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  c.o.n.f.l.i.c.t

  An Insider’s Guide to Storytelling

  in Factual / Reality TV and Film

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  c.o.n.f.l.i.c.t

  An Insider’s Guide

  to Storytelling in

  Factual / Reality TV and Film

  Robert Thirkell

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  First published in 2010

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square

  London wc1b 3dp

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Copyright © Robert Thirkell 2010

  Robert Thirkell has asserted his rights under

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,

  to be identified as the author of this work

  ISBN: 978 1 408 12909 8

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  Available in the USA from

  Bloomsbury Academic & Professional,

  175 Fifth Avenue / 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10010

  www.BloomsburyAcademicUSA.com

  Typeset by Country Setting, Kingsdown, Kent ct14 8es

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

  by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out,

  or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without

  a similar condition, including this condition,

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  TO MATTIA

  and all who have worked and put up with me,

  thank you

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword, by Jamie Oliver

  ix

  Acknowledgements

  xi

  My Anglo-American TV Dictionary

  xiii

  Introduction

  xv

  1

  C haracters

  and Concept

  1

  2

  O ut of the box

  and Scripts

  49

  3

  N arrative drive

  and Filming

  91

  4

  F ront

  and Editing

  129

  5

  L ove

  and Managing Your Stars and Career

  165

  6

  I nterviews

  and Commentary Writing

  199

  7

  C are

  and Getting the Programme on Air

  237

  8

  T imeline

  Title and Truth

  273

  The Hundred Rules of Television

  317

  Index

  326

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  foreword

  How wonderful – one of the best TV makers in the world gives you

  all of his secrets and advice in film-making. Warning: this book may

  possibly make you feel inadequate and will certainly make you paranoid

  about your work, but you will probably make your best film ever from

  reading it. Personally I think that Robert is mad giving away all of his

  TV trade secrets. So make the most of it, learn from one of the TV greats

  about his ethos in exceptional television making.

  C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T is the recipe book of great television that means some -

  thing or matters, and Robert Thirkell is the master of C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T.

  jamie oliver

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  acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the many talented friends I have worked with,

  whose influence has helped me to make better films. I would particu -

  larly like to thank the entire production team of Jamie’s School Dinners: Andrew Conrad, Dominique Walker, Guy Gilbert, Lana Salah, Zoë

  Collins, Louise Holland and not least Jamie Oliver, who had the big

  idea. And a particular thanks to all the many other directors who

  sweated making films for me – it was demanding! I sometimes think my

  mistake was to think every film had to be a winner, which can be tough

  on directors. But then I think pushing people to exceed what they had

  dreamed of is what it is all about. This book will, I hope, do that for you.

  I have tried to acknowledge the people who did the real work, especi -

  ally when you gave me wonderful material to work with. If it gnarls that

  I am telling it from my point of view, it is because it is the one I know,

  and makes the learning point: the directors were the ones who got the

  brilliant material, put it together and have their names at the ends of

  the films.

  I would also like to thank all the many friends who have bravely let

  me quote them. I am hugely grateful to all of you: Alan Hayling, who

  also pushed me to publish when I was scared it was a load of self-

  indulgent tosh; Alex Graham, Andrea Wong, Axel Arno, Bo Tengberg,

  Cecile Frot-Coutaz, Charles Wachter, Charlotte Black, Dominique

  Walker, Hugh Dehn, Jan Tomalin, Jane Root, Jo Ball, Jon Rowlands,

  John Smithson, Julie Uribe, Lana Salah, Matthew Robinson, Michele

  Kurland, Nick Mirsky, Nick Stringer, Patrick Collerton, Peter Moore,

  Roy Ackerman, Simon Dickson, Stephen Lambert, Stefan Ronowicz,

  Thomas Breinholt, Thomas Heurlin, Victoria Dummer and Zoë Collins.

  Thank you every one for your courage in taking part. It is like being

  a contributor.

  Also I could have done none of it without my legendary agent Anita

  Land, all at Capel Land, and Jenny Ridout (and her team), who was

  actually willing to publish this and put up with me. I have driven her

  mad trying to make it accurate. I always thought it was tough for

  xii

  Acknowledgements

  writers making the tran si tion to film; now I have found just how tough

  it is the other way round, as I have stumbled along.

