Little Dot Studios activities in the USA

Increasingly over the last few months I have been working and commissioning at Little Dot Studios with more than half an eye on the USA. To that end I have been working closely with Paul Woolf, formerly of Barcroft and Maverick, and my old colleagues Dan Jones and Alex Hryniewicz of Little Dot. Here is a piece about it from today’s Broadcast…

A mid-form online Original documentary I commissioned for Real Stories – shot in Montana by Debbie Howard

Little Dot taps up Barcroft exec for US unscripted role

Paul Woolf will supercharge development of indie’s factual strand

Little Dot Studios is ramping up its Real Stories doc strand across the Atlantic with the appointment of its first US head of unscripted development.

Barcroft head of development Paul Woolf has been hired to supercharge the development of the All3Media-backed indie’s factual brand, as it aims to commission more long-form docs and series for US networks and platforms.

Woolf has already commenced in the East Coast-based role, reporting into Little Dot director of content Dan Jones.

The former Maverick TV development director said he was delighted to join a team that with “an incredibly broad and deep understanding of both TV and social platforms”.

Jones added: “Paul is a fantastic development talent and his arrival allows us to make a sustained push in the US, which is hugely exciting.”

During his time with Barcroft, Woolf was behind Netflix format Amazing Interiors and worked on a range of short-form projects for the outfit’s in-house digital platforms.

He joined fellow All3Media indie Maverick TV as US development exec in 2008, relocating to the UK in 2010 to work on BBC2 social experiment Old School and Billy Connolly’s Route 66 for ITV.

Real Stories, which includes the likes of My Son the Jihadi and America’s Poor Kids, is headed up by former Channel 4 multiplatform commissioner Adam Gee.

Little Dot said it generates around 1 million cross-platform views a day on sites such as YouTube. The vast majority of viewers are aged 16-34 and more than 71% of its audience hail from the UK, North America and Australasia.

Shows from the strand are also available via a $3.99 (£3) per month SVoD app, which launched earlier this year.

Little Dot has been busy hiring this year, having already appointed Holly Graham as its inaugural head of US partnerships, while it picked up former C4 group partnership manager Jade Raad as head of brand partnerships for its newly-formed media division.

[text courtesy of Broadcast]

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Sorry I Shot You

‘Sorry I Shot You’, the second of my commissions for Real Stories, Little Dot Studios‘ documentary channel, went live last night. You can watch it here. It’s a fresh, moving look at Restorative Justice.

He shot a cop. Did his time. And now wants to make amends.

Dean Stanbury aka Stana was a bad-boy gangster and grime rapper growing up in East London. Then one fateful day in 2006 he shot and wounded a police officer. Dean was running away and fired over his shoulder. He did 8 years in jail, coming out a changed man. He now wants to track down the officer he shot and express his remorse and regret, check he is OK, and apologise to him face to face for what he did. Will Dean be able to find him after all these years? What will the policeman say, how will he react? In the process Dean re-visits his past to work out how he became the man capable of pulling the trigger that day.

Dean now has young children of his own. He has changed his lyrics, which were shockingly violent, to reflect his new values and discourage young men like he once was from glamorising guns, crime and life on the street.

What makes this film stand out is that it is a tale of Restorative Justice told from the inside (as opposed to TV people pitching up and looking in on this world). The director of ‘Sorry I Shot You’ (Nicole Stanbury) was involved in gang-related and organised crime which lead to her serving time in Holloway and other women’s prisons before finding her way back to the straight and narrow, including directing this her first film. Because she is a close relative of Dean Stanbury and has his full trust, the film is astonishingly intimate.

‘Sorry I Shot You’ is an uplifting documentary about redemption and second chances gratefully seized. Its protagonist is unusually honest and open, making this a very revealing and insightful film.

