Institutional research by Kate Parkinson. Candidate number -9204.

When I started to look at institutions distributing documentaries or similar I found that the channel most likely to show one off documentaries or controversial documentary series are Channel 4. Channel 4 have done shows such as Skint, Educating Yorkshire, My daughter the teenage nudest and most relative to us they do a show called My Tattoo Addiction.

Shows such as Skint are classed as controversial because they are looking into the life of youngsters struggling with family life, living off benefits, getting themselves in trouble, etc. Skint was scheduled to be on at 10pm which is post watershed, they will not want children watching it as it is so controversial. Most of Channel 4's one of documentaries are scheduled for after the water-shed.

Here is a clip of Educating Yorkshire which gives an indication of the style of documentaries Channel 4 show and why it is classed controversial and post watershed material.

When I found this information on Channel 4 I did some more research into their documentary background and found that they are actually looking for people to showcase their own documentaries for them to play on Channel 4. They are also looking for new presenting faces. If we ask an aspiring presenter/actor to be in our documentary something like that could be a perfect way of kick starting you career.
I compared our ideas for our documentary with the questionnaire they had published on their website which was this:

What are your commissioning priorities?

We are looking for single films in the Cutting Edge strand, Documentary Series, hour long films from new directors in the First Cut strand, and international feature docs which we showcase in the True Stories strand.

Kate: Our documentary will be a true story of different people's views/ beliefs/ stereotypes on tattoos. It will be edgy and cool to appeal to our target audience. We could use bad situations that happen in the documentary to build tension and keep people's interest.

What are you not interested in?

There are some ideas that clearly don't fit with our stated purpose of reflecting Contemporary Britain, and won't work for our C4 output.

Kate: Our documentary will reflect Contemporary Britain as tattoos are quite a stereotypical thing, people, especially British people, are very opinionated about tattoo's and what they represent so our documentary will cover that situation completely and we will uncover varied people's opinions on this.

What are the tariff prices for programmes you currently commission?

It varies, but roughly £150K for a one hour fully commissioned Channel4 programme. For True Stories roughly £40K for a pre-purchase, £10K for a licence but it can vary depending on the project.

What is the biggest creative challenge your team or genre faces?

Finding the really big ambitious ideas that will re-write the rules in the new post Big Brother world, and will break through to become major events in the schedule.

We are always looking for great new presenters.

As most True Stories are international co-productions and the financing of these films can occassionally be tricky.

Kate: As we found whilst doing our similar product research Tattoo Documentaries aren't very original so a big challenge for us will be making ours new and fresh, finding a way of making it original and better than others. However, I did find that not a lot of Tattoo Documentaries are British they all seem to be American or Canadian and different cultures can have varied views on these kinds of situations therefore ours being British could bring a totally new reaction to tattoos.

What advice would you give to new talent companies keen to connect with your team?

Research what we commission and what each commissioner is looking for, then target that commissioner directly via the 4producers online submission sytem.

For projects looking for co-production funding, please submit online. For acquisitions / licences, please send direct to Anna Miralis.

We will also be making ours for a target audience of 16 - 40 therefore our documentary does not have to be shown so late, ours will be edgy and grown up without using bad language and other features that make the other documentaries post watershed.