David Farrier is a New Zealand-based journalist.
He's also the host of 'Dark Tourist' on Netflix and created the Sundance official selection 'Tickled' - Great movie.
'Dark Tourist' was an 8 - episode series. I was watching it, figured
David Ferrier is probably good to talk to. Reached out to him. He was awesome enough
to come on the podcast and we talked about
What it takes to sell a series to Netflix?
Here are my takeaways. The best parts of the podcast that I had with David Farrier.
Lets do it.
We talked about - How David pitched Dark Tourist to Netflix?
David: Yeah, I pitched it to Netflix but it wasn't my idea there's
a one of the EPs at the show Mark McNeil, he's a New Zealander who's been making
really amazing television in New Zealand for a long time and he saw it tickled at
the movies in New Zealand and he had had this idea about, you know a sort of a
Travel Show and documentary based around this idea of Dark Tourism and you know
people that holiday to places where something awful's happened. And he sorta
tickled and brought the idea to me and I loved it because I, during travel team to.
I go into places a bit off the beaten trail and then the I took to
Netflix and they got on board with it really quickly actually.
Alex: Netflix wants to make the best show they can.
David: You know they just so I mean that's the thing we know.
They just wanted to make a good show. They wanted to you know they'd
invested in this thing and they wanted it to be good and they weren't. They were
just trying to make the best show they could, and it was really helpful because
you know the interesting thing worth Netflix is you know you're making
something for a global audience so there's a lot of different things to
think about and the way you guide a viewer through a situation or what you show them
- I asked how many ideas did David pitch to Netflix and what did those ideas look like?
David: I think like 3. I think we took them like
three ideas of things that we thought would make a good documentary series.
So we're thinking of things that would be a series. Not feature films but you
know a documentary series. So yeah two other ones. To be honest, I carry
around so many different ideas for things I can't even remember exactly
what those were that we did pitch. I just noted that Dark Tourist was the one
where they just instantly responded to it.
-What the pitch looked like?
David: I think it was pretty much the first time was
was being in a room and just bringing up the ideas
on the spot and just. I don't know I think you hear about having to pitch
things with you know pitch decks and having your little sizzle reel
and all that kind of thing and I think there's definitely a place for that but
also I think of an idea. If you're excited about an idea it was the same
with tickled like I pitched that to the Film Commission in New Zealand and I
pitched it to some financiers over in the States and I think if you just talk
and like really enthusiastically about something, and the story is good, and the
ideas are good, and the characters a good, then you don't have to do those
pitch decks and those reels and you can kind of shoot a short track that sometimes.
- What was David's takeaway after the first meeting?
David: I think the takeaway was we're all on the same page of what the show would be and then we
just went off and basically wrote down what we wanted to film and how it'd be
structured. And you know, obviously they wanted that because they wanted to make
sure that this this idea that they enjoyed had the content
to make it work. There's the other thing - you can sell a great idea
but then if you sort of start research you can go all when there aren't actually
21 places we can go to. That ain't going to work for this concept
Then the idea falls over pretty quickly so we just wanted to prove for them with
that document that - No, this is a show, this is what it looks like
these paces and also characters gonna be enticing and interesting and global and
So that's what we went into it.
- How David met his Co-producer?
David: I didn't know him at all before he approached me he had seemed tickled and I knew his
work, I knew some of the stuff he had done but I'd never met him before.
We had a coffee as you do in New Zealand. We had a flat white and he had a
piccolo and he just told me this. Ideally I jump on it because you
know I'm pretty happy as long as I'm spending time with people that are doing
things that are much more interesting than what I'm doing and I just find it
such privilege to be able to get these little insights into people's worlds and
I mean and that's why I love being a journalist on a show here in New Zealand
because I sort of worked on the show that was late at night it was on at
10:00 p.m. You could get away with a lot of sort of cheeky stuff and you could
look into little weird subcultures and people doing interesting things and I just loved it.
-We found out that Netflix financed the show, it wasn't an independent production
David: Yeah, yes It did yeah it's fully financed by Netflix.
- Then I asked - How do you know if a project is good enough?
David: I think you just know down deep where it is, where it might lead but I think I also I do a thing
where I just like to get discussion hit me as quickly as possible so I tend to
start everything as a written piece online so with Tickled that was a series
of three blogs that I put out on this New Zealand news website I worked for
which had a really man not a big readership but you know I put that out
on Twitter and Facebook and people started talking about it and I suddenly
got links to all these other people in the world of Tickling.
If you want this full episode go down to the description. You can check it out it's on Spotify and iTunes.
My interview with David Farrier. If you want the actual proposal we use
to sell video production services at Lorelia, that is over at experiment27.com/proposal
You can have that for free.
If you want the discovery questions what we actually ask on call number one for experiment 27 to sell to new
clients, that is over at experiment27.com/discovery
If you want this hoodie you know some Alex Berman merch, that is over at Wohello.com
and if you want to work with more enterprise clients. You run an agency
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I'm Alex Berman. Thanks for watching.