Title:

The Missing Puzzle: Birth of a Format

By Ivo Burum

BA (Deakin University); BA (AFTRS); Dip Ed (La Trobe University)

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

of Master of Arts (Research)

Film and Television Production: Creative Industries (FTV)

Queensland University of Technology

2008

Supervisors:

Ass Prof Geoff Portmann, Helen Yeates

ii

Abstract

The art of storytelling is one of the oldest forms of creative

discourse. Apart from finding stories, the most important job in

television is the construction of stories to have a broad audience

appeal.

This first-hand review of Missing Persons Unit, hereafter referred to

as MPU, a prime time program on the Nine Network in Australia with

immense audience appeal, is an original work by the executive

producer (development and series producer Series One, executive

producer Series Two and Three) based on an overview of two-and-

a-half years of production on three series.

Through a case study approach, this Masters project explores how

story is constructed into a television format. The thesis comprises

two parts: the creative component (weighted 50%) is demonstrated

through two programs of MPU (one program for evaluation) and the

academic component through a written exegesis (50%).

This case study aims to demonstrate how observational hybrid

series such as MPU can be managed to quick turn-around

schedules with precise skill sets that cut across a number of

traditional genre styles.

iii

With the advent of radio and then television, storytelling found a

home and a series of labels called genres to help place them in a

schedule for listeners and viewers to choose. Over recent years,

with the advent of digital technology and the rush to collect the

masses of content required to feed the growing television slate,

storytelling has often been replaced by story gathering.

Today even in factual series where a clear story construct is

important, third party ‘quick fix’ specialists are hired to shape raw

content shot by a field team, who never put their own work together

and may never come into the edit suite during a project.

This thesis explores the art of storytelling in fast turn-around

television. In particular it explores the layer cake approach used in

the production process of MPU, that enables producers of fast turn-

around television to shepherd their own stories from field through to

post-production.

While each new hybrid series will require its own particular sets of

skills, the exploration of the genesis of MPU will demonstrate the

building blocks required to successfully produce this type of factual

series. This study is also intended as a ‘road map’ for producers

who wish to develop similar series.

iv

Acknowledgments:

I’d like to thank Helen Yeates who played a pivotal role in helping

shape this thesis. Her torch-like notes provided a clear focus that

helped wade the dark shoreline between turbulent academic waters

and the more manageable and familiar practical world, which I

understand.

I’d like to thank Associate Professor Geoffrey Portmann for his

support throughout my research and writing process. As a television

practitioner himself, Geoff was a welcome sounding board

throughout this cathartic process.

Interviews and conversations conducted for this thesis represent a

cross section of people in a variety of production roles involved with

the development and production of the series. Their support and

knowledge was crucial to the thesis and I thank them for their time. I

would like to thank the following people for allowing me to use their

contributions: Justine Ford, Meni Caroutas, Marcos Moro, John

Gregory, Peter Abbott, Chris O’Mara, John McAvoy, Art Phillips, Jeff

Lowrey, Inspector Amanda Calder, Snr Sgt Amanda Gayle and Snr

Sgt Garry Bailey.

In particular I’d like to thank Freehand TV for giving me the

opportunity to make MPU and the support to build it into the type of

program it was.

v

Statement of Original Authorship:

“The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted

to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher

education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the

thesis contains no material previously published or written by

another person except where due reference is made.”

Name: Ivo Burum

Signature:

Date: 19 January 2009

vi

Contents:

Front Page i

Abstract ii

Acknowledgement iv

Statement of Authorship v

Contents vi

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Methodology 8

Chapter 2: Historical Review of Literature 18

2.1 Interpreting the real – from Documentary to reality 19

2.2 Defining Genre, Style and story 33

2.3 Television: The new style guru 38

2.4 Television Business: Defining truth and documentary 41

2.5 The birth of the modern format 46

2.6 Reality in the lounge room 51

Chapter 3: Missing Persons Unit Production 60

3.1 The Concept: Development and early change 62

3.2 Operational Orders: The first police grid of control 73

3.3 Giving birth to a format: A working Model beyond NSWPOL 79

3.4 Production style and story overview 92

3.5 Skills Overview: Building a team that works 97

3.6 Story type and filming overview 107

3.7 Filming specifics 111

Chapter 4: Missing Persons Unit Post Production 117

4.1 Offline Edit 120

4.2 Compile Edit 124

vii

4.3 Narration 128

4.4 Music 135

Chapter 5. Practical Evidence 141

Chapter 6: Summary and recommendations 164

Bibliography 174

Interviews 179

Television Programs 180

Websites 180

1

Chapter 1: Introduction

There is no denying that television production in the digital age has

changed and new technologies have delivered a paradigm shift in

the way we think about program development, production and

delivery platforms. For people in the industry, the choice of content,

style and how we finance projects is redefined in new hybrid forms

almost every time someone picks up a camera. Missing Persons

Unit, the highest premiering and continual rating documentary series

in Australia television history1

MPU is indirectly the result of new digital technology. From as far

back as the early 90’s, access to low cost digital technology and the

experimentation that followed, resulted in vibrant millennium

schedules featuring new hybrid program forms. This ‘new wave’ of

program development, essentially and sometimes a rush of raw,

untrained enthusiasm driven by an access to technology, often

marginalised the craft of storytelling in favour of experimentation.

McKee in his seminal book Story tells us that, ‘the art of story is in

decay, and as Aristotle observed twenty three hundred years ago,

, is an example of one of these new

hybrid forms. This thesis, exploring the birth and subsequent

development of the MPU format, is a case study based on an

original work (production) by the author over a two and a half year

production cycle.

1 Film Finance Corp statistics (2006) MPU was part funded by FFC

2

when storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence’. 2

Many practitioners agree with McKee who believes that ‘today’s

would-be writers rush to the typewriter without first learning the

craft’.

3 Like McKee, I see the demise of storytelling as a decadent

bludgeoning of the craft, not only as far as writing goes but also with

respect to producing and directing. I see an ill-considered tendency

in some of today’s producers and directors who pick up small DV

(digital) cameras and begin shooting immediately. Some senior

television executives view this shift as a redefining moment in a new

era of television production, which is delivering a diversification of

content and style resulting in a proliferation of programs like Big

Brother, Biggest Loser, Survivor, The Bachelor, Australian Princess.

Such largely voyeuristic reality shows, watched by people possibly

seeking enjoyment and entertainment, play on the audience’s

longing for a reaffirmation of their own status in life. 4

MPU is born of this growing public appetite for a certain kind of

voyeurism, which encompasses the notion of looking at a mirror on

personal possibilities. A modern day hybrid ‘child’, conceived from

the coupling of reality and observational styles, MPU is the more

manageable format-driven, fast turn-around offspring, which I call

‘obserality’. MPU plays out in an environment where unscripted

2 McKee, Robert (1999:13) 3 Ibid (1999:15) 4 Steven Reiss, James Wiltz, (2004)

3

actions are observed as police and families react to real inputs.

Even though there is no prize for the winner and the ‘reality’ is not a

Big Brother construct, MPU is a form of observational reality, with a

degree of the cinematic truth of observational documentary,

packaged around the evolving structure of an existing and

developing reality. McKee adds that ‘story isn’t a flight from reality

but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort

to make sense out of anarchy of existence’. 5

MPU blends an array of advanced storytelling techniques to cover

actuality and edit content in a dramatic fashion. The style has

become an acknowledged winner both with viewers, who love the

‘hanging drama’ (the unresolved cliffhanger stories), and with

network executives who love the viewers. John McAvoy, Head of

Factual Television at Nine believes that ‘one of the main advantages

of having a returning show for the schedule is that you know where it

sits and you know that it’s popular’.

Essentially, this was

the philosophy driving the development of MPU: a complex hybrid

form of storytelling involving real events that explore tragedy in

everyday life, using story and strong narrative to construct gritty

actuality into a format.

6

5 McKee, Robert, (1999:12)

Like all the popular reality

programs, the format of MPU enabled Nine to pre-sell time against

proven results designed to hold audience share during and after a

break. This study explores how that format was developed and how

6 McAvoy, John (2008) Interview

4

it worked.

Case studies such as this are often seen as prime examples of

qualitative research, a mode of investigation that adopts an

interpretive approach to data (information): studies ‘things’ within

their context and considers the subjective meanings that people

bring to their situation. 7

My research is work-based, and while it is not immediately about

supposed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ practice, the success of a show is so often

about eliminating what could be termed bad, ineffectual practice.

Moreover, because television development and production is inexact

and subjective at best, this thesis does not identify a real

organisational problem or issue. However, it does address a

management or team building aspect integral to work-based

research, which is as critical as any creative consideration in

television. Like work-based research, the aim of this thesis is to

arrive at useable observations and recommendations, which are at

least capable of being implemented

I contend that the key aspect of any

methodology is its relevance to the investigation. Therefore I

decided on the mixed method research approach.

8

7 Clough, Peter & Nutbrown, Cathy (2006:17).

in the further development of

the format and/or style.

8 Hart, Chris (2006:128)

5

This thesis is also part of the action research ‘family’, a form of

enquiry that enables practitioners to investigate and evaluate their

work: what am I doing…what do I need to improve and how do I

improve it? 9 Much of the work of the production team (myself

included) follows an action research model at some point in the

production cycle. It is, technically, research done on the job by

practitioners (people from the inside) and can be part of the ongoing

creative and managerial project assessment, that provides an

update on and new methods for moving forward. ‘Is my/our work

going as we wish? How do we improve it where necessary?’ 10

As the executive producer, I work on all elements from the outside;

overseeing all work. What are those people doing? How can their

practice be described, explained or improved? The impetus to

resolve these questions puts me back on the inside with the creative

team, where I determine what the collective is doing and how best

we can describe these actions.

In the participatory and collaborative environment of a production

team, where on-the-job training is common practice, action-based

research is an essential background element continuing at various

levels, without ever being defined or articulated fully. Action

research is the crucial trial and error ‘basket’ of television

9 McNiff, Jean & Whitehead, Jack (2006:7) 10 (ibid) (2006:8)

6

development and production.

While much of my research stems from on-the-job learned

experience, I have also critically referenced here, relevant

comparative thinking in the field. My review of literature is not

immediately designed to identify previous strategies, because, as

with any new form of television, MPU requires its own distinctive set

of strategies. This is not to say that the MPU style is unique today,

as I began interlacing stories in the 90’s in Australian observational

programs like Home Truths (ABC 1994) 11 and again with Nurses

(ABC 1999).12

The MPU production process is discussed in this study around a

structure that tracks the process from development to delivery, and

includes interviews with key players: CEO Freehand; Director

Production Freehand, Head Factual Nine Network; New South

Wales Police (NSWPOL), key production and post- production

personnel.

Hence my review of literature sets an historical

context, explaining how, over the last half-century, developments in

technology resulted in a global proliferation of hybrid styles,

influenced my work and led to the creation of MPU.

This thesis will demonstrate how traditional storytelling skills marry

different program genres and directing styles within formats, to

11 Home Truths (1994) Television Series; Australian Broadcast Corporation 12 Nurses (1999) Television Series; Australian Broadcast Corporation

7

create strong narrative that travels across traditionally restrictive

genre-defined slates. Driven by the production milestones of MPU,

the study is framed by the exploration of the following interlinked

research questions:

• How and why are certain content ideas developed into

program formats?

• What are the program-making skills needed to meet

production imperatives?

• Is content compromised during development, collection

and transformation across grids of control?

• What is the impact of a third party narrative and music

and does it transform record into representation?

• What is a developmental way forward for future

program makers?

Alfred North Whitehead sums up the key issue confronting

producers with his provocative statement: ‘It is the business of the

future to be dangerous’. 13

13 Angel, Jerome (2001:160)

As the business of television itself

appears to be confronting even more ‘choppy waters’, my aim is that

this study will provide a user-friendly framework for designing

production methodologies, as well as a theoretical underpinning for

formulating an aesthetic and a personal view about this style of

production, especially when, to extend the metaphor, the tides

become creatively dangerous.

8

1.1 Methodology

More specifically, this thesis explores the craft of storytelling in

factual television and in particular its application in a fast turn-

around, hybrid observational-type program, such as MPU. Labeled

as a form of reality at pre-production, MPU’s narrative story structure

saw its being reviewed under the traditional factual observational

documentary banner. This is the element I consider is mostly

missing in modern hybrid formats and, arguably, is the key to solving

the dramatic structure puzzle.

I have chosen my research topic linked with my creative practice,

because I rarely have the opportunity to reflect on ‘how and why I do

what I do’ in the television business. While I have taught many

young directors and producers how to find and construct story in

different styles of production, this thesis gives me the opportunity to

articulate and question the ‘practical’.

As the executive producer of MPU and other projects, I have often

wondered whether, as a participator, I was too personally involved to

investigate objectively, that which is essentially my work. However,

McNiff and Whitehead in All you want to know about Action

Research, make the salient point that ‘you are not a spectator

democrat…but an activist democrat who is prepared to make

statements about what your work is about and how it can best serve

9

the interests of others.’ 14

An increasing shift toward arts-based research has raised complex

questions, such as how to evaluate its quality and even whether

distinctions exist between ‘what is art’ and ‘what is research’. As the

physical sciences begin to recognise that the natural world works

not so much through cause and effect, as through relationships and

connections

This comment is made in an educational

context, and while there is little that is ‘democratic’ in the upward

referral system of fast turn-around television, McNiff and

Whitehead’s statement applies equally to the role of the TV

executive producer, who is always creative and educational. As an

active democrat in my professional practice, I present this study as a

critical analysis and clarification of how the construct of MPU was

designed to serve many different masters, this amounting to an

ironic juggling act of practice and control.

15

In a television environment, evaluation occurs daily; and it does, as

expected, bring about a quick implementation of the changes that

this kind of evaluation might suggest. Evaluation in the television

context, as in other creative disciplines, is rarely neutral: ‘different

people prioritise different values…Evaluation processes are always

, which is also the essence of the workings of any

television series, we are better able to understand and evaluate arts-

based research.

14 McNiff, Jean, Whitehead, Jack (2006:65) 15 (ibid 2006: 69)

10

politically constituted and involve the exercise of power’. 16

As this thesis is based on original research - a case study, work

practice, interviews and unstructured observation - a methodology

had to be devised that would not deliver a statistical statement, but

rather a clearly articulated ‘diagram’ of the controls and skills

required to find a balance between what the Network initially

commissioned, what the production company believe they can

deliver, and what police will allow the team to film. In an attempt to

achieve this, and in keeping with usual qualitative research practice,

as mentioned earlier, I have chosen a multi-method approach, with

an aim to discover a more complete, yet more subtle understanding,

Network

priorities shift according to internal politics and audience research.

The evaluation of quality and effectiveness by network management

is ultimately a measure of daily ratings. The production company

has its own budgetary and delivery imperatives, and company

managers make evaluations and decisions accordingly. The

executive producer has his/ her own vested interests to meet

deadlines and agreed creative standards. Each of these key creative

areas of the production cycle may evaluate the same project

completely differently. Thus, in any arts-based research project,

evaluation will largely be subjective and specifically relevant to the

particular player in the cycle.

16 (ibid 2006:69)

11

enabling more varied and appropriate methods in specific situations.

For the past thirty years, my work has been, in effect, a continual

research process into how to improve my practice. Therefore, in

developing my approach when commencing this particular study, I

spent the production period of Series One, Two and Three (please

refer to attached DVDs) documenting production milestones, and

these findings form the major part of this exegesis. To contexualise

my development as a television program maker during this period, I

have placed my work in an historical context, to show how a shift in

technology led both to hybrid programs and to my distinctly

personal/professional style of production. This historical context

section is dealt with by reviewing literature on factual production,

specifically the transference of factual programming from cinema to

television, and the move from documentary to the hybrid forms we

now call reality.

I have chosen to include in the study a number of interviews with

key players on MPU. Atkinson and Silverman believe we live in an

interview society 17 and because the interview has become ‘as much

a product of social dynamic as it is a product of accurate accounts

and replies (it) has become a routine, almost unnoticed, part of

everyday life’. 18

17 Atkinson, P., & Silverman, D (1997)

Interviewing in a structured or unstructured way, for

18 Fontana, Andrea & Frey James, (2000:647}

12

varied purposes, in order to describe, to interrogate, to assist, to

test, to evaluate, is a part of every day life in the 21st century.

However it is still surprising how difficult it can be to encourage an

interviewee to speak candidly, or to speak at all. To achieve this

requires deft skill, familiarity with subject and an array of interview

styles appropriate to the situation.

Hence I have chosen to vary my interview style to reflect my

understanding of the person being interviewed. Like Schwandt, I see

the interview ‘more as a discourse between two or more speakers or

as a linguistic event in which the meanings of questions and

responses are contextually grounded and jointly constructed by

interviewer and respondent’. 19

Researchers are not invisible, neutral entities, rather, they are

part of the interactions they seek to study and influence those

interactions…There is a growing realisation that interviewers

are not the mythical, neutral tools envisioned by survey

research. Interviewers are increasingly seen as interactive

participants in interactions with respondents, and interviews

are seen as negotiated accomplishments of both interviewers

and respondents that are shaped by the contexts and

situations in which they take place.

Interviews are gathered in a context

and therefore cannot be deemed to be totally objective with ‘no

strings attached’:

20

19 Schwandt, T.A. (1997) 20 Fontana, Andrea & Frey James, (2000:663)

13

This statement by Fontana and Frey implies that certain types of

interviews are better suited to particular kinds of situations. This

reality shapes the interview choices I have made in both my

professional work and in this thesis.

Ethical clearance was gained from the University, and in accordance

with standard ethical protocols, I requested that all interviewees sign

an informed consent document to confirm that they completely

understood the parameters of the project, and the terms and

conditions of participation. They also could withdraw their consent

at any time. Such practice follows a critical research framework 'of

informing research subjects of their rights, and obtaining their

consent to research'. 21

In the review of literature, I reference a number of people who were

instrumental in the development of MPU: John Gregory the CEO of

FTV, Chris O’Mara the former Programmer at ATN 7, and Peter

Abbott the former Executive Producer of Big Brother. These three

executives are also the partners in Freehand TV, henceforth known

as FTV, and because they have been my colleagues on MPU for the

past three years, my interviews with them were less formal.

Questions were not always closed; instead they revolved around

interpretations of specific, shared experiences during the production

period. In this informal discursive style, a space opened and the

21 Bertrand, Ina and Hughes, Peter (2005:17)

14

interviews moved from expected questions to a more spontaneous

and honest discussion. As Schostak points out, each interview can

be seen as a project having as its aim the exploration of the project.

At the same time, the discussion strategy has the potential to create

‘a sense of interchange where ideas by co-equals (can) be tested’.22

The benefit of discussion-based interviews with colleagues who

have experienced the same project is that facts or assumptions are

‘checkable’ against each other’s experiences.

During this ongoing process, John Gregory spoke about the early

development of MPU, Chris O’Mara spoke on formats and their

benefit to Networks and Peter Abbott spoke on reality TV and the

skill sets required in delivering new hybrid formats. Due to time

restrictions, some interviews had to include more structured

questions, together with participant observations about the skill sets

required to make the program. Mixing traditional on-camera

interview styles - participant observation and more structured

questions - often go hand in hand, one supplementing the other 23

to

deliver the required result.

The constant in all the interviews is the use of common television

language terms and an operational police language. This was

important to provide the study and the participants with a

22 Schostak, John (2006:50) 23 Fontana, Andrea & Frey James, (2000:651} .

15

sharedness of meaning, 24

and this was only possible after police

and production staff became familiar with each other’s terminology.

However not even a common language was sufficient in some

instances. Therefore, I used a group interview style when

interviewing NSWPOL Senior Constables Amanda Gale and Garry

Bailey, primarily to assist them to recall certain events that were

their shared experiences. 25 Even after nearly three years of working

with me, they felt more comfortable discussing the program as a

team ( the way they work). Hence the interview took the form of a

brainstorming session wrapped around a number of formal

questions 26

about the difficulty of moving from being a police

person, to becoming a TV police person, and their subsequent

perceptions of the effectiveness of MPU in assisting police in their

investigations.

Furthermore, two senior MPU producers were interviewed about

their experiences in the field and edit suite. In particular, I was

interested in their views on the skill sets required and the political

hurdles they encountered - with both families and police – to deliver

MPU stories to a quicker than usual turn-around.

24 (ibid 2000:660) 25 (ibid 2000:652) 26 (ibid 2000:651)

16

As with all similar series, MPU is made to a price, the Network

wanting to extract ‘more for less’ without jeopardising quality, a

factor which is always the ongoing commercial production

conundrum. John McAvoy, Head of Factual at Nine, discussed the

genesis of MPU, the benefit to the network of returning formats and

the impact of the series on their schedule and ratings. John was also

asked to comment on the skill sets required to produce MPU.

Parameters imposed by police – privacy, commercial in confidence

considerations, and internal protocols - impacted on my interview

with Inspector Amanda Calder the Manager of NSWP Public Affairs,

regarding the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPS). The SOPS

became the NSWPOL ‘bible’ for the production of MPU. This police

rulebook contained very complicated operational guidelines and

formed a set of review protocols that had to be addressed before

any stories went to air. The SOPS gave police a degree of

operational security and became the ‘safety net’ I used to entice

other state commands to eventually become involved in the show.

Most importantly, the interviews for this study are used throughout to

demonstrate and interlace with the observations I have documented

over the course of production and in this research.

As this thesis is a microcosmic case study of the production process

of MPU, the major focus is on the practical work, the development

and production. A detailed description of the methods of production

17

and an investigation into how and why we made the decisions we

did, are examined in Chapter Three.

Two programs are supplied as the creative component in this thesis,

as evidence of the style and the package. Even though Episode One

of Series One was produced just as I was commencing the

research, it is included as a preliminary episode that clearly

documents the genesis of the production style leading to the change

in format length. Episode One of Series Two, produced during the

research phase, is provided for evaluation and further documents

the development of MPU from a half-hour format to a one-hour

format.

As proposed, it is hoped that the intended outcomes of the

exegetical component form the basis of a useful tool for producers,

directors and writers planning to develop similar programs.

18

Chapter 2: Historical Review of Literature

Through tens of thousands of years of tales told at fireside,

four millennia of the written word, twenty five hundred years

of theatre, a century of film, and eight decades of

broadcasting, countless generations of storytellers have spun

story into an astonishing diversity of patterns. To make sense

of this outpouring, various systems have been devised to sort

stories into shared elements, classifying them by genre. No

two systems, however, have ever agreed on which story

elements to use in the sorting, and, therefore, no two agree

on the number and kind of genres.

Robert McKee, Story

Before exploring the specifics of Missing Persons Unit, I consider it

important to locate my background and production style in an

historical, television industry context. Much has been written on

documentary production in its various forms and also about reality

television. Nonetheless, apart from the in-depth case study research

available on Big Brother, which appears extensive, I have found little

that is specifically relevant to my particular style of production: that

is, the interlacing of real-time actuality using cross-genre skills, into

a soap-like dramatic structure. This is probably because all hybrid

formats such as MPU are unique and require specific developmental

and production approaches.

This section of my research will also look at how the changes in

technology over the past three decades have led to new forms of

television that are in many cases – for example, Big Brother,

19

Nurses, Home Truths – heavily reliant on technology. Peter Abbott,

the former Executive Producer of Big Brother, is convinced that Big

Brother would not have been possible without the advent of the

small invisible cameras that spy on the Big Brother housemates.27

I

contend in this study that MPU would not have been commissioned,

if new technologies had not brought about a reduction in production

costs, and more specifically, a streamlining of post-production, to a

level where MPU became commercially viable.

2.1: Interpreting the Real: From documentary to reality

My history as a program maker, at least in part, mirrors the stylistic

and technological development of factual television over the past

thirty years. I have attempted to adapt my production methods to

utilise new digital technologies, at the same time, varying my style

and increasing my output without compromising narrative. The latter

I hold sacrosanct in every form of television.

Professor Stuart Cunningham observes the great influence

television has on our society:

Television provides a prime platform for public life and has

largely displaced the newspaper as the prime and most

trusted source of news for the majority of the population.