  Finally I would like to thank friends, family and especially my

  partner who has put up with me rewriting this ever since we met in

  2006. It seems writing is just like making a film, but even more

  exasperating for lovers, who suffer book as well as TV neglect. Mattia

  wanted the title to be ‘Pushy Bastard’, but the nice publishers thought

  better of it.

  Phew, what a lot of thanks – it’s a very handy word for TV producers.

  You can never use (or get) enough!

  In this book I have used the job titles for people who have given top

  tips, as at the time of writing. These are not necessarily formal titles, but

  descriptions of what they do, to suit the context. I hope that they are

  correct, as also my recollections of many programmes over a long

  career. I have driven many people mad, as usual, trying to check accur -

  acy, so if some detail of a film, its making, or your job title has slipped

  through the net please bear with me. People move fast in TV so many

  job titles will be outdated anyway – sorry.

  my anglo-american tv dictionary

  Like so much that looks similar between Europe and America, there are

  many differences. Having been lucky enough to work in both, I have

  attempted to cover some of those differences in factual film-making, as

  each has so much to learn from the other. Given some varying termi -

  nology, here is a brief glossary of different terms as I see them.

  UK

  US

  Assistant Producer/

  anyone else

  Producer

  Back story

  Previously on

  Channel/Broadcaster

  Network

  Commentary

  Narration (Talk in Scandinavia)

  Commissioning Editor

  Network Executive

  Contributor

  Contestant/Cast/Participant

  Current Affairs

  News

  Cutting room

  Edit bay

  Episode 1, 2 etc.

  Episode 101, 102 etc.

  Executive Producer

  Executive Producers (usually lots)

  Factual/Documentary

  Reality/Unscripted/Docuseries

  Part

  Act

  PD (Producer/Director) This one person usually replaced by many:

  Supervising Producer, Producer, Segment

  Producer and a Director

  Pre-Ad Break

  Tease

  Pre-Title/Front

  Cold Open

  Presenter

  Host

  Production Manager

  Executive in charge of production, Line

  Producer

  Researcher

  Assistant Producer

  Runner

  PA/Runner

  Script sequence

  Beat

  Series

  Season

  Series Producer

  Show Runner (Executive Pro
ducer

  responsible creatively)/Co-Executive

  Producer

  Series setup

  Super Tease

  Taster DVD

  Sizzle/Promo/Presentation Reel

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  INTRODUCTION

  When Jamie Oliver and his wife Jules burst into my hotel bedroom, on

  a small island between Sicily and Tunisia early one Sunday morning,

  and told me the film was off, I wondered which rule of television I

  had broken this time. However, there was a near hurricane blowing.

  The ferries tried to get into harbour but turned back, defeated by huge

  seas; Jamie, Jules and our film team were all stuck on this tiny remote

  island with just two restaurants and one simple hotel. I would have plenty

  of time to think about it.

  Making films is tough. It’s not a science, but I thought there might

  be rules that can help make it a bit easier. This book uses my experience

  of nearly thirty years in TV to try to identify the tools that have helped

  me. I have used first-hand experiences of making programmes, some of

  them with Jamie Oliver, as case studies to illustrate how these rules can

  help.

  What continually surprises me is that mostly it isn’t the big obstacles

  that defeat films – often the films that are toughest to make turn out

  to be the best – instead, it is often a host of small and obvious things

  that could easily be avoided. There is on TV now a proliferation of

  factual output that fails: reality shows, features, documentaries, factual

  enter tainment, specialist factual and far more. The shows fail because

  they have ignored the basic principles of authentic storytelling, which

  is so easy to do when you get too close. I’m lucky; it gives me a job!

  At the BBC I was responsible for many hit formats such as the

  BAFTA winners Troubleshooter with Sir John Harvey Jones, as a director; Back to the Floor and Blood on the Carpet, as Head of the BBC’s Documentary Unit, as well as some shows I prefer to forget. When

  I announced that I would be leaving the BBC, I was asked to join

  independent production companies, and the broadcasters encouraged

  me to set up my own. However, I asked TV bosses in the BBC and

  xvi

  Introduction

  Channel 4 if I could follow a different direction, in a job not done

  before. I wanted to become the TV Troubleshooter. Having developed

  a reputation for storytelling through over a hundred films, I wanted a

  new challenge: to see if or how I could apply what I had learnt to many

  other people’s work, and even come up with a toolkit that could be

  used in my absence, to help directors avoid the many pitfalls I had seen.

