s story. This evolved from extensive research that Serra did in nine months of preproduction.

“Senna’s life was really well documented from when he started to race carts as a kid in the 1960s to his teenage years on Formula 3 and into his championship winning period. We could trace the progression of his look from a specific film emulsion of the sixties to the 1990s which marks the beginning of digital video. It’s almost a history of visual photography which we intended to emulate.”

Serra rewatched motorsport movies including Ford v Ferrari and Rush for how they combined drama with race action. He also scouted the main locations and took his own reference shots on a Leica. He identified a handful of iconic images representing four phases of Senna’s life and used these as principal references to build four LUTs with Luisa Cavanagh on DaVinci Resolve at Argentina’s Quanta Post.

“I took all of this research to Luisa and together we created the final look. We did 10 or 11 sessions just to find out the look and the LUT that we would use along the way.”

Look phase one was Senna’s childhood in Brazil and the beginning of his career. “The Brazilian phase is about affection, loving and care and conceptually requires warmer tones,” Serra explains. “For his time racing Formula Ford and Formula 3 in England we use wider shots and cooler tones that emphasize his loneliness away from home. For the Formula 1 phase at Team McLaren, we use a light that conveys a certain hostility. Everything shines, and the team wears bright red and white uniforms. It’s a very stimulating world where everything is a bit artificial. The last phase is Imola when Senna is driving for Williams. The team livery is white and blue, so we decided to adopt that look, to go whitish and icy because the sport has also modernized with technology and pristine garages but also as if the image were already a little more ethereal.”

Series producer Gullane Filmes relied on production services from Salado Media in Uruguay and Argentina, with cameras supplied by Musitelli Film & Digital out of Montevideo.

“Brazil has a very big film industry with great rental houses, but Musitelli is conveniently located close to Brazil, Argentina and, of course, Uruguay,” Serra adds. “When you go to Musitelli, you see how they love what they do.”

For Azul, working on Senna was both a great responsibility and a privilege. “I had a unique opportunity to connect with a huge international audience, but front of my mind was the Brazilian audience.

“I remember as a kid watching the races every Sunday and how much Senna represented for us. It’s not just that he was an amazing driver and a World Champion, but he represented an era in Brazil when things were bad for us both economically and socially. At that time, he was pushing the boundaries of what was possible. People all over Brazil gathered together with families on a Sunday to watch Senna give us all a little bit of hope.”

Mark Gatiss: UK industry has been ‘shaken to its core’

Broadcast

UK-based writer and actor Mark Gatiss has thrown his name behind proposals to tax international streamers and preserve British TV production, adding that the country’s industry has been “shaken to its core” over recent years.

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MPs called for “urgent action” to support the UK industry earlier this year, with the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s (CMSC) British Film and HETV report supporting enhanced tax incentives for domestic high-end TV (HETV) and a 5% streamer levy.

Gatiss told Broadcast International he agreed with the proposals, adding that “the persistent problem with Britain is that we simply don’t value the creative industries.”

He continued: “It makes sense to try and protect content because it is increasingly difficult to create high-end drama in the face of behemoths with eyewatering budgets. At the same time, anything protectionist always scares me. It’s a complex issue and I’m not sure these [attempts] ever make any difference.”

Gatiss was speaking at the Italian Global Series Festival (IGSF) in Riccione and Rimini for the premiere of his new show Bookish, a period detective drama he created and stars in for UKTV’s crime channel U&Alibi.

“You come to other countries like Italy or France and the TV and film industry plays a huge part in not only the culture [of the country], but of its economy.

“People just accept that, but in the UK we’ve got a major problem, despite the fact that we all consume so much content every day. Unfortunately, it’s an ideological thing which baffles me constantly.”

He also said numerous friends in the industry have left as the sector has been squeezed by reduced budgets and demand, describing the surge of commissioning following the pandemic as a “massive bubble” that was “totally unsustainable” and like the “wild west”.

“Disney bought everything with four walls,” he said. “That bubble was bound to pop. Everything collapsed. Covid and the actor’s strike seem to have shaken the industry to its core. It’s a bit dizzying. I’ve got so many friends who are leaving the industry and anecdotally you hear many more extraordinary stories. It’s just kind of gone.”

Gatiss also confirmed that a second season of Bookish is set to start filming in August.

Set in London in 1946, the show centres on Gabriel Book (Gatiss) as an antiquarian book dealer and amateur sleuth.

The 6 x 70-minute series was commissioned by head of drama Helen Perry, produced by ITV Studios-owned Eagle Eye Drama and directed by Carolina Giammetta, with Polly Walker, Daniel Mays, Joely Richardson and Connor Finch among cast. PBS Distribution holds the North American rights and Beta Film handles international sales.

“I’m very interested in the whole post-War period which informed Bookish,” he explained in a presentation about the show at the festival. “We have two things left in Britain. One is the Second World War and one is the 1966 World Cup, and we cling to them like a life raft. We increasingly aggrandise and mythologise them out of any perspective.”