Another indicator is the extent to which television has

influenced political and other public processes in our

society…Although this kind of role carries with it significant 27 Abbott, Peter (2007) Interview

20

problems, it remains the case that television (albeit supported

by radio and the press) is the ‘glue’ that holds together much

of our sense of ourselves as a society; it is the main platform

on which whatever passes as public debate and collective

sense-making in today’s society takes place. 28

Along with this degree of influence there is also a possibility of a

highly negative impact, involving:

The degree to which television contributes to declining levels

of social cohesion, increasing perceptions of the so-called

‘mean world syndrome’ and loss of faith on public

institutions.29

Such a view underlines my reasons for developing ‘cross genre’

series such as Home Truths (ABC 1994), Nurses (ABC 1999) and

Missing Persons Unit (Nine 2005): to promote an awareness of

family (Home Truths); to foster a greater understanding of

marginalised institutions (Nurses), and to debunk the loss of faith in

public institutions (MPU).

For much of my career as an independent producer and with the

Networks, I have waged what could be termed as a slow ‘war’ on

restrictive, genre-defined production and its dangerous habit of

suffocating development. At the ABC, where I began to develop the

MPU style of production, and where access to internal production

dollars was indirectly tied to an ability to penetrate its centralised

28 Cunningham, Stuart (2000:29) 29 Ibid (2000:30)

21

genre-based system, I found a contradiction between what we did

and what we purported to do. The 1993 Annual Report of the Board

of Directors stated that ‘the Charter requires the ABC to offer a

range of programs that make a contribution to Australian culture and

society. We are obliged to make provision for all Australians and, at

the same time, not compromise quality…’30

This rings forth as a

telling mandate.

Professor Elizabeth Jacka notes the series of ‘principles’ of Public

Service broadcasting (PSB) from the findings of the Broadcasting

Review Unit in London, which were picked up in the Australian

government review of the ABC and the Special Broadcasting

Service (SBS) in 1988 (DOTAC 1988). A number of these principles,

applicable here, involve the following: universality of availability;

universality of appeal; provision for minorities; that broadcasting be

structured to encourage competition in programming standards, not

for audiences; and freedom for the program maker. 31

These principles are highly significant, in particular universality of

availability, meaning that ‘PSB ought to be available to all members

of society and to all “citizens”’; or universality of appeal, meaning

that ‘the PSB should not confine itself to only a few genres or

categories of programs; rather it should embrace as wide spectrum

of the possibilities as the commercial sector’. Provision for minorities

30 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 – Sect 6, 1, (a) ( i) 31 Jacka Elizabeth (2000: 53)

22

is another key aspect envisaging ‘that at the same time it will provide

for minority audiences in a way that commercial broadcasters –

those obliged by commercial imperatives to maximize audiences in

every possible timeslot - can not’; and, last but not least, freedom of

the program maker, which lay in the PSB program maker whose

‘ethical and aesthetic ideals should represent the highest values of

the society’. 32

However, the reality at the ABC in the early 90’s was quite different

from what is contained in this idealistic rhetoric. If the review of the

ABC (DOTAC 1988) provided the mandate and if department heads

were making a provision for all Australians, it seemed to me that

they were not doing the same for all producers, especially those who

were not in their immediate purview, working away from the Sydney

production base.

Of course, many of the production decisions that were made were

largely a product of the ABC’s Total Project Costing (TPC) (1987)

that was first mooted in 1974, and largely designed to determine

once and for all the real cost of ABC programming. The ABC

needed this information in order to report to Canberra at Senate

Estimates on their overall spend. It was also critical to know actual

costs and rates of charge, if the PSB’s like the ABC were to sell their

skills and resources to outside productions to increase revenue. This

32 Ibid (2000:53-54)

23

became particularly relevant during the late 80’s and 90’s when, ‘in

countries like Germany, France, Australia, Canada and New

Zealand, PSB has been in apparent decline, suffering from shrinking

audiences and a rapidly diminishing revenue base’. 33

At the ABC, the TPC system determined that projects would only be

commissioned, if costs could be allocated to one of the finite genre

funding ‘buckets’. In areas like comedy and drama, where long lead

times and finite costs were the norm, it was business as usual,

resulting in seminal shows like Geoff Portmann’s Mother and Son

(1984-94),34 and drama’s Phoenix (1992) and Janus (1994). 35

However in the factual department, genre heads became a little

nervous, and the new more rigid development models meant that

almost all development was referred back to Sydney, to be

referenced against their national slate and ‘holistic’ budget.

Partly because of the lack of revenue at this time, the ABC had

blanket agreements in place to purchase vast amounts of content

from international broadcasters ‘that enjoyed large scale in country

production and export dominance’. 36

33 Ibid (2000:52)

This, as O’Regan observes,

led to a view that Australian television services were ‘not at the

center of definitions of television, in that these nations import

34 Mother and Son (1984-94) Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Comedy Series 35 Phoenix & Janus (1992-94) Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Drama Series’ 36 Cunningham, Stuart (2000:22)

24

program concepts and programs’ and this led to local product being

referenced ‘often negatively – to imports’. 37

In a sense, Australian

networks were foregoing an Australian identity in favor of Anglo and

US style and content. While some peers saw this and the ABC’s

‘one stop shop’ Documentary and Features department (1994) that

was established in this climate, as a disadvantage, I would argue

that it was an opportunity to create an identity.

This new ‘super’ factual department, with the overall responsibility

for all factual genres, had, arguably, both a positive and negative

impact on development of local content. The positive aspect was

that there was one place where all factual producers could pitch,

with one cohesive factual slate. The negative side was that if ‘factual

heads’ were not in favour of the idea, internal ABC producers had

nowhere else to pitch their creative ideas.

In the first instance, I determined the only way forward in this

environment was to make myself more versatile and more

employable. To this end, and by the time I left the ABC in 2005, my

experience included a range of factual and non-factual program

forms: documentary, current affairs, drama, docu-drama and

magazine production. While I did not recognise it then, subsequently

I would use the diverse skill sets gained from these different styles

of production to build my own generically hybrid productions.

37 O’Regan T (1993:11) Australian Television Culture

25

Further, in my capacity as an executive producer at the ABC, I found

that producer/directors with multiple, varied skill sets, fared much

better on specialist factual productions, gaining more work than their

counterparts with a single craft skill (for instance, either producing,

or directing or writing).

Moreover, during this time, from the late Eighties onwards, there

was a technological revolution on its way that was to change the

production canvas, both at the ABC and at every other network and

independent production house: ‘PSB’s decline began in the late

80’s and was caused by the twin forces of technological change,

providing for a vast multiplication of TV channels, and the wave of

deregulation which swept the Western world’. 38

Deregulation was a political aspect that was beyond the control of

producers such as myself. However the technological imperatives of

the digital age provided a milieu within which astute producers could

work. The proliferation of channels and the cheaper technology of

the digital age resulted in a paradigm shift in the way producers

could think about development and production, predominantly

because the industry became starved for content. Programs became

referred to as ‘content’, and cheaper, more streamlined technology

led to experimentation in new forms of storytelling that delivered

different ‘content’. Smaller, cheaper cameras could now deliver

38 Jacka Elizabeth (2000: 52)

26

broadcast-quality pictures; affordable desktop digital edit suites with

onboard DVE’s (image manipulation technology) and inbuilt audio

mixing systems, completed the production chain. Producers could

now have turnkey production and post production equipment on

their desks. This greater accessibility to the tools of production

resulted in more adventurous forms of programs. Reduced cost of

production meant ‘sizzle reels’, that is, short video promotional tapes

that clearly demonstrated the strength of an idea, could now be

made ‘on the cheap’ and used more convincingly to sell innovative

concepts to genre department heads. As more networks came on

line and more program slots became available, requiring even more

content, Heads of genre departments began engaging with almost

any new concept, even those that technically sat outside their

scope.

Looking more broadly and contextually at this issue, it can be noted

here that even experienced documentary makers such as D A

Pennebaker recognised the role this new revolution would play in

changing production styles:

For people who are looking to get closer or maybe even go

beyond the edge of what they’ve always seen as a kind of a

wall as far a they could go, I think digital gives you a leg

up...and it’s not just the size (or the cost)…it’s the difference

between the pistol and the rifle.39

39 Pennebaker, D A (2002:51)

27

After shooting with a digital DV camera, Pennebaker, arguably the

‘father’ of un-tethered, location-based factual films and a pioneer of

the documentary industry, said: ‘I would be surprised if I did any

(shooting on) film for a while or ever again’.40 Moreover, his

documentary partner Chris Hegedus summed up the importance of

the digital revolution, when she observed that DV transferred film

making into the hands of the masses. 41

At the extreme end of experimentation, this new wave of storytelling

redefined documentary: for example, the emergence in 2000 of

online sites like The Nanking Atrocities, 42 which documented the

story of the Japanese massacre of Chinese in 1937. This site, that is

predominantly textual with a few pictures, adds fuel to the debate

about what is ‘documentary’. According to Nichols, ‘in documentary

film, four modes of representation stand out as the dominant

organisational patterns around which texts are structured:

expository, observational, interactive, and reflexive’. 43 The Nanking

Atrocities, resembling an online essay, contains conventions similar

to those present in an expository documentary: ‘(expository) is the

mode closest to the classic expository essay or report and it has

continued to be the primary means of relaying information and

persuasively making a case since at least the 1920’s’. 44

40 Ibid (2002: 51) 41 Hegedus, Chris (2002:50) 42 The Nanking Atrocities, (2000) Online site http://www.nankingatrocities.net 43 Nichols, Bill (1991:32) 44 Ibid (1991:34)

28

The Nanking Atrocities, while similar to a book, contains aspects of

an expository documentary. Furthermore, as with many

documentaries, the author of The Nanking Atrocities uses the ‘voice

of god’ authority, not in the conventional spoken form, but in a

written form to establish both his and the site’s authority. However,

unlike traditional documentaries, the online documentary is non

linear, enabling the viewer or reader to jump from one area to the

next to create his or her own story flow, thereby altering the author’s

meticulously crafted story to suit particular information or creative

needs.

Of course, with the ‘upside’ of experimentation, there can often be a

‘downside’. The flexibility digital technology provides can also have

an apparently negative impact on the craft of storytelling:

We love the new technology and the accessibility to

everybody, that democratization of the process. But at the

same time, we see, particularly with regard to the Internet and

video, the way in which the technological tail is now beginning

to wag the dog. I think we’ve lost touch with story, with

narrative…our ability to follow the story.45

The inbuilt danger, which eminent filmmaker Ken Burns has

articulated here, is what I am witnessing more and more in the

digital and DV age: a phenomenon I have termed the technological

drowning of craft, brought about by new, cheaper digital technology

enabling almost anyone to pick up a camera and make a film. This

45 Burns, Ken (2002:89)

29

trend may have an experimental benefit, as McKee believes: ‘While

the ever-expanding reach of the media now gives us the opportunity

to send stories beyond borders and languages to hundreds of

millions, the overall quality of storytelling is eroding’.46

It doesn’t seem to me that it’s my responsibility to figure out

names for these things (styles), because they (names) don’t

help me much in my work. I want to be able to do a scripted

film or a fiction film if somebody brings me something that

intrigues me. I don’t want to feel that it’s not my business

somehow.

I would argue

that McKee’s comment is very insightful. In my experience as a

participant observer in the production field, if I mention ‘story’ to

many of today’s producers, I often receive a blank response,

followed by a kind of off-putting shrug that could be summed up

thus: ‘What? You’re living in the dark ages’.

On the other hand, however, the new technology has given program

makers such as myself, who did not want to be labeled ‘genre

specific’, a liberating breakthrough. We could do more for less, and

much more quickly. If needed, we could now shoot and edit a ‘sizzle

reel’ to sell a concept, which may have been impossible to sell

verbally, because the idea was outside prescribed genre definitions,

and therefore potentially un-fundable. Pennebaker elaborates on a

further insight here:

47

46 McKee, Robert (1999:13) 47 (ibid 2002.: 54)

30

This telling statement sums up how I also thought in the early

Nineties at the ABC, and slowly my department heads also began to

think in this manner: ‘No one will buy without seeing a sizzle these

days’. 48

Interviewee Chris O’Mara refers here to the growing

practice of presenting sizzle reels as part of the selling pitch. When

a producer puts a sizzle reel into a programmer’s video player and

presses ‘play’, the genre is not as important as whether or not the

‘sizzle’ has ‘heat’, and if it does, it might hopefully have traction, and

therefore be approved for further development. Whether the form is

magazine or documentary seems almost irrelevant. Individual

factual department heads do not want to be the one who rejects the

next ‘big project’, simply because it may not be their particular

genre; whether they would admit this openly, is another issue

altogether.

During that period of change, the question for me as a producer

became, what stories to tell? The 1993 ABC Annual Report provided

another bullet for the adventurous producer, when it determined that

‘the ABC’s role in developing Australia’s national identity, fostering

cultural diversity and encouraging cultural expression will be more

important than at any time in the history of broadcasting…’ 49

48 O’Mara, Chris (2007) Freehand Television, Head Development - Interview

Armed

with this mandate, I decided I would attempt to increase cultural

expression by offering ABC viewers an opportunity to participate in a

49 ABC Annual Report Statement by Board of Directors 1993-94

31

semi-controlled production process.

In the first instance, my plan involved giving DV cameras to ordinary

Australians to use in a series called Home Truths.50 Seen by critics,

participants and program makers alike, as one of Australia’s first

forays into reality television, Home Truths was also an opportunity

for a more immediate, and far more collective form of factual

storytelling. Jeff Lowrey, a participant in Home Truths, says, ‘It gave

a working class bloke like me without any experience in TV an

opportunity to tell my own story from a very different cultural

perspective, my own’. 51

Stylistically, this social observational-

documentary series (obs-doc), filmed by the participants themselves

about the lives of twenty different Australian families, was a hybrid

form of television, relying on a combination of skill sets not

immediately found in traditional documentary forms. Home Truths

was observational in the way the material was captured, yet not

totally so. The program utilised current affairs skills and devices to

link thoughts into coherent story and strong sequences; however,

this was not current affairs.

Similarly, the series that is presented here as my creative practice,

Missing Persons Unit is a recent evolution of this type of multi-skilled

set, hybrid form, using an amalgam of skills to weave strong story

structure around unscripted actuality. Colleagues at other networks

50 Home Truths ABC TV (1994) 51 Lowrey, Jeff (1994) Home Truths Participant - Interview

32

have said that the series revolutionised the way Australian networks

now make police factual television. The Seven Network’s The Force

Series (2006) also captures ‘real time’ unsolved actuality, and has

begun lacing it in the MPU unreconstructed, soap style. Forensic

Investigators (2007), which reconstructed and dramatised solved

cases, was taken off air, even though there exist thousands of

interesting solved cases that could have made great television. I

consider that this happened because the audience would not invest

their viewing time into this kind of series any more, other than for the

drama. The Forensic Investigator cases were already solved so they

might as well be watching Without a Trace or a similar police drama,

with higher production values. When MPU came along, audiences

finally had a choice and they chose the program laced with actuality,

which, at the same time, was seeking their help to solve dramatically

charged cases.

It should be noted here, however, that the nature of commercial

audience ratings is a strongly contested area in academic debates,

as ratings can be viewed as an inherently limited measure of the

‘success’ of any television series, even with new, more refined

measuring technologies being introduced in the past decade.52

52 Balnaves, Mark & O'Regan, Tom (2002).

Ang

argues also that media corporations implicitly define 'watching

television' as a 'simple, one-dimensional and purely objective and

isolatable act'. She points critically to the issues surrounding the

33

ratings systems used, which, in her view, do not give an indication

of the richness and diversity of audience responses, nor do they

communicate the ‘ “lived reality” behind the ratings’.53 While such

qualitative audience research is outside the scope of this exegesis, it

is significant to acknowledge that, from this critical perspective,

ratings can be viewed as a method of packaging and delivering

audiences to advertisers, and, as Balnaves and O’Regan point out,

‘ratings systems only know the audience in certain capacities’. 54

On the other hand, given that MPU is being sold globally, and that at

the time of writing, discussions are underway to produce a replica

series in the USA, the home of multiple fictional and factual police

shows, it is worth finding out in some detail, the reasons for MPU’s

ratings success, at least from an industry insider’s point of view.

Series One averages reached 1.59 million viewers; Series Two and

Three, screening in the strongly contested Thursday night 8:30pm

time slot, became the number one program across all networks.

These strong results were a major impetus driving this research.

2.2 Defining genre, style and story

Over nearly three decades of attempting to document ‘the real’, I

have worked in many different forms of story delivery: documentary,

current affairs, magazine, docu-drama and ‘reality’. In the early

53 Ang, Ien (1996:56, 57) 54 Balnaves and O’Regan (2002:61)

34

days, like many young filmmakers, I believed that each of these

genres or what I call forms of story delivery, was distinctly different.

Four issues soon became apparent: the major difference between

the forms is the ‘skill set’ used to tell the story; the skill set gives the

finished piece a specific resonance or tone; the generic labels

attached to these forms are, in certain cases, designed to facilitate

scheduling, departmental and/or budgetary imperatives; and finally,

all genres are vessels for story delivery.

While some filmmakers persist with labels designed to keep the

genre club discrete, others, such as verité documentary-maker

Bruce Sinofsky, also see their work as a form or style rather than a

genre of film making: ‘Every film is an exploration. I don’t even use

the “documentary” moniker. I’ve always said non fiction and I’ve

always said that all film making is storytelling’.55 Popular filmmaker

Nick Broomfield agrees: ‘It’s all about storytelling – in the way you

order it in connections that you make and your ability to bring people

out’. 56

55 Sinofsky, Bruce (2002:168)

If these are valid comments, then a news reporter is as much

a storyteller as a documentary maker, albeit one using a different set

of skills and pitching at a different audience. Moreover, it may also

follow that the only real ‘genre’ - what the skill sets are designed to

deliver – is story.

I have always found defining genres an inexact science. For

56 Broomfield, Nick (2002:131)

35

example, the difficulty in reaching agreement over documentary’s

defining characteristics is mirrored in a similar argument over how to

classify documentary, using the available critical literature. The term

documentary was defined in 1926 by John Grierson as ‘the creative

treatment of actuality’.57

There are two counterpoised tendencies in documentary: with

one (the actuality component) the documentarist is claiming

our attention on the strength of his or her ability to represent

events that have occurred in the external world; with the other

(the creative component) a whole series of structuring and

narrativising ploys have been brought to bear in order to

heighten the impact of the film or program on an audience.

This is still a reasonable definition that

highlights a process by which documentary welds various

components – for instance, words, pictures, images and sound

effects - to elicit a response. However, whether Grierson realised it

or not, his definition also points to one of the more problematic

aspects of documentary:

58

And herein lies the conundrum: the storyteller’s first responsibility is

to create a strong story through a process that is largely subjective.

This process may involve manipulating the actuality component

creatively, thus altering the viewer’s perception in order to realise

the storyteller’s vision for the story.

While some filmmakers and critics still use the designation genre,

others see this term as potentially misleading. Among my industry

57 John Grierson, (1966) 58 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997: 12-13)

36

peers, there is no generally accepted view as to whether

documentary refers to genre or style, or just to a particular form of

story perception. Some practitioners believe it is all about the

subjective audience response which the filmmaker wants to elicit:

If it has proved notoriously difficult to define documentary by

reference to its shifting stylistic practices, it is because the

term ‘documentary’ describes not a style or a method or a

genre of film-making but a mode of response to film

material…The documentary response is one in which the

image is perceived as signifying what it appears to record; a

documentary film is one which seeks, by what ever means, to

elicit this response; and the documentary movement is the

history of strategies adopted to this end.59

This view by editor Dai Vaughan links closely with the way I see any

form of creative construction. Moreover, the strategies Dai mentions

possibly serve the same purpose as the skills sets I have been

referring to throughout this study; that is, using whatever means or

whatever skill set to elicit a specific response to a story.

Thus, while some documentarists purport to represent an objective

view about events in the external world, the reality may be quite

different. The very process of collection and transformation from raw

footage to structured story on the screen, is an interpretation of the

real. Where will I film, whom will I film, what lens will I use, will I use

a narrator, who will that be and how will the film be edited? These

are all key editorial considerations that suggest that documentary 59 Crawford, Peter and Turton, David (1993:101)

37

itself can never be more than the filmmaker’s representation or

interpretation of the real world; in other words, skill sets are used to

deliver a subjective view of the truth designed to achieve a specific

response to a story.

Even the least intrusive (by the filmmaker) ‘direct cinema’ style of

Albert Maysles impacts on the so-called truth or objectivity of the

film. Maysles says of his films: ‘The way I use my instrument, the

way I use my emotions, let’s say, is, I think, to get closer to the truth

rather than distant from it. And I think, perhaps the determining

factor is I empathise with the people I film’.60 While Maysles is

referring to his ‘style’, Nick Broomfield calls it his ‘art…(of) how you

shape it, the fun that you have with it…the way you manage to

encapsulate the film’.61 While Maysles’ style is to impact as little as

possible and only to gain access and trust, Sinofsky believes, and

Broomfield agrees, that this ‘line in the sand’ should be crossed

whenever necessary, and that there is nothing wrong with having a

relationship with the film’s subject. 62

60 Maysles, Albert (2002:5)

As a practitioner, I have found

it nearly impossible not to become involved. I also find that,

generally speaking, subjects respond to clear direction and input

which they see as an attempt by a professional to help them make

their story ‘right’ for the screen.

61 Broomfield, Nick (2002:131) 62 Sinofsky, Bruce (2002.:162)

38

Therefore, for all our claims as producers to present the world ‘as it

is’, and our attempts to engage the attention of the audience by the

force of argument, documentaries will probably never attain the level

of objective ‘truth’ to which they sometimes aspire. With a new breed

of digital filmmakers developing their own film languages and

working to their own sets of rules, the definition of what is truth and

the line between objectivity and subjectivity, will continue to blur.

As digital technology becomes more accessible, so did the

audience’s awareness of the process of collection and possibly even

construction. While today’s audiences are persuaded by the general

power of documentaries, that is, the search to find out more about

the issues, they understand their interpretive nature and the devices

used (by the filmmaker), and see documentary as a treatment of a

story. 63

That treatment will differ stylistically depending on the

filmmaker’s skill set, her/his interpretation, the intended audience

and the new electronic broadcast market imperatives impacting the

business of factual story production.

2.3 Television: The new style guru

Television altered the economics of filmmaking and almost overnight

there was little space for documentaries in cinema. In an instant, so

to speak, the ‘lords’ of the flat screen became the masters of the

63 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997: 4)

39

‘fact screen’. When television broadcasters began to offer

documentary a new home, they also began to dictate its form.

As a medium that delivers programs to the living room, television

fosters a desire for intimacy by focusing closely on people’s lives, a

style many established documentarists of the late 1950’s and 60’s

began experimenting with. This generation of filmmaker did not want

to corral their subjects, or put them through the charade of re-

enacting roles.64

The aspirations of this early wave of observational filmmakers have

been encapsulated by leading British documentarist Michael

Grigsby, when he expressed the following hope about his films:

They wanted direct location- based access and

began developing the technology (cameras, sound and fast film

stock) and reinventing the style (hand-held close ups and people

moving unencumbered in their own environment) in order to make a

new kind of observational style of documentary, feeding television’s

need for greater intimacy.

I feel that, particularly now, society and people are

fragmented, very isolated, and have in many cases no means

of being heard or of expressing themselves about their

everyday life or their emotional situation…I think it is

incumbent on us as broadcasters, filmmakers, whatever we

are, to be looking at our society and trying to find those

64 ibid (1997:65)

40

resonances, trying to hear those voices, to give people

space.65

In Australia, television Networks like the ABC became vehicles for

expressive change. While the Charter responsibility to encourage

cultural expression among all Australians provided the mandate,

technological advances made the department heads, who made

everything possible, much braver. In the early Nineties, as

mentioned before in this study, this attitude enabled me to develop

Home Truths – twenty Australian families with their own DV

cameras, filming their own extraordinary lives for three months.

