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Nick Fraser: BBC Storyville Commissioning Editor

Nick Fraser is the man responsible for the BBC’s documentary film strand. He tells Tom Huntingford why even the most serious docs need to be entertaining and why filmmakers should think from the beginning about their film’s destination...

How does a film end up on BBC Storyville? 

The BBC give me an amount of money per year and I go around either commissioning films, buying into them when they’re halfway done, or buying them when they are completed – about 20-25 titles a year. I have to use the money as wisely as I can and I do that basically by taking as few rights as possible, ie by restricting the BBC’s participation to UK rights to the films, which leaves the filmmakers free to sell their films elsewhere in the world. 

What do you look for in documentaries? 

You have to be able to spot early on that the story is going to be important. You look for certain qualities in films, like curiosity, like certain standards of truth-telling, and a degree of entertainment – I think even when you’re doing very serious topics the films shouldn’t lecture people. Documentaries should be things that you watch out of curiosity and a desire for empathy. I think that if you can begin to understand other peoples’ lives, then that’s hugely important. The best films are basically about telling people about things they don’t know in very immediate, unexpected ways. 

What would you look for in an unknown director? 

At the BBC we don’t have a snobbish attitude that we only want to work with well-known filmmakers. It’s very satisfying when we can find new filmmakers, but that’s not what we’re set up to do – I mean, there isn’t a special mandate from the BBC to support young or new filmmakers. 

I can give you two examples. Harry Freeland got out of film school and spent three or four years of his life filming with albinos in Tanzania, and made the Albino Witchcraft Murders, which was a great film; it worked really well for us. It had an astonishing impact – we showed it a couple of times on BBC4, he managed to raise quite a lot of money for the albinos and he created a foundation, Standing Voice, on the back of it. 

The second one, which we have in the works this year, is a film about the South Sudanese football team. South Sudan, being one of the newest, poorest countries in the world, has trouble doing anything, let alone creating a national football team. There is a coach called Goran who is Serb – it’s funny, and it tells you about South Sudan. Again the filmmaker funded himself to shoot 60-70 hours of material, brought it to us and we supplied the money to finish the film. 

What’s your advice for filmmakers trying to break into the industry? 

If you want to make a film, you should do it in your own way. You shouldn’t compromise until you’re obliged to. And much more important than the style of the film or “what’s it about”, is what the filmmakers are actually saying about what it’s about. 

When you start a film you should always, if possible, try to figure out where it is going to end up. Where is it going to be sold? How do you get the most impact for the film?

Finally, you have to come up with stuff that you have shot. And you have to have an appealing story. There is still enough money globally to fund a huge variety of documentaries, and people will find a way of making them.

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