Wednesday 30 December 2015

Wishing you the best in 2016!

In 2016 wishing you the very best...
... health, prosperity and happiness and especially the time to enjoy them!

Tuesday 18 August 2015

What is "authenticity?"

I hear a lot of talk these days about making factual programming more "authentic" for audiences. But what does that mean, exactly? Here are a few criteria I would use to define "authenticity" in terms of storytelling for factual programming:
 
- Stories that are closer to the real lives of the viewers (based on audience research) 

- Stories that have a strong human component, i.e. strong emotion 

- Stories with a strong protagonist/character (a reporter is not a protagonist) 

- Stories where there is a lot at stake for the character, i.e. life and death, illness, fears, difficult goals, etc. 

- No "betrayal" - stories are always: accurate, journalistic and deliver what they promise    

- Tell the whole story, don't leave anything out; fulfill the audience's expectations and don't leave any unanswered questions 

A key metric to ask: why should the audience care about the story? 

And here's another: "what will the audience talk about tomorrow... or share online right now?"