Home Truths was one of Australia’s first reality-type series, a hybrid

form of observational documentary in a new era of filmmaking,

where technological developments encouraged experimentation in

capturing ‘the real’. This featured ordinary people reacting to life in

their own spaces, resulting in our own new, more subjective film

language.

Today the films of, for instance, Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield and

Alan Berliner, that further develop the early experiments in capturing

the real, display strategies of dealing with the subjective filmmakers’

vision, providing a voice for society and for the isolated. John Dovey,

a writer, producer and lecturer at University of West England, argues

that:

65 Grigsby, Michael & McLintock, Nicolas (1997: 7)

41

In (their) films we are witnessing the dominant tradition of

documentary filmmaking responding to the shifts in the

private and public domain of social space. There now exists a

significant strain of documentary filmmaking practice, which is

characterised entirely by its attention to and incorporation of,

issues around subjectivity.66

Peter Abbott the Executive Producer of the Australian series of Big

Brother believes:

This shift, largely the result of smaller cheaper equipment and

satellites enabling correspondents to beam live vision and

sound from their mobiles in war zones, also led to a shift in

market forces as society became more inward looking and

this led to the detriment of international documentaries and to

a more format driven situation. 67

This raw, immediate style of capturing actuality that centred on very

personal experiences, became a new television aesthetic on which

storytelling began to rely. Furthermore, documentary filmmakers had

to find the collection of skills to make it happen, in the world of fast

turn-around television.

2.4 Television Business: Defining truth and documentary

As the style of factual television evolved, so did definitions of

documentary. Critics often measure documentaries against a set of

values or examples, comprising a body of work produced over a

66 Dovey, Jon (2000:28) 67 Abbott, Peter (2007)

42

period of time. However, viewers have their own ideas on what

documentaries should deliver, measuring the defining qualities of

documentary against other types of programs in the factual

schedule. Even though many documentary makers may disagree,

producers will tend to take their cue from broadcasting institutions

that commission their work. 68 As documentary began to find a home

on television, Network chequebooks began to redefine documentary

style even more dramatically.

As this occurred, the relationship between context and the

production of truth, began to change irrevocably. Roger James, the

head of Carlton documentaries admits that when he pitched the

Guardian feature to the networks, ‘there was no research in place to

support the assertion that the Cali cartel were planning to upload

cheap high-grade heroin onto British streets. The idea was

formulated on the basis of what networks would find exciting, the

combination of heroin, Columbia, drug trafficking and a new

threat’.69

In today’s television environment driven by programmers and

commissioning editors, documentary truth is sometimes replaced by

created story; and the only probable difference between what Roger

James and many of us do, is that he admitted it. Far from being the

exception, in today’s buyers’ market, the ‘rule’ tends to be that

68 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:13) 69 Dovey, Jon (2000.:10-11)

43

producers ‘second-guess’ what programmers know their audiences

want.

In the television age, documentary has become an umbrella term to

suggest certain styles of filmmaking that accord with particular

conventions on how information is gathered and incorporated into a

program. In addition, in order to secure television pre-sales,

producers have had to make their documentaries in styles that,

according to programmers, would render them more accessible to

television audiences. During the Eighties and Nineties, this led to

some of the most interesting developments in the form of

documentaries being directly attributable to television’s constant

generation of new types of programming in a relentless quest to

increase audience share. 70

Institutions act to interconnect funding, product, and use

because of the strategic play-off between their investment in

specific projects at the level of station, channel, and

programme and their need to gauge audiences responses

correctly in order to make these projects, and products, viable

at a given level of production cost. The insertion of

The more television began to own the

factual and, in particular, the documentary slot, the more a buyers’

market began to emerge and dominate. John Corner, Professor of

Television studies at University of Liverpool, explains the

phenomenon this way:

70 (ibid: 7-8)

44

advertising income into funding can only be maintained if

viewing levels and viewing profiles support it. 71

Corner refers here to the direct correlation between what is termed

‘content spend’ and television programming. The programming of

airtime is a Network equation that is adjusted daily. What the

programmers want, they get; and once they get it, they want it more

cheaply and newer in form. This means that traditional forms of

documentary have had to be reshaped, in particular verité and direct

documentary, in order to make these forms fit the cultural and

financial economic models of television.

Brow-beaten by tight deadlines, advertisers and shareholders driven

by coldhearted ratings, network programmers have come to realize

that, if documentary was going to survive on television in the late

twentieth century and beyond, it had to reach, entertain and hold an

audience week in, week out. One solution to these new economies

of scale was fly on the wall series like Roger Graef’s Police, or The

Family (BBC 1974), Sylvania Waters (BBC and ABC 1993) and

Home Truths (ABC 1994). These series, characterised by a lack of

staging (direct cinema of Police), high shooting ratios (of Family and

Sylvania Waters), a preoccupation with institutions or domestic lives

(Home Truths), all had the intimacy of privileged access and were all

controlled ‘fly on the wall’ series. That is, they used a degree of

producer input and narration and editing skills to corral the unwieldy

71 Corner, John (1999: 13)

45

nature of ‘fly on the wall’ immediacy. One of the main reasons Home

Truths was commissioned by the ABC hinged on the producers’

assurance that the injection of narration and stylistic similarities

across the episodes, would transform the ‘fly on the wall’ style into a

more manageable half-hour TV format, which could be delivered on

time and to a price.

Hence, the strategy for today’s TV producers is to ‘second-guess’

what programmers know their audiences want. The result is that the

notion of documentary truth on television is now subject to specific

political economies, in which ‘fact’ itself is a flexible commodity, used

to deliver audiences through complex treatments. Network format

imperatives, insisting on punchy, emotional, dramatic roller coaster

rides, are met by welding a comprehensive range of storytelling

skills during shooting (use of camera and questions) and in post-

production (editing, narration and use of music).

John Grierson, the so-called father of British documentary,

proclaimed the importance of documentary in the role of creating a

healthy public sphere, in which an educated and informed populace

was seen as key to social cohesion. Half a century later, factual TV

includes anything from Candid Camera, confessionals, surveillance

programs, docu-soaps and the various documentary forms including

video diaries. Mostly, documentary now exists in a televisual space,

neither wholly fictional nor wholly factual, where factual producers

are virtual slaves to the television schedule. Given the new

46

economic constraints, documentary makers are wondering: firstly, if

documentary can still play the role it allegedly once had in public

service broadcasting; and/or, secondly, if commercial imperatives

will make the survival of documentary even more dependent on its

becoming ‘more entertaining’ as with the newer television forms.

2.5 The birth of the modern format

Much of the mechanics of television relates to the division of airtime

and at commercial networks, specifically, the sale of airtime. Genre

labels group programs under, for example, the factual television

umbrella, and enable programmers to schedule daily (morning,

afternoon, evening) across a week

(drama, news and current affairs, documentary, comedy, reality) and

throughout a year (ratings and non ratings). The proliferation of

channels in the digital age has brought about an even greater need

for new and innovative programs to deliver to Networks the point of

difference that would maintain their audience share. This has

resulted in a proliferation of hybridised program forms, where

generic boundaries are blurred in an effort to create attractive new

formats. 72

72 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:8)

As mentioned earlier in this study, MPU is one such

hybrid format, designed to cater to the growing thirst of the

audiences and networks for observational material packaged in

more structured format.

47

In an attempt to manage what audiences watched and what was

scheduled, film and then television pioneers categorised stories by

genre. One of the aspects they were managing was the

differentiation between styles of production, for example, the BBC

and the ABC use genre labels to differentiate general from specialist

(history) programs. However, in 2003, the BBC changed the

structure of factual genres to reflect the altering nature of factual

television,73

and increased the number of genres, something the

ABC had attempted earlier under Jonathan Shires, who introduced

twenty-two genre departments, ostensibly to better facilitate or label

the diverse range of content being developed.

In my opinion, this plan was a mistake. While more labels meant

even more emphasis on specific genre-related styles, the reality was

an enormous crossover between the twenty-two departments. For

example, the portfolio I received was called, Contemporary Life, and

even history programs sat under that umbrella, albeit contemporary

history. Managing all these disparate departments would be a

nightmare and costly: twenty-two heads of department would be

needed and their abilities and skills levels would be varied. If

implemented, and it was for only six months, this system had the

potential to create a scheduling (production and broadcast)

nightmare. However, the real danger of the fragmented Shire model

73 Hill, Annette (2005:42)

48

was that it would deplete the overall amount of money available for

development, and make the Australian on-air schedule even more

reliant on international content and, in particular, proven offshore

formats.

As global trade in formats grew throughout the Eighties and

Nineties, the format bible became a new form of television currency.

This was generally viewed as a quantification of someone’s creative

dream, a uniquely identifiable document enforceable by law, that

would give formats a degree of legitimacy often even before they

were produced. For instance, formats could generate income at

concept stage and be sold into multiple markets to be produced

simultaneously in a number of territories.

Global circulation of formats generally occurs through two broad

mechanisms, one that involves not seeking consent of the producer

of the original program (certain ‘formatable’ elements are used

combined with new elements); the second (where a mirror of the

original program is produced) usually involves obtaining

authorisation to license the format. 74

[P]art of a process for obtaining legal authorisation to copy,

imitate etc that which is called the format or set of production

ideas. These are not public ideas or knowledge but rather are

Dr Albert Moran explains the

second mechanism, involving a licence fee as:

74 Moran, Albert (2003:2)

49

deemed to be intellectual property in which the producer

holds various rights. 75

These rights are quantified in an agreed value called a format

licence fee, which is paid by the program maker (independent or

network) to the original producer for the right to use the format – an

economic and cultural technology of exchange. 76

First there is the paper format: a five or six page summary of

the main ingredients of the programme and how these

ingredients will combine. Second, the ‘bible’, and extensive

and detailed document often running to several hundred

pages of printed information, drawings, graphics, studio

plans, photographs and so on…A package of printed

information about the scheduling, target audience, ratings

and audience demographics based on broadcast

history…scripts…off air tapes of previous versions of the

programme…Finally the format can also arrive in human form

when a consultancy service is provided to new producers by

the company owning the format.

The format fee

buys, as Moran explains, a series of overlapping but separate forms:

77

The experimentation that went into format development meant a

continuous redefinition of traditional genres and styles of production.

While the Shire model broke down content style in genres, the

reality was that tagging programs as genre-specific was now not as

important as the race to be the first to develop or acquire the ‘hot’

new format. Nevertheless, as Peter Abbott observes, at times the

75 Ibid (2002:3) 76 Moran, Albert (2004:6), 77 (Ibid 2004:5)

50

danger with formats is a homogenisation of production styles: ‘at the

end there’s still an editorial head. It’s still one person’s view of the

world around them and formats destroy that and as a consequence

programs become less individual and less adventurous’.78

Repeat the winning formula…create your own successful

series…with BBC World Wide Television’s format package.

Minimise the risks – formats offer tried and tested creative

ideas for reliable quality programming. Grasp the essentials –

each package contains many elements you need to make an

individual series tailor-made to your own particular

requirements.

Peter

Abbott’s company, Freehand TV, is partly owned by the BBC. While

his view above is clear, Freehand still trades BBC formats and

wherever possible also produces them, because they believe in the

selling power that the certainty formats preach:

79

The format market is extensive enough that the BBC employs a

format supervisor, who travels the world checking that licensed BBC

formats are made according to their prescribed production ‘bibles’.

Therefore, while on the one hand the digital age encouraged stylistic

adventure, the requirement, on the other hand, for content in a

rapidly expanding multi-channeled digital environment, may also

have led to a growing reliance of proven formats in place of

adventurous programming. The increase in audience fragmentation

brought about by a proliferation of new channels placed a greater

78 Abbott, Peter (2007) Interview 79 Moran, Albert (2004:259)

51

emphasis on the economic imperative to ensure the popularity (and

economic viability) of programs, in an effort to contain and grow the

fragmenting audience. Therefore, proven shows that can be stripped

80

to get a returning audience by building to an event to hold ratings

over weeks and even months, became the flavour of the day.

Furthermore, the mass appeal of the ‘reality TV format’ stripped

across weeks, offered the most visible example of an economic

strategy to deal with multi-channel competition and fragmentation.

2.6 Reality in the lounge room

As a program maker, I have to admit, rather reluctantly, that the

following observation from Friedman is valid:

As we embark upon a new century of broadcasting, it is clear

that no genre form or type of program has been actively

marketed by producers, or more enthusiastically embraced by

viewers, than reality based TV.81

Reality TV is a complex form to define, and at times to defend,

possibly because the type of program we normally associate with it

is difficult to categorise. Peter Abbott believes reality TV is

impossible to define, arguing that:

80 Stripping a show is to exploit the content in a manner that enables the series to be run as many times as possible over a week or month, or longer, at the same time slot. 81 Friedman James (2002)

52

(T)he common factor is that we don’t use actors but real

people and this enables them to be marketed as it could be

you. If anything it’s the fresh food of TV, but I don’t think there

can be a genre that It’s a Knockout, Sylvania Waters and The

Bachelor all fit in’. 82

However, some commentators contend that this all-encompassing

aspect of reality TV is also its hallmark:

By 1994 the term ‘reality TV’ was already a catch all phrase

that covered a number of hybrid forms but could be

conceived as: recording on the fly and frequently with the

help of lightweight video equipment; events in the lives of

individuals and groups; the attempt to stimulate such real life

events through various forms of dramatized reconstruction;

the incorporation of this material in suitably edited form into

an attractively packaged television program which can be

promoted on the strength of its reality credentials.83

Nevertheless, reality TV could just as easily be called people

programs, documentaries of real life and programs about what might

happen to you or me; and this ‘it could be you’ aspect has been part

of their appeal since the early days of the very first reality television

program, Candid Camera.

The New York Herald Tribune wrote of Candid Microphone, the

precursor to Candid Camera:

Everyone may tune in on their neighbours or, at any rate,

somebody’s neighbours and listen to their unrehearsed,

82 Abbott, Peter (2007) Interview 83 Kilborn Richard, (1994:423)

53

unwitting, unsponsored remarks. It’s a wonderful sport, like

looking through keyholes but capable of infinitely greater

variety…The possibilities are limitless: the prospect is

horrifying. Wait till they get the Candid Television Camera. 84

They did not have long to wait. At the height of the Cold War,

Candid Camera (US 1948 -) a format for recording ordinary people

in extraordinary staged circumstances, functioned as a statement to

people to stop worrying about being watched. In today’s post 9/11

age of terrorism, the same could be said about the current crop of

reality programs. Now the mantra could run as follows: ‘don’t mind

all the cameras spying on you, it’s for your own good, look how

these people easily relate to cameras recording them all day’. And

per capita, Australians are probably the world’s most willing

participants in reality TV programs. Frontier House in the USA and

Outback House in Australia are two installments in the successful

House format developed by Wall To Wall in the UK. Even though the

population of the USA is fifteen times greater than Australia, the

same number of people applied for Outback House as did for

Frontier House in the US. So this begs the question: what is the

appeal of such programs?

Chris O’Mara, the former programmer for the Seven Network in

Australia, believes the appeal for the public is that they can see

themselves in reality TV shows. He claims:

84 Funt, Allen with Phillip Reed (1994:30)

54

People watching see an element of their own lives they look

at it and see a glimpse of what could happen in their own

situation so there is an element of reality and voyeurism.

They wonder how they would react in the same situation and

there is sympathy for the mums and dads of bad teens who

run off’ 85

Missing Persons Unit viewers look at the stories, see themselves in

the place of the families and feel that ‘there if not for the grace of

God go I’. This form of identification/voyeurism also occurs in reality

TV. And even though MPU is reviewed under the more factual

banner, it may also fit a reality TV profile, as Chris O’Mara further

argues: ‘MPU is observational documentary; again it’s also a reality

show as we are shooting real life.’ 86

Chris O’Mara also believes that the popularity of reality TV with

network programmers has less to do with its style and more to do

with its ability to be planned and sold on a large scale:

What Chris is referring to is the

particular MPU style, which will be discussed in detail later, which

dictates that it is shot in real time, with real people, covering real

stories.

I think comedy is a genre, drama is a genre but not reality, it’s

just real life in a production construct. Networks have given it

a label because they like putting things in boxes for ease of

scheduling and for marketing purposes’. 87

85 O’Mara, Chris (2007) Interview

86 Ibid (2007) 87 Ibid (2007)

55

It may then follow that what unites the range of programming often

described as reality TV, is primarily its discursive, visual and

technological claim to ‘the real’. However, that alone may not be

enough to form a definition. Friedman adds that looking at the

marketing phenomenon of reality TV might provide another clue to

its popularity:

The proliferation of reality based programming…does not

represent a fundamental shift in television programming, but

the industry’s reliance on ‘reality’ as a promotional marketing

tool is unprecedented. What separates the spate of

contemporary reality based television…(is) the open and

explicit sale of television programming as a representation of

reality. 88

From this perspective, reality TV could be defined as programs built

around specific marketing elements: real, ordinary everyday people

whom the audience can identify with, event driven rundowns,

generally presenter led, an audience or viewer eviction element, a

prize at the end and purporting to represent the real. If so, then

what about MPU, the main focus of this study? This program has a

marketing element – the need to search for someone’s loved ones; it

has a viewer element – ringing crime stoppers with hot information;

and it ostensibly represents the ‘real’.

Kilborn and Izod see reality TV also as a mode in which television

packaging intervenes in actuality-based production, as it seeks to

88 Friedman James (2002:7)

56

highlight the sense of shared experience. Out of this come programs

that use a wide range of television techniques (skill sets) to enhance

the entertainment value of the material.89

We expose all their tricks. We’re completely upfront about it.

When you want the contestants to talk about first love, you

hear Big Brother say “hey – would you talk about your first

love?” But documentary filmmakers have always manipulated

material both in the way they edit it and the way they shoot it’.

If their definition is valid,

then I see a distinction between what is called reality TV and MPU

type programs. The truth is that some of my peers working on

observational programs like MPU, rejoice when their programs are

labelled reality, because it gives them a home, with a large financing

bucket and a marketing umbrella under which to pitch. Nevertheless,

other doco-makers are enraged, because they see the tag as

demeaning. Furthermore, as Big Brother’s Peter Bazalgette,

Creative Director Endemol UK believes, documentary makers are

annoyed because:

90

The reality in today’s ‘buyers market’ is that network executives do

not really care what documentary makers think. They are seeking

proven winners for channel visibility and for the economic

predictability these formats offer. Bazalgette defines these types of

series as high concept, stating: ‘They make more of a mark, create

more of a brand with viewers, and once established people come

89 Kilborn, Richard and John Izod (1997:85) 90 Bazalgette, Peter (2001)

57

back to them again and again’. 91 He considers that it is all about

being heard above the noise, and one answer is ‘to commission

programs that are major events. High concept ideas that can be

stripped across a channel’s schedule every day for several weeks to

help ambitious channels stand out from the crowd’. 92

Thus the key questions in this study, as illustrated here, may not be

so much about asking what is reality television or whether it is fact or

fiction. More relevant might be a consideration and exploration of

the ways the reality format itself, as a marketing tour-de-force, plays

out each day or week in a highly contested, largely self-obsessed

space, using a highly developed construct or skill set to tell a story

and hold an audience.

This is not to say that the concepts of fact or fiction have absolutely

no meaning any more; rather that because these terms are always

under reconstruction and negotiation, our definitions of the

relationship between TV realism, fact and fiction and entertainment

shows, must also adapt. For those viewers watching reality TV,

these definitions have adapted to accepting that reality television

programs manipulate and construct the real, through instruction,

editing, characterisation and dramatic structures.

91 Ibid ( 2002:14) 92 Ibid ( 2002: 14)

58

While MPU, the main subject of this study, also has similar drivers to

reality TV, it is arguably different enough to be defined in other

terms. While based on real people and strong stories, it does not

occur in a manufactured construct and is not event-driven. MPU is

built around highly dramatic un-rehearsed story twists that leave the

viewer waiting until the next break, or the following week, and these

are plotted along a time line that is predominantly driven by actuality

and not ‘ a Big Brother instruct’. Rather than events, MPU uses a

combination of filmmaking and journalistic skills to weave stories

gathered from an observed reality, to create a type of observational

soap, which is, essentially, an extended form of storytelling, using

cross programming, recurring characters, and repeating information

to update audiences, much like a daytime soap or serial.93

While it uses some trademark soap or serial characteristics, MPU is

one of a group of new hybrid forms of storytelling that sit outside

prescribed definitions. As Nichols argues:

Any firm sense of boundary which such shows attempt to

uphold between fact and fiction, narrative and exposition,

story telling and reporting inevitably blurs and everything is up

for grabs in a gigantic reshuffling of the stuff of everyday life.

Everything, that is, is subject to interpretation by television as

a story telling machine’ 94

Nichols’ view is valid; stylistically it is all ‘up for grabs’. But what

producers do with the raw content, how they grab it and how they

93 Corner, John (1999:57) 94 Nichols, Bill (1994a 43)

59

manipulate it, will be slightly different with every incarnation of hybrid

observational documentary form on television. And it is this

difference that we will explore next.

60

Chapter 3: Missing Persons Unit Production

I think I wanted it (the program) to be as accessible as

possible to as big an audience as possible and to find a way

of holding that audience. I always thought that was part of the

riddle that it was important to be able to do that.

Nick Broomfield 95

MPU is a half hour (now one hour) observational docu-soap

television series that captures the ‘real life’ drama of the men and

women of the police force, as they investigate and find missing

people:

Missing Persons Unit a new series premiering on Channel 9

explores the emotionally charged world of the (NSW) MPU.

Unfolding over months of dramatic filming, our cameras

record the real time detective work of the MPU as they search

for missing people. In each episode, this unique insight into

the MPU and its field and forensics investigators plays out

against the intimate pleas for help from devastated families of

missing people.

They say it’s a nightmare…but it’s worse than any

nightmare…because you don’t wake up from this: Mrs Janet Draper, mother of Ian, reported missing 3rd August 2001

MPU is not a drama, but it is dramatic television. Shot in the

observational style and with unprecedented access, we

capture stories as they unfold, and experience first hand the

trauma of devastated families waiting for answers as they

hang on to hope. 96

95 Broomfield Nick, (2002:128) 96 MPU Production Press Notes (2005)

61

That is what I told journalists and that sums up the essential nature

of MPU as a series. The key question driving this study is: what was

the production process from the beginning?

Television production is a team activity. However, as the series

producer and then executive producer of MPU, I was responsible for

all editorial and managerial aspects of the show. This included

signing off on story shoots, story edits, interlacing stories into

programs and writing the final program scripts. I embarked on this

Masters research because I became convinced my work might

serve some useful purpose, possibly as a ‘road map’ for

adventurous producers wanting a starting point for their own similar

productions. From the beginning of this study, I have had the

opportunity to review and reflect on my work practice methods. This

has been important in crystallising my views on certain aspects of

production, in particular the application of the craft of storytelling in

factual, hybrid forms. I have also had the opportunity during the

research, to speak with my producers in a less frenetic environment,

and this has been insightful. Notwithstanding all this, I now believe,

more than ever, that while this exegesis takes the form of an

investigation, its primary function is as an operation reference tool.

While not a handbook, this study and the two associated creative

practice DVD’s are designed to provide as much ‘take home’ advice

as possible for future producers.

62

Therefore, I have structured the remainder of the research around

the production milestones of MPU from concept to delivery.

Wherever possible, I have structured these milestones in the natural

order in which they impacted production.

Throughout this section, I will refer to a number of interviews

conducted with two MPU producers, a senior editor, the Head of

Factual for the Nine Network and a number of other key players. As

mentioned earlier, ethical clearance has been gained for all

interviews with industry colleagues involved in this study.

3.1 The Concept – development and early change

‘One person is reported missing every 18 minutes’ 97

This seemingly incredible statistic was to become the driver for the

development of MPU, one of Australia’s most successful

documentary series.

