Kirsten Jan van Nieuwenhuijzen thinks that the format of Het Perfecte Plaatje has now proven itself enough to make a series without celebrities, according to the format developer.
The success of the Tijl Beckand show Het Perfecte Plaatje has not left Kirsten Jan van Nieuwenhuijzen unmoved. The format developer, who once started his career as one of the first four creatives by John de Mol, has come up with exactly the same format once, but without well-known Dutch people, he says in the podcast Content Wars.
No BNs
Kirsten Jan has already put this program idea on paper. “I developed a format a long time ago with some other people and it was called Shoot. And that was a talent show for photographers. We had made a very good promo of that, really spent quite a lot of money on it, with each episode having a different kind of photo genre.”
This eventually went up in smoke. “Do you recognize the format? Right, The Picture Perfect. We even had Canon there. Well, crazy huh? Canon is now with The Perfect Picture. Canon approached, they also wanted to participate, we pitched it everywhere. The only difference we had was: we had no celebrities.”
Unknown people
Maybe that’s why his idea didn’t work out, says Kirsten Jan. “Looking back, that obviously works better with Dutch celebrities. We had unknown people who really wanted to become photographers and our main prize was that you would get a contract as a photographer, for example at De Telegraaf, so that you would immediately have a career.”
He continues: “But the format, and I still have the promo… When I sometimes teach at colleges, I show it and they say: ‘Huh, isn’t that The Perfect Picture?’ Well, I’m not going to say it was stolen, that’s not true at all, because this is an idea that a lot of creatives have had… But this format has become a huge success.”
‘Time is ripe’
But then with celebrities. The time is now ripe to try without celebrities, says Kirsten Jan. “I think that maybe even Het Perfecte Plaatje could now also be made with unknown Dutch, because that is now also a very good title that regular fans just watch.”
He concludes: “If you cast well, you could do that.”