Teens - Interview with Dimitri Doganis

12 March 2015

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This autumn, Teens will bring adolescent life to the screens with a keener focus and more insight than ever before, thanks to a revolutionary new documentary format. Here, the co-exec producer and founder of Production Company Raw, Dimitri Doganis, reveals more about the series, its remarkable technology, and what life is like for teens today.

 

You have amazing access to social media and, in particular, to the Teens’ text messages. How does that work?

We've created a new piece of technology called the Digital Rig (D:Rig) which was developed under our Head of Development Tim Wardle and my co Exec Producer Lucy Willis. The D:Rig allows contributors to share their digital communications with the documentary production team. The system comprises customised mobile phones given to each contributor which, with their consent (and the explicit consent of those they communicate with), will send their data – including voice calls, text messages, Facebook posts, photographs and internet search history – back to a secure central server in near real time. The data on this server is viewed and processed by a dedicated team of D:Rig researchers and producers, who use it to inform what observational documentary teams are filming on the ground. The data is archived so that it can be used in the edit, where graphics integrate texts, google searches etc, directly into the documentary footage.

 

With docs like 24 Hours in A&E and Educating Yorkshire, we’ve had very intimate, fly-on-the-wall access in the past. Is this the next level in that evolution?

We're certainly seeing it as a new evolution in terms of the relationship between contributors and production teams, and it has the potential to change how observational documentary series are made. While the camera rig from 24 Hours in A&E captures intimate moments over a very short space of time, the D:Rig allows us access to contributors' thoughts and behaviours over a much longer period.

 

Has anything like this been done anywhere in the world before?

Not as far as we are aware. The system took 9 months to develop and required considerable investment and specialist knowledge to build.

 

What was the set-up, in terms of filming? Is it a mixture of fixed rig, traditional camera crew and self-filmed?

The majority of filming was by traditional observational crews, but contributors also filmed parts of it on their mobile phones.

 

You’re dealing with young people, who don’t necessarily make the best decisions all the time, particularly when they’re drunk. Did you have any misgivings about showing stuff that might reflect on them very badly?

There’s always a balance to be struck between showing material that may reflect unfavourably on young people and being truthful about what happened. As a rule of thumb, we were careful about any material that would cause them undue distress or negatively impact on their futures.

The teens taking part in the series did so after extensive discussion with both them and also their parents; we explained not only the filming but particularly the digital aspect of the series. The contributors were also screened by a psychologist before filming. The students had the opportunity to watch the programmes before broadcast and wherever possible we accommodated their comments and any concerns. This is an important series which attempts to address not only the reality of teenage life but also a really interesting contemporary theme – how people communicate, manage their relationships and interact in this digital age. We wanted to produce something which is honest and accurately represents the experiences that the teenagers went through, but as you will see from the programmes which also has real heart

 

Young people are incredibly tech savvy and media-aware. Do you think they ever really forgot they were on camera?

In general, all contributors are increasingly media-aware but it helps that we filmed our young people over a decent period of time and they were able to build up good relationships with the crew on the ground.