In 2005, the Nine Network began discussing with the New South

Wales Police Department (NSWPOL) the possibility of working

together to produce a television series on the NSWPOL MPU. John

McAvoy, the Head of Factual at the Nine Network, remembers the

initial Network concept as not resembling the present show: ‘The

original discussion was to have a live component, not that it was

97 National Missing Persons Unit Website (2007)

63

going to be similar, but more like Australia’s Most Wanted, viewer

interaction is what they (Nine) were looking for there’.98

I was fearful that what Nine wanted was Australia’s Most

Wanted and that they wanted an American-style production

with production value but no real stories. What was realised

early on was that these police do a job that is not what

policing means to people and that a live show wouldn’t

capture this’.

Indeed, this

was FTV CEO John Gregory’s biggest concern when FTV was

asked to produce for Nine:

99

Moreover, the need to capture police on the job was the driving

force in developing the show, especially for John McAvoy from Nine:

‘the present concept has the obs-doc all on tape, and I think

everyone is much happier’. 100

Ultimately MPU became the Number One show across all networks

in the crucial 8:30 pm time slot justifying John McAvoy’s support of

the concept:

I don’t think the concept has lost anything, I think in the live

show the key element was audience involvement, but this

show doesn’t discount that, our audience can still be involved

and that’s one of the reasons people watch the show

because they can still buy into the story.101

98 McAvoy, John (2008) 99 Gregory, John (2007) 100 McAvoy, John (2008) 101 ibid (2008)

64

In fact, the audience ‘bought’ into it so much that the program stayed

at Number One across three series over two-and-a-half years. The

value of such success gives a producer statistics that one can

literally take to the bank; that link between creativity and economic

performance is exactly what commercial television is all about.

The initial enthusiasm for a live show was tempered with one major

drawback: the issue that much of the actuality that drives MPU, the

drama of the search and the emotion of the families looking for

closure, could not be captured in the proposed live format. At best,

the producers of a live show could hope for a series of short reports

and on-air telephone calls from the public: in essence, a prime time

community service announcement. While the Network wanted that

proactive, ‘worthy’ feel, they also wanted to reveal the drama of

people going missing: the search, the emotion and the devastating

impact on family and friends of missing people. In effect, they

wanted great television, a formula John McAvoy clearly thinks we

found:

I think it’s better now than it would have been as a live show

and I think you can dedicate more time to the stories than you

would in a live show with people standing around a studio

talking and people are still ringing in with new leads. 102

The aim was to develop a show driven by current actuality and

woven to deliver strong narrative, emotion, drama and holding

102 Ibid (2008)

65

power. Additionally, with proper, careful planning, that formula is

what we delivered immediately from the first program, rating 1.53

million viewers and becoming the Film Finance Corporation’s 103

‘highest ever’ premiering documentary series.

The earliest crime program I could remember at the time was

Crimewatch (BBC, 1984) and the most recent (in terms of planning

for MPU) was Forensic Investigators (ATN 7, 2005). While different,

these programs both relied on drama reconstruction. In developing a

style for MPU, I looked carefully at these programs. Forensic

Investigators features solved cases that were scripted and

reconstructed using actors. The drama was written and often lacked

the involvement of police. As the cases were already solved, I felt

the program served no real purpose except to entertain. Hence, we

disregarded it as a model.

Crimewatch recreates unsolved police cases and also interviews

families and police. The public are encouraged to call in with

information to help solve the case. Such a format has been

criticised as ‘cheap lazy television… programme makers realise

they’re on a good thing…No need for script writers or imagination,

it’s ready made, put in the microwave, sensational - success

103 Film Finance Corporation (2005)

66

guaranteed (television) ’.104

Just as Crimewatch relies for its popularity on a characteristic

mix of components, so do the various forms of reality

programming depend on the way in which the multiple

ingredients (reality bites, reconstruction, surveillance material,

presenter talk) are brought together in a fast-moving

audience friendly package.’

Strangely, twenty four years later similar

comments to these are employed by critics to describe reality TV:

105

In effect, this is what we were searching for in MPU - the right

‘package mix’ to hold our audience.

The ‘ghoulish voyeurism’ 106

However, as the ‘new kid on the block’, so to speak, MPU needed a

point of difference from Australia’s Forensic Investigators and

of Crimewatch allegedly taking over the

schedule was pitched as pro-active television back in 1984. Unlike

Forensic Investigators, Crimewatch was actually trying to assist

police to solve unsolved cases. It is my contention that this social

purpose, where the BBC pays to increase police case profile, is

where television should be heading. While the series may have

been strong rating television, if it also helped police solve just one

case, I believe the format had and still continues to have a place in

today’s schedule. Therefore I considered Crimewatch as a possible

model for MPU, a series that was also designed to assist police.

104 Graham, Polly (1994:13) 105 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:159) 106 Kennedy, Ludovic (1994: 8)

67

Britain’s Crimewatch. We needed to capture and increase a

distinctive sense of authenticity about our program. I determined

early in the planning process that the best way to achieve this was

to eliminate dramatisation as a storytelling device. In its place, we

would build on our close association with police, and our unique

access to current stories. Real people would provide emotion as

they recounted their loss and made pleas for help. Together with the

driving actuality of an unfolding search, that is, hard working cops on

the beat solving ‘hot’ stories, we had the dramatic story elements to

immerse viewers in the reality of the moment, and make them

identify with the families, and feel that ‘it could be them’. John

Gregory, the CEO of FTV, believes this is the main reason that MPU

resonates with the audience:

MPU falls into the category “There but for the grace of God

go I” TV, and the fact that it is actually human drama told

without a script per se. It is legitimate TV drama, it is well

crafted and has an appeal that goes beyond the language. It

doesn’t matter that they are Australian…there’s a connection

with family a sense of loss, universal themes that everyone

can tap into. It’s authentic and people can tell that the tears

and joy are real, it doesn’t dwell in crime but has the real life

drama that deals with the human condition’. 107

Indeed, that comment sums up also what we were looking for on the

screen: to create a feeling that was so devastating that it drew out

the compassionate element from an audience, who could readily

see themselves living the same nightmare as the families of the 107 Gregory, John ( 2007)

68

missing people on the screen.

Another clear evolving point of difference from Crimewatch and

Forensic Investigators was that our stars and focus were police and

ordinary families, not TV personalities. In order to keep the audience

in the moment of the search, we decided not to use an on-screen

presenter. Instead, the production team decided on a narrator to

assist in moving the story forward and to help fill in current ‘blanks’

in cases with unfolding actuality, where we could not always be

present when the story was developing. The narrator became our

device for filling these story holes, creating emphasis and time

shifting. The narrator, as will be explained later, is a useful tool in

fast turn-around schedules.

Nonetheless, no amount of planning was going to be effective

unless we had unfettered access to the appropriate police personnel

and their operations. The success of many documentary projects

rests to a large degree on the production team’s ability to gain

access, both to people who have a story to tell, and to the places

where revealing evidence can be found. One of the strengths of the

documentary form is its ability to evoke the sense of ‘being there’, at

events where viewers themselves would be denied access. 108

108 Loizos, Peter (1993:67)

69

When I came on board, the production team’s access still had to be

negotiated. From the first meeting with police, it became apparent

that to achieve worthwhile results, we would firstly have to develop a

level of trust. Significantly, complicating our relationship right from

the outset, the police could remember the inflamed debate

surrounding the 1991 ABC TV documentary Cop It Sweet. 109

At our first meeting to explain how we would proceed, and even after

the series had been ‘green lit’ by both police management and the

Network, the police with long memories still had to be convinced to

be involved at the ground level. Inspector Amanda Calder, Manager

NSWPOL Media Unit believes the memory of how police were

portrayed in Cop It Sweet caused them to baulk at MPU:

This

film had followed police officers on duty (something we were also

planning to do) and, according to some commentators, represented

Redfern police station in Sydney’s inner city, as one of the most

controversial police commands in the country. Hence, the police

were wary of invoking such exposure again.

About 1990 the NSWPOL got involved in a TV show with the

ABC. And that unfortunately was managed in such a way

where the police service didn’t have veto because we didn’t

have legals in place. So as a result of that show which

provided a lot of adverse publicity, police officers were bought

up to scrutiny. Some lost their job and it was a big issue.

Since 1990 it became ground into police not to get involved in

media again. Even now we hear ‘what about Cop It Sweet.

109 Cop It Sweet (1991) ABC TV, Documentaries

70

After that the relationship between police and media was so

strained. 110

Police reservations were not only based on their fears about how

they would be portrayed, but also about how they would perform on

camera:

The hardest thing was that we were being shown doing a job

that we’ve grown to love but that we hadn’t been doing for

long – we were meant to be experts and being police there’s

always a huge emphasis on procedure and doing something

right. Then there was the filming. We’re not actors, we’re

cops. So the filming was new and the job was new – a recipe

for disaster that turned into a triumph for all. 111

Inspector Calder is referring here to the fact that extra general

duties police were seconded to the MPU to facilitate filming.

However, police fears were in some key ways a mirror of our own

concerns. We were not police and did not understand their

procedural imperatives, and, at the same time, they were certainly

not actors: ‘We had to develop new skills to help us make the

television work look natural, otherwise none of this would work, that

was the first big challenge’.112

Indeed, this was going to be the most confronting continual

challenge for producers working with police. It is a common problem

I have experienced in similar series when filming with non-actors

110 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview 111 Ibid ( 2008) 112 Bailey, Garry ( 2008) MPU Case Officer, Interview

71

over long periods of time. For instance, during the early stages of

filming Home Truths, a self shot series exploring family life in

Australia, participant Jeff Lowrey said, ‘I’ve filmed everything, my

life’s just not that interesting mate’.113

A lack of understanding about

how material is used (edited) commonly leads to a questioning by

the participants of the value of their input, the relevance of their

story, or their ability to do the job. Hence, this was clearly happening

with police at the MPU, even before we began.

The production planning team were concerned also that MPU police

officers did much of their work from the office using the phone.

Therefore, if the job was primarily office bound, our series would not

have the dramatic ingredients of the field search, or the emotion of

families being interviewed face-to-face, the type of engrossing action

required to sustain a prime time slot:

Our MPU officers were also a little nervous of the whole TV

thing because they did most of their business from behind a

desk on the phone, where they focused on certain high-risk

cases. For the TV show the officers were asked to spend

more time in the field investigating cases they may not have

spent as much time on, like the many teenage runaways we

get. But these cases made for good television and finding

teenagers is still part of MPU core business, so we agreed to

this even though it churned up resources. 114

113 Lowrey, Jeff (1994) ABC TV Home Truths Interview 114 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview

72

While we had to convince police commanders to agree that MPU

case officers should spend more time on the road interviewing

families and chasing leads, alongside general duties police, we also

had to convince the officers that they were actually capable of doing

all this while being filmed.

This was not always easy, for instance, for Snr Sgt Garry Bailey:

It’s hard to just switch on and off - is this filming or is it real.

So it’s always real and because of that filming does

sometimes get in the way – we want you to say this or that

and while holding back doesn’t compromise the investigation,

it can make you look silly in the eyes of other cops.115

Subsequently, when the wrong things were said, when it got ‘too

real’ in the heat of the moment, the Police Filming Supervisor (PFS)

would step in, and we would be ordered to revert to working to strict

police protocols with a ream of administrative checks and balances.

This was our first major hurdle in developing a show that would, as

Freehand Director of Production Peter Abbott put it, ‘best present

this subject to the audience so they will be most intrigued by it,

entertained by it and will keep watching the commercials and be

there after the break’. 116

115 Bailey, Garry (2007) MPU Case Officer, Interview

The key thorny issue was that this would

need to be achieved within parameters specified by the police.

116 Abbott, Peter (2007) Creative Director FTV, Interview

73

Commanders eventually agreed to our request for more fieldwork,

because the practice gave police an increased public profile and the

street visibility they wanted to promote on the series. However, now

we were technically out of the office, we needed to find a way to

control our unfolding, unscripted and unpredictable actuality. This is

where the police Standard Operational Procedures (SOPS) or

operational orders became critical.

3.2 Operational Orders: the first police grid of control

The success of a series like MPU, which is exploring a protected

world, is always going to depend on the relationship between the

key stakeholders - the Nine Network, NSWPOL, families of missing

people and the production company.

From the outset, the most important issue is to set the rules of

engagement that will enable the series to achieve and hold traction.

What did the Network want, how much access will the police allow,

will families cooperate, how much can the production company bend

and still deliver the series the Network commissioned? The complex

ways that these editorial questions and requirements are balanced

against police imperatives, was all dealt with in the Standard

Operating Procedures (SOPS) .

74

Primarily designed to facilitate filming, the SOPS laid out the

conditions under which NSWPOL could participate:

Involvement in this production brings a range of benefits

(and) meets the following key corporate objectives:

1. To reduce the fear of crime within the community by

reassuring the public of the ability of Police to prevent and

solve crime, apprehend criminals and work to solve missing

person’s cases.

2. To increase community confidence in police and thus the

detection and reporting of crime.

3. To effectively consult and communicate with the

community and give them the opportunity to comment on

service delivery.’117

Technically, NSWPOL were only interested in meeting these

objectives if the film crew could make ‘every reasonable endeavour

to ensure their presence does not compromise police operations nor

record operationally sensitive information and to that end, the film

crew will at all times comply with the directions of the NSW Police

Film Crew Supervisor (PFS) whilst on Police premises or whilst

filming Police operations’. 118

However, access to a ‘never before

seen world’ of operational sensitivity was exactly what we were

promoting to the press.

Inspector Amanda Calder, one of the architects of the SOPS sees it

this way:

117 SOPS (2005) MPU Operational Orders, NSWPOL 118 Ibid (2005)

75

Our business is the business of policing not television. So we

needed a set of orders that detailed our business and your

business (production company). These orders had to set out

the requirement for participating in the show from A to Z; and

the main thing that we wanted to understand is the

relationship between the production-company and police. We

wanted to know each others’ business and how the two

businesses can intertwine to make this a positive program.

And we knew that there was every chance that it would be

positive if we understood how each operated in the field. 119

Furthermore, Snr Sgt Garry Bailey stated that it was important for

the production team to realise what the primary focus was:

You don’t want to turn up to some one’s house whose had a

loved one missing for a day a month and have them thinking

that you are there for the filming – you want to focus on them

and their problem finding their missing loved one.120

This is the fine balancing act our producers had to perform for each

story: if the police were not happy, the production could not proceed.

Inspector Calder stresses that the SOPS were designed to be

operational and not dictatorial:

We all knew at the end of the day what we wanted to achieve,

but how we did that is something we had to find out and lay

out in detail. Step by step to getting into a police car, going to

a job, speaking with families and filming, that’s what the

Operational Orders provided. If we walked out not knowing

how to manage this thing it could have been a disaster. The 119 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview 120 Gayle, Amanda (2008) MPU Case Officer, Interview

76

SOPS provided the info for you guys to understand our core -

business and for us to understand what your imperatives are

– they are really like a bible. 121

Nonetheless, what is defined as ‘operational’ for police, can quickly

become restrictive for producers. Even though we had unique

access, the SOPS provided early evidence that we would have to

work under strict protocols. Such restrictions are illustrated here:

( a) a 4-day filming week not the usual 5 or 6; ( b) no story would

go to air without a full set of formal releases – on-camera

agreements were not acceptable by police; (c) a release could be

withdrawn up to seven days after it had been signed – this is

devastating if the story had already been shot and edited; (d) if

police did not want to follow a story, we would not – raising

questions as to who is the real film maker; (e) the film crew could

only film with the police appointed PFS (Police Filming Supervisor) -

as there was only one PFS, this meant we could only use one crew

to film and if we had more than one ‘hot’ story, we had to decide

which story to follow; and (f) police would have the right to review

and comment on finished programs – in effect, if they did not like our

response to their comments, they could withdraw from the series.

While we promoted our unfettered access to a unique world of

policing, the SOPS were designed to control access to crucial

information, and at times this included the very people who had a

121 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview

77

story to tell, places where revealing evidence could be found and the

duration of filming each day and week. Of all the grids of control that

can impact on this type of evolving factual production, this almost

intractably binding document, written by police lawyers and

designed to be bullet proof, was to have a profound effect the series

several times in the course of the filming.

Were the SOPS necessary? Inspector Calder argues:

We may not have got the staff without the SOPS in place.

When we ask for interest from commanders for staff for the

show it gives them confidence that staff will be able to

maintain the integrity of the police department even if they

inadvertently say the wrong word. It gives the police comfort

on knowing they can just get on and do their work’.122

On reflection, I would argue that this administrative micro-control

was necessary because the existence of the SOPS ultimately got

the series approved by police commanders. Nonetheless, having a

stake-holder with an (almost) power of veto and the actual ability to

pull out of the deal if it did not go according to plan, meant that the

production team were continually ‘treading water’. Moreover, the

daily arbiter of how we were travelling was the PFS, a police officer

effectively deciding on matters impacting a television schedule and

series.

122 Ibid (2008)

78

Because the SOPS made provision for only one PFS, we could only

film with one crew at a time. This meant that if the PFS was

unavailable, there would be no filming, no matter how urgent the

filming was. Inspector Calder clarifies this problem:

With Cop It Sweet that was the main issue, there was nobody

supervising what they were doing, no PFS. The police are

operational and we didn’t want them impacted by the filming,

that is the role of the PFS - to facilitate all filming requests.

And it’s paved the way for all police TV shows who are all

using a PFS today. 123

This was the police’s SOP ‘trump card’, technically their way of

maintaining police integrity in the face of filming imperatives, by

controlling our access to stories and information. From an editorial

point of view, having the PFS present at every shoot, watching the

clock and the behaviour of police, was going to pose its own set of

logistical difficulties.

Therefore, even with our access, parameters outlined in the SOPS

meant that we would have to come up with additional content and

more elements; otherwise we would not have a series. The real

question was, where would we find the extra elements, what would

they be, and how would they impact on what was pitched as a series

driven by real time actuality?

123 Ibid (2008)

79

3.3 Giving birth to a format: a working model beyond NSWPOL

Irrespective of the type of format, my philosophy has always been

that a good producer understands a story before trying to tell it. In a

series like MPU, which relies on unscripted observational actuality,

knowing the content elements - where the story will come from - is

essential. Understanding the content will establish if there are

enough story elements to sustain the format. Building the program

format, identifying and aligning the blocks, is partly a mathematical

exercise designed to provide drama for the audience, flexibility for

program makers, and brand longevity for the Network. Stack these

building blocks incorrectly and the foundations will crumble into a

scheduling, creative and editorial black hole. On the other hand,

spending time on the front end of program development, and the

‘back end’ of the series should be seamless. In our case, dealing

with the development of the ‘front end’, meant understanding fully

the impact the SOPS would have on program elements.

While the SOPS gave police the legal parameters to participate in

the series, they also restricted production in ways that made it

obvious we would have to find additional content, to supplement

NSW MPU actuality elements. On reflection, I consider that the key

SOP regulations that impacted creatively and logistically were the

following:

1. The four-day working week had the most damaging impact: ‘We

requested a four day week because we work an 8 day fortnight and

80

given the show was about the MPU we felt it best to work their

normal work schedule’.124

124 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview

This meant that we were filming four-fifths

of the time we had allocated in the schedule, or twenty percent less

than we had planned. It also meant that because we could only offer

a four-day week, we were restricted in our choice of crew. The

normal procedure is that crews will arrange a deal with a production

company for a long-term production, but would they arrange one for

a job that was a four-day week? What would they do on the fifth day

and, furthermore, if we needed them on that day, would they be

available?

2. The Police Filming Supervisor, whose role it was to determine if

we could shoot a story, under what circumstances, and where and

when we could shoot, potentially had an enormous impact on our

schedule. The PFS personnel mostly came from the media area

and, not being operational MPU officers, meant that they appeared

sometimes overly cautious, referring almost every decision back to

the SOPS. Compounding our problem was that the PFS role was a

‘revolving’ one. No sooner had one PFS begun to relax and swim

with the ‘television flow’, than they were replaced by a new,

uninitiated PFS. This meant we were back to a ‘work to SOP rule’

situation, looking to make up valuable time each day.

3. The seven-day rule: fearing a backlash from families who agreed

81

to appear on camera, when they realised their lives were going to be

splashed on television, the police insisted we allow these people

who signed up for the show, a seven-day ‘cooling off’ period to

withdraw their consent. As Calder points out:

NSWP have a moral obligation and or duty of care to families

and must, alongside the producer, consider each case before

it proceeds to broadcast. From the outset, we were

concerned that families in their time of stress might say, do or

sign a release they may later regret. Because the TV show

provided them more coverage than a news story, they would

come on board, desperate and looking for help. So we

wanted them to have a 7 day cooling off period’. 125

This rule meant that within seven days of signing, even after stories

had been edited, written and planned into programs, participants

could withdraw their consent. Without such consent, we could not

run a story. The reality is that police took their moral obligation very

seriously, and on occasion, even beyond seven days after the

signing of a release, police would ask us to pull or alter a story,

because a participant had had second thoughts. From a production

perspective, the seven-day window on releases was unworkable,

because this factor had enormous implications for an unplanned

shoot like MPU, that relied on actuality collected on-the-run, as its

primary source of content.

125 Ibid (2008)

82

4. A finite filming period meant that once we reached the completion

of scheduled filming, police seconded from other commands to the

MPU for filming would go back to their respective commands and

the regular MPU officers would begin rostered leave. Because of

this, extensions to scheduled filming were not possible.

5. The police right of review before programs went to air posed a

complex another editorial hurdle. The police Review Committee had

the power to: make ‘recommendations for amendments to episodes

as per their right of veto; approval of each episode before

submission to Network for broadcast; gather feedback from officers

and Commands involved in filming; and monitor privacy concerns’.

126

These five key restrictions meant that there was a real possibility

that we would not film enough content in the agreed schedule, and

there was a related risk that even completed stories could be pulled

at the last minute. Given this reality, I argued that programs needed

This right of review gave police a last minute opportunity to vet

stories as well as the context in which they were integrated into

programs. The SOPS stipulated that we had to listen to police

review comments. However, because of our tight production

schedule, we only became aware of police review comments very

close to delivery of completed programs. The police right of review

after edit, had the potential to become a scheduling disaster.

126 SOPS (2005:21) MPU Operational Orders, NSWPOL

83

just three stories and not the four that Nine was requesting. I

considered that in a commercial half hour program of 22 ½ minutes,

three stories would be enough. Any more stories would require an

editing style that would fragment the program too much, and make

our ‘story count’ even more difficult to achieve.

Although John McAvoy at Nine believed that four stories would give

the program a more vibrant feel, he compromised and requested we

begin a fourth story that would carry over from one program to the

next. He reflected that:

Hanging on the drama is nothing new – CA (Current Affair),

MPU (Missing Persons Unit), RPA (Royal Price Alfred) all do

it. It’s like a tease in News, if something big happens they

hold info off for the sports report at the back. The whole point

is to culminate at the end of the program when there is a

need for resolution and when the resolution is naturally there.

But the bites need to be long enough to give the audience a

feel for the story, that’s a key. 127

The production reality was that, in order to get the bites long enough

and intelligible enough in a program shot on the run, three stories

should be enough, with two resolving in one episode, the third

hanging over to the following week to give a dramatic hook to the

end of a program and bring viewers back the following week. Being

able to hang stories over multiple episodes also gave us more

content, because we did not have to chop a story extensively, to fit it

into one episode.

127 McAvoy, John (2008) Nine Head of Factual, Interview

84

While hanging stories over from one episode to the next sorted a

network issue, it posed problems for police. Inspector Amanda

Calder clarifies their point of view:

It’s important that if a person turns up in subsequent episodes

that they have signed a release before that part of the story

goes to air, because if they turn up they are no longer missing

and without a release can’t be on the program. 128

What Inspector Calder refers to is the one conundrum that I could

never work out. We made the program to find people, yet if we found

them, possibly due to the broadcast of the story, we were unable to

run the subsequent joyous instalments without the missing person’s

agreement. Calder sees it as a moral and privacy issue from the

police viewpoint. 129

Therefore, in an attempt to buy screen time and to make the show

even more relevant, I devised an end of show ‘promo’ that would

highlight three unsolved missing persons cases, from around the

country. This provided an opportunity to promote long-term cases

and, even more importantly, bought us an extra 45 seconds of

content. This interstitial gave us the flexibility to play with story

Morally I could see the police perspective, but

from a logistic and scheduling point of view, I felt that this was an

unnecessary restriction, yet another caveat that would impact

adversely on our story count.

