Master Class with BBC Producer

Producer 

The lecture started telling about her journey through education and how she ended up where she has. She told us about her time at the BBC in the Arts department going from being a researcher for a documentary series 'What do Artists do all day' Link to video to being an executive producer. She showed us work she was involved with such as 'Women who spit' Link to video. The important components to the success of a documentary are; Access, Format and Talent, this is demonstrated in documentary 'Charli XCX - The F Word and me' Link to video where she was able to get access to Glastonbury and Charli XCX as her talent. 

Pre-production package

For our pre-production packages that we will be pitching next week highlighted the importance of having a visual treatment for the 'commissioner'. She also mentioned the need to have a title that was eye catching and memorable- "Tabloid title with Broadsheet content". 

When pitching to a  commissioner you need to be aware of who you are dealing with, getting a sense of what they want as it varies from broadcaster to broadcaster. Commissioners are looking for timeliness, scale and ambition. 

BBC commissioning videos - link

BBC3's aim is to make people laugh and make people think, they are looking for;

• Relevance- to it's target audience e.g. demographics
• Stimulating content that gets spoken about and passed around
• Timely, why now?- talk-ability
• Original, different, ground breaking, is it genre and form breaking

There is a big opportunity for short form content and you're not always confined to a slot duration.

When pitching an idea you need to know, who your idea is for as different commissioners and broadcasters want different things. You should watch a lot of TV so you become aware of the landscape that your work would be in, this makes it less likely to be a copy of someone else's work.

Pitch

A pitch should map out the story that you want to tell, it should be visual as well as informative and include the who, what, when and why of your story.

• Story- the heart of the treatment
• Format
• Contribs/cast
• What is it
• Style + Tone- what will the camera do?
• Example scenes/screen shots
• Who is in the crew
• Budget
• Schedule

We then went on to create the start of a treatment for a Doc that we came up with.

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I found this lecture hugely helpful for my work as a Producer. It has shown me what a professional pitch looks like and what I need to include in my groups pitch next week. 

It's allowed me to have questions answered and given me confidence in our Doc.