Talesmith founder Martin Williams and creative director Ruth Roberts on uncovering startling new animal behaviours as Secrets of the Penguins hits National Geographic.
Ruth Roberts
Tell us more about Talesmith. RR: Talesmith is a London-based premium factual production company. Secrets of the Penguins is our most recent broadcast but we’ve also worked with networks like Roku and done a lot of development work with History, Amazon and the BBC. We work with all the big main streamers and broadcasters across natural history, science, adventure and obs docs. Storytelling is at the heart of everything that we do, that’s always the DNA of the company. We also try and push boundaries at every step – taking the familiar, making it unfamiliar, taking the ordinary and making extraordinary.
MW: We’ve always been happy and keen to embrace new technologies, not just at the point of capture, but also in terms of delivery to audiences. We’ve made several ‘flying theatre’ films now, which are these giant screens with hydraulic seating. We’ve made projects in VR and AR as well. We enjoy finding alternative methods of engaging with the audience.
What were the origins of Secrets of the Penguins? RR: We have a long-standing relationship with Nat Geo and the senior VP of production and development there Janet Han Vissering. We were looking at building out ‘Secrets Of…’ as a franchise. Penguins are charismatic cool creatures with countless incredible stories but obviously a lot of documentaries made about them already, so the Secrets Of franchise demands world first stories and storytelling, and new technical expertise. That was our development challenge, how can we tell different stories in a different way?
How difficult is it to focus on new behaviour and new tech? How do you approach the task? RR: First, by immersing with the scientists, talking to the very best out there and just asking them, what have they seen that hasn’t been filmed? What did they want? What kind of stories did they think we should tell? And from that, as storytellers, being able to unpack it and work out is there a really cool sequence in that? Or is that just a cool, nuanced behaviour?
MW: One of the positives of focusing on a single kind of animal is that you get to spend more time on all of the detail about what they do. Those conversations with penguin scientists yielded some interesting leads. You may have seen the 50-foot cliff jump that came out. That was actually the result of some very detailed research at the development stage, where we’d found these satellite images, we’d spoken to scientists, they’d heard about this behaviour. Knowing that that was potentially taking place, we were on high alert with our crew out there to be able to capture it. So you ride your luck in a certain sense, but it’s all about spending time with the animals. Our crew are only the fifth crew ever to spend the entire overwinter period in Antarctica, filming all the time. In that situation our crew started to film things that even the scientists had rarely seen, things like we saw a pair of emperor Penguins rehearsing for this egg transfer behaviour by passing a little block of ice like a snowball between themselves.
Martin Williams
And presumably that’s going to help almost market the series itself because it’s had a ridiculous number of hits on YouTube and TikTok. RR: That clips have over 150 million hits across all their platforms. So that is superbly exciting. I think as filmmakers we’re very aware with the streamers that those are valuable marketing tools. They’re thinking about the billboard. And we, as filmmakers helped to serve that.
MW: That was a very bold strategy, I think, from the network to release that clip a whole year before the show was airing. At the time we wondered whether you want to give this amazing clip away now? But it was really clever because it did create interest. People know about the series already. And now it’s part of the run into transmission.
Time is money and there isn’t a lot of that about right now. How willing are networks to be patient? MW: You have to be nimble. You have to be willing to make quick measured decisions based on your experience. National Geographic have been hugely supportive with this series and having good communication with them has been key. We were on Zoom calls at least once a week, talking about what’s coming up next, what’s happening. We were communicating all of the winds and the things that weren’t working so well on location and making decisions together about where to put our resources to get the best possible story. Like every production, every naturalistic production, we were hampered by the impacts of the changing planet. And in our situation, bird flu was a huge problem for us and meant we often had to pivot to something else having invested money in a shoot. That’s where it’s great to work with a collaborative network who understand it and will support your decision.
RR: The natural history market has changed a lot in the last few years. A few years ago, there were a lot of big blue chip natural history numbers getting through, and that’s changed dramatically. The vision of a natural history doc is changing. There will always be the demand for blue chip content, but there are different ways of telling these stories, whether you mix up genres, bring in drama or bring in just different skill sets. And that always comes with different budgets and different timeframes. It’s a different marketplace to what it was.
Secrets of the Penguins has revealed fascinating new details
Where does AI sit on the list of things keeping you up at night?
RR: In terms of natural history filmmaking, I think authenticity is key. I think in most documentary filmmaking it’s the new premium to be human-made and especially in natural history. You can’t fake this stuff, not at the highest level. AI has a use in the field, like logging rushes, those very practical jobs that could be done in a fraction of the time. I think in using it to generate content, we have to tread very carefully.
MW: We’re swimming in a tsunami of misinformation and disinformation at the moment. I think projects like Secret of the Penguins and other natural history projects that are created for trustworthy networks like National Geographic, people are going to seek these things out because they want the authenticity, they want to believe in real things. There’s no way AI would ever be used on screen in this kind of project because it will completely undermine everything that people think they’re watching. That’s the key thing for natural history – it’s a genre that people want to believe in.
Do you think it will be used at the super high volume, low cost end of the market? RR: It’s not something that we’ve discussed with networks. I’m sure they would hate the idea, but creatively AI can offer a lot. Outside of natural history we’re absolutely looking at AI in terms of visual effects and all those elements.
MW: Essentially, AI is another tool that can be used, and you’ve got to use it in the right way. I think the audience needs to know if it impacts what they’re being told, and they believe in what they are looking at, then they need to be told that it’s being used in a certain way. I think it’s fine if people know on screen that they’re looking at something that is a made-up image, but I think being clear about what that is key.
What’s the biggest challenge you face? MW: I think there’s a limited market for natural history. So, there’s that’s, but that’s nothing new. We’ve seen this boom and all the natural history producers have ridden that wave. As ever we have to keep reinventing ourselves and our ideas to stay relevant and exciting as storytellers for the clients that we speak to.
Talesmith isn’t just about natural history. We’ve been working in other genres, history, science, other unscripted genres, and in the immersive space as well. It’s really important for us as a company to stay nimble by looking at those other content producing revenue streams and staying true to our values as a production company, but finding different ways to produce content to stay up with the audiences that are changing. Audience tastes are changing so fast.
What are the main markets you’re focusing on? RR: The financial movement is in the US market. The British market is the British market and it’s fantastic, the quality is incredible, but the money isn’t really there at the moment. It’s there when you look hard enough for it, but we certainly find the home of the streamers, the LA market, is the one to be focusing on if we want to have longevity.
MW: Our expertise in finding coproduction funding, which we did quite a lot of that a few years ago, finding creative ways to find funding, just gives all the projects an extra leg up, and networks will definitely sit up if you’ve got money attached.
RR: It’s interesting because we are really confident with coproduction. It’s what most of the British companies grew up on. For the LA Market especially, it’s kind of new for them.
LIVE FROM: LA SCREENINGS