However, Gatiss believes there is audience appetite for new detective dramas, adding that “we’re in a new golden age of murder mystery.”

He continued: “It’s murder as parlour game. It’s a great escape for people from the scariness of the real world just as it was in the golden age of murder mystery fiction in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s the puzzle that people like, not necessarily having something drenched in blood.”

Bookish has been labelled as ‘cozy crime’, but Gatiss said he finds the term pejorative. “I don’t like the term ‘cozy crime’ because it suggests there’s no teeth to it and there’s definitely teeth to Bookish,” he said.

“In this strange, post-war period the world has been shaken up. It’s in ruins but it’s also a time of extraordinary optimism and a sort of madness. There were lots of liars. People would come back from the War and reinvent themselves as retired Majors who’d had a ‘good war’ but they turned out to be embezzlers and stranglers.”

He added: “I’ve always wanted to play a detective. I’ve had this idea for a long time. It’s also informed by my love of the films of Powell and Pressburger.”

Gatiss, who created BBC hit Sherlock, also touched on why the drama had not returned for a fifth season, explaining that stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman “didn’t want to do it anymore.”

He added: “We pitched a feature film during lockdown which they both liked the idea of but it’s not happened. You have to acknowledge that there is a moment in time in which lightning strikes and then it stops. Never say never, but going back is often very difficult. I don’t want to live in the past.”

Gatiss also said he doubted he would return to Doctor Who, which he last wrote on in 2017.

“I’ve not been asked. I don’t know what’s going on with Doctor Who at the moment. I know it’s all about the Disney deal. I’m two Doctors down and I think once you once or two Doctors down, you can’t come back.”

The IGSF, running 21-28 June, is billed as a new incarnation of the Roma Fiction Festival, which ran for 10 years until 2016. It is organised by Italy’s producers’ association APA, in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Culture and SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers).

 

Behind the Scenes: Dept Q

IBC

New Netflix police procedural is a love letter to hardboiled noir and classic British TV crime drama says showrunner Scott Frank.

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The Hollywood scriptwriter behind Minority Report, Get Shorty, Logan and The Queen’s Gambit says his happy place is British TV crime drama – and now he has now created such a show of his own. New Netflix series Dept Q is as rain sodden, dour and shot through with grim humour as UK audiences expect of their detective mysteries.

“What's different about British police drama are the characters,” enthuses writer-director and showrunner Scott Frank. “I think about Sarah Lancaster (Sgt Catherine Cawood) in Happy Valley. These are characters that are sometimes put under certain personal pressures and I find that it's done really well. You could say it’s all cliché but in these shows it feels fresh to me.”

He reels off a list of classic Brit crime drama including Line of Duty, Blue Lights, The Responder and Cracker. “Happy Valley is my happy place! Broadchurch, Prime Suspect - my wife and I tear through them all. I feel that I’m watching a different sort of procedural. You're steeped in this tone and mood and you don't want to look away. There aren't parts where you want to pause. If you have to go get a drink or go to the bathroom, you don't want to. You're not as tempted to look away because you know that everything is important. I just love that.”

That is what he has attempted to achieve in Dept Q, a dense nine-part adaptation of the novel by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. The series revolves around Carl Morck (Matthew Goode), a former top-rated detective assigned to a new cold case whilst wracked with guilt following an attack that left his partner paralysed and another police officer dead.

Noir as Trojan horse

As is clear from Frank’s filmography (Dead Again, Malice, Out Of Sight, A Walk Among The Tombstones) he is also attracted to the neo noir genre. His last TV series Monsieur Slade imagined the famous Maltese Falcon detective Sam Spade living in the south of France in 1963.

“In noir literature no one is all good or all bad and the best characters are those that inhabit that grey area. It's really interesting to see people in a situation where they have to be the worst of themselves in order to do something good. You see that in westerns, too, like Unforgiven. Morality is elastic as people try to do the right thing or try to survive. It’s intense.

“The other thing is that the noir genre can hold emotion. You can have all these other values if they're done right and not just an exercise in plot. Some movies have great plots and you enjoy them for that but others like Chinatown rise above that. A good film noir can be everything.”

Genre fiction shows are like Trojan horses, he adds. “The audience immediately knows and understands the type of story that they're in and that allows us as storytellers to smuggle in other subjects.”

Family drama

Dept Q’s lead character Morck is one miserable bastard. He carries a lot of baggage into the series when we meet him. No-one seems to like him, not his colleagues and least of all his teenage son.  For all that, he exhibits the caustic wit and unshakeable integrity of the hardboiled hero.

“Yeah, he's quite a hard going character,” agrees Frank, filling in the character’s back story. “He's trapped in Scotland. He didn't want to be there in the first place. He's only there because of his wife who then left him. A lot of him has just kind of given up but he becomes increasingly activated as the show goes on and I think that's an enjoyable thing to experience. You want him to wake up. You're like, ‘Come on Carl! We need you to help this person.’”

