'Genre Bending'
Tom Brisley (Head of Factual, Darlow, Smithson) and Stephen McQuillan (Independent)

Tom Brisley, Stephen McQuillan, and Chair Jane Millichip sat down on Saturday morning to discuss the recent trend sweeping broadcasters across Europe and the States – Genre Bending.  Tom and Stephen shared their experience of dramadocs, both in terms of the craft and the wider issues surrounding scripted reality: where does reality end and drama begin?

Tom discussed the making of Touching the Void, which was, at that time, a brand new way of making a doco.  Their very dead-pan interviewing technique with the talent interviewed face-on to the camera: with an image of the director projected, so that the talent was looking at that image when they answered questions.  Director Kevin McDonald (One Day in September) was very keen to use this technique.

As Tom recounted, “The financiers insisted we take the talent out and film on the mountain but none of that ended up on screen. It was only in the cutting room that the style emerged, and it became a perfect way to tell the story. The film broke so many rules in that you knew that Joe Simpson survived within the first two minutes of the story.  The interviews were done first over some days and then it was cut together. Then the drama was built in around it. It was never our intention to use any narration”.

Stephen (producer UK docu-drama The Secretary Who Stole £4 Million)

The documentary was based heavily on research from court transcripts, diaries and artefacts. Because of the legal implications surrounding real-life issues, every fact had to be backed-up from a primary source. In a drama-doc it can be difficult to embed facts into a drama-doc because it can feel unnatural. We used composite characters to simplify the narrative.  We made the decision not to have narrative in the film because narrative can break the spell, especially on a character-driven piece.

Tom: Both movies and drama-docs can be based on true events but with a drama-doc you do go that extra mile to check facts. A drama-doc is all scripted with no documentary elements whereas a docu-drama can be scripted drama but has lots of archive. You can also have genre of documentary with reconstruction or re-enactment.

We have been making a drama-doc about the Somme . We wanted to find a fresh way of seeing the bloodiest battle of WW1. We used personal diaries and letters to tell the story of the 24 hours immediately before the battle began and the first 10 minutes of the battle itself. It was shot in Poland where you get better value for money. 

Another project developed by Darlow Smithson was Blitz, telling the story of the bombing of London in WW2 with archive footage, interview, re-enactments that worked when you put it all together. There are no rules, if it creates a fresh interesting way of doing something but it all depends on the market and the broadcaster.

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