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tv production
Getting At The Truth
Inside the world of Whistleblower,
the new conspiracy thriller series for ITV1
J ust because you’re para- noid, the saying goes, does-
n’t mean that someone’s not really out to get you. The thought might have occurred to the crew of the new six-part ITV drama
Whistleblower, as each story reveals one aspect of a conspiracy or cover- up revealed by two dogged heroes.
Conceived by Tony Marchant and produced by Carnival, the stories follow corporate lawyers Ben (Richard Coyle) and Alisha (Indira Varma) as they first follow their own consciences and then encourage others to do the same.
“We’re going into Whistleblower with two heroes who are the Everyman,” producer Sanne Wohlenberg explains. “They are you and me on the street. They have to wrestle with the rights and wrongs and all the moral dilemmas that comes with each case that’s brought to them. They have to get to the bottom of it, but they’re not a bunch of detectives or superheroes, they don’t always know what to do, but the moral issues are what drive them forward.”
“There’s a very fine line between how the public perceive somebody who ‘blows the whistle’,” says director Paul Gay, who directs two out of the block of six. “They could be called a ‘grass’, even. It’s very interesting subject mat- ter, and I think the question that’s always being raised is ‘would you do this? Would you become a whistleblow- er’. It is a very tricky thing, because there’s always a risk I suppose.”
The paranoid conspiracy genre has had a long history in movies, from All The President’s Men to The Insider, and does allow for a certain visual style that keeps alive that creeping feeling of unease within the audience.
“The visual language is very con- scious,” adds Gay, “you can really help to create the effect of a conspiracy thriller by using long lenses. It’s not
always possible, because sometimes you’re in small offices, but even then we managed to shoot through glass and partitions and things like that. It does create a feeling of observing meetings and situations from a dis- tance, rather than being immediately in the room with the actors.”
“We shot it in a style which is very observed,” confirms DP Lukas Strebel. “Very often we shoot into things or through things like windows, or for exteriors we shoot out from the inside of a house. Blowing the whistle is all about observing and telling peo- ple what you know, and it’s about little secrets as well.”
Strebel, fresh from his Royal Television Society award and the BAFTA nomination for See No Evil – The Moors Murders, is lighting all six episodes. Along with Paul Gay the other two directors are John McKay and Richard Clark, with the episodes written by Marchant, Tony Saint, Steve Thompson and Paul Logue.
“I’ve hopefully developed a cer- tain style for this show,” adds Strebel, “but I don’t want to press it on the directors. I’m always curious to share a vision, to work together and enter someone else’s world