128 Calder, Amanda (2008) NSWPOL PR, Interview 16 March 129 Ibid (2008)

85

content at the crucial dramatic end to each program.

We also began to look at doing more work with the Local Area

Commands (LAC’s) the general duties officers of NSWPOL who did

much of the leg work in missing persons’ cases. The LAC’s provided

extra colour and we were hoping they would be able to work on the

fifth day when the MPU were not available. However, this was not

possible, because without a PFS, who, like the MPU was scheduled

only on a four day a week roster, filming was impossible.

Next in our search for additional content, we looked to specialist field

investigators, such as detectives, search and rescue,

anthropologists and the Coroner. While all these groups were willing

to participate, they would only work under the regulations stipulated

in the SOPS, which dictated only working when a PFS was present.

The PFS was also the liaison between the production team and

families and friends of missing persons. Contact with families whose

devastating journey gave the program its emotional ‘glue’ and the

background to create strong story threads, occurred only under the

watchful eye of the PFS and only in the four-day weekly filming

window. These restrictions impacted on our ability to shoot the

whole story and capture the one element that every great story has,

progression.

86

Progression, in production parlance, is moving the personal into the

general sphere, making a story more complete by making it more

universal and relevant to a broader audience. When a story

progresses, it calls upon greater human capacity, generates great

change in characters’ lives and places them in greater jeopardy.130

Paul Kalina, from the Age newspaper, wrote about one of our

stories:

Losing a near and dear one is a tragedy. But when someone

vanishes it is doubly cruel. Is the person dead or alive? Are

they the victim of an accident, foul play, or misfortune? Were

they suicidal? Or have they opted out, to search for a better

life? Who knows?’ 131

Kalina’s statement identifies elements in our stories that could lead

to strong progression - the capacity for great change. However,

given the SOP restrictions, combined with the reality of not always

being able to be there to film the progressive milestones of each

story, capturing progression in our stories was going to be difficult.

Thus, a pivotal production question arose: what would we need to

counteract our lack of manpower on crucial filming days, where

stories unfolded on many fronts?

In the first instance, we needed to create an environment with

access to more content and control over what we chose to film. We

130 McKee, Robert (1999: 294) Story 131 Kalina, Paul (2007) Missing Presumed Loved ( Article, Feb) in The Age newspaper

87

needed to create an environment, where we could pick and choose

current stories on the bases of possible progression. Due to our

short filming week and other restrictions, this was not going to be

possible in New South Wales. Therefore, we had to consider police

commands in the other States. The overarching problem,

essentially, is that producing missing persons’ stories is far more

complicated than producing gardening stories. Issues of privacy, as

well as the pre-filming time needed to overcome internal policing

protocols, meant that filming current cases involving unfolding

actuality, was not going to be possible in other States.

The only non-NSW filming opportunities were historical or ‘cold

cases’. The ‘cold cases’ required ongoing publicity, they could be

researched and there was a degree of control over the way they

developed. Cold case files are often substantial and afford

interesting filming opportunities of masses of detailed information.

This can include photographs, letters, case notes, all collated by

police to facilitate early and ongoing investigation, and all readily

available. Cold cases were laced with desperate emotion of families

like Lynette Melbin’s mother and father, who have been waiting

thirty-five years for an answer to their daughter’s disappearance:

‘What we’re worried about now is that we’re getting old and we

might die before we find out what happened to Lynette’. 132

132 Melbin, (2005) MPU Series 1, Episode 7

88

Out of necessity, historical or cold cases, became part of the MPU

mix. They also became the ‘glue’ in the MPU equation that bound

segment to segment, with an emotion that all current stories did not

immediately evoke. However, cold cases did not develop or unfold

dramatically, as current cases did. They did not have the actuality of

the unpredictable search, or the urgent chase of a current case. In

effect, we felt that cold cases were not going to be dramatic enough

to sustain the pace needed in a prime time commercial slot. On the

other hand, they were controllable and their risk-free nature (no

privacy issues), was appealing to police commands in other States.

We also decided to use one more location element, not so much

because of its strong dramatic appeal, or out of necessity, but rather

for the ‘feel’ of immediacy it provided. Surveillance footage gave us

a sense of ‘being there’ and gave the material a heightened sense of

reality. As Jon Dovey notes:

The low grade video image has become the privileged form of

TV ‘truth telling’ signifying authenticity and an indexical

reproduction of the real world…a direct and transparent

correspondence between what is in front of the camera lens

and its taped representation. 133

While Dovey is referring to low-grade footage in general, his

comments are especially relevant to CCTV footage, which provides

a sense of immediacy to a story, while raising the possibility in the

viewers’ minds, that they themselves could also have been captured 133 Dovey, Jon (2000:55)

89

on one of these cameras. In a sense, because of this, CCTV

personalises the story for the viewer, without the viewer ever having

to experience the story, or having been to the televised location.

Once we had our elements, the final aspect of the development

puzzle was to transform the pieces into a whole program. Would

programs comprise discrete stories, running one after the other, or

would stories develop throughout the episode, and interlace such as

soap television?

As mentioned briefly before in this study, in 1994, I was asked to

develop Home Truths for ABC Television Documentaries and

Features. Because of schedule and budget constraints, this

observational series exploring the lives of Australian families needed

to be more manageable than traditional observational documentary.

It also had to be more dramatic, to hold a weekly primetime 8 p.m.

slot. Compounding our problems on Home Truths was the key

creative imperative, that participants shoot their own stories,

something Home Truths participant Jeff Lowrey, believes was

crucial to his participation: ‘That was the appeal, my story told from a

very different perspective, my own, how could I say no’. 134

134 Lowrey, Jeff (1994) Home Truths ABC TV, Participant

However, while Lowrey’s enthusiasm was a huge plus, getting

broadcast quality material from amateurs was effectively the real

task.

90

Therefore, back in 1994, in order to mitigate our exposure to the

vagaries of non-professionals shooting their own stories, and the

inconsistency of using the very first digital DV cameras in Australia, I

decided to use two stories in each program. Two families facing

similar issues, for example, single parenting, had their stories inter-

cut against each other.

This ‘two up’ style, which had not been tried with self-shot

observational documentary in Australia, proved to have some great

advantages over similar ‘one up’ programs from the United

Kingdom. However, one of the weaknesses of asking non-

professionals to shoot stories is that they rarely cover the beginning,

middle and end of a sequence, because they are untrained in

coverage or storytelling. Having two families in the same program

meant that there was a better chance of getting a complete

sequence. One family might begin a thought and the other family,

living with the same issue, might complete that thought. Also editing

one story juxtaposed against the other imbued the observational

documentary with a dramatic, soap opera or serial style.

Because actuality in MPU current stories is unplanned, producers

risked not being able to capture the whole story as it unfolded on its

many fronts. My solution to this problem, one similar to that

experienced in Home Truths, was to interlace the stories throughout

the program, using one story to build the drama in another, and

91

holding as much resolution and drama until the back end of the

program – as with any daytime soap opera or serial.

Even with all the above elements, we needed one more, a narrator,

to enable us to bridge information holes, and move the narrative and

drama forward.

Finally, with the elements in place, MPU was shaping up as

something more than an observational series. My producers began

wondering what they had signed up for. MPU producer Meni

Caroutas observed:

I thought we would be making a ‘reality’ program, in so much

as we would follow the daily working lives of police attached

to the MPU. My impression was that we would capture each

moment of the police journey, from the time they received a

report of a missing person, to the final conclusion. 135

However, what he actually found was a hybrid form that built its

distinctive type of narrative, from actuality shot in an observational

style, to mimic reality. In the same way as any folktale, or any soap

opera or sitcom, MPU had captivating tales and fantastic heroes.

However, because it was made to a price and a fast turn-around,

non-observational deadline, MPU was a new genre of storytelling, a

complex elemental program, needing a variety of skill sets, to lace

the elements and ‘make it fly’.

135 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

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The central question was: who was going to be able to make MPU,

and what skills sets were needed to combine the elements

successfully, so that the end result looked like a seamless

observational series?

3.4 Production style and story overview:

MPU is about real people and not fictional characters. It is

unscripted in the first instance, and, arguably, does not resemble the

conventional drama or reality-type programs normally seen on

television. The creative practice section of this thesis includes

examples of the programme, produced as part of this Masters (see

attached).

From the first report of a missing person, to the door knock that

brings news to a devastated family, MPU provides a front row seat

in an arena of compelling human drama, a real life journey that plays

out daily in homes across the nation.

It is argued here that the strength of the series lies in the

production’s ability to access the unique world of the MPU, their

specialist support groups, the Coroner, the families and friends of

missing persons, personal photographs, home videos and

surveillance footage. The degree of access to these elements

determines the ‘feel’ of the series.

93

MPU is not a covert operation shot by hidden crews. The old saying

that ‘if the shot isn’t good enough, it’s because you ain’t close

enough’, probably rings true here. The MPU ‘feel’ is based on

unprecedented access, and real access is best represented on the

screen using a widish lens, shot close, with a very intimate feel, that

demonstrates the filmmaker is in the thick of the story.

Scene setters are essential. However, MPU cameras need to be

amongst the actuality as it unfolds, either in the MPU, with the

coroner in their forensic lab, investigating in the field, or feeling the

emotion with our families. A single camera, hand held and close, is

the key to feeling the emotion and the reality of MPU. Being there at

the start of a story is vital, as one of the strong dramatic elements of

investigation is the altering emotional state of players as the

narrative unfolds.

While MPU is not drama, at the same time it is highly dramatic. It is

not infotainment, yet it is laced with ‘high tech’ forensic investigation.

It is about real people who have something authentic to tell us and

something new and exciting to show us. Whether it is procedural

actuality from the MPU, or an emotive cry for help from relatives, the

marriage between these two realities creates the MPU drama. Like

any great dramatic chase or journey, there is always a beginning,

middle and an end. Being there for these milestones is the key to

developing the MPU narrative.

Hence, for these reasons, it was important to avoid drama

94

reconstruction. The emotion of raw material captured in real time,

showing the MPU’s skill, frustration or joy and the family’s desperate

attempts to keep hope alive, became the ‘glue’ for MPU and the

driving heart of the series. However, even though there are over

30,000 cases reported each year, choosing the cases that work best

for television, those with progressive elements that would develop in

our shooting timeframe, proved the production team’s greatest

challenge.

The Nine Network agreed that three stories should be included in

each half hour program. This meant we needed 33 cases for the 11

half hour episodes in Series One. While this sounds like an easy

task over a 26 week shooting period, the rate of family drop-off,

along with issues of privacy, made this a tall order.

Initially, the concept was based around current stories, cases just

reported. Even though one missing case is reported every 18

minutes in Australia, persuading distressed families to agree to be

filmed, was not always easy.

Therefore, the process for current case reporting developed as

follows: cases were reported to police, entered onto a computer

database, and downloaded by the MPU the following morning. The

PFS and our producer would look over cases and decide on those

worth pursuing. Families of missing people were then called to

determine if they wanted to be involved in filming. If they did, we

would call them again, with our camera rolling and begin their story.

While about half of our families were willing to participate, we quickly

95

realised our production schedule would restrict our ability to produce

the number of current stories required to make the series. As

mentioned, to increase our number of possible stories, we had to

include non-current or cold cases devoid of the drama of current

case searches. Also as previously discussed, the unfolding search

was the key to creating the MPU hanging drama style. To overcome

the tired feeling of cold cases, we needed a ‘fresh hook’. The need

for this hook reduced the thousands of cold cases at our disposal, to

only a few.

Another political dilemma was that NSWPOL became keen to film

more cold cases, because these cases needed the publicity, were

more controllable, and families who were already over their initial

shock were more willing to be involved. Not wanting NSWPOL to

take the easy option and ask us to film more cold cases, as

producer, I had to involve other States in cold case filming.

While the cost of development required to film current cases in

states other than New South Wales was prohibitive, Victorian Police

were agreeable to filming a couple of more manageable cold cases,

that could be planned and filmed quickly, in just a few days.

Therefore, our program was shaping up to include current cases

interspersed with the odd cold case, with a more immediate hook,

such as a new search or a new clue, to provide a feeling of

currency.

96

Our inability to construct closure to current cases also posed a

problem, especially if the case stretched over a number of episodes.

This led to the development of a closure device, the personal plea.

The plea made sense in a cold case that was newly activated, with

no movement or information flow for some time. However, asking a

family to do a plea in a current case that may not air for some time,

seemed both insensitive and almost irrelevant, compounding our

already difficult problem of persuading families to agree to film their

stories. This concerned producer Meni Caroutas:

A big difficulty in trying to get a family on board, was that the

story we were asking them to do, would not see the light of

day for weeks or months. Therefore it was hard to say to a

family, especially on current cases, that our story would be

shown straight away, leading to their loved one being found.

There was no real advantage to the family. 136

We rationalised that the tangible benefit to the family was that

something was being done, and that the eventual broadcast was

better than no publicity at all.

Pleas also provided a strong emotional closure to episodes and

continuing stories. Our initial pleas were made on cold cases.

However, as soon as we heard one and felt the emotional impact,

we knew that pleas had to be made for all cases. Undoubtedly,

pleas made great television, so they would remain.

136 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

97

We now had the elements and the style with which to construct our

new format. The question was how would it look and what skill sets

were required to make it happen?

3.5 Skills Overview: Building a team that works

I interviewed and hired a number of staff in key creative areas,

before I found those with the right combination of storytelling skills to

stitch together all the MPU elements.

MPU is a particular type of program that needs a person with a

specific mindset. Peter Abbott, former Executive Producer of Big

Brother, believes a person’s interest in the material is crucial:

People end up making programs like themselves. That’s why

I always want to know a person’s next job, what do they want

to make after this job, it tells me what they want to do and

does this job logically fit onto that path or is it just a job.

Because I don’t think you can do it intellectually – you can

use your skills or techniques but some where it wouldn’t

work.’ 137

Peter Abbott’s view is valid, up to a point. A person needs the right

attitude, but without the right skill set, no amount of attitude will work

in fast turn-around TV:

There are people who are good at acquisition and those who

are good at process. On Big Brother we had people who did

one or the other and they wanted to have a go at the other, 137 Abbott, Peter (2007) Executive Producer Big Brother, Interview

98

but it became quickly obvious that they were only good at one

or the other. So some were good at collecting the material –

picking up on the emotions as they happened, and others

who were good at synthesising these and put the show

together in an interesting way’. 138

Importantly, MPU field producers were not going to hand their work

over to edit producers. Therefore, putting together a team

comprising people with the right mindset and skill set, who were

good at both field and post, was going to be another important factor

in determining the level of MPU success.

In my experience, many practitioners who choose at one time or

another to work in television, believe it will be an easy and regular

filmmaking job, with a weekly income. There is also a perception

that an MPU-type program on television will primarily be driven by

technology; someone presses buttons in the field and then someone

constructs it in post-production. Nothing is further from the truth in

practice. Never have storytelling skills been more crucial than in

today’s fast turn-around digital television environment.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns sums up this digital dilemma

where the technological ‘tail’ seems sometimes to wag the dog:

I think we’ve lost touch with story narrative, I don’t mean in

the feature film way, but I mean, just our ability to follow

stories. And we still have to realise that this is a process that

138 Ibid (2007) Interview

99

involves discrimination, in the best sense of that word, that

we need to be able to choose. 139

Burns’ view was not shared by many who applied to work on MPU;

their perception tended to be that we were making an observational

reality show and that we would simply roll on everything into post-

production. The truth is, as much as we were making an

observational type program, it was also investigative; unless

producers made articulate choices in the field, we were not going to

capture the investigative element, or make deadlines. As with Nick

Broomfield’s documentaries, we had to find our own balance

between observation, investigation and the creative treatment:

So many documentaries you see on television they’re just like

a studio interview. It’s all to do with the person giving

information. It’s not to do with who that person is and their

lives, and I always think that’s such a waste. Why not just

write an article?’140

Moreover, producers had to be aware of all the elements: unfolding

story (observational), writing in an out of stand ups (current affairs),

action overlay and colour moments (magazine), the dramatic

overlap (daytime soap). .

While MPU is all about information flow, we needed to move away

from the standard medium-close-up piece to camera and overlay

style. In our tight schedule, we could not rely totally on slow

139 Burns, Ken (2002:89) 140 Broomfield Nick, (2002:132)

100

developing, inconclusive and hard to manage observational footage.

We were inter-cutting stories and needed information to be

presented succinctly, and for stories to progress in an investigative

fashion. Like Nick Broomfield, I chose to move talent forward in a

story sense wherever possible, ‘I actually really try never to use the

same interview…to go back to it, because I feel that you’ve kind of

gone

backwards …’. 141

We did capture the action in the way of an observational

documentary, but I think we also used the ‘CAF’ (Current

Affairs) style of telling a story. Sometimes the natural

progression of things doesn’t tell the story very well, so there

were occasions where sequences were ‘set up’. A phone call

in the office, a grab from a cop etc to link and explain things

that had happened. But overall the essence of what was done

was accurate and true.

Where possible we adhered to this philosophy

and chose not to return to the same location, unless the story

dictated it. However, unlike Broomfield, we did not have months to

spend filming stories. Our schedule dictated we needed at least a

story every week. Given that our current stories were not

researched, and had the potential to unfold on many fronts

simultaneously, it was always going to be a challenge to cover

stories in a purely observational style. Our producers needed

investigative current affairs skills to discover the narrative, and move

it quickly from one element to the next, in the right direction:

142

141 Ibid (2002:133) 142 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

101

Because of the pace needed to sustain a prime time commercial

slot, MPU producers needed, in a subtle way, to pick and direct

information delivery, to help the story along. This required a deft

story sense, a skill often developed from prior, non-television

experience:

My police background allowed me quickly to build up a

rapport and trust with the police, which I believe is vital to

being successful. My current affairs background made me

conscious of all the elements required to put a segment

together, but overall the style of storytelling in MPU was

different to anything I have ever done, and the new skill set I

acquired made me a much better storyteller. 143

Producer Meni Caroutas is very special; because of his police

background, he was quickly able to come to grips with police

protocols. However, it is the storytelling skills that he and Justine

Ford brought with them from their News and Current Affairs days,

which were most useful to develop and focus MPU stories quickly.

Nevertheless, Justine Ford, a very experienced producer, found the

transition testing:

I wouldn’t say I had all the skill sets to direct and produce

MPU stories although having a journalistic background did

help enormously. I learnt that constructing a current affairs

story is significantly different to constructing an observational

documentary piece with narration. It was exciting to learn how

a story could be enhanced by allowing it to ‘breathe’ through

143 Ibid (2008)

102

expansion of actuality and by using minimal, but well

considered, voiceover. 144

Thus, it is this ability to capture story on the run and to let it breathe

in the edit, so to speak, which gave MPU its distinctive style.

As Justine points out, the most important skill that producers

needed, was an ability to write ‘in their heads’ on the run:

I think writing skills are enormously important on a show like

this and I am glad that I studied journalism and worked in the

fast paced world of news and current affairs where it is

important to write a lot – and fast! In addition, having worked

with police on shows such as Australia’s Most Wanted meant

that I had an understanding of police operations and culture,

and my work on observational documentaries (without

voiceover) like Border Security and RPA gave me an

understanding of the way ‘real life’ stories unfold.145

Writing on a show like MPU often happens in the experienced

producer’s head while filming. Without the skill to do this, the post-

production process would take too long, because the field elements

required to construct the story may have been missed. This ability to

construct narrative, by covering actuality that moves the narrative

forward, was crucial, especially given that we were never going to

be able to cover every developing element of the story. The key is to

choose a story construction that is achievable, and that also looks

natural.

144 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview 145 Ibid (2008)

103

A further requirement for producers was a high level of maturity.

Very often they were working without complete permissions in areas

that could become litigious. However, this, as Nick Broomfield

observes, is what can result in unexpected, observational ‘gold’: ‘I

really don’t have anything. I guess it adds something. It’s not

necessarily a very comfortable way to work, but I do think it

produces something bigger than the imagination’. 146

Indeed, what our team had to consider was that, while we were

starting with nothing more than a report, we were producing a series

with many facets and information holes; yet the whole program had

to look seamless. The style involved no lighting, no angles that

‘screamed’ artistic elegance, and no dissolves. In essence, we were

producing an observational program with a strong investigative

narrative, designed on the fly and interlaced in post-production.

In this process, our editors became the key to shaping the final

product:

When I first came on I was as an assistant editor and at that

time I was more preoccupied with being able to complete all

the technical aspects of editing rather than worrying about

what type of program it was. At that point it was about fulfilling

a technical/operational skill set on a program, whatever the

program. And when I had the opportunity to change focus

beyond that I was already involved and aware of what the

146 Broomfield Nick, (2002:134)

104

program was, although I certainty under-estimated the

complexity of it.147

The complexity that MPU senior editor, Marcos Moro, refers to in

this quote, is the combination of skill sets required to edit MPU:

I think to be able to see a story for what it’s worth and to be

able to get that across as straight forward as possible. To be

able to peel it back and get out what emotions are most

common for all of us. What do we want to get out of this

scene? Sometimes it’s information. Dave was last seen here

buying blah, blah. Sometimes it’s just that Dave is missing

and his mum wants him back home. You need to be able to

get that across as simply as possible.148

Unlike many fast turn-around television programs that use discrete

field producers, writers and editors, who all work to a third party

script, MPU works to a ‘layer cake’ approach and needs story

editors who can cut editorially. The positive aspect of allowing

producers to edit their own stories is that they gain an intimate

perspective. Alternatively, the ‘downside’ is that they can become

too close to their own work, and lose the story in their passion. The

‘layer cake’ approach was designed to give the program different

layers of input to safeguard against misdirected focus, while

maintaining the field producers’ input. This method required editors

with an opinion and a strong story sense, who could argue with

producers at a level that moves story forward.

147 Moro, Marcos (2008) MPU Editor, Interview 148 Ibid (2008)

105

Crucial to the ‘layer cake’ is the cameraman. Because the show

needed an observational feel, we had to shoot hand-held and the

cameramen had to be physically strong. They also needed an

editor’s eye in order to see the story develop, follow the action and

shoot story cutaways without direction. Long observational

monologues would not work on prime time commercial TV, therefore

story cutaways, to heighten the drama and compress or extend the

main narrative in post, were critical to achieving the fast dramatic

feel of MPU.

Although many camera people will attest that they can cover this

type of unfolding actuality, what is particularly required is the special

camera person who knows when to drop out of one shot and move

to another. This means hiring camera people who are experienced

enough to listen to and feel the information, and confident enough to

know that they have captured what is needed, then move on to the

next sequence.

Comparatively speaking, in relation to observational-type programs

generally, MPU was made on a shoestring, with a very small team.

This made it even more critical that the team knew what was

demanded by the stylistic and production imperatives. The following

section contains a thumbnail summary of the skills required by each

member of the team:

106

Executive Producer: requires good editorial skills with journalistic

ability, fast turn-around and long form experience, a sense of story

and the ability to write and craft the program, away from the obvious

current affairs or observational feel.

Series Producer: needs journalistic and story skills to identify

episode arcs and the ability to write draft narrative quickly.

Production Manager: must have fast turn-around and long form

experience and an ability not to panic when the stories dry up.

Production Coordinator: requires extensive experience in managing

changing shoots and fast turn-around edit situations.

Producer/Director: Field and post experience required with strong

people, visual and story skills and the ability to construct story on the

fly. An understanding of legal aspects of filming (defamation, privacy

etc) is essential. Their foresight and relationship with the players is

vital. They need to be observer and confidant, creative and

managerial, while they follow action and cajole story. Above all, they

need to know and recognise the elements that make an effective

story, as it unfolds on varying fronts.

Associate Producer: They research and produce the historical

stories and if required work with the editors to complete stories while

producers are still in the field. Ideally they are able to pick up a crew

or DV camera to film when required. They are responsible for

keeping abreast of stories and the comings and goings of police,

107

investigators and families. AP’s will receive a daily editorial update

on the shoot, pick ups and advice on story development.