It is one of the first original productions from Real Stories (and the first ever commission for Underworld.TV) and has the feelgood vibe and overcoming of adversity which is part of what characterises this fast-growing documentary channel. ‘Sorry I Shot You’ [a 29 minute watch] went live on 2^nd March 2018 on the Real Stories YouTube channel.

4 of the best international dramas

I’m a big fan of Walter Presents, the reservoir of sub-titled drama on Channel 4’s All4 VOD platform. It’s the brainchild of Walter Iuzzolino, a fellow Commissioning Editor at Channel 4 (we did The Sex Education Show/Sexperience together, for example), and it comes from a really genuine place, he loved Italian soaps growing up (watched with his granny) which is the root of his passion to seek out the very best of international TV drama.

Here are the 4 I’ve most enjoyed recently:

Sexy bike, sexy sea, sexy photographer, hairy journo

1) Maltese

The only one in the Walter presents pot from his native Italy. Set in the 70s on Sicily (1976) and created by the team behind ‘Gomorrah’, writers Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli. The scenery was a delightful mind-trip, the language was a joy to listen to, and the story and acting were well up to par. Perfect for dull grey British fag-end of winter.

Sexy scene-stealer

2) Paris

The show is stolen by Sarah-Jane Sauvegrain playing Alexia, a transgender woman at the heart of a wide cast of characters whose paths are interwoven across the 24 hours of the story (spread across six 45-minute episodes). These characters are from the political realm and the underworld, interconnected in many ways. Seemingly this portrayal of a transwoman was a landmark on French TV (of the kind represented by the first lesbian kiss on Channel 4’s Brookside). Sauvegrain plays the role with a fascinating mix of femininity with the occasional flash of male physicality – mesmerising and moving. The whole thing is a delight.

Unsexy OCD

3) Hotel Adlon

A family saga centred on Berlin’s famous posh hotel beside the Brandenburg Gate. The three 95-minute episodes cover much of the 20th century, starting in 1904. More of an epic feel about it due to the long episodes, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable mix of aspirational luxury and fairly accurate history (culminating with the Nazis of course).

Sexy detective, sexy lake

4) Vanished by the Lake (Le Mystère du Lac)

Like Maltese, it’s as good as a holiday hanging out by the lake in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southeastern France. A teenage girl goes missing by the lake in a town where two other teenagers had gone missing before, 15 years earlier. A classic whodunit plus Provence landscapes – what’s not to like? How come there are so many sexy French detectivesses? Real-life or just a drama conceit? Who cares – fun to watch.

Little Dot launches SVoD app

From this week’s Broadcast – by Alex Farber – text courtesy of Broadcast

 

Little Dot launches SVoD app

Real Stories will offer factual shows

Little Dot Studios has launched an international SVoD service dedicated to factual programming.

The $3.99 per month Real Stories service is available via iOS and Android, with plans to launch via Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV and Roku devices shortly. It is available as an ad-supported service in the UK.

The service features a host of acquired films, including Rich Russians Living in London, Out Of Control Kids and Interview With A Serial Killer, alongside Little Dot’s debut slate of commissions.

Ordered by commissioning editor Adam Gee, these include Underworld TV’s Sorry I Shot You and Big Buddha Films/MedialabUK’s Absent From Our Own Wedding.

Real Stories’ YouTube channel has generated 1.1m subscribers and some 284m video views to date, and has gone on to be extended across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

The app launch will be followed by an SVoD launch for world history channel Timeline, ahead of Little Dot’s portfolio of other channels including Spark, Nurture and Only Human.

The All3Media-backed business has tied with video streaming firm Simplestream to develop the debut app, revealed by co-founder Andy Taylor in October.

Little Dot’s senior partnerships manager Robbie Spargo said the aim was to learn about changing consumer habits.

“In particular, we’re fascinated by viewing shifting back to the living room through devices like Fire Stick, Roku, and Apple TV,” he added. “The Real Stories app will also give us the opportunity to experiment with different commercial models, from subscription to advertising to branded content partnerships with agencies and brands.”

