2019-06-11

STVF Documentary MasterClass: Co-production, Short Video and Commercialization

On the morning of June 11, STVF Documentary MasterClass was held as scheduled in the Central Hall of Shanghai Exhibition Center. Mark Edwards, American documentary producer, Fu Hongxing, Chinese documentary director and master supervisor in film studies, and Ryota Kotani, an NHK executive producer and director, shared their observations on the current development trend of documentaries as keynote speakers.

Scene of STVF Documentary MasterClass

Trend 1

Mark Edward talks about co-production

At present, a large number of international documentary works have appeared in the field of high-quality documentaries. As a producer with rich international co-production experience, Mark Edwards has cooperated with professional teams from many countries in many international projects.

Mark Edwards said that co-productions often have a solid data base and a large editorial space. However, there are a lot of problems need to be coordinated and solved in the co-production process, such as data collection and research in different regions, scripts in different languages, different versions, editing work, funding and so on. Among all the problems, Mark Edwards believes that it is the most important to promote mutual trust between teams in different countries, but the establishment of trust mechanism is not achieved overnight and requires time to build.

However, Mark Edwards points out that the primary responsibility for documentaries is to be responsible for the audience, regardless of the background of the project or the subject matter involved in international cooperation. Therefore, when starting international cooperation, as producers, we should stand in the perspective of the audience and ask ourselves repeatedly why we combine such resources and why we put these materials in the content.

"Producers should first consider the audience." Mark Edward said.

Trend 2

Ryota Kotani talks about short video trend and slow TV

When talking about the current documentary trend, Ryota Kotani, who has long been active in documentary production, said that the current young people\'s short video viewing habits are bringing great challenges to the documentary production field and industry.

"Young people are more interested in short videos than long ones, and they don\'t want to watch them for more than 10 minutes." Ryota Kotani said.

For documentarians, Ryota Kotani said, it means changing the habit of shooting long films in the past. The change of habit needs to start from the beginning point of shooting. The change of documentary from long to short is not simply a change in editing form, but a change in the language of the lens itself and the rhythm of documentary film expression shall be considered as well.

Although mobile short video has become a trend and inevitably bring impact on documentaries, Ryota Kotani is still optimistic about long documentaries and documentaries broadcast through television channels. Compared with short videos, he put forward the original concept that documentaries presented on TV are "slow TV" and "slow movies". He believes that with more and more high-definition quality television enter into the family, there will be more room for documentaries in visual presentation, meanwhile, higher requirements are also put forward for the lens language of documentaries. It is necessary to fully consider the guidance to the audience on the basis of slow rhythm.

Whether it\'s a long video or a short video, attracting viewers is the most important thing, Ryota Kotani said. "The video has to catch the viewers in a few minutes, otherwise the viewers has no desire to continue watching." Ryota Kotani.

Trend 3

Fu Hongxing talks about documentary film ushered in a better development opportunity

In the interaction with the audience, in response to questions that more and more documentaries entering the cinema and become commercialization, Fu Hongxing said that at present there is indeed a tendency for funds to invest in documentaries, and the amount of investment in documentaries is also increasing. In recent years, the market has also seen many production organizations focusing on the field of documentaries, and more and more enterprises have begun to regard documentaries as a high-quality image carrier for cross-border dissemination.

In general, Fu Hongxing thought documentary companies have ushered in a relatively good opportunity for development, but for documentary workers, the biggest problem is how to achieve a balance among the creation, business and policy environment.

Fu Hongxing pointed out that no matter what theme of documentary is, the most important thing is to find a balance. For documentary creators all over the world, as long as they are based on the balance point, even if they dance in chains, they can still have more creative space.

In Fu Hongxing\'s view, the most basic creative ability is the ability to tell stories, which are more related to the emotional stimulation of the audience by the lens language. Taking the theme of the main melody as an example, Fu Hongxing believes that many people misinterpret the theme of the main melody and think that the main melody is to instill slogans, but in fact, it is still telling stories.

As part of the traditional quality activities of the festival, three of STVF Masterclass focused on three sections of documentary, animation and TV drama. The lecturers of the three master classes are all important people at home and abroad who have rich practical experience in their fields, as well as creative patterns and accumulated experience in the industry. Under the common context of discussing the future development of China\'s TV content categories, the speakers proposed to return to the content-based creative essence and to explore in depth the creative paths and development modes of different content categories.

From June 11 to June 13, the Magnolia TV Forum was composed of 5 industry dialogue forums and 3 master classes, all of which were presented by the leaders of TV industry at home and abroad. The Magnolia TV Forum, which has always been regarded as a weathervane for the TV industry, this year\'s overall theme highlights the sense of the times and mission. It takes cultural inheritance as the keynote and strives to give full play to the platform effect of the TV Festival, gathering the wisdom of the global industry for the development of the TV industry in the new era, promoting the TV industry to keep pace with the times, and showing the vigorous strength of China\'s TV industry to the world.