At one point someone tells Morck ‘I heard you were dead’ and Morck quips back, ‘Only on the inside.’  

“I felt like he was dead and it would be fun to have him reborn to give him a sense of purpose,” Frank says. “At the beginning he doesn’t have a sense of purpose. He’s marking time more than anything else. When he sees that they've put him out to pasture in the basement of the police headquarters, he says, ‘Perfect, this will do’ because he doesn't really want to work. But this case gets to him and the de facto family-like unit that he works with wake him up.”

The ‘who’ and ‘why dunnit?’ of Dept Q aside it is the familial relationships which drive the drama. Morck for instance feels isolated from his own family.

“I was very conscious of writing about the dysfunctional family that ends up as Department Q,” Franks explains. “I always knew how I wanted the story to end. I knew what the final shot should be. I just needed to figure out the pace of how it all happens so it doesn't feel sentimental. Emotion is good, sentiment is bad. So how do we gradually bring everybody together in a way that feels genuine and not some cliched archetype?”

Illuminating a dark show

Frank briefed French cinematographer David Ungaro (Monsieur Slade) and production designer Grant Montgomery to light interiors not as single rooms but with light spaces and dark spaces.

“I don't like watching a show and wondering where the light comes from,” he says. “So, if we need light in a room we would add a skylight or another light to make its presence more natural. We had a colour palette that didn't have too much in it so that certain colours would really stick out. It isn't desaturated by any means. It's a very colourful show but there isn't every colour of the rainbow.”

He says he hasn’t seen the several Danish feature adaptations of Adler-Olsen’s books, including The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013) but did reference the 2004 film Birth directed by Jonathan Glazer.

“It had a similar vibe that I wanted visually, in particular the way that movie used light and dark. I knew that I didn't want Dept Q to be The Killing or another typical Scandinavian noir. I wanted it to have a little more room for colour and more room for light than those shows typically do.”

As with every Netflix show Dept Q is shot digitally. Frank continues, “It’s very hard to tell the difference between digital and film when lit properly. Digital can look great when you push it to the very edge and use as little light as you can get away with. I wanted the sets to work so that it wasn’t too dark and we can't see anything but also they had to feel real and not as if light is coming from artificial source.”

Scenes shot inside an air pressured hyperbaric chamber were framed with a square aspect ratio. “The whole reason to do that was to put us in there with [the character] and not have your eye wander too much but to stay in the confines of their world,” he says.

“Any kind of composition that I come up with has to be about story and character. How much can we tell in one shot? That's where light and production design, wardrobe and props comes into play. When you're composing a shot I want to get the maximum story out of it.”

 

Writing episode one, scene one

Like the first paragraph of a novel screenwriter’s want the opening scene to grip the audience to get them to want to stay for more.

“The truth is I'm often criticised for being too slow at the start. I’m always being asked if there’s any way we can shorten the first episode! I feel like you want to have something that announces the show. Something arresting. But you don’t just want to grab the audiences’ attention, you also want to grab their trust. If they feel you know what you’re doing, then they’ll be patient and get engaged. That’s a tall order. A strong start leads to the next thing, that leads to the next thing, that leads to the next thing.”

They covered the scene in multiple ways because it’s one that the narrative revisits and pieces together from different angles. The footage we see first is in the style of bodycam footage, the inspiration for which Frank says came from 2009 crime drama Harry Brown which opened with shaky mobile phone video.

“I put more thought into that opening than to any other scene because I really wanted it to get you from the beginning. I wanted you to wonder what you're looking at, to be a little thrown off so that you have to pay attention. You have to listen. It starts in the middle of a sentence. You do not see the end coming. That was the trickiest for me.”

Other writers on the show (Chandni Lakhani Stephen Greenhorn, Colette Kane) helped him ground the show for British audiences. He says he asked them “What would really piss a Scotsman into a good argument with an Englishman?’ – hence the scene in which Morck and partner debate the legitimacy of the 1966 World Cup win.

“If I can't hear the characters talking, I can't write the story,” Frank says. “Once I get the characters speaking to one another then the story gets much better. Dialogue for me is the most fun. Sometimes, if I'm not sure what to do in a scene, I'll just have people start talking. I might not use all of it, but it’s a great way to get started. It’s like journaling, except, instead of writing my own thoughts, I'm writing their thoughts and their words.”

Based in Edinburgh

Frank had landed the rights to the books in 2013. While he was prepping The Queens Gambit in Berlin, Rob Bullock (Executive Producer, Left Bank Pictures and producer of The Night Manager for BBC/AMC) got in touch about the project. Frank suggested that Left Bank took it on and did it as a British production.