Simplestream chief commercial officer Dan Finch said the service had been built using its fast-turnaround ‘VOD-in-a-Box’ platform.

“It allows Little Dot to deliver Real Stories on demand, to a targeted end-user’s location whilst serving up the appropriate business model for that territory in line with their programming rights,” he said.

“We’re looking forward to working together over the coming months on Real Stories and other exciting Little Dot brands across the globe.”

Top Documentaries on UK TV 2017

My favourite documentary series of the year

	Title	Channel	Share %	Viewers ‘000s
1	Blue Planet II	BBC 1	45.8	14,011
2	Diana, Our Mother: Her life + Legacy	ITV	36.7	9,390
3	Diana, Seven Days	BBC 1	32.9	6,425
4	Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum + Dad	BBC 1	26.2	6,345
5	Spy In The Wild	BBC 1	25.7	6,218
6	The Real Marigold Hotel	BBC 1	23.3	5,999
7	Wild Alaska Live	BBC 1	31.9	5,998
8	Attenborough and the Giant Elephant	BBC 1	20.3	5,378
9	The Real Full Monty	ITV	24.2	5,362
10	Fake Or Fortune?	BBC 1	26.0	5,127
11	Snow Bears	BBC 1	23.6	4,969
12	Paul O’Grady For the love of Dogs	ITV	21.1	4,960
13	Diana: In Her Own Words	CH4	20.6	4,923
14	The Truth About… Sleep	BBC 1	20.3	4,704
15	Ambulance	BBC 1	21.1	4,660
16	Police Tapes	ITV	20.5	4,522
17	Easyjet: Inside The Cockpit	ITV	20.2	4,488
18	The Real Marigold On Tour	BBC 1	18.3	4,411
19	An Hour To Catch A Killer	ITV	18.1	4,362
20	Inside London Fire Brigade	ITV	18.7	4,317
21	Britain’s Busiest Airport – Heathrow	ITV	18.5	4,309
22	The Met: Policing London	BBC 1	19.5	4,224
23	Martin Clunes: Islands Of Australia	ITV	19.4	4,222
24	The Cruise : Mediterranean	ITV	17.3	4,216
25	Galapagos	BBC 1	16.9	4,173
26	Elizabeth And Philip: Love & Duty	BBC 1	14.6	4,149
27	Sir Bruce Forsyth: Mr Entertainment	BBC 1	21.7	4,094
28	Reported Missing	BBC 1	16.6	4,051
29	Prince Harry & Meghan	ITV	16.8	4,034
30	Joanna Lumley’s India	ITV	18.3	4,025
31	The Week The Landlords Moved In	BBC 1	18.2	3,982
32	The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway	BBC 2	17.4	3,908
33	Italy’s Invisible Cities	BBC 1	14.6	3,859
34	Ross Kemp Behind Bars	ITV	17.1	3,848
35	Sugar Free Farm	ITV	16.3	3,840
36	Gordon Ramsay On Cocaine	ITV	16.4	3,839
37	Diana: The Day Britain Cried	ITV	14.6	3,817
38	Spy in the Wild: Meet the Spies	BBC 1	17.6	3,784
39	Serial Killer with Piers Morgan	ITV	15.9	3,683
40	The Ganges with Sue Perkins	BBC 1	15.9	3,671
41	How To Stay Young	BBC 1	15.9	3,648
42	Britain’s Best Walks with Julia Bradbury	ITV	17.1	3,619
43	A Very Royal Wedding	ITV	14.9	3,588
44	Gone To Pot: American Road Trip	ITV	13.5	3,585
45	Killer Women with Piers Morgan	ITV	15.7	3,553
46	Britain On The Fiddle	BBC 1	14.1	3,459
47	The Truth About Stress	BBC 1	14.7	3,451
48	The Harbour	ITV	14.4	3,431
49	I Am Bolt	BBC 1	15.8	3,409
50	The Sheriffs Are Coming	BBC 1	14.1	3,400
51	Orkney: When The Boat Comes	BBC 1	17.0	3,380
52	Winterwatch	BBC 2	14.0	3,378
53	Harry & Meghan: Royal Engagement	BBC 1	16.0	3,377
54	Russia With Simon Reeve	BBC 2	14.0	3,287
55	Call The Midwife: The Casebook	BBC 1	17.0	3,234
56	Devon & Cornwall Cops	ITV	14.6	3,206
57	Planet Earth II: A World Of Wonder	BBC 1	19.6	3,174

