Judges comments from the 'CIPR Press Awards' Friday 11th of June 2010.
Category winner, News Digital Innovation of the Year
Fermanagh TV
In a difficult time for both regional and national newspapers when newspaper executives are still dithering about what to do to combat the effect of the internet on their advertising revenues, it was fascinating to see an excellent local paper making a brave decision to tackle the problem head on in an attempt to link the print product to another news platform and make some money.
It was an inspired move to seek Lottery Funding for the project that was set up to give a voice to a very local community, a voice that in the past was often not heard on the major broadcasting outlets.
The content is rich and varied and the website and newspaper are clearly working ell together, hopefully securing a profitable future for both before long. The editor of The Impartial Reporter Denzil McDaniel and his staff on both outlets are to be congratulated for their courage in embracing the new platforms offered by the internet with the experience, resilience and commitment of the old. The winner is Fermanagh TV.
Overall winner, Digital Innovation of the Year
Fermanagh TV
This is something like the tale of Jack the Giant Killer, with a tiny organisation going head to head with its heavyweight competitors and their depth of resources. The winner has used innovation, the latest technology, some imaginative business ideas plus a heavy sprinkling of what people love to call ‘good old-fashioned journalism’ to create a unique product that is serving its community well.
The website set out to give an online voice to an area that is often neglected by the major broadcasters and it has been rewarded by loyalty and interest from generations more attuned to their laptops and iPhones than their television sets or local newspapers.
The cross-fertilisation with the print product may help one of Northern Ireland’s best local newspapers, The Impartial Reporter, to survive in an increasingly difficult market for the regional press. It’s also an impressive use of Lottery funding.
The creation of a unique digital history of Fermanagh that's growing by the day,will be a superb resource to local historians and other people, including school-children, for years to come.
In times of crisis, disasters and major news stories when people crave instant information, many people reach for their TV controls or newspapers but the younger generation go to the internet with its social networking sites which the winner has sensibly incorporated.
With a wide variety of channels, links to the local council and local amenities, the website caters for real people living real lives, covering areas of interest that they wouldn’t find elsewhere. The two video reporters should be given special mention, but it really is a superb team effort from this year’s winner of the Digital Innovation of the Year category, Fermanagh TV.
Documentary Production: What We Can Learn from Our American Cousins
By Eimhear O’Neill
In what can only be described as a spectacular editing suite off West Broadway in Soho, New York, I found myself sitting in the room where the Academy Award-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, was edited. Considering this was only my second day with the people behind Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, I knew my six-week placement with Jigsaw Productions would undoubtedly generate fresh experiences and solid contacts for the Northern Irish production sector… and it delivered.
This time around, however, it was the turn of one of the best-selling books of the last decade and one of the most compelling films of the year: Freakonomics. Exploring the dwindling façade of Sumo wrestling, Alex Gibney’s segment in the documentary was three weeks away from its premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and still without sound design and dubbing. When I arrived into New York in early April, Jigsaw had three documentaries premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival:Freakonomics,The Untitled Eliot Spitzer Project and My Trip to Al Qaeda which had been recently bought by HBO. At a press conference before the festival launched on May 21st, Jane Rosenthal, one of the co-founders of the festival alongside Robert De Niro, introduced the two week event as the ‘de-facto Alex Gibney festival,’ which puts into perspective how influential and respected Alex and his team at Jigsaw are within the New York documentary sector. Generally, having one film in a festival is an achievement, so to have three - with the Eliot Spitzer project still a work in progress - was testament to Jigsaw’s reputation.
In addition to this, Jigsaw was also producing a documentary feature following cyclist Lance Armstrong’s training for what he hoped would be an eighth Tour de France win, as well as Magic Bus, a time travel immersion experience of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their infamous road-trip to the 1964 World's Fair for The History Channel and Optimum Releasing. Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a feature portrait of Washington super lobbyist Jack Abramoff from his early years as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a disgraced, imprisoned pariah, was released towards the end of my placement in theatres across America on May 7th. It was an extremely manic time and, from my perspective, a valuable opportunity for the acquisition of new skills, but, given their track record in producing award-winning documentary films, I have no doubt this frenetically productive period was simply business as usual for Jigsaw.
