SAE welcomes BBC Producer Billy Hill to present his experience of getting his recent documentary 'Dale Barclay: All On Black’ commissioned by BBC Scotland/ iPlayer. This was a three year process and Billy will take you through his experience on how to turn your great idea into a commissioned programme.

The event will explain:

- How to approach the subject for your project by making contact with the contributors you want to speak to.

- The importance of producing a short teaser and a one page paper pitch that will explain your project visually and in writing to take to production companies and broadcasters.

- Getting used to your idea getting rejected as part of the process.

- The usefulness of writing a full treatment for your project which is a short story style summary of the whole documentary.

- Development and the commissioning process.

- Archive acquisition and negotiating fees with UK and foreign broadcasters, music rights and contributor release forms.

- Post-production offline and online editing.

- The final sign off and getting ready for broadcast to promote your film.

Ahead of the event, you will be able to watch the documentary on BBC iPlayer - link can be found below.

BBC iPlayer

Speaker Bio

Billy Hill is a self-shooting producer and director for the BBC whose recent documentary 'Dale Barclay: All On Black' is currently on the BBC iPlayer. The documentary tells the story of the lead singer of cult band The Amazing Snakeheads, Dale Barclay, who died in 2018 at the age of 32 from brain cancer. Billy comes from a political journalism background and has produced short films and TV packages across BBC’s news and political output as well as producing live outside broadcasts for the BBC’s election coverage for TV and radio.