Camera: the camera operator will need to be experienced in

following a developing story without a script. They need to be able to

listen to unfolding story and capture the same, including all actuality

on the fly. Overlay and cutaways are essential, as compression and

expansion are key elements of the format. Being in good health is

vital as the shooting is almost all hand held.

Sound: Extensive experience in location sound recording, in a

variety of environments and being able to work effectively with a

boom, to cover a wide area of impromptu dialogue.

Editor: Needs good storytelling skills and a proven track record of

being able to identify and cut unscripted stories on their own. They

need fast turn-around current affairs and/ or magazine type

experience, but extensive experience in creating long form story arc

skills is also crucial.

3.6 Story type and filming overview:

On MPU a variety of natural filming opportunities presented

themselves from first report, through to closure. The style of MPU

dictates the crew needs to be present at as many of these

milestones as possible.

108

Notwithstanding this, to think that the observational story always

moves forward without questioning, or prompting from the producer,

is hopeful at best. MPU producer(s) needed the vision & experience

to manage the following: see the story unfold; decide on the story

that’s worth following; know how to prompt and encourage the action

to facilitate useable content and coverage; and finally, be able to

script story structure on the run.

For instance, it was important that producers did not let the moment

disappear for some unworkable, altruistic independent ethic. The

medium of television works well when the action is on screen, being

covered as it evolves, with a narrative that is structured, compressed

or stretched, to move the story forward.

Many factors would impact on our ability to capture our stories;

everything from time, weather, police protocols, to a family’s

willingness to give precious, extra input. It was the producer’s role to

gauge the level of ‘gettability’ and plan the collection of elements

accordingly. This process, documented here, required producers

with a great deal of experience at covering and choosing the

actuality moments needed to construct the narrative. Experience in

the evolving nature of observational documentary was crucial,

otherwise producers would become ‘bogged down’ by the weight of

the material, or become despondent by the seemingly loose

structure of the unfolding story.

109

Without the ability to research our current stories, the producers did

not experience the task of finding a direction and structure as easy:

I tried to choose stories that I thought were different to the run

of the mill. If I picked a teenage run-away, I wanted it to have

a different element to it: danger for the MP, a hard luck

upbringing, etc or something that would give the MP

sympathy from the viewers. I just get a ‘feeling’ about a story.

I chose a number of stories where the NOK (next of kin) could

not be contacted, which would usually kill a story, but I had a

gut feeling, and my instincts were often proved right. I also

tried to pick stories were I thought the investigation process

would be extensive, giving us a longer story with many

elements. 149

Producers with news and current affairs skills did best when making

stories on the fly’’, and when dealing with issues of privacy and

possible defamation:

I just make sure I don’t blatantly break the law when on the

road, and it’s pretty hard to do when you’re surrounded by

cops. Privacy is an issue when canvassing because it’s

taking place in public places, but this is overcome quickly with

consent forms etc. I don’t think defamation is a real issue, but

when it is, it’s a job for legals to sort out. 150

While this may seem a relaxed approach from producer Meni

Caroutas, in reality, dealing with issues of privacy and defamation

was a constant hurdle our field crews had to overcome.

149 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview 150 Ibid ( 2008) Interview

110

Early in the filming process, it was important to recognise factors

such as where a story was heading, what elements were required,

how achievable are they, and how long it would take to get them.

Not all stories had an immediately recognisable beginning, middle

and end, but they were stories nevertheless. They had emotion,

character development and a resolution of sorts, in the form of a

plea to the viewer – an emotional call for help.

The way a story plays out in the field has to be controlled, while

simultaneously letting the actuality unfold. Producers needed the

experience to see the elements of a beginning to their story evolving

in front of them: the character development, the realization of the

tragedy, a new lead or a cry for help. These are all signature

elements that could be used to start a story. Once we had a

beginning, we needed to identify the potential middle of the arc,

which could involve the new development, the new lead, or new

characters who move the story forward. The end of the story may be

a resolve to the new leads, the family’s growing disappointment or

elation, the frustration or joy from police, or a plea. The strength of

these elements helped determine story duration and whether or not

the beginning, middle and end, played out in one, two or more

episodes. Finally, the duration of a story was governed not only by

its evolving nature, but also by its emotional impact.

111

3.7 Filming specifics

It was important not to forget that the police and the production

house were joint stakeholders in the project. Persuading the police

to trust the production house, to the point where they allow the

natural flow of filming to continue, on the basis that all the unwanted,

unworkable sections can be edited out later, was one of the crucial

elements of the shoot.

The first aspect this researcher discovered about filming with police

is that, fundamentally, police have a job to do. Filming is ancillary to

that job, but on the other hand, we were filming the job. Justine

Ford remembers: ‘The first time I watched police track down a

missing person, I was amazed!’ 151

An ability to assess what makes a suitable story; an

understanding of how to work within police culture or a

willingness to learn; an ability to express genuine sympathy to

As Justine found out, the most

interesting footage is of police in the line of duty, searching for clues

and talking with families. Police have a reputation to uphold and

need to be seen to be doing their job, according to regulations.

Therefore, the most difficult filming scenario is, ironically, when the

actuality becomes, in a sense, too real, too emotional, or too

dangerous. However, these times are also the most exciting,

requiring a deft touch from producers who must demonstrate a

comprehensive skill set, and in particular:

151 Ford, Justine ( 2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

112

the families of missing people; interviewing skills; a sound

knowledge of shots required, framing, show style, writing

skills (and) an eye to detail to ensure accuracy. 152

These skills enable the program to be shot in a flowing style that

keeps the production on schedule and, more importantly, allow

police work to continue throughout the filming process. Stopping and

starting action, or getting police to repeat action or dialogue might be

required; however if this is done too often, the result may be that the

police feel either uncomfortable and/or that they do not have the

requisite talent to do this. The police view is that they know about

policing and what they deliver to camera, is ‘real policing’. Therefore,

a flowing filming style, using a hand held camera and no lighting, will

make police feel as if they are not being set up. Hopefully this will

encourage them to feel part of the moment, and not worry about the

technical aspects of filming, or what they are saying and doing.

However, the reality is that any prime time program on a commercial

network requires pacing and compression, and producers on MPU

(under the guidance of myself as series producer) had to capture the

crucial elements to enable this construction to occur in the edit. This

meant that the action overlay required to extend or compress

sequences, needed to be filmed on the run. Sufficient action overlay

enabled us to use patch up voiceover (VO), recorded after the

actuality, instead of going for a second action take during filming.

152 Ibid ( 2008)

113

Recording a field VO on the run does not slow police work in the

same way as a second or third take might. Capturing extra VO to

make more of the police’s ‘key statements’ is crucial to delivering a

show like MPU with its strong information feel and public message.

The pivot to all this is building trust:

Trust is absolutely integral. It is essential that officers can

trust producers with sensitive information. This is a key way

to forge a solid relationship with on-camera police and it’s of

enormous benefit to the filming process. 153

Reminding police of the community-minded imperative of the

program was crucial throughout, in order to achieve the best result,

in what for officers is a new and difficult role, being the cop on

television.

Reinforcing positive aspects during filming is crucial and that is why

the second take, special close-up or voice recording, are only ever

done to punctuate an already important point police have made, or

to translate the complex language of policing, into lay terms. Experts

and police, in particular, understand a request couched in this way.

The real point here is that, because police are trained to be curious,

too many retakes or alternative versions may have them thinking

about the various possibilities of being misrepresented:

Police are by nature suspicious of the media and with good

reason. Getting them to allow themselves to be filmed, and in

153 Ibid (2008)

114

the course of that, putting their actions under intense scrutiny

was difficult. 154

Therefore, keeping coverage simple and flowing became a key

scheduling and psychological imperative of the MPU production

style. Filming with families is another crucial element and one that

delivers the emotional ‘glue’ that binds MPU programs, for the

reasons people go missing are varied:

I learnt that up to 40 people can be reported missing every

day in New South Wales alone and they come from all walks

of life: teenagers, dementia sufferers, absconders from

mental health facilities, missing bushwalkers…the list goes

on. So it made sense that there would often be cases to film

and that many of them would have happy endings. So I have

been privileged to produce many stories that have featured

dramatic and inspiring elements as well as excellent police

work. 155

However, what producer Justine Ford also learnt, was that the

investigation only begins after police meet families, as this will often

reveal significant, telling signs as to why their loved one actually

disappeared. For example, a husband may ask police to investigate

the disappearance of his wife, provide background information, and

agree to film. Police may find the wife, who then provides a

completely different story of life with a wife basher. This happened to

the production team on one occasion and once the wife was found

and her story recorded, the husband revoked his consent, fearing

154 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview 155 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

115

that his wife’s story would discredit him. Without his consent, we

could not run the story.

The most difficult aspect of filming with families is that we are asking

them to become involved with production at the most emotional and

traumatic moment of their lives, that is, when dealing with the loss of

a loved one. Compounding the problems of working with families is

the fact that any interview or plea they make will not be broadcast

that evening on the news, where it might bring about some

immediate good, but months later as part of a documentary series.

Our producers needed the skill to convince families that filming was

an opportunity to provide police with information, to assist what

could be a ‘long term’ police investigation. This is why the plea was

important:

I tried to overcome this by telling them that their story might

impact on other families, and stop others from going through

the turmoil they were experiencing. Many families were also

reluctant to air their personal business on television, so I tried

to explain that we were not about making judgments that we

just wanted to show the police at work. 156

Hence the program represented an important opportunity,

irrespective of the delayed broadcast (we never misrepresented

ourselves a daily show) to reach their loved ones, or someone who

knew their whereabouts.

156 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

116

To facilitate this fast turn-around style, we shot with a small three-

person crew (producer, camera and sound). We used a Digi

Betacam and shot supplementary DV footage when required. We

filmed everything hand held, even interviews in order to create a

very immediate feel and so as not to slow police procedure and not

frighten families with lots of gear. Tripods were used sparingly and

mainly for forensic-type work or pans. Lights were never used.

The audio plan was to capture actuality sound as it happened.

Sound was recorded mainly on boom, as this proved to be the most

effective way of moving around a room full of people. Radio

microphones were only used when required, and if time permitted.

Generally the MPU case officer wore a radio microphone, but all key

audio was, more often than not, recorded using the boom.

The following chapter will elaborate further on the post-production

aspects of Missing Persons Unit.

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Chapter 4: Missing Persons Unit Post Production

I don’t think you ever have a different story in the editing

room. When you’re out in the field, if you don’t get the

material that tells the story, no matter what you do in the

editing room you can’t put it together to say something. And I

think when you’re in the field you see different themes

emerging, different stories being told. And I think in the

editing room you see strong scenes that take you to certain

places and how things start to connect.

Barbara Kopple, Documentary

Filmmakers Speak

The editing process always has a crucial impact on a program, and

never more than when weaving a multitude of elements, such as on

MPU. As one critic observed:

It is in the editing room that many directors find their greatest

challenge and fulfillment. It is in the editing room that

documentary unlike story-board based fiction film, is more

often than not conceived, structured and born. 157

While this is a valid point, in a fast turn-around show like MPU, the

editing schedule is, by necessity, very rapid. MPU comprises

observational content that needs to be woven into a tight soap like

program format written to commercial breaks. The post-production

period consists of story offline, compile and audio sweetening. The

general rule is that we allowed two and a half day’s offline per story,

a week to compile (re-cut and write) and one day audio sweetening,

157 Lier, Miryam van (1994:3)

118

plus two hours for the mix and re-stripe. When the show extended

to one hour for Series Two, we had an extra, one-and-a-half days in

offline and an extra day at audio, with compile remaining the same.

This meant that our one hour ‘obs-doc’ style programs were

completed in three weeks.

This is a very fast turn-around for an observational type of program

that is laced with strong narrative. One hidden danger of editing so

quickly is that funding bodies and networks expect the process to

happen faster each time. Evidently, in factual programming, that is

not always an easy call. While drama editors spend their time in the

suite finessing cuts and trying to heighten the scripted drama,

factual editors have to find a structure and the drama, and this

layered process takes time and money.

Factual editors have the additional task of creating a sense of ‘being

there’ for the audience, and of shaping the material in a way that

develops the argument:

[This] first approach will tend to prevail in certain type of

observational documentaries…With the second which is

sometimes referred to as expressive or constructivist editing,

the intention is more to align or combine images and sound

sequences in such a way that meanings emerge more

through the contrasts, echoes and reverberations between

shots. 158

158 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:206)

119

I do not consider that the two approaches Kilborn and Izod refer to

above are necessarily mutually exclusive. On MPU, the editors

needed to create a sense of immediacy, of being there, and also to

construct images that contrasted, especially when interlacing

stories. The aim for our editors was to edit to our style and create a

varied rhythm and pace that became signature to the program. This

developed into another debate as to what extent the finished

program was ‘real’ or a representation of reality. To keep it more at

the so-called ‘real’ end of the spectrum, I decided against graphic

elements or frame manipulation in the body of the program. Where

possible the focus remained simply on the subject and the story.

Our edit process was two fold - offline and compile. The main task in

offline is to tell clear stories, segmented with a hook to a dramatic

tease. At the compile, the segments from three stories are woven in

a soap opera style, to reach a dramatic finale both at commercial

breaks, and again at the close of the program, and if needed, to

carry the plot across programs.

Story segments were between 35 seconds and 1’30’ long. Because

program segments were relatively short, five to seven and a half

minutes, we only inter-cut two stories against each other. Exceptions

occurred sometimes at the end of the last segment, where an

update may occur on a third story.

To obtain this intricately woven soap opera style without a pre-shoot

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script is not easy in post production, especially on a tight schedule.

Therefore our first decision was to build in-house edit suites to give

us more out-of-schedule hours viewing and edit time.

4.1 Offline Edit

One of the earliest decisions we made was to buy rather than hire

edit suites. With the reduction in cost of non-linear edit packages we

were able to purchase Final Cut Pro (FCP) suites for offline. This

was important to John Gregory, the CEO of Freehand, who

observes: ‘The first driving factor to putting suites in was cost, but

soon we realised the positives to the project with respect to

crafting…and it makes the editors a part of the whole collaborative

process’. 159

159 Gregory John (2007) CEO Freehand, Interview

John Gregory refers here to the advantage which

accessibility provides to the schedule and knowledge transfer.

Having our own suites in the office made it possible for producers to

view their cuts after standard working hours, and prepare changes

for editors. This saved a great deal of time. Moreover, it meant that

editors were around for production meetings and could have an

input into field production decisions. Hence, importantly, our editors

felt integral to the whole creative process.

Our edit stream also had field producers working in the suite with

editors. As the positive aspect of this is that producers know their

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material best, editors do not have to spend as much time wading

through rushes to find the story:

I would hate to not write and edit my own stories. The MPU

approach works because no one knows a story better than

the person who has produced it. Often there is information

about a case that is not evident in any of the rushes, but it

could prove integral to a case. In terms of factual accuracy, I

think you put that at risk, when someone other than the

person who has shot the story, tries to compile it.160

The other benefit is that producers have both the responsibility and

the immediate access to see their stories through to completion.

Those producers with a strong current affairs or news background

can be influenced at times, by a strong story editor to alter their

news style to a more long form storytelling approach:

I’m a big fan of the layer cake. Seeing the evolution of my

stories has taught me a lot, and made me a better storyteller. 161

The final acknowledged benefit of having producers in the edit suite,

in a fast turn-around environment, is summed up by producer /

director Justine Ford: ‘In my view the MPU approach – to be

involved in the story from shoot to edit – is the best approach. It

forces the producer to think about story arc in the field which

enables him or her to craft a better story in the edit suite’. 162

160 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

Often

with flow systems that require producers to hand over fieldwork, they

161 Ibid (2008) 162 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

122

may not take as much care, because they do not see upfront the

problems the editor is having constructing their work. Giving them

the responsibility for finishing their own work proved incredibly

valuable during the MPU production process.

Nevertheless, while many producer directors with journalistic

backgrounds share Justine’s view, there is a negative aspect that

emerges in having producers in the edit suite after hours looking at

their material. Marcos Moro, the MPU senior editor on Series 2 and

3, believes producers in the edit suite can be distracting:

it is a great way to work having the producer who shot it in

the edit being able to guide you knowing the story from start

to finish; but I also think it may be an indulgence because

being a producer in the field is a totally different skill set to

being a producer in the suite, and sometimes I think the

producers may be blinded by what they know happened and

what needs to be known for the story to work’. 163

Marcos feels, as many editors do, that field producers often become

too attached to their footage, and want to try this and that, over and

over again. To make matters worse, non linear edit systems

facilitate a potentially endless ‘trial and see’ process that, at the end

of the day, may result in very little edited screen time, because the

producer has been trying different versions of the same sequence all

day. In this situation, a strong series producer who works like a sub-

editor in a print environment, becomes invaluable.

163 Moro Marcos (008) MPU Editor, Interview

123

To counteract this, editors on MPU needed an ability to see the

‘bigger picture’ and quickly wade through story elements, both on

their own and especially with a dogmatic producer in the suite. They

needed the experience and the confidence to help the producer

choose quickly at the slab down stage, to move the story forward.

Overall, MPU editors required genuine storytelling skills. An ability to

cut action is not enough on MPU, which is more than just an

observational series.

Experience in seeing and constructing story elements – beginning,

middle and end – very quickly, is essential. Also important is

appropriate experience in dealing with large quantities of

observational content, at a fast pace. The offline process is very

structured. Editors slab stories very quickly, leaving black holes for

voiceover, in between synchronized grabs without overlay. Stories

are broken into segments, up to one and a half minutes long,

finishing with a hook. The segments are laid into a story time-line,

with black in between each story segment. A story with seven to

nine segments will generally run through a program, where shorter

stories might only run across a couple of breaks.

As demonstrated in this study, the key to strong MPU stories is

strong characters, interesting police work and powerful, authentic

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emotion:

Actually it’s surprising to me how uniform the stories are.

They seem to have all the same elements to them mostly. 164

The aim during offline is to find such a balance, or as Marcos Moro

defines it, a uniformity between each story, through the use of

recurring elements within each story. It is also important to extend

the story resolution out as far as possible and over multiple breaks.

Not all designed breaks and teasers will play out as a producer

envisages, because programs take on a new life in the edit and

transform again during the compile, which is where story arcs

become program arcs.

4.2 Compile Edit

The MPU ‘compile’ is the place where stories are turned into

programs. Like stories that need strong characters, interesting police

investigation and emotion, programs also require a number of

elements to make them work. Compile is where the programs are

given their emotion, drama and gravitas. This is the part of the

process where the distinct shape of each program is designed and

the overall emotional tone of the series is defined.

Each MPU program needs a policing story, an emotional story and a

strong ‘thread’ story that runs through the program and possibly into

164 Ibid (2008)

125

the next, binding all the stories. Sometimes all three of these

elements can be found within the one story. However, finding a

stylistic difference between stories was the key to giving a program

both texture and the emotional and dramatic peaks and troughs,

helping to make the overarching effect more dynamic.

Unlike some compiles where the process is simply a matter of

‘topping and tailing’ segments, the MPU compile is really a long form

edit that gives the program its documentary feel, shaping the rhythm

to the specified network format. This re-editing sometimes frustrated

our editors:

When I was story cutting, I found it frustrating as I didn’t

understand why certain parts that I thought worked were

changed; but having now been involved further along the line

I realise that although stuff works it may not work in the

greater scheme of things and needs to be sacrificed… 165

Marcos Moro is not alone in his frustrations with the so-called ‘layer

cake’ approach employed on MPU. Producer Meni Caroutas also

had reservations:

I think when you cut from one story to another the impact of

each story can be affected. The viewers begin to get into a

story, then they’re thrown a new case which can be

unsettling. The only complaint I have ever heard about the

show, is that there are too many different stories. 166

165 Ibid (2008) 166 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

126

By contrast, producer Justine Ford sees the process this way:

The layer cake approach allows members of the production to

work as a unified team to continually refine and improve

stories. This approach – that “the show’s the thing” helps us

all to learn from each other, improve our skills and therefore

make a better show. 167

Handing over one’s work, in this case a complete story, to enable

the story to be intercut with other stories and doctored to improve

the overall program story, is all about letting go. This process, where

work is polished until the very last minute, does not suit the

preferred style and working practice of every producer.

In MPU, we decided to interlace our stories in a soap opera-like

fashion, with each story having a different rhythm and feel.

Intercutting stories against each other, rather than running them as

discrete segments, gave us the ability to position the drama to be

most effective. If we needed to carry viewers across the key half

hour break, we would load the segment before the break with fast

paced and resonating emotional content. Judiciously edited, this

enables a producer and editor to create a rhythm and hanging

drama to a break. While it can be distracting if done badly, having a

second story to cut to means we can leave one story early and not

reveal the whole plot, before a break. Theoretically, as in any soap

opera, this will have the audience coming back after the break,

curious for a resolution.

167 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

127

Nonetheless, the process of interlacing stories is not always easy.

Figure 1 below provides the graphic example of how such a half-

hour program might look. But which story you start with, which two

stories inter-cut, how you get across the half hour break, when to

introduce the third story, or in the case of the one hour program, the

fourth story, and which story carries over, are crucial dramatic

questions, answered in the compile.

As in any good story, each program needs a beginning, middle and

an end. In MPU this proved to be the most difficult aspect of the

compile. As each story had its own beginning, middle and end and

the program had its own beginning, middle and end, it meant that in

every program of MPU, we were technically dealing with four

beginnings, four middles and four ends.

The only suggestion I can give when working through this creative

conundrum, is that these decisions about what is a story or program

beginning, middle or end, are made on feeling as much as

mechanics. A strong dramatic opening is always good, followed by a

story that has an exciting investigative journey. Next it is necessary

for the plot to shift. Then the stakes need to increase and finally a

resolution of sorts. This of course sounds very like a standard drama

script, and that is exactly what we were trying to create in every

episode; a strong dramatic narrative.

128

Fig 1. Sample story interlace for half hour program

A story that will run through out the program from Seg 1 to Seg 4

can have between 7 and 9 story segments to it.

In this example Story 1 has 8 Segs and Story 3 is the carry over.

Seg 1 Seg 2 Seg 3 Seg 4

Story 1

Story 2

Story 1

Story 2

Story 1

Story 2

Story 1

Story 2

Story 3

Story 1

Story 3

Story 1

Story 1

Story 3

Story 1

Story 3(co)

It was a writing juggling act to seamlessly interlace these stories, so

that the end result is a program that conveys the impression that it

has one dominant beginning, middle and end. Ultimately this factor, I

would argue, is the key to MPU’s watch-ability, and one of the major

reasons why the series stayed at Number One across all networks,

for three seasons.

4.3 Narration

Generally one hallmark of observational documentary is that it is

devoid of voiceover narration and, in its stead, we often use thought

track from the protagonists. Narration in factual films has a negative

reputation and is seen, at its most basic, as a ‘voice of God’ device

from some disembodied character. In documentary, the voiceover

technique has been vilified by some commentators as the destroyer

129

of the pure image, as it is a detached voice superimposed onto and

distorting the pure image. The use of voiceover narration can also

be seen as ‘unimaginative and incompetent’ 168

The expository text addresses the viewer directly with titles or

voices that advance an argument about the historical world.

…The expository mode emphasises the impression of

objectivity, and of well established judgment…the viewer will

expect expository text to take shape around the solution to a

problem, or puzzle: presenting the news of the day, exploring

the working of the atom or the universe, addressing the

consequences of nuclear waste or acid rain, tracing the

history of an event of the biography of a person.

and something best

reserved for newsreels or historical documentaries, where

overwhelming didacticism is seen to have a place. Nichols observes

that:

169

As identified above, the main features of narration in documentary,

for better or worse, are: voiceover narration addresses the viewer

directly in setting out an argument (implies forethought and assumes

validity); and the technique offers solutions and /or closure, to

stories.