The Black Lesbian Handbook

This is a documentary project I’m really proud of. I recently commissioned the 2nd series this time set in Atlanta, Georgia but featuring some of the people who appeared in the London-based 1st series.

Channel 4 has really got behind it promotion-wise and it’s doing really well, finding a significant audience on All 4.

What’s particularly pleasing is the warm reception online like these:

The films were directed by Andy Mundy-Castle and produced by Rukhsana Mosam at Ten66 in Sussex.

Don’t Stop the Music on Newsround

I loved Newsround as a kid. And now after all these years a bit of me gets on it – in the form of Don’t Stop the Music, the multiplatform project I’ve been working on all summer with pianist James Rhodes and Jamie Oliver’s production company, Fresh One.

Over 7,000 instruments were collected in the Don’t Stop the Music Instrument Amnesty thanks to the huge generosity of the British public and their care about music education. That makes it the biggest UK instrument amnesty ever.

Here’s the Newsround item which shows the last step in the journey as the instruments reach the kids…

South America Day 7 – Uruguay, Montevideo: On The Town

Argentina is separated from Uruguay by the River Plate, which from the shore looks like a sea. On the Argentina side it is muddy brown. On the Uruguay side, a bit bluer. It takes around two hours to cross by boat. Valeria, Damian and I boarded from the modern passenger terminal in Buenos Aires, built only two years ago, complete with a wall of falling water.

I spent much of the journey doing my Spanish lessons on Duolinguo. Lo siento, no hablo Espagnol. Funnily enough, I got to use that phrase on Uruguayan television later in the day.

The journey is a flat expanse of calm river, punctuated with the odd vessel but otherwise without features. Eventually the Uruguayan mainland looms into view, and then Montevideo, a largely low-rise city. On disembarking we passed pretty much the whole of the country’s navy in port, grey hulks labelled 1 to 24 under huge yellow cranes.

We were picked up by a colleague of Damian’s from TV station Estudio 9. She drove us along the coastal road, the Ramblas, a crescent promenade bordering the river-sea. We went first to Channel 10 where Damian did an interview on a daytime show. He was preceeded by Chico Novarro, a famous Argentine romantic singer of boleros, and his leather-trousered son, a well-known actor. The two presenters and crew were really welcoming and friendly, especially the older host who couldn’t have been warmer.

Everyone in the crew, cameramen, sound, the works, were on their phones the whole time they were shooting. I watched a voice-over artist at the side of the set do the sponsor presentation live, delivering each bit perfectly and on time then returning to his magazine the second the mike went off.

The set was a comfortable house with living room, kitchen and (fake) garden beyond the French doors. Damian chatted in the kitchen with the younger host (with whom he made the multiplatform show Conectados a couple of years ago) and efficiently got across his activities with Mediamorfosis.

We left the beautiful shade-dappled side street where Channel 10’s studio is located for a hotel in the city centre, not far away, it’s a bijou city. After dumping our stuff, the three of us walked ten blocks to the old city centred on Independence Square (this is Uruguay independence from Argentina). It is defined by the old theatre Solis, a strange masonic tower and a stone arch – very atmospheric and typically hispanic.

We had a late lunch outdoors (a lovely fresh white sea fish steamed with carrots and onions). Then I dragged them in to a beautiful late 19C book shop with high shelves, a book-lined balcony, a stained glass window half-way up the stairs and a café up above. If I lived in Montevideo, this would be my HQ.