It was Bullock’s idea to transplant the show from Denmark to Scotland and to Edinburgh in particular. Bullock says, “What appealed to me about Edinburgh was that in the conversations I'd had with Scott, we talked about how Scandi drama has this tradition of being shot in dark, gloomy, moody locations, and how we’d like to make something warm and colourful that cut against that. Edinburgh has this extraordinary architecture and beauty, but with a dark underbelly.”

Department Q based itself at FirstStage Studios in Leith and filmed in Edinburgh over six months, making use of varied locations across the whole of the city and East Lothian.

Location manager Hugh Gourlay says, “A lot of shows that are set in Edinburgh often just use it for exteriors and then film in Glasgow, whereas we made the decision to do everything there and it really makes for a great backdrop.”

Locations include Arthur’s Seat, the International Climbing Arena, Wester Hailes with its hills and 1960s housing estates, a crematorium at Mortonhall (used for the Christian Centre) and a former WWII radar station in North Berwick that became a lawyer’s house.

A key location was a ferry which should have been easy but not given the recent shortage of them in the country. Gourlay found a family-run company based in Orkney that had two vessels, one of which they could hire for two to three days.

Goode casting

Matthew Goode has appeared in films for Woody Allen, Zack Snyder and Matthew Vaughn as well as in Downton Abbey, The Crown and The Discovery of Witches. He’d also starred with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in Frank’s directorial feature debut The Lookout (2007).

“I wrote it with him in mind because we’d worked together before and I knew he could do it,” Frank says. “There were certainly bigger ‘names’ that were bandied about, but I'm a big believer in the show makes the star rather than vice versa. I know Matthew was concerned that he wasn't a big enough star in that Netflix wouldn't approve him but the truth is they said yes rather quickly. He really is a chameleon. Also at his core, like Morck, he's complicated and dark and funny, and can be caustic. I just knew he would get it.”

RED and the City: A Perfect Couple

interview and copy written for RED camera

article here

And Just Like That… Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte return for another season of style, romance, and unbreakable friendships, as the beloved comedy-drama continues to be wedded to RED for a third installment.

The enduring appeal of the Sex and the City lead characters (played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis) and consistent presence of key creatives including Executive Producer John P. Melfi and Showrunner and Executive Producer Michael Patrick King are essential to the success of the Max Original spin-off.

Parker, Melfi and King are intimately involved in the look of the show which has been shot on RED since the first season pilot.

“With a show as successful as Sex and the City, it was very important to get the look right early on,” says cinematographer Tim Norman (Inventing Anna; American Horror Story) who has photographed most of the 31 episodes across three seasons. “I'm really happy with the evolution of the show's look married to the evolution of the RED cameras.”

As the next chapter to the multi-Emmy-Award winning Sex and the City, Norman understood just how important the city itself was to And Just Like That…when establishing the look in 2021.

“Since New York City is very much a character, that immediately had us leaning towards large format. We also had conversations early on about what a close-up for the show would look like and from that came the idea that we would shoot more for portrait photography.”

The six original series were shot 16mm and two follow up feature films on 35mm. With And Just Like That…, set a decade after the events of the 2010 movie, came a modern upgrade to digital.

“With large format you can design a shot that takes in the space and environment in great

detail and then allow the shot to evolve into a close-up of your star,” Norman explains. “Instead of an 18mm lens you're on maybe a 50mm which lends itself to portrait photography.”

For the first season, Norman selected the Panavision DXL2 with the RED MONSTRO 8K VV sensor partnered with Panavision Primos. For the latest season, he revised the package to RED V-RAPTOR XL [X].

“The most important quality of V-RAPTOR XL [X] for our show is the global shutter. If you can picture an iconic Sex and the City shot of glamorous women wearing sparkly dresses crossing a Manhattan street at night, RED just lifts the environment to be a character. I know that RED will render everything that is happening in the background including traffic, lights and reflections which to me is part of the essence of the show. RED just seemed a natural choice.”

Well over half of each season is shot on location in NYC locations including upscale hotels, exclusive restaurants and some of the city’s most desirable apartments. Il Coros, Daniel, Benoit, Loeb Boathouse in Central Park, the Met Opera and Midtown’s The Bar at the

“The color space of RED is fantastic,” Norman says. “We shoot a lot in mixed light on this show and the color space is very forgiving. I find it to be very natural and can handle mix-light situations very well.”

The consummate production design and luxurious fashions worn by the stars are a big part of the show’s appeal too. “Everybody is super detail oriented and I want to be able to capture as much of the hard work that everyone's put into the look of the show. With RED we are able to showcase everything.”

The consistency of look is maintained between seasons with the union of V-RAPTOR and Primo 70 lenses. The Primo 70s were detuned by Panavision New York according to Norman’s specifications.

“The vintage nature of the glass combined with the modern large format sensor gives us the perfect cinematic style. I enjoy a strong relationship with Panavision’s rental house in New York. They've been super helpful throughout my whole career. I like the way the Primo 70s are very consistent and that even when you introduce your own diffusions to them you can rely on the look you're going to get between sets.”

