This week, award winning documentary film maker, Elizabeth Stopford, discusses how her latest C4 documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ was received on Twitter, and what a “real time” response means from a filmmaker’s perspective.
Watching my latest documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ go out on Channel 4 was a novel experience because its transmission was punctuated by an ongoing commentary – courtesy of twitter.
The ‘water cooler effect’ of people talking about your show afterwards has now been superseded by the immediacy of being able to ‘listen in’ on what people make of it in real time.
I’d spent over 6 months producing the documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ through Rare Day for Channel 4. The Johnsons had twenty years of happy marriage, professional success, a lovely home, blond-haired children. They were nicknamed the ‘Sunday Supplement family’ by locals, and appeared to have it all. Then one day, Nick Johnson, told his wife he had a surprise for her, led her blindfolded into the garden, and committed an awful act of violence.