My involvement and training varied from day to day, often determined by the demands of Jigsaw’s various deadlines. For example, I was assigned the task of putting together a publicity package for one of the Tribeca Film Festival documentaries, My Trip to Al Qaeda. This involved constructing a synopsis, choosing the strongest stills from the film and writing biographies for the key personnel involved in the production. Such duties were both enjoyable and challenging - there was no BBC publicity department calling to help! I went on shoots to Washington DC to film web videos for Casino Jack with one of the producers, Zena Barakat, and ended up filming GV’s of the White House from the back of a rented jeep on a Sony EX3. I also did my fair share of leg-work, dropping tapes off to the Tribeca Film headquarters and collecting drives from C5 Sound, the leading audio post-production facility for motion picture sound in New York City, for example.
I gained valuable insight into the editorial process of the company, as I would join the Jigsaw team to watch the first cut of a new documentary and produce editorial notes to help shape the final version. One evening in particular stands out: I found myself sitting alongside Alex in an otherwise empty 40 seat theatre off Times Square watching a colour-correction screening of Casino Jack.
When the film festival actually began, I was fortunate enough to attend the premieres of My Trip to Al Qaeda and The Untitled Eliot Spitzer Project. My Trip graced the front page of the NY Times Arts section and the Spitzer project naturally received a lot of publicity as it featured Eliot Spitzer, a former New York Mayor, speaking, for the first time, on camera about the prostitution scandal which led to his resignation from public office. On the night My Trip to Al Qaeda premiered, I went to dinner with the Jigsaw team and ended up sitting beside Alex and Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Looming Tower and writer of the documentary. Over dinner, Alex took the opportunity to find out more about our upcoming BBC NI documentary profiling Gerry Adams, a project that also grabbed Wright’s interest, as his new play explores the Palestine and Israeli conflict, given the sectarian appropriation of this conflict in the Northern Irish context. The three of us mused that Belfast, a city where Israeli flags are displayed in loyalist areas of the city while Palestinian colours are flown in nationalist areas, could be an appropriate place for the UK premiere of his play.
While we spend countless hours developing treatments and taster DVDs for a hub of commissioners and broadcasters, Jigsaw, like most New York production companies, invest a heavy amount of time in networking with philanthropists and wealthy individuals. The commissioning process is much less centralised than our own, with a great deal more emphasis placed upon identifying and securing sources of funding, and a concomitant sense that the idea, usually the first step in the competition for commissions in the UK, will follow.
As an Academy Award-winning production company, Jigsaw now find themselves in a position in which funders and investors actively approach them with capital to make a feature length film. Magnolia Pictures, the theatrical and home entertainment distribution arm of the Wagner/Cuban Companies, have an established relationship with Jigsaw and distribute most of their documentaries. Jigsaw has worked extremely hard and has reached a plateau of success which enables them to ride through the difficult economic climate. Their ambition and thirst to produce grittier, darker and critically acclaimed documentaries remains unchallenged. With a full time staff of four and a further six to eight contracted and freelance staff, the framework around documentary making for Jigsaw is one which, I believe, could be successfully transplanted and developed within in the UK context. Conversely, Jigsaw was keen to learn how Below the Radar develop and fund documentaries, and I had many interesting conversations with members of the team, all of whom were interested in the UK commissioning process.
My placement has inaugurated a relationship between two production companies on either side of the Atlantic, one that will not only generate business for both, but which has the potential to benefit the Northern Irish production sector. It’s an exciting development and a fantastic example of the vital support provided by the Creative Industries Innovation Fund by Screen N.I. What we can learn from our American cousins is that not one model is better than the other, but that cross-pollination between these two distinct frameworks has the potential to generate a hybridized set of shared, internationally recognized skills, and to change and improve the way in which documentaries are funded and made here in Northern Ireland.