Norman was introduced to the advantages of RED’s large format earlier in his career through fellow New York-based cinematographer William Rexer, ASC. “He and I worked with Fred Elmes, ASC on the Prime Video show Hunters. Fred was doing some front of the lens diffusion using his own nets, an idea that I took into And Just Like That…”

The production shot between May and October 2024 often with two units in tandem and covering some scenes with three cameras. “At that point, V-RAPTOR XL [X] had barely been released. We needed six cameras almost immediately because shooting was scheduled within a few weeks. Panavision and RED came through and delivered us six REDs fresh out of the box. We didn't miss a beat and we didn't have a single problem.”

He explains that multi-cam not only allowed the production to be more efficient but it aided the comedy. “For instance, we have many scenes with characters sitting around conversing at dinner tables and it’s important to try and capture as much of the wit and spontaneity of the performances as we can rather than potentially dissipate the energy doing repeat set- ups.”

Camera movement is also very important to the DP who gently breathes life into the framing and composition without calling attention to camera. “Our job is to make the environments beautiful but not detract from the comedy, to let the characters take the stage.”

He adds, “The trick with this show is to present these beautiful women in the best light so when they are situated in this variety of environments it must feel realistic but not over lit.”

Another plus for Norman is V-RAPTOR’s small form factor. V-RAPTOR XL [X] deploys the

same size sensor but in a body about a third the size of the DXL2. “Around ninety per cent of the show is done on a remote head. It’s the way I've learned to see the world and I like the way that the camera can move. So, we're jumping from studio to jib very quickly and having extra RED camera bodies prepped and ready for anything is a huge help.”

When it came to shooting specific episodes, King shared his creative input about how to approach key scenes. “He's so tuned into the show and to the characters. We'd have these collaborative meetings to talk about the scenes which were important to him and the overall vision. In that process it became very clear how we were going to distil the look.”

Norman also credits his team including gaffer Scott Ramsey, key grip Gary Martone, Digital Imaging Technician Andrew Nelson and Picture Shop colorist Pankaj Bajpai, another veteran of the original series.

“It's incredibly important to me to set up an environment on set where everyone can take ownership. It's a very dense experience working on this show but we have a fantastic team.”

 

SVG Masters of Madness: New football format shakes up the rules of sportainment

SVG

article here

The ball is round, but that's where the comparison with regular football stops. Scoring by hand, no headers or offsides, unlimited substitutions, balls fired from cannons and coaches who go on the field to kick a penalty are all part of Masters of Madness which aired in Belgium earlier this year.

This is the latest new soccer format targeting younger generations on social media (see also The Sidemen vs YouTube All-Stars; Baller League and Kings World Cup Clubs).

Masters of Madness is designed as a new football competition format with shorter, faster games for younger TV viewers, streamers and YouTubers rolled into a daily sports entertainment show.

“It's not's conceived to replace anything. That would be a bit crazy,” says Serge Bellens, Head of Directors at Play Sports. “Well, okay, we do try to do something crazy but it’s not in competition with regular football. It's not going to replace the Champions League or national club competition. That wasn't the starting point at all.  We wanted to try and make something new that can coexist alongside regular season football and be something fun to watch during the Christmas holidays up to the end of March.”

The league’s first season was played in December at Antwerp’s Google Pixel Arena and broadcast earlier this year on Play Media’ commercial channel Play4, the network’s GoPlay streaming service and on YouTube.

It is the brainchild of media production companies Woestijnvis and Sporthouse Group and two ex-pros: former Belgian Footballer of the Year, striker Dries Mertens who won 100 caps; and Ajax and Spurs central defender Jan Vertonghen who played 157 times for the national team.

“Every decision was made with them and run by Dries and Jan,” says Bellens. “It was Jan’s idea for instance not to have any headers during the game.”

The basic concept is a six versus six indoor football competition played between eight mixed gender teams on a pitch measuring 46m x 26m. The teams are made up of amateur players, ex-pro players, personalities from the world of football and celebrities. Each match comprises four quarters of eight minutes.  The teams play the entire match on the same side of the field. The home team defends the left goal, the away team the right goal (TV view). The LED boarding surrounding the pitch is playable to create a faster game.

So far, so conventional. However, games can be switched up in all manner of novel ways. These ‘Maddies’ and ‘Boosters’ are played like ‘Jokers’ by team coaches or by the officials and include adding an extra ball onto the field (fired by cannons), raising the height of the goal by 50 cm, reducing the number of on field players and introducing zones on the pitch which can’t be played in.  Goals might count double for a limited period, the goalkeeper and an outfield player have to switch positions, one team’s goalkeeper can be penalised for actually using their hands and there’s a ‘Hand of God’ in which one team can use their hands to play the ball “like Maradona did in 1986.” On certain match days, teams can even add a ‘legend’ to their team, won via social media challenges.