  As a TV Troubleshooter I have visited many different independent

  production companies and broadcasters, sometimes to help create the

  structure of factual series which are about to be filmed, more often to

  help sort them out in the cutting room, to make the director’s dream

  programme come true. In the rush of modern television it is very easy

  to start filming without asking the right questions. When filming it is

  easy to get so close to the material you can miss the most important

  points. And in the cutting room it is easy to forget some basic rules

  that make factual programmes work.

  While troubleshooting dozens of films each year for broadcasters all

  over the world – from ABC and Discovery in the US, to all the UK

  terrestrial broadcasters, and all over Europe and Australia – I have been

  lucky to have an unparalleled view of the nuts-and-bolts working of

  factual television. So, since those waves lashed off Italy five years ago, I

  have attempted to work out a toolkit to help avoid messes in the first

  place, and to get out of them when, as is almost inevitable, they strike.

  This toolkit is initially assembled from my experience in the BBC’s

  Business Documentary Unit, spending many years with Britain’s lead -

  ing busi ness men, and time with hundreds of companies, making hun -

  dreds of films, including many dozen Money Programme s and Trouble at the Top s . Some of the tools are influenced by the world of business, and although concerning television, should be of use in any job. These tools

  are combined with others which have been developed during my

  career, first for getting on in the snakes and ladders of the TV world

  (you climb the snakes and tumble down the ladders where the rungs

  are cut), and more recently the fruitful years helping hundreds of factual

  programmes and working closely with chefs Jamie Oliver and Heston

  Blumenthal on how to think creatively and originally, from the start, to

  win. There are even a few tips on how to stay sane and happy in the

  crazy world of tele vision. These tips go right through the film-making

  process from finding stories and characters to structuring scripts and

  filming; from editing and the all-important finding of motivation for

  Introduction

  xvii

  characters and sequ ences, right through to delivery, titles and getting

  people to watch. They are the rules I have found useful when in doubt;

  if you disagree with them and find your own that work for you, all the

  better. I hope reading about mine may help you do that.

  As I travel the world helping to format new ideas and trouble shoot -

  ing TV series that aren’t working out quite right, I find that the strong

  storytelling outlined in this book is becoming increasingly necessary for

  programmes to sell, survive and win out, not just in Britain but in

  country after country. The US now imports a long list of ‘unscripted’

  factual programmes from Europe, and is creating more and more reality

  shows of its own. The tips I outline here are spreading round the world.

  A decade ago on the BBC we originated Back to the Floor, a hit series

  in which bosses experienced their own shop floor. Now that pro -

  gramme idea has resurfaced, imaginatively reinvented as Undercover Boss, and is playing to huge audiences in the US, revealing a vast and unsatis -

  fied appetite for factual programme with content in America. The art

  of narration, unpopular in the US for a long time, is making a come-

  back and the principles of casting strong characters and highlighting

  jeopardy are becoming increasingly important everywhere.

  Wherever you are, the tips outlined here are designed to help you

  jump ahead of the game. They come from long experience of working

  out just what enables programmes to break through, and developing the

  C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T toolbox.

  Storytelling has always been important, but it depends on us

  following people we care about. So first we need to find the right

  ‘ C haracters’ and concept. Then think ‘ O ut of the box’ as we construct a strong script. As we go filming we need to sustain a strong N arrative drive, always remembering the questions of the film and sequence. In

  the edit, if we can get the all important F ront right and work out the motivation for characters and sequences, the rest will follow. All along

  we have to L ove and deal with our contributors and presenters, and turn them into people. Then we have the question of how to mix I nterview, actuality and commentary. Finally, when we have finished the film, we

  have to get it on the air in a way that will make the audience C are, and we have to make the commissioners care about our projects too. And that

  means getting the right T imeline and title – I have probably seen more films wrecked by getting these wrong than anything else - and, above

  all and most important, keeping it authentic, remembering the Truth.

  xviii

  Introduction

  All these letters spell C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T, and it is what this book is all about. When I ran the Business Unit at the BBC, transmitting dozens

  of films each year, I was renowned for saying only three things mattered

  in our film-making: conflict, conflict and conflict. Storytelling is about

  revealing characters under pressure leading to their transformation and,

  ideally, redemption. The pressure, or conflict, is necessary for the char -

  acters to reveal themselves and change. If it works, we are moved, under-

  stand ourselves better, and are better able to construct stories for