Held in La Rochelle in France, ‘Sunnyside of the Doc’ is the primary International Documentary Market at which commissioning editors and production companies come together for four days each year to buy, sell, and chew the fat.
Sunnyside provides a good window on the state of HD television globally, and having reported from the event for the pages of this magazine two years ago, I can safely report spectacular growth in HD documentary production since.
Underlining that growth in France, Françoise Feuillye, commissioning editor for Canal+ HD stated “When commissioning documentaries, much depends on the subject matter together with the production company’s ability to produce in HD. Some of our magazine style content is actually shot in HDV, but the fact is that 80pc of content broadcast on the channel is now produced in HD with the remainder ‘up-rezzed’”.
In fact, by the end of 2008, eight French TV channels will be broadcasting in High Definition, complementing good sales of HDTV sets in the country.
Anne Roder-Botbol who in her role at Channel 4 International brings together European co-productions, provided further insight. “Even if broadcasters are not broadcasting in HD the quality of the HD image shows immediately; Japan and the USA only want HD now. The cost of producing in HD has come down too, so it’s more affordable than two years ago”. Anne indicated that the requirement for HD in Europe is not as entrenched, and is more subject specific, explaining that most of the human interest and current affairs docs in the C4i catalogue are currently standard definition titles.
Brazil is experiencing what might be called an economic miracle and the audiovisual industry is growing as a result. The country’s presence at Sunnyside centered around a new publicly funded channel ‘TV Brazil’ soon to be launched. TV Brazil will demand complete independence both from political influence and economic interests. Fernando Dias, the new channel’s Director, stated that content will be made up from 80pc independent production with only 20pc produced in house. “This is the first time this has happened in Brazil, the new channel is comparable to the UK’s Channel 4 in the 1980s” he declared.
Providing the producer’s perspective, Jennifer Gherardi of Australian outfit Jag films suggested there was much enthusiasm in the land down-under. “In terms of investment in HD production a lot of smaller production companies are holding out for the RED camera, and for the minute those teething problems are fixed.”
And indeed, in the technical area, the RED One camera on show provided by LocaRed caused much interest. Producer folk, attracted by the relatively low price tag, and the promise of 4K images were keen to learn more about the camera’s reliability and the related post workflow.
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