“It is certainly quite different but that was also what was exciting, because we created the crazy ourselves,” says Bellens, a highly experienced live match director who calls the shots for Play Sports’ UEFA Europa & Conference League games and was involved from inception including helping devise the rules of the game.

He has also worked as live producer for HBS on match coverage during the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar and previously at FIFA World Cups in Brazil, Russia and UEFA Euro2020. At the same time, he is also a Senior Match Director for VTM (DPG Media), covering the Belgian National Football team, the UEFA Champions League and the Belgian Cup.

“We’d seen the success of other initiatives and that gave us the opportunity to do something completely new. We wanted to get rid of the things that happen in a normal football game that “younger” people might consider to be boring. Our goal was to create something shorter, faster and perhaps more immersive, meaning to keep the viewers’ attention span awake.”

“We wanted to divide each 8” quarter into certain moments where something exciting, new or surprising could happen which you don't expect, because ofcourse, it’s not allowed in a regular game.”

Test runs of the gameplay and production took place in a warehouse. “It was a very basic test but with all the technical aspects in place,” Bellens explains. “One of the things we tested was the length of the quarters. Should they be 8 or 10 minutes, 12 or 15? Should we do two x 15 minutes or two x 10 minutes? What would work best for getting optimum attention for audiences? If we went with two halves of ten minutes and we wanted to include a 2 Boosters for each team and a Maddy during the game,  and maybe even another extra Maddy surprise, that would be too much. We had to get the balance right.”

They finalised on four times eight minutes, incorporated a countdown clock (familiar to US sports like NFL or hockey) and rejected some Maddy and Booster ideas because they either didn't work or they were too complicated to understand immediately for players or viewers.

At this stage the production didn’t test results with social media influencers but Bellens says that across the production team the younger generation target audience was well represented.

“We also wanted to keep it a secret,” he says.  “We did make an edit of the shows and showed that to people for feedback and as you can imagine it went through a lot of discussion.”

With such a new and potentially complicated format happening so fast making the game play comprehensible was a priority.

“We talked about all the visual aspects of the game, the LED visuals, on-screen graphics and the commentary which all help to explain the rules during the game. We didn’t want to have a section explaining the rules before every game because that's boring. We wanted to let the visuals or commentary explain how things work in real time.”

Given the complications of starting a new game from scratch they decided that recording the matches would be easier. This was done over six days in December and January.

“Practically it was much easier doing this in the Christmas holidays. We could hire the venue for 2 weeks and ensure that all the players could be there for those days rather than risk interference with other schedules. Some of the female players also play for Belgium Clubs or the national women's team, for instance.”

Recording also gave production the leeway of correcting a wrong replay or graphic or inserting more relevant coach or celebrity reactions at certain points. Each team has dual coaches who are filmed being interviewed live by a pitch side presenter and live commenting on the game in progress. These interviews are displayed picture in picture during the live game.

“When players were sent off, or had a 2’ penalty they came as guests on the commentary position and added fun as a pundit on their own teams’ game.”

He adds, “The main challenge was getting the best quotes of commentary into the game when it is being played at such a fast pace. For a show of 45-50 minutes long our timing and our editorial needs to be spot on.”

While Bellens directed all the matches, a live producer monitored the interactions of team coaches and their interactions with the pitch side presenter. 

To cut down on potential chaos, the production team knew in advance which type of Booster or Maddy would be thrown into the mix.

“The biggest chaos was the multiball when there are several match balls in play for two minutes. That was horrifying to direct.”

Eight social media creators and influencers were invited on site to make their own content of the match, fans, the coaches and players before, during and after the game. This content was captured by creators but held back and posted in sequence as the games were played out on YouTube, GoPlay and Play 4. There was even a studio-based Watch Party which ran on YouTube in parallel to the broadcast of the final.

“Core to the whole concept was to create a ‘Madness’ community and to do that generating a lot of activity on social media is part of the game.”

Technical provision

EMG Belgium provided facilities with live graphics from Boost Graphics. Set and show light design by Creme Fresh and Never Fear Shadows.

The camera plan itself is familiar to a conventional match day including the main camera centre pitch (LDX 24x) and close-up next to it on the TV platform (LDX 86 x).

“We didn't want to confuse viewers of soccer completely with cuts to very exotic positions all the time.”

Other positions included a main tactical camera above one goal, and a portable Super Slow Motion (LDX 24x). A couple of Sony FX 3 on DJI gimbals were able to go onto the pitch after each goal; RF Sony FX 6’s were trained on team benches, Insta360s & Marshall camera’s were placed as in-goal cams, Google Pixel Cams provided POVs from the ball cannon and PTZ covered commentary positions.

A live drone was used during the game flying close to or behind the players and at key moments such as when a coach comes on to take a penalty.

“That’s one advantage of organising the competition ourselves. We could make up the rules. The drone acted much like a less expensive version of an indoor Spidercam.”

