Delegates attending the conference sessions at this year’s BVE at London ExCeL were treated to a high quality programme featuring some genuine heavyweight speakers.
To celebrate this year’s programme, TVBEurope is producing a brand new conference review, Keynote, that will feature exclusive profiles of a speaker list that included Louis Theroux, actor and director Jason Flemyng, director Amma Asante, and a host of notable dignitaries from the worlds of film, television, and media technology.
Louis Theroux brought proceedings to a close on day three by hailing the impact of Netflix, Hulu and other platforms on the rise of long-form documentary making. Despite having announced three new documentaries with the BBC earlier in the day, the award-winning filmmaker told audience that the one of the biggest changes over the past 20 years has been the rise of OTT platforms.
“What we’ve seen in the past couple of years, which has been really interesting, is the growth of these platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and others, and the way they have provided an audience for serious long form documentaries like Making A Murderer and more recently the OJ one, which is on iPlayer at the moment,” Theroux told the audience.
“I think as a result of that, there’s an audience for serious documentary that can be ten hours in length. I don’t know whether that’s existed as a mass form before now.”
“There’s now a budget for docs and there are first run docs that don’t go in cinemas, they just pop-up straight away on whichever platform’s paid for them.”
Theroux’s panel proved to be a highlight of this year’s BVE with so many attendees trying to get into the session that organisers opened up another of the venue’s theatres to cope with the overspill. Even with the extra seating, many in the audience were left standing around the edge of the theatre in order to watch and listen to what he had to say.
Keynote will be available to TVBEurope and TV Tech Global readers in digital edition format. Look out for further announcements.