Also at my request we popped into the Torres Garcia museum next door in a tall old townhouse, five or six narrow floors high. Joaquin Torres Garcia is Uruguay’s most famous Modernist artist. The early work on display (like Adam & Eve) shows the influence of Cezanne, Picasso and Gauguin. He lived in Paris, Barcelona and New York. Other roots seem to be Klee (searching for a symbolic universal picture language) and native South American Indian art (flat hieroglyphic planes). He was clearly both a restless experimenter and a relentless theorist. Note to self: pick up a book about him on my return.

We then headed off to El Observador newspaper in a quiet, more industrial quarter, beautifully designed offices in black and white, stylish. I had a look around the newsroom, then got roped into an interview despite my Duolinguo Spanish. That’s when I got to say “Lo siento, no hablo Espagnol” on air. We talked about the future of TV and media with a similarly stylish young journalist with blue glasses (Dame Edna Everage-style but dialed down and cool).

Off for a siesta listening to Kind of Blue (= perfect siesta length, finishing on flamenco vibe) then over to Estudio 9 where Damian and I were doing a two-hander evangelising transmedia. The venue was a black-curtained studio, subtly lit in the beautifully lit and decorated former dance hall. We had fun doing it, it seemed to go down very well.

From the studio we headed out for a suitably late a l’Espagnol supper in a former market with various folk from the British Council Uruguay office. In the corner of the open-to-the-air market (a bit like Spitalfields market) was an enclosed space with windows housing a tango school. Tonight was tango night so I got a chance to watch some regular couples at work. I liked their ambition. When I eventually got back to my 8^th floor room I realised what I was looking down on was the corrugated iron roof of the mercado. So I fell asleep in Montevideo listening to the sounds of tango from below.

Blue and Brassy

American overstatement

On a hunt for NFL gear in NYC this morning for one of the Enfants Terribles, I walked past Macy’s and noticed this brass plaque. The exact wording it turns out is crucial. You leave with the impression that this is where the first movie was projected – “Here the motion picture began” is what misleads. But the truth is actually precisely (and narrowly) what it says below: it’s where Edison first projected a movie. It was put up by “The American Motion Picture Industry” where truth is not always at a premium.

Movies were first publicly projected 8 months earlier in Chicago at the Model Variety Theater. And they were first projected to a paying audience 5 months before in Paris at the Grand Café. In fact they’d already been publicly projected in New York before this date. I haven’t done much research but I dare say there are some other European claims to challenge these dates.

Edison had already charged members of the public to watch movies prior to this date but on peephole machines, not projected. On the date marked by this bold and brassy plaque the film was part of a vaudeville show and was simply three of his peephole films spliced together. So over-stated, over-charged and over here.

Meanwhile back at home in London, I was thinking the other day about blue plaques because a newspaper story has been doing the rounds about how English Heritage, who now administer the blue plaque scheme, established in 1866 and believed to be the oldest of its kind in the world, are about to kill the blue plaque. The scheme was set up under the auspices of the Society of Arts (later the Royal Society of the Arts, of which at one time I was a Fellow). The baton then passed to the London County Council and in due course to the Greater London Council. In 1986, English Heritage took up the responsibility. So the press stories recently suggested that the scheme was about to end but I suspect this was actually cack-handed PR on the part of English Heritage, crying wolf in the face of tight times and cuts. They have subsequently said they are just pausing the scheme to deal with a back-log and slow things down in these cash-starved times. What they have done in the process is drawn attention to the cost of what should at heart be a simple operation with expenditure limited to making a robust piece of blue ceramic, but no doubt there is some immense bureaucracy accreted around a simple idea designed to make a plain link between notable characters from the past and the buildings in which they lived, worked and died. As English Heritage summarises the 147 year old scheme with which it has been entrusted: “It is a uniquely successful means of connecting people and place.” I suspect if EH did pull the plug, we the public could do it for ourselves at a fraction of the cost and bring back a long tradition of public subscription in our country with the help of some open, sharing digital technology.