For the live referee cam they custom-made a minicamera to fit above the ear. “We tested one worn on the ref’s chest but in my opinion it's not quite as good because you don’t see the exact viewpoint of the referee. With a body cam, it only points in the direction the chest is aimed at and often, if there’s a foul, you don't see the action or if they are speaking to somebody you only see half a face. The ‘ear cam’ didn’t have these problems and was one of the technical revelations.”

Ten ambi mics were stationed around the arena, the presenter and guests had handheld mics with mic and headsets on commentary positions. Further mics for live audio of the head referee, assistant referee, and each coach duo. Also, every match one player was miked up, to use later on Masters of Madness social media posts.

Distribution

Coverage was packaged into a match day consisting of four games. These were released on consecutive Fridays on YouTube and on GoPlay. The following week each of the four games was stripped across Play 4 Monday through Thursday.

“It was a hybrid combination of dropping things online for the younger generation who want things more immediately – although what’s young? I'm in my late 40s and like watching shows on YouTube! – and broadcasting for a different audience on linear. Both of those worked out really well.”

So much so that talks are underway about running a second season and also possibly exporting the league to other European territories.

The inaugural winner was the Racing Pannakoek team, with an all female coaching staff led by Belgiums’ ex-international Imke Courtois.

 

Sheffield DocFest: Panellists scold media for succumbing to ‘climate of fear’

IBC

article here

Investigative documentary filmmakers take broadcasters and streamers to task for being complicit in the rise of authoritarianism and muzzling the Palestinian experience in Gaza.

Ronan Farrow, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, documentarian and podcaster, has condemned the “false equivalence” of political reporting that enabled Trump to win power.

Speaking at Sheff DocFest he said, “Journalists, including myself, were obsessed with the performance of fairness. The false idea that the media was dominated by a persistent liberal bias and that conservative voices were being drowned out created a situation where good reporters who cared about being perceived as fair began treating unusual things happening on the far right as usual.

“Increasingly, we normalised fascist things that were eroding democratic rights because there was a need in newsrooms to balance left with right. The false equivalence created a space in which authoritarianism has flourished.”

His words were echoed across the festival where the fight to make documentaries that hold truth to power was a running theme. Several filmmakers accused the British broadcasters of muzzling coverage of Gaza by British broadcasters and of the far right.

“Impartiality is being misused,” said director Havana Marking, who says she was required to interview far right spokesperson Tommy Robinson by execs for her film Undercover: Exposing the Far Right. “You can't be impartial about racism. That is not negotiable.”

Unscripted filmmakers are facing funding challenges for projects outside of true crime, celebrity and sports genres while American broadcasters and platforms have all but pulled the plug on buying anything politically left leaning in order to appease the White House.

Farrow, speaking on video link, expressed his deep concerned at the situation. “Any cursory study of the history of fascist authoritarianism reveals how pivotal disinformation is as a tool of oppression and repression. We are seeing that play out now in several places around the world, but it is in a very acute nadir in the United States.

“If you deny a democratic population access to facts it's much easier to manipulate events and manipulate people. That's why, like clockwork, one of the first steps that strong men take is to try to demonise the press and to cut off the access of the press.

He continued, “People wanting to seize power for their own benefit and to control others in an undemocratic way do not like the free flow of information. That's why the free flow of information is explicitly protected in the Constitution. It’s a cornerstone of our democracy.

“It's gravely concerning to be living through a time when so many people have lost trust and confidence in the media through a combination of self-inflicted problems. Cable news did descend into partisan shouting but the [problem exacerbated] through bad faith attacks from people trying to consolidate power by discrediting the media.”

He said he envied broadcasters like CBC and the BBC, “where governments subsidise serious news while maintaining their editorial independence,” he said, acknowledging that “Public funding for truly adversarial independent watchdog news is something the United States has very little appetite for. The gutting of PBS and NPR has been devastating.”

“Now, I avoid that kind of performance when the facts don't merit it and strive to be fearless even in the face of accusations and partisanship. I had to essentially stop being afraid of being branded a liberal propagandist and just report the facts.”

He urged journalists and documentary makers to tell stories across platforms, as he did with Harvey Weinstein investigation Catch and Kill which began as a series of articles in The New Yorker before versioning into a book, a podcast and TV series for HBO.

“Where media consumption is so fractured we need to be able to tell stories across audio, video, and print. Diversification across media is a partial solution to a big problem which is that the business model is dropping out of investigative journalism.”

Impartiality in the way of truth

Broadcasters and streamers came under fire in the session ‘Too Hot to Handle: The Future of Political Documentaries’ for their failure to tackle the conflict in Gaza.

Prash Naik, Co-Founder, Creators Counsel, spoke of “the chilling effects of the climate of fear and how that's impacting of filmmakers and funders.”

