The Edinburgh International TV Festival has always been as much about looking forward – what are the big trends, programmes and challenges for the coming year (s) – as looking back at the triumphs and crises just gone.
And invariably one of the most interesting ways of divining the future health of the industry is through the state of the Ones to Watch scheme. This is where 30 of the rising young stars of TV, selected from among 100s of applicants, are invited to ‘’represent some of the most exciting people working in the TV industry today’’ at the festival. Or, more accurately, to schmooze and booze with the industry’s great and good in the bar at the George hotel.
One of the highlights of this year’s One to Watch scheme was the ‘Live Pitch’ session which involved 8 shortlisted finalists from among the 30 Ones to Watchers delivering 90 second pitches to Tabitha Jackson, commissioning editor for Arts at Channel 4.
With more than kudos at stake – the winning pitch would also get £4,000 commission to turn their idea into a 3-minute film for C4’s Random Acts strand - the standard and breadth of pitches was reassuringly high.
Shelley Rai, a researcher at Twenty Twenty, proposed a short documentary about what she called “Peter Pan Man’’ – an 80 year old who had gone back to university and was living the life of an 18 year old fresher. Giving it a distinctive visual twist, she suggested the whole film be shot using a Go Pro (attached to her octogenarian subject) intercut with stills, with a voice over that started as that of a young man and – using digital wizardry – but quickly ‘’aged’’ into that of an old man.
Jason Bates, a freelance researcher, who Stuart Murphy no less had praised as ‘quick and smart, silly and ridiculous and reassuringly geeky’, wanted to make a film satirizing modern society’s overprotectiveness of children – all shot at a child’s eyeline using a camera rig attached to his wheelchair.
Others included a highly stylized film about a transsexual nightclub (Alice Carder, freelance AP and presenter), a conceptual piece about the power of laughter (Jemma Chisnall, freelance AP) and a part animated short about privacy and state secrets based on a children’s book (John O’Rourke, researcher at BBC Scotland.)
Tabitha praised all 8 pitches as being incredibly well delivered. Her top tips for the pitching were:
- Don’t speak too fast
- Explain clearly what the viewer will be seeing – both content-wise but also a sense of the style and look of the film
- Some visuals help. You don’t have to have made the film: but illustrating some of what will be on screen are useful
- It’s important anyone pitching to the Random Acts strand understands what that strand is about, and has done their research. The films need to be surprising, engaging and visually distinctive
- She wants films that can tell a story in 3 minutes – and don’t feel simply like longer form docs or films that have been cut done to a highlight reel
In the end, Tabitha said there were 3 ‘runners-up’ – John O’Rourke, Jason Bates, Hannah Farrell(AP at Timeline Films, who pitched a film about a rapper with a stutter) who she would like to speak to further to see if their ideas could be developed into a full-fledged Random Act commission. But the winner was Jodie Adams – freelance AP – with an operatic take on the trials of modern life.
For more festival highlights, some of the sessions are available to watch on GEITF's Youtube channel.