Any way, enough kvetching as they say around here (I’m writing this at 3rd Avenue and 24th Street), I’d like to draw attention to my favourite blue plaque. It’s high up on the wall of 22 Frith Street in London, above the Bar Italia, directly opposite Ronnie Scott’s jazz club – and it’s a model of British understatement:

British understatement

So basically “Here Television began”.

If you go to Bletchley Park, or certainly this was the case about five to ten years ago, you could see the concrete base of the hut where the world’s first programmable computer was created by Alan Turing. The hut was knocked down some years ago. The spot is (or was) not specifically marked. I remember standing there and thinking if this was in the USA there would be something pretty significant to mark this stupendous happening. “Here Computing began.” Or at least “Here programmable Computing began.”

It was minus 13 the night I arrived here. As an Englishman in New York I might have said: “It’s a bit nippy”. But there’s a time for sang froid and a time for being big, bold and brassy…

4thought.tv – Rescuing the God slot

Really enjoying working on this new project (Phase 1 launched yesterday, main site launches 13th September at http://www.4thought.tv) First C4 programme to have URL as a title. It was great to read this initial reaction in The Guardian as they clearly get the idea…

Channel 4 rescues the God slot

The new Channel 4 series of religious and ethical meditations breathes life into a stale format

• • Jonathan Bartley
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 July 2010 14.30 BST

If last night’s 4thought.tv is indicative of things to come, then there might yet be some hope for the God slots.

The new series of short films to be screened after Channel 4 News feature a single speaker who reflects on religious and ethical issues or aspects of their spiritual lives from their personal experience. Nothing particularly new there is would seem. But despite being considerably shorter, and generally more spacious with its script, it looks like being a lot grittier and down to earth than the platitudes which emerge during other pauses for thought such as Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

The first offering to kick off the series was by Dr Gill Hicks, who lost her legs in the 7 July London bombings. In just a few powerful sentences, she reflected on her experience of God through those who helped her, but also the choice she felt she faced between life and death.

Usually God contributions are the preserve of the identifiably religious. Clergy, theologians, even thinktankers have been chosen as religious
“representatives”. This has predictably led to the debate about who should be “in” and who should be excluded from delivering their reflection, on the basis of whether their belief system is important, or relevant enough to qualify. With a few notable exceptions, the slots subsequently reflect back – in often bland monologue with a moral pay-off at the end – the values and perspectives of big religion.

It’s not the fault of the contributors so much as the way the slots are structured and the culture that surrounds them. Often devoid of attitude and original experience, the presentations can sound contrived, and meander aimlessly amidst the harder news output. Which is a shame, because space for reflection amongst the 24 hour news churn should be an important contrast to help the listener or viewer refocus and get a sense of perspective in a way that is accessible to all.

And there are many ways to do it if you are prepared to move beyond the old formula – as Channel 4 is now showing. In particular they seem to be reviving the idea of “testimony”. For their slot focuses on people’s lives and experiences as much as philosophical or doctrinal concepts. Gritty, difficult, uncomfortable issues and ideas that haven’t been packaged into a neat formula can emerge more easily when the focus is what has happened to a person, rather than a more abstract tradition of thought.

There is of course huge value in philosophy, theology and the wisdom that has developed over centuries. But there is merit too in stepping away from it, and listening to the experiences to those who would not immediately be identified as religious. In many ways it makes perfect sense. If you want a reflection on exclusion, then listen to the excluded. If you want to hear about poverty, then listen to those who live with it on a day to day basis. And if you want a new angle on the old, tired debate about whether God exists, and if so why there is so much suffering, then listen to someone who has survived the carnage of a bomb blast. They may just have some powerful and thought provoking reflections on whether God was there or not.

[Article reproduced courtesy of The Guardian]