He said, “The authoritarian U.S administration is hostile to any media that it perceives as a little social progressive. Therefore, the streamers have taken the line of least resistance. Anything that is politically sensitive [is avoided or cancelled] and as a result of that, they return to True Crime and celebrity docs.”

Traditionally, doc makers almost certainly required a US distributor or coproducer partner to make their projects but these avenues have dried up.

James Jones (Producer/Director, Jones Films - Antidote & On the President’s Orders) said, “We believe there is a strong appetite in the US for films that are politically sensitive [about Putin or Gaza or trans rights for example] but Apple and Amazon are not going to touch it and Netflix instinct is to go with what the algorithm tells them works.”

Director Ben de Pear was particularly forceful. His film, Gaza: Medics Under Fire one of a handful shot entirely inside Gaza, has been shelved by the BBC despite being cleared by BBC legal teams, pending the result of an investigation into controversial doc How To Survive a Warzone which aired on the BBC without disclosing the potential involvement of Hamas.

“The best journalists in the world are working inside the BBC and they are being silenced,” De Pear said. “They are being forced to use language they don’t recognize. They are not describing something as it clearly is [because of impartiality].

Excepting Channel 4, which he praised as an example to follow (De Pear is a former editor of C4 News) said UK broadcasters had been “stymied by the very powerful lobby.

“Paranoia has got inside the head of commissioners. They are far more worried about offending the [Isreal] government than they are offending our own. A different standard applies to [stories about Gaza] than any other story I can remember.

He contrasted the “hundreds of thousands” of videos of events filmed from inside Gaza on social media with national news reporting.

“Everybody in the world can see what's going on and there is a huge black hole at broadcasters and platforms. It’s flipped that whole fear that social media would somehow undermine journalism. Journalism has undermined journalism.”

He also criticised the justification used by the BBC and other broadcasters of having no sanctioned access to report on the ground from Gaza as “a big excuse.”

“Of course, you can [report on what is happening]. Why can't you speak to a Palestinian about their experience? It's racism. The BBC says it cannot enter Gaza so instead they speak to a representative of the ‘Hamas run health ministry’ and immediately the audience questions if they can trust the person or not.”

He said, “The people that are experiencing the death of their families right now can't be introduced as witnesses because they live in a place that is apparently controlled by Hamas.

He added, “The fear of being labelled anti-semitic has become more important than telling the truth.”

Nor was Netflix spared his scathing attack. “If Netflix released a film about Gaza it would probably be the most watched in the world because it is the most engaged subject in the world,” De Pear said. “Netflix should be funding films that reflect the world that's going on. Netflix should be making films about war zones. Netflix should be taking risks. They shouldn't just be taken safe bets on environmental films with Attenborough.”

 

Indies turn to crowdfunding

As funding becomes increasingly narrow or risk-averse, indie producers are turning to crowdfunding their projects. This is where filmmakers attempt to drum up funds from the general public either by way of straight donations or by offering incentives such as merchandise or a mention in the film’s credits.

Although its use in film and TV has been around for over a decade, “crowdfunding still feels like a really exciting and radical option for combating the disaster that is documentary funding at the moment,” said Charlie Phillips, a producer, commissioner, programmer, and consultant. “Grassroots crowdfunding offers alternative funding models that bypass traditional gatekeepers and put power directly in the hands of communities.”

Dan Edelstyn turned to crowdfunding as a last resort when the costs for his feature documenting attempts to turn a London residential street into a renewable energy source spiralled.

“Crowdfunding can be embarrassing if it goes wrong but we had no choice,” he said. “In a perfect world broadcasters would realise what an amazing project this was and give us the finance to make it but they are struggling, their ad revenue is down and we are fighting against a very conservative broadcasting system.”

He and producer / partner Hilary Powell slept on the roof of their house for 23 nights as a stunt to raise £100k. That proved so successful they made three further crowdfunding rounds, including one in the form of a bond, which together raised £450k.

The film Power Station debuted at Sheff Docfest. The filmmakers have £100k of debt from the bond issue which they hope profits from sales will pay back. “We believe we can achieve that,” he said.

If done right – such as by building a community interested in the project via email lists and social – then momentum can mushroom from one campaign to the next.

Paul Sng raised £74000 on the platform Indiegogo to crowdfund his film about the punk artist Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché. He offered t-shirts and tote bags and thank you credits as rewards. “The process is nerve-wracking but without it there wouldn't be a film, so I’m always really thankful to the people that supported it.”

Crowdfunder UK offers match funding from corporates, local authorities, trusts and creative bodies. “If someone pledges £250 then we can source match funds which quickly raises the total amount,” said Max Upton, Head of Campaigns. “This has the benefit of increasing the average amount of donation. It’s psychological; if people see the average donation is £70 rather than £40 they are more likely to donate that themselves.”

He said the platform was seeing more documentary teams coming to them wanting to support a social cause.

“People who feel strongly about a certain issue will get behind the film because they want to see the story told.