Naman Ramachandran Seven international broadcast majors have teamed to launch a call for documentary proposals at the ongoing Sunny Side of the Doc market.The international documentary coproduction unit of France Televisions is uniting with partners ZDF (Germany), Channel 4 (U.K.), CBC (Canada), SVT (Sweden), ORF (Austria) and ABC Australia, seeking proposals for high-end documentaries dealing with subjects in two categories.
The first category focuses on ancient civilisations, archaeology, paleontology, geology and space exploration and the second on the subject ‘How cutting-edge science can provide solutions to save the planet.’Proposals should ideally be “an epic scientific adventure with international scope, following groups of international scientists in their fieldwork,” with “wide and international audience appeal” and “factual clarity combined with an engaging and emotional approach, creating a sense of awe” and are “visually spectacular, using the best of modern image-making techniques,” according to the broadcasters.
They should have potential for a 90-minute feature, which can be edited to 52, 45 minutes or 2×52’ and the broadcasters say that they “will be attentive to equal representation, promoting women’s voices in the directing and writing, technical crew or front of camera.” Subjects on health, social issues; an approach which is too dry and academic, difficult for a general public to grasp; and projects that are presenter-led are not encouraged.An international jury composed of representatives from each broadcaster will select three projects, two in the first category and one in the second.
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