It is this aspect of providing closure that most interested the MPU

team when we decided to brave the use of voiceover narration as a

storytelling element. MPU is made to a price that dictates that our

crew will never be there for every unfolding event. Therefore, we

168 Kozloff, Sarah (1988:21) 169 Nichols, Bill (1991:34-38)

130

needed a device that would enable us to create continuity and, in

effect, plug the information holes. We also decided to use the

narrator’s voice to move the story forward, to assist information flow

and to provide a large degree of flexibility when shifting or segueing

to other stories, or to the break.

However, ‘voice’ can also be viewed as just one element in the

whole that makes up the documentary language. Nichols further

observes that:

In the evolution of documentary the contestation among

forms has centred on the question of ‘voice.’ By voice I mean

something narrower than style: that which conveys to us a

sense of the text’s social point of view, of how it is speaking

to us and how it is organising the materials it is presenting to

us. In this sense, voice is not restricted to any one code or

feature, such as dialogue or commentary. Voice is perhaps

akin to the intangible, moiré like pattern formed by the unique

interaction of all a film’s codes and it applies to all modes of

documentary. 170

And that is how we intended the narrator’s voice to be experienced

in MPU, as one of the story elements, albeit a key element that

helped move the story along. We were hoping that, for the most part

‘the word of witnesses, uncritically accepted, (will) provide its own

validation’. 171

170 Nichols, Bill (1983)

We designed our narrator’s voice, where required, to

assist this imperative and to drive the story through truncated (for

171 Ibid (2005: 25)

131

time reasons) narrative and missing actuality.

As with any program, the aim is to create a style that says, in effect,

that interviewees never lie: ‘What I am telling you is the truth.’ Then

we the audience ask, ‘Is the Interview telling the truth?’ 172

The

degree to which the audience believes the televisual narrative will

depend in MPU on the appeal and veracity of interviewees - the

police and the families and friends of missing people, and the

balance between the voice of the interviewees and the voice of the

narrator.

Furthermore, the impact narration has on a program is always a very

personal view. What for some is a ‘voice of God’ destroying the pure

film image, is for others, an essential tool of the storytelling trade.

Producer Meni Caroutas says that the narrator’s role is pivotal: ‘He’s

(sic) the storyteller, guiding and informing the audience, but most

importantly he reminds them where each story is up to during

various segments’. 173 Producer Justine Ford sees it slightly

differently: ‘The narrator’s role is to use minimal and impactful

voiceover to increase the drama. It’s not to paraphrase the words of

missing people and their families – that is the role of actuality’. 174

172 Ibid (2005:25)

While these two views seem similar, they are significantly different.

Meni sees the narrator as the storyteller, while Justine sees the role

173 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview 174 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

132

as one of supporting the actuality. In this difference lies the craft of

storytelling. Too much narration, used the wrong way and the

storytelling focus shifts; the viewer’s interest is lost. Too little

narration, and the right dramatic, or information moments are not

supported, and the viewer’s engagement may also be lost:

On the one hand, huge numbers of viewers enjoy

eavesdropping on the lives of others…On the other hand,

television cannot risk losing the interest of viewers by leaving

them in the slightest doubt how to understand what they are

watching. Hence the appeal of the expository mode, in which

a narrator or presenter, reinforces the central message of the

program to combat the distractions in the home. The

hybridised documentary (MPU) can get the best of both

worlds, being able, for instance, to make use of both a

commentary that provides a historical context to what is seen

and a direct access to the words and actions of the people in

front of the lens. 175

Kilborn and Izod have described above the way we used narration

on MPU: to reinforce a central message, supplement a lack of

information from on-screen players, and drive the story forward in

the desirable dramatic direction. However, narration also has

another impact that is often not discussed. Knowing that voiceover

narration will form part of the elemental scope of a program can

influence how a producer works in the field:

When I begin planning a story script, I factor in where

narration would provide the most impact or be most needed.

My vision for a story always includes consideration of the

175 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:75)

133

voiceover script which I try to craft around the actuality to

marry with my vision. 176

The strength of planning for narration early in the production process

is an important aspect of creating a more definite structure. The

danger is that, for reasons of expediency, possible strong driving

actuality will be replaced by narration. Subsequently, a preference

for voiceover narration may lead to even more editorialising:

Robert Epstein’s award winning documentary The Life and

Times of Harvey Milk (1984) uses narration at the very top of

the film to set up the death of Harvey Milk and put the

position of the film maker supportive of Milk, his politics and

his sexuality; saddened by his death; angered by the law’s

treatment of his murderer. 177

But Epstein also uses his narrator as part of the set up mosaic of

news footage, to establish both Milk and the narrator, as credible

characters to be trusted throughout the film. This expository opening

to the film establishes a style that can be used to pace and view the

film.

This is also how we used our narrator - as a threaded device to

affect the tempo of MPU. However, the desire to make the episode

‘punchier’, can lead to an even greater use of narration. In fact, this

is what happened in MPU at the beginning of Series 3 when the

network deemed the MPU style had to change to include an on-

176 Ford, Justine (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview 177 Bruzzi, Stella (2000:46)

134

camera narrator at the beginning of the program. While MPU

producer Meni Caroutas saw the offscreen voice of the narrator as

pivotal, he did not agree with the on-camera presence: ‘I don’t like it.

The show is about the police and the MPU, and the families they

encounter. The host is unnecessary’.178

178 Caroutas, Meni (2008) MPU Producer Director, Interview

While Meni was not alone

in this view, after three series, the Network wanted a change, and

our role was to facilitate this, without impacting negatively on ratings.

When a program is rating at Number One in its slot, the golden rule

is ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’. Nevertheless, significantly, it could be

argued that the Network managers broke that rule twice: once, when

they decided to capitalise on MPU’s success, and move from a half

hour format to a one hour format; and secondly when in Series

Three, they decided to include an on-camera narrator. While each of

the above changes did not result in huge audience growth, they did

not scare the audience away and lead to any significant reduction in

ratings. Furthermore, the network was now growing more contented,

still winning the slot and now featuring Mike Munro, one of the

network’s favourite faces, on camera.

Once again, documentary and, in this case, the shape of a

television documentary series, becomes a negotiation between the

film, its subject matter and the desire of the commissioning network

to enhance the particular Network profile, through an increase in the

135

voiceover narrator’s presence.

What these instructions to change from an off-screen to an on-

screen narrator demonstrate, is that the constant evaluation and re-

evaluation that drives commercial network television programming

decisions, at every level of program production. This case study has

attempted to illustrate, as clearly as possible, such significant,

multilayered shifts in the overall development of MPU.

4.4 Music

Not much has been written about the use of music on television.179

Within the aural profile of television, music plays varying roles

and functions, quite apart from its vital job in signaling

programme identity through signature title music. These

functions include generating thematic support for what is on

the screen – indications of historical time, of geographical

place and of appropriate mood being prominent – and

providing formal support for programme organization, pacing

and the shifting ‘intensities’ of portrayal.

However, music is another layer in the production development

process. Music has played an important role in MPU to deliver and

heighten emotional moments and create dramatic points leading to

poignant scenes:

180

We chose Art Phillips as composer to provide music and a score for

179 Corner, John (2005:242) 180 Ibid (2005:242)

136

Series One, which would achieve all of the above and some more.

Basically, however, the philosophy of the brief was such that we

required music that did not fight or work against the scene, in

particular the dialogue, but rather reinforced and heightened the

drama, adventure and emotion:

It’s all about creating more intensity from the script or the

story. Taking the viewer into a deeper journey about what’s

happening with the story, than there would have been, if there

was not any music. 181

As the series developed, we learnt to use composer Art Phillips’

music as a virtual character, to clarify scene emotion and to give

scenes more resonance with viewers:

Music is an invisible character even though sometimes the

music is meant to be coming from the characters point of

view it’s still enhancing that character so I look at it as a third

dimension or an invisible character. So it is really about taking

the viewer into a deeper emotional understanding. 182

The initial idea was that our music score would punctuate a scene.

However, in some cases, using music as a third character resulted

in its driving a piece, not directionally, but for pacing. This posed

another production conundrum: if music is another ‘character’, then

what is that third party ‘character’ doing in someone else’s story?

My view on a great score to any film project – TV,

documentary, what ever – the viewer doesn’t realise there is

music there. The idea is that the composer is on the same

181 Phillips, Art ( 2008) Interview with MPU composer 182 Ibid ( 2008)

137

wavelength as the producer/director and that the music is

working in the way they want the character portrayed

because that’s the way they filmed it, the emotional context of

the words. Hopefully the music is helpful to that

representation. But as a composer I feel less is often better.

And I wonder how less music would have worked on MPU. 183

Art Phillips was not alone in his reflections on the amount of music

used in MPU. Network imperatives for their key 8:30 p.m. prime

time slot determined a certain level of music and this was reinforced

by executives throughout the production cycle. In addition, this

insistence on a particular level of music has historically generated

heated debate from purists:

It is perhaps not surprising that the more the representational

scheme of a documentary is framed by rationalistic

imperatives and concern about ‘balance’, the more music is

likely to seem extraneous if not wholly suspect, an importer of

unwelcome emotion and feeling. 184

On MPU music was designed to illuminate recurring emotional

themes that might resonate in the conscious mind:

Thematic material is based on a motif that might be 6 or 7

notes; those are the ways I think about storytelling. But in

MPU there weren’t recurring motifs, there were recurring

emotional themes, and the music was more varied to cater to

the range of emotions explored on the program. The music

sat more with the obvious than the subconscious. When the

police were searching, that was tense drama and that’s 183 Ibid ( 2008) 184 Corner, John (2005:243)

138

exactly where the music headed, in the same direction as the

police car. 185

Our music exposed the natural drama of a scene by drawing the

viewer into a scene they may have otherwise found it difficult to be

in, for example, a harrowing moment as a mother and father walk

through the woods looking for their missing daughter. The narration

said: ‘a walk no parent should have to make’ 186

185 Phillips, Art (2008) Interview with MPU composer

and the music

helped our viewers make that walk with these distraught parents.

One key to the success of the series was the involving of viewing

families at home, immersing themselves in the unfolding family

drama. For the series to hold an audience and increase the ‘switch

on’ throughout the program, ‘mums and dads’ watching in their cosy

living rooms with their children, had to think that this could be their

personal story also. But just like programs with sick children, our

possible ‘switch off’ factor was high. In order to engage our viewers

with what could be their worst imagined, nightmare scenario

unfolding on the TV screen, we required them to make a huge

emotional leap of faith, that could only be made through the carefully

orchestrated use of music. We were, in effect, creating narrative

drama from non-scripted actuality, edited as a soap or a serial, and

we were not using reconstruction or graphics to assist our stories.

Hence music was the only practical way for us to enhance the

186 Episode 9 - MPU Series 1 (2005)

139

emotion on the screen and create a fluid pathway for viewers to

enter the story. At another level, our music helped, in effect, to plug

the narrative holes that existed because of our inability to film on all

fronts as stories unfolded. The skill was to weave the music in such

a way so that the program appeared seamless. If the viewer noticed

the hole was plugged, we would have failed.

The scored music from Series One was reedited and used as library

music for Series Two and Series Three. This is often a difficult

process, because scored music is scene-specific and can be difficult

to use in alternative scenes.

The composer Art Phillips articulates why this was possible with

MPU music:

Technically this may have been possible because all of the

tonal centres related to each other without anyone realising it.

Much of the music was written in the key of B – which is a

floating key center for me – much of the chordal harmonic

structures worked around that key of B – so when you began

cutting it up things were working together because of the

cohesive tonal center. Added to this is that the emotions were

recurring from program to program and series to series.

That’s another reason why the scored music was able to be

re-edited for another scene with a heart felt feeling – that’s

why it worked. 187

Once producers and editors learnt to work with the music in this

way, they began writing and editing with specific cues in mind, to

187 Phillips, Art (2008) Interview with MPU composer

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strengthen the actuality and narration. In addition, as producers

began to grow more familiar with the style of the program, they

began filming specific pieces with particular music in mind.

The strategy with MPU was to learn to use all the available devices

seamlessly, to create a mood and set the audience off on a ‘roller

coaster ride’ on what could only be termed, our ‘trolley of hope’.

The following chapter will consolidate and elaborate further on the

specific creative practice elements of this Masters thesis.

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Chapter 5: Practical Evidence

I have provided as my creative practitioner component two episodes

of MPU to demonstrate my work as Executive Producer. Firstly,

Episode 1, Series 1

(see Appendix A) is not provided for assessment, but rather as a

reference to indicate the genesis of MPU. The observations on this

episode provide an important background to the style of the series.

The second example, Episode 1, Series 2 (Appendix B) is provided

for evaluation in this Masters project.

I have chosen these episodes based on the following criteria. On the

first episode of Series One, I was series producer and responsible

for the development of the style, the content and the selection of

staff for the whole series. The first episode of Series Two, the one-

hour format, on which I was executive producer, is in the new,

longer format. I am a very hands-on series and executive producer,

and in both roles I was responsible for development, overseeing

story edits and writing the programs. My role on MPU, initially as

Series Producer and then Executive Producer, covered 33 episodes.

Both roles included developing the format and then overseeing all

aspects of production. Even though television and in particular my

layer cake approach, is a collaborative exercise, my role included

signing off on stories, working with producers to restructure story

edits, re-writing story scripts when required and deciding which

stories would go into which episode.

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MPU programs did not run discrete stories back to back. Because of

the interlaced format, where stories are broken and interwoven

throughout the episode, MPU became, in one sense, an authored

series where my role was to interlace each episode from the stand

alone stories. Which stories go into an episode, how they are

segmented and interlaced, became the key to the MPU format.

Interlacing stories is the editorial phase that creates the hanging

drama synonymous with the MPU style.

Once stories were broken into their 30 to 90 second segments, they

needed to be re-written. Creating the new words, new segue links

and writing the drama into each program, became my responsibility

during the ‘program edit’, the most crucial phase of MPU

postproduction. The result of my creative input can be

demonstrated by increasing ratings from break to break during many

of the programs. This climbing ratings trend throughout MPU

programs was not evident in the fourth series after I left, where

ratings dropped from 1.4 million per night to 742,000. In part, the

drop in ratings can be attributed to a new timeslot, but the dropping

figures throughout the program is generally a factor of production

and of the story telling aspect of the program.

As has been established throughout this study, MPU is a fast turn-

around series. Unlike, for example, Australian Story, where research

can take months and where production is built around a lengthy

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controlled, sit down interview and paste up style, MPU is more

immediate, much less researched and more dynamic in its

approach. Unlike traditional observational programs that can spend

up to sixteen weeks to edit a one-hour episode, MPU postproduction

on the one hour format, was over in just three very short weeks.

Three days to edit each story and five days to build the program to

picture lock off, including voiceovers and ‘temp’ music, is incredibly

quick for observational type of material.

Of the 33 programs I made [11 as series producer and 20 as

executive producer] I have submitted two. The two programs chosen

are not necessarily the best of the three series; rather they

demonstrate aspects of what I have been analyzing in earlier

chapters. Essentially, this comprises the production methods and

nature of each program, and crucially here, the differences gauged

in the program ‘feel’, particularly as the series duration is extended

from half an hour to one hour.

No pilot program was ever produced for MPU. The reason that

people with my skill set tend to be brought on to develop and run

these type of shows, is in part to avoid the expense of producing a

pilot, something that networks often see as an avoidable expense.

Fortunately, MPU was very successful from the start, as the first

program of Series One was the highest premiering documentary

series ever funded by the Film Finance Corporation (FFC). The FFC

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went into print to publicise MPU’s resonance with audiences, in

particular driving home the message to independent producers who

felt they should avoid funding a show like MPU, because it was

apparently not ‘true’ documentary. Clearly a need exists for a more

nuanced research method, in order to gain a better understanding of

the popularity of MPU at the program’s ratings height, a ‘need to

supplement ratings with customised research’. 188

Episode One of Series One, the first program in my three series of

MPU, is a half hour format that demonstrates how we began to

develop our actuality-to- narration balance. From the outset, as

indicated earlier, our style was different to the current crop of

Australian cop shows like The Force (Network Seven) and Forensic

Investigators (Network Seven), which all used an on-camera

presenter whose voice also narrated the program. It was apparent

early in the series development, that we would also need a narrator

to help truncate and move our story forward in our three-story half

hour format, and to fill in narrative blanks that were the result of only

being able to film with one crew. However, it was also apparent that

our stars were the families, the police and the missing people.

While such

qualitative audience research is outside the scope and aims of this

thesis, certain significant questions regarding the multi-faceted

nature of the program’s appeal remain open, and further

investigation is recommended in this area for future researchers.

188 Balnaves, Mark & O'Regan, Tom (2002: 61)

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Therefore, it seemed an obvious decision not to have an onscreen

narrator. This episode analysis is essentially an explanation of the

intricate workings of certain specific production elements, explained

earlier in this study in more general terms.

While the following segment notes relate specifically to Episode One

of Series One, the style elements discussed in them are applicable

to all programs:

The Introduction: this set up the punchy narrative and emotive style

of the show and also introduces the interweaving style of stories, all

in less than a minute. The introduction is in essence a program

‘tease’ designed to set up the dramatic possibilities in the show.

The Titles: These are dynamic and featured families and police

doing their job. They also include graphics that highlight the amazing

statistics such as - one person reported missing every 18 minutes.

These are facts I could never have imagined and we hoped they

would get the viewers talking even before they realized they were

going to watch the program. The titles also include poster-like

elements that were replaced each episode. These elements feature

the faces of the missing people who are profiled on the program.

The titles provide a breaker from the stylistic introduction to the

reality of the show and the MPU.

The Muster: Every morning the NSWPOL MPU would download

cases from the overnight missing reports. However this was usually

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done by the Sergeant and then distributed individually. I wondered

for the sake of drama whether we could have a meeting around a

table where the cases of choice, those we felt would be accessible

and work on camera, could be handed out to MPU operatives

around a table. This creates an arresting beginning to each program

and an effective change of pace from the dynamics of the titles. It is

a successful device, using a controllable event to deliver more

information on featured cases. This then increases the stakes and

takes the specific into the more appealing general level; for

example, the devastating disappearance of teenager Latoya

becomes everyone’s nightmare with a simple line, ‘there are none at

greater risk than teenagers’ 189 conveying the idea that all our sons

and daughters are in danger. The muster also enabled us to set up

a case without much background and jump into the action. For

example in the case of Bill Roach missing for over a decade, the

MPU received almost no notice that a new search was planned.

Because the muster was a neat segue device, it also enabled us to

cut straight to the chase, by letting the viewers know that, ‘Mark will

leave in a matter of hours’ 190

The muster propelled the viewer into

the next storytelling phase of the program, the story interweave.

The Program: In the half hour format each episode comprises four

segments and three breaks. Each of the segments has to finish on a

hook to bring viewers back after the break. And given that we are

189 MPU (2005) Episode 1 Series 1 190 Ibid (2005)

147

only ever intercutting two of the three stories, the critical issue is

when to introduce the third story and which continuing story it will

run with.

The story interweave is made possible because of our ability to use

voiceover. For example, in Latoya’s story the voiceover is used to

increase the stakes and take the story away from just another

teenage runaway case; ‘Latoya’s mum Jasmin, a single mum of

three has been up all night waiting for her daughter to come home’.

This conveys information that Latoya didn’t return home, for the sole

purpose of increasing the stakes. Then the voiceover line, ‘she’s just

heard that her daughter Latoya may have turned up at school this

morning’ 191

which takes the story to its next search phase and a

new beginning, even though Latoya may have been found. In this

case, voice is used to increase drama and move the story on, all in

the space of 11 seconds. The viewer is left with the question; is she

or isn’t she at school?

The series makers have been criticised by some for supposedly

helping the actuality become more dramatic through voiceover and

judicious editing to a hanging question. However, I believe the more

valid question is: did we misrepresent the situation and if so to

whom? Brian Winston makes an insightful point: ‘We have confused

media responsibilities to the audience with the ethical duties owed

191 Ibid (2005)

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participants as if the outcome of taking part were the same as

spectating’. 192 While he sees two distinct responsibilities, I would

argue that the filmmaker has one responsibility, that being to the

story. Winston continues: ‘The expectation was not only that the

camera would not lie, but that it could not, therefore the silence was

understandable.’ 193

Winston’s ‘understandable’ silence is only

acceptable in a prime time commercial show if it is a dramatic

silence. And as well as story progression, we were trying to help

these silences become more dramatic through the use of voiceover,

music and the opportune edit to another case. The manipulation of a

moment is not immediately about misrepresenting the case, but

rather about making the story clearer (pointed voiceover), or

increasing the already present tension or emotion (music or edit).

Compounding this dilemma is that we are not amateurs, whose

every day cam-recorder is seen to be ‘truthful’. Our cameras are

large and therefore we are seen to be involved in a calculated act.

We are professionals, and as Winston remarks: ‘Manipulation,

distortion and fakery have thus far been required by professionals

(although the home computer is well on its way to changing that)’.194

192 Winston, Brian (2005:181)

To this end we did not use dissolves, reconstruction or any on-

screen devices to manipulate the image. We just moved the search

on from one story to another. On screen, we kept it as honest and

authentic as we could.

193 Ibid (2005:182) 194 Ibid (2005:182)

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Hence, while Latoya’s mum is at the door and our voiceover has

pre-empted a journey, we cut to the Roach case with her journey

already in progress. Rather than wait for Latoya’s mum to get ready

and leave, or jump-cut her scene to a car, the more seamless way is

to use the momentum on the Latoya case voiceover, to propel the

Roach story into life.

When the cops arrive in Armidale to look for Bill Roach, they have to

wait for the briefing, so again we continue the momentum of the

search by cutting to Jasmin in the police car en-route to school. This

creates a sense of real time without slowing action. When Jasmin

arrives at school she has to wait; therefore we cut back to Armidale,

where the drama is increasing in the press briefing. One search

becomes the other as we interplay the two mothers’ yearning and

searching. The aim is to keep up pace and create a sense of parallel

urgency.

While one family is still looking for information, the other story shows

us a result. One story unleashes a dynamic and the next story

finishes it. While the Roaches sit at the press briefing waiting for

information, back at Latoya’s school we see a result, as police begin

to interrogate Latoya herself.

In segment two with one case solved and one waiting for the search,

we begin another story, the search for missing father Albert Locke.

150

We intercut this with a new and unexpected twist in the solved

Latoya case, as our voiceover tells us ‘Last night after she was

located Latoya disappeared again’. What the voice is doing is

jumping time for the viewer by keeping the clock (the fact that we

have jumped to the next day) relative.

Another example of our distinctive style occurs at the nursing home

in the Albert Locke case. The law states that Albert’s son Colin, who

had been looking for his dad for 30 years, could not be told where

Albert was found unless Albert agreed. This also meant that we

were unable to film the police’s sighting of Albert or identify the

location. Rather than see this as a negative, we shortened the

scene. Not dwelling on our inability to see Albert, we softened the

cut using voiceover and moved to a statement by police outside the

nursing home.

For now, this case concludes in this segment, when police tell Colin

his father is found but doesn’t want to see him. To close the scene

we use a plea from Colin to his dad and go to the program break,

leaving the viewer wondering if the old man will relent.

In segment three we come back with the Roach story, with exterior

action scenes as the mother watches divers search in a dam. The

voiceover tells us exactly why they are looking there and, in the

process, increases the emotional stakes: ‘It’s the place where police

feel Bill’s body was disposed.’ While Yvonne Roach can only look

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on, Jasmin’s frustration leads her to the streets to begin her own

search for her daughter. The episode picks up momentum as the

intercut shows one mother on a cliff waiting for divers to surface,

while the other searches through a deserted house. The voiceover

on Latoya’s mother tells us ‘It’s a parent’s worst nightmare’, but we

cut to Bill Roach’s mum watching divers surfacing empty handed,

and the audience know that it’s also her worst nightmare. The

stakes continue to increase, as two searches become one story of

maternal despair.

In segment four, we are there when Latoya comes home. Back at

the dam we move the story to another area where we find clues

(body fluids). Have police found Bill’s blood? This leads to a new

development when Bill’s mother tells police that Bill was adopted –

and we have a new angle for the story: where is Bill’s birth mother?

