It’s almost
exactly a year since we made it and it reared it’s head again this week when it
won Best Business Feature at the Smurfit Business Awards. Here’s a pic of
reporter Robert Shortt picking up the award:
It was a
documentary that changed in form on a few ocassions during the making of it. At
first, it was to be a shorter report that would allow in-studio discussion
afterwards but halfway through filming an hour-long slot became available and
suddenly we were under pressure to deliver a one-hour programme in a total of
four-and-a-half-weeks. I think I had a pretty extreme look on my face for those
few weeks!
I suddenly
realised that I’d never done a full hour of interview-driven TV before. I’d
done long documentaries driven by observational scenes and I had done plenty of
short interview-based pieces but never a full hour. How to pace it? How many
shots would I need?
So, I decided to
resort to what I know... it was an unfolding story so I divided the documentary
into scenes and thought about the relationship between those scenes and how
they would drive the narrative on.
I wanted the
documentary to work as a drama that had an “and then and then and then” flow
with each scene being motivated by the last. I was working with the excellent
and thorough reporter Robert Shortt and we both felt that we didn’t want
commentary in the documentary and that really helped. Retrospective analysis
would have interrupted the flow. We wanted the audience to stay in the moment
and not to be pulled out of it by opinions.
We also had to
think about how the reporter’s narration would work in that situation and I
felt it was important to make sure that our interviewees revealed the important
information, so we looked closely at each piece of voiceover to ensure that it
didn’t give away the key information in the upcoming scene. If the audience
knew what was coming up, why would they stay interested?
The Sunday
Independent said the programme was “gripping” and hopefully that was a
reflection of the way we approached it.
The documentary was on the RTE Prime Time website but seems to have disappeared today, so hopefully it'll reappear there soon.
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