And that’s the hook to finish the program on.

The next week’s stories feel like part of the program, but because

this segment is simply a tease, we are able to bow out leaving the

viewer guessing. The end credits are used to deliver more

information as we promote three cases we will not feature. During

this time we interlace information with questions.

By contrast, Episode 1 of Series 2 of MPU (for evaluation) is

MPU’s first one-hour program and demonstrates how the show

changes in the longer format, with the extra story and a little more

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breathing space. This stands as an interesting example of how a

top-rating half hour format can be altered to bring the network more

screen time, without impacting on the fundamental style of the show

and still keeping the costs down. What the difference between the

two formats also demonstrates is that we only needed one additional

story to fill an extra 22 minutes of airtime, an issue the Network

executives were concerned about.

This episode also demonstrates the use of a developing or hanging

story, an element that became the MPU trade mark: the soap-opera

nature of the show, that left drama points hanging from one program

to the next, and, in the case of the Green story, from one series to

the next. It also shows our first use of parallel action to increase

multilayered dynamics, in situations where the search stops.

In an earlier episode in Series One, we previously ran the story of

sisters Jacquie and Penny’s thirty year search for their missing

mother, Veronica Green. In the course of the investigation, we

discovered a new lead: Veronica had adopted out a baby her

daughters had never seen. Now some forty years after the boy’s

adoption, the hunt is on to find him, in the hope that their mother

may have sought him out when she disappeared.

The introduction to this story provides a strong example of how an

ongoing case can be recapped and updated. In less than three

minutes, we update the story, provide an important recap and

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introduce the adopted brother watching the story on television, to

give new life to an old story. The introduction to this story is an

example of the use of narration to bridge from one series to the next

and, in this case, to provide an update in a complicated story shift –

the police are now widening their search to look for another relative.

It is also our first attempt at playing with time within a story, by using

parallel action intercuts within a story. The concern with parallel

action is that it suggests a filmmaker who is working in two places at

one time. However, if the story is unfolding in real time actuality, the

filmmaker would not be expected to be in two places at once.

However, as the format had been set in Series One and the viewers

had already ‘bought into’ our style, I felt confident about introducing

this more manufactured traditional form of intercut in this story, in

order to create a more dynamic, layered impact.

Case choice was ever-important in MPU. Watching this program

some viewers would say they didn’t find the Green story as

interesting as the case of missing teenager JayDee; others would

say ‘Oh not another missing teenager case’. The greatest difficulty

was finding the right balance for each program. Although the story

mix became crucial, even more important was the duration of the

segment for each story. How long to hold one story and when to cut

to another gave the program its rhythm and its audience holding

power.

With the next case, missing 14 year old schoolgirl JayDee, the real

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danger was that viewers would switch off thinking it was just another

standard, teenage runaway story. The week JayDee went missing,

we found that we had a couple of teenage runaway cases that we

could have followed. However, we chose JayDee because she was

not a stereotypical runaway. She came from a respectable, upper

middle class home and had a loving family. We increased the stakes

by reinforcing that JayDee had never stayed away this long before,

and reminded the audience that she has no money. We focus on

JayDee’s mother’s anguish and leave the story with the introduction

of a new character, Sam, and the real possibility that the fourteen-

year-old, a chat room addict, is not with friends; rather, something

more sinister is potentially going on. As mentioned earlier, it is

important for our viewers to buy into the story in an empathetic

manner. This can only happen if viewers can share the family’s pain,

and this can only be achieved by presenting a family that is relatively

‘normal’. While this was often not the case in MPU, wherever

possible, if we had a choice, we would choose families that we felt

our target demographic could relate to.

In the Green story, we continue with the new twist in the drama: Will

Steve, the brother whom their mother adopted out at birth, call his

sisters? The aim is to leave the viewer guessing sufficiently to want

to stay with the program until the resolve. This is where narration

can play a pivotal role: ‘As the weeks went by with still no word from

Steve the girls wondered if they would ever get to meet their

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brother’.195

Because of the tight nature of this commercial format,

the narrator is often used to provide this type of information

succinctly and at the opportune moment.

In the JayDee case, we heighten the drama by involving detectives

in the search to locate JayDee’s mysterious older boyfriend, Sam:

‘We are worried given her age’. 196

The detectives are tough,

experienced specialists and when they say they are ‘worried’, this

signals real alarm, reinforcing that this case is not just another

teenage runaway story. Ethically, the production team was

conscious not to tell police what to say. If, for instance, police said

they were ‘worried’, then this was an authentic response, and they

were not simply ‘playing to the camera’. If they said this openly,

either because they were worried that JayDee was with an older

male, or because they wanted to create an impact with families, we

felt that this was their call. One of the aims of the program was to

convey forcefully to families that what appears to be a simple

runaway situation can turn into a very frightening scenario. Stating

that they are concerned about a teenager who has not been missing

for this long before, and who is suspected to be with an older male,

seemed appropriate editorially and ethically.

Back at the Green home, narration was chosen to allow for a four-

week time shift and to learn that the desperate sisters have now

195 Episode 1 Series 2 (2006) MPU 196 Episode 1 Series 2 (2006) MPU

156

written their brother an impassioned letter. This sequence is another

example of parallel action within a story, when on the one hand we

see the Green daughters telling us about the letter, and their brother

Steven explaining what it was like receiving his sisters’ letter. Even

though this was not our regular style, the use of parallel action

worked to heighten the emotional significance of the letter to Steven

in the making of his decision, as well as to create a sense of

urgency. The program cuts to the break, with the audience still

wondering if Steven will call.

In the next segment, the JayDee case is used to increase the

momentum of the show when the police hit the streets. This takes

the program back to traditional MPU actuality, after the more self-

conscious parallel action of the previous scene. Now we see the foot

police questioning ordinary people, desperate for clues. They get a

new lead and possibly an important clue on Closed Circuit

Television (CCTV) footage. After more than three weeks - have

they found JayDee?

The MPU style, of intercutting between cases enabled us to leave

scenes on a high point with unanswered questions and drama. The

added screen time in our longer format enabled our editors and

producers to spend more time developing the drama. In the Green

story, for instance, we spent time with Jacquie’s children as they

talked about wanting to see their new uncle. In this segment, we

again use parallel action to give the scene some dramatic impetus

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when Steven calls and they agree to meet. Now that they have

agreed to meet, we shift the story focus back to the original search

for their missing mother Veronica: ‘Now all that’s left to do is set up a

meeting and hope that their mum Veronica will be watching it

somewhere’. 197

While one family is almost reconciled, we reintroduce JayDee’s

mum watching the CCTV footage to try to indentify her missing 14-

year-old daughter. As she watches the CCTV footage, Steven sets

up the meeting with his sisters. While one family is torn apart,

another gains some respite, in their 30-year nightmare search for

missing mother, Veronica Green. The overarching production aim is

to keep a focus on a search happening at all stages of the program,

and this is not always easy when working with unscripted, unfolding

actuality.

Hence, while the brother is found, the search and

our story continues.

At this stage we enter the critical phase of a one hour format:

holding the audience across the half hour break at a time when

other networks are beginning new shows. For this, I needed to inject

new dynamics into the program and I chose the case of Kevin

Moran, an American lost in the Blue Mountains. This case is an

example of an unfolding story that was over when we arrived on

location. As our crew was out on another story, I went off with a DV

197 Episode 1 Series 2 MPU (2006) Green story

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camera to film and produce the story. When we arrived at search

Headquarters in the Blue Mountains, we heard the good news that

Moran had been located alive by Search and Rescue. The police felt

this was the end of the story, but it was actually, in one crucial

sense, the beginning. Over the next two and half hours, I filmed an

introduction with police to set up the moment before Kevin’s location

was identified and the distinct possibility that his mobile phone,

providing his coordinates, might lose power. This would prove

disastrous for rescuers and cut Telstra triangulation links with his

mobile lifeline. Once this set up was filmed, our MPU police

personnel arrive and the detail of getting Moran to safety and the

concern for his state of health, becomes the story.

The Moran story became an example of what can be achieved if the

producer carefully edits the ongoing story in his or her head.

Focusing on the minutia, the fine details about how Moran was

located and the drama of winching him to safety while bad weather

was closing in, made for a dramatic shift of action in a program that

to date mainly comprised family emotion. The result was a fourteen

minute story filmed in two and a half hours and edited into the

program that evening.

We continued across the break with the dynamic JayDee search

and the Moran rescue. The police led on their wild goose chase by

JayDee’s friend Rachel are even more desperate for clues. Seeing

police in the car following Rachel’s direction shows their concern

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and the lengths to which they will go to find JayDee. The extensive

police effort also further demonstrates that this is not just another

teenage runaway case, for those viewers who felt it was exactly that.

In the remainder of the program, we now had the Moran rescue (risk

and action), the widening and more frenetic search for JayDee (risk

and drama), the Green story and Steven’s impending visit to his

sisters (emotion). We therefore had a supple triangular drama to

intercut. However, there was still one story to come. As a general

rule and because we only ever cut two stories against each other, I

chose the fourth segment to introduce four stories, and raise the

stakes for the hour.

With so much happening in the important back half of the program,

for our fourth case, we needed a short story that resolved within the

episode. In the case of elderly pensioner, Yvonne Davis, missing for

a day, we entered the story with family and police immediately

involved in a search. Intercut with the air rescue of Moran at this

crucial point in the hour format, we were able to increase momentum

and take the program back to the unfolding actuality style of MPU.

After the parallel action style of the Green story, the unfolding and

unfortunate end to the Davis case indicates MPU is a ‘real’ program,

where anything can happen. As the garage door is lifted, we go to a

break waiting to see what police have found behind the door. Some

viewers complained that they didn’t know exactly how Yvonne died;

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other critics said that it was a slip on our part not to advise cause of

death. However, this story, filmed in a few hours, clearly

demonstrates the difficulties the production team faced every day.

Even though we knew the cause of death, we could not release this

information because the case had not yet gone before the coroner.

We were even unable to acknowledge that we knew the cause of

death, because the extended family had not officially been told. And

when they were told, the immediate family asked us not to release

the cause of death. It is always a fine balance between what the

family want, what the police need, what the network expect and

what we believe is right legally and editorially: not always an easy

call in non-scripted unfolding actuality-based programs like MPU.

In the final segment we are left with four possible resolutions, a

powerful way to end a show. The Greens’ impending visit with their

brother Steven provides the family emotion we could not capture

from Yvonne’s family, who were too distraught to speak. Therefore,

here one story provides the emotional register which was not

possible from the other story. The Moran case ends with a

reaffirmation of how serious this rescue was and how it could have

easily ended in tragedy: ‘Another 12 or 24 hours and it could have

been a different story’. 198

With two cases resolved (Moran and Davis), the JayDee case is still

198 Moran case (2006) Episode One Series Two MPU.

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in full flight with police and her mother, Retha, scouring the streets.

We finish this story with a plea from JayDee’s mother, and end the

program on a perfect hook as the Green sisters almost meet their

brother, ‘There he is, that’s him definitely…’. 199

Throughout this exegesis, the use of the action research method

has opened up and explored the various modulations of how MPU

created a style and a balance between actuality and voice designed

to increase the drama, fill information holes, and move story forward.

We left our narrator off-screen to focus on the story. It is worth

noting that promotional clips for programs like The Force (Seven

Network) that utilise an on-camera narrator to promote the series,

say ‘No more of this…’, referring to the presenter on-camera, ‘but

more of this’, as the promotions cut to actuality. MPU set the style

and now that style is becoming more widely used, with variations.

We cut from this

emotive scene to the next week’s tease before the meeting and the

audience will hopefully be back for the next program to see Jacquie

and Penny meet Steven, and also to find out what has happened to

missing teenager, JayDee.

As the key example of my creative practice, I have submitted

Episode 1 of Series 2 because it was the only program in Series 2

where the style included a mixture of traditional parallel intercutting

within a story and actuality. We needed to use the parallel

199 Green case (2006) Episode One Series Two MPU.

162

intercutting style in the Green story to create immediacy and

currency between the sisters and Steven who was living 1500

kilometers away. Even though this program rated extremely well,

with strong leads reported to Crimestoppers and very encouraging

post-program comments from the public, I would argue, with critical

hindsight, that the Green story suffered from not having the

unpredictable actuality that had become a key signature in the

series.

Some commentators see the use of people in crisis for documentary

advantage as ethically questionable. If the MPU style is seen as

exploitative by some, it could be argued that, as in science research,

documentary might also be justified through claims of advancing

knowledge in the interests of society, in particular relation to the

public’s right to know and understand. 200

In MPU this was the case

as far as the program makers and participants were concerned. We

gave the viewing public more knowledge and awareness of the

social issues surrounding missing people, and they helped police

locate 52 missing people over three series of production.

In assessing the validity of MPU as a piece of television, it is

important to remember that any program can be reviewed on many

different levels: did it succeed with the audience; is it structurally

sound; is it technically proficient; is it exploitative, to name just a few

200 Pryluck, Gavin (2005:200)

163

criteria. MPU was a series made to a price: tight shooting schedules

[Yvonne Davis story filmed in half a day; Moran story filmed in just

over two hours and edited in four hours] always impact on style and

affect structure and this is a reality of fast turn-around television. The

restriction of one crew and one PFS meant that judicious choices as

to what to film needed to be made on the run. Very short edit

schedules meant a particular process for the edit had to be devised

and adhered to. Legal imperatives, the wishes of family and police

protocols always impacted on what information was ultimately

released. The public service aspect of the show, that it assisted

police to find missing people, also impacted on style. These

contextual factors need to be considered when viewing the episodes

submitted as creative practice; as does the fact that, despite these

restrictions, MPU became, at the time, the number one show across

all networks on Thursday.

164

Chapter 6: Summary and recommendations

It has been demonstrated in this insider practice-led study that the

series MPU is a show made to a price, designed to deliver an

audience in the fragmented world of digital broadcast television. In

the first three series, MPU became the Number One show across all

networks, ostensibly because of its compelling drama, constructed

to a strong narrative and, most importantly, because we were able to

create a brand.

John Gregory, CEO of Freehand Television sees branding itself as

the key to success in the new age of television:

The reason we did the BBC deal is because we wanted

access to that deep content pool so that we can deploy it.

And why BBC wanted Lonely Planet, because they want the

brand. Of course they can make travel content and they do;

but the Lonely Planet brand already has a loyal following so

people who want travel and adventure come looking for the

LP brand to deliver content to that umbrella. People know

what they will get when they come to Lonely Planet. 201

In many respects, the MPU success is built – unashamedly - on

what I call McDonalds TV, the type of television where people know

what they will get each week. People came to Nine at 8:30 pm

Thursdays, because as John Gregory observes, we were able to

deliver the same content in the same format, week in, week out:

201 Gregory John, (2008) FTV CEO Interview

165

If you engage the audience you will draw them back. That’s

what broadcast TV can still deliver - that mass experience. If

we watch MPU on Thursday night we can talk about it on

Friday morning. 202

Nevertheless, with so many media opportunities across multiple

platforms, people have become more judicious, and we had to make

sure that a sizeable audience watched regularly. The first part of this

equation was to make a show that would be scheduled in the best

slot:

We live in a disposable society, the government sweeps

people under the carpet, a well made series needs good

scheduling to find it, people will look at content and dispose of

it just as quickly. The fact is that they sweep through the

content and find what they want…MPU brings the people to

Nine on Thursdays…and we overlook the craft of storytelling

at our peril. 203

As articulated here in this study, one key step had been to find a

production team that could create and weave drama throughout the

series, to spark the programmer first, and then hold our audience.

We did this by building a team that could tell a story; a team with a

variety of skill sets that could provide each program with the gravitas

of current affairs, the insight of observational documentary, the

colour of magazine, and the polish of a drama script. The plan was

to construct a program in such a way that peaks, troughs, drama

202 Ibid (2008) 203 Ibid (2008)

166

and search, were placed at exactly the right places to bring viewers

back after breaks:

Once people started watching the series, once you look at the

minute-by-minute ratings performance you see that every

episode draws people in as opposed to just holding. People

sit down from making their cup of tea and are drawn in; any

program that can do that is gold. 204

We were successful and the right scheduling took us to top ranking

across all networks. The wrong scheduling would have seen the

program flounder, just as the 4th series has in its rescheduled slot.

Along the way, we, the production team asked ourselves many

questions. These questions also have been threaded throughout this

study, in the reflections on the creative practice via action research,

and the interviews with key players which have been interwoven into

these chapters. The most discussed aspect revolved around

whether we were altering the nature of the program through the

layered grids of control, from development through to delivery. Of

course we were doing this, but such a process was necessary in

order to fit stories into a television format. Did the addition of third

party narrative and music, for example, transform record to

representation? What ends on the screen is always a

representation. In a program like MPU, we needed to be true to the

story, the factual chronology and the characters, and the intent of

the storyteller. How do we as filmmakers best capture the meaning 204 Ibid (2008)

167

of what we are recording? What do we need to do to best deliver the

message to the audience in a way that keeps them watching and

encourages them to interact with the program by providing leads

over the phone or visiting to the NMPU website? These are

questions that guided the action research for this case study,

intricately linked to the ongoing production questions.

As shown in the detailed analysis of particular programs, our grids of

control - the continued involvement by producers and the production

overview afforded to editors – our ‘layer cake’ approach, was

designed to ensure each program was given the best chance for

success. The process was designed to ensure that for as long as

the schedule allowed, another layer of input was always available, to

take the material to a new level editorially, stylistically and

mechanically. Without this, MPU would not have had the ‘edge’ to

sustain the onslaught in the 8:30 p.m. timeslot.

The various grids of control were also essential to keep the program

legally ‘healthy’ and factually correct. This was crucial because at

the rigorous police review of completed programs (another layer),

police vigilance over all legal aspects including our representation of

police, was uncompromising.

It is valid to argue here in this study that there has been a recent,

observable paradigm shift in the way viewers consume television

content. With more platforms to choose from, viewers have become

168

more discerning and program makers have had to produce fresh

formats to grab attention. Challenging programs such as those

made by John Pilger, for instance, are still being bought, but his type

of politically-driven work accounts for less and less of the overall

production slate. If this type of socially investigative work is made in

the future, it will most likely need to be dressed in more accessible

formats:

As documentary enters its second century, it finds itself less

constrained by the ideological and aesthetic dogmas which

have by turns driven and hindered its development. At their

best today’s documentarists pick and chose from the forms of

the past…and produce films that are more varied, imaginative

and challenging than anything we’ve seen before. At their

worst they churn out thousands of hours of indistinguishable

‘reality television. 205

I am not sure that the view of Macdonald and Cousins is completely

persuasive here. I would argue, from my critical reflection on my

creative practice within the making of MPU, that imaginative and

challenging programs will only come about, if the skill sets required

to make them are enshrined and taught effectively to a new breed of

filmmaker.

Furthermore, as television becomes even more adventurous in its

desire to hold an audience, it would seem that we will see more

hybrid formats like MPU on the screen, that is, more publicly minded

205 Macdonald, Kevin & Cousins, Mark (1996:311)

169

programs akin to public service announcements, delivering content

in an innovative fashion. However, this will only happen if production

companies and in particular networks, are willing to pay the

development fees, associated with devising new formats:

When Eddie McGuire walked in as CEO of Nine, one of his

first prognostications was to gather all of the programmers

and heads of departments together and say ‘henceforth what

we will do is all those producer thieves who have provided us

content with a 20% mark up’ like it was a piece of lumber ‘we

are not going to deal with them any more; this is Nine we are

a creative enterprise, we are going to make them in house.’

Someone had the guts to ask, ‘but Ed how are we going to

get hit shows?’…’What do you mean, we’ll make them’…’We

don’t own shows like Idle and Neighbours, if we want hit

shows we will have to buy them’…Ed: ’Why can’t we just

create hit shows?’…’We can but you won’t get them every

time’.206

Kilborn and Izod claim that in the coming years we will see many

new hybrid forms, and that the debate will be less about the

confusion that can arise in viewers’ minds when fact and fiction are

blurred, but more about ‘the need to create factually-based dramatic

entertainments where the aim is not so much to raise consciousness

as simply to discourage the viewer from switching to another

channel’.

207

After three series of MPU, and after this reflective study on the

206 Gregory, John (2008) Freehand Television CEO, Interview 207 Kilborn, Richard & Izod, John (1997:161)

170

production process, I would argue that the series should evolve to

include a live component. This view is not based on an assumption

that the current series is missing this element, but rather because

the drama of MPU is now well established, and as a consequence, I

consider that a new, more publicly minded element could sit well,

without detracting from the drama. Furthermore, because MPU is

billed as pro-active television that actually helps police solve cases,

it could be improved with a more immediate or pro-active element,

such as a live component.

I would suggest adding this segment to the back end of the series,

to update on running cases and to feature new urgent cases

breaking in the transmission week. I would record this update in a

different Crimestoppers’ State office each week. This would

immediately make the national Crimestoppers’ operation more

involved with MPU, and in the process nationalise the live element.

There are two suggested ways of achieving this:

(a) in the first instance, to keep a hole in the program and record

the update and live material on the day of broadcast just prior to

broadcast, and then edit it into the program very close to actual

transmission. The ‘downside’ with this approach is that it would

make the process rushed especially through network and police

legal reviews on the day of broadcast.

(b) the second option, is to go live-live and record a segment in the

Nine studios on the night of broadcast and then roll this in live,

171

before the program closer. This way each program would have the

latest live updates on selected cases for that week. The problematic

aspect of this would be the weekly studio cost associated with the

recording and the accessibility to the host and/ or Crimestoppers’

representatives on the exact night of broadcast.

Indeed, the cost of including the live component may be seen as

prohibitive. However, with a program as important as MPU that has

achieved recognition as a public service tool, as well as critical

acclaim for creativity, it may be just what is needed to keep the

current series relevant in the age of reality programming.

In conclusion, Professor Tom O’ Regan observes, that ‘As with

other countries which constitute a minor fragment of the language

speaking group within which they participate, Australia television’s

import profile centres imported programming. This centring impacts

upon the forms of local television, criticism of it and of television

generally’. 208

“Sir: I am and American visiting in Australia and, although I

am charmed by this country and enamoured of the people,

there is one facet of life here to which I take great offence. It

is in the direct theft in television of American concepts…It

seems from the time that I have spent in this country that

Australians are quite self conscious about a belief that they

And he cites this criticism published in the Sydney

Morning Herald, from the point of view of James Bridges, an

American visiting Australia, who said:

208 O’Regan, Tom (2004:86) ,

172

have little artistic culture of their own. The solution to this I’m

afraid, is not to borrow from another culture, but to develop

one’s own artistic ideas”.

James Bridges (18th March 1991) 209

O’Regan further observes:

That Bridges can find Australian programs both too

“American” by their imitation and not “American” by not

striking out on their own suggests an Australian disposing of

materials which is sufficiently different for recognition of

difference to be noted but sufficiently similar for such

difference not always to be recognised as something in its

own right and to be valued as such. 210

Conversely, I would argue that MPU is a valued, locally recognisable

Australian brand in an era of global television format domination,

developed in a country forced often through economic imperatives to

buy programs off shore. Designed to deliver riveting and dramatic

actuality that stops viewers from channel surfing, MPU also has

another more altruistic imperative, to be the most interesting one-

hour public service announcement on commercial television. This

forms the major contribution to knowledge from this project.

The program delivered a message to an audience that every 18

minutes some one is reported missing in Australia, amounting to

over 30,000 reports every year. That ‘message’ amounted to an

209 Ibid (2004:86) 210 Ibid (2004:87)

173

important communication, asking the audience to be involved and to

ring in with possible leads. During the first three series of MPU calls

from the public to Crimestoppers with new information on missing

people increased by up to 20% following the broadcast of each

program. This resulted in over 50 missing people being found on

the program. Even though some of those people would probably

have been located in a normal course of events, a number of those

cases were solved directly because of the series and the interactive

vigilance of the public. To be able to bring one family together would

have been enough.

I would contend this is the way today’s television formats can

develop, and I wait excitedly for the next format, to build on what I

have learnt, unpacked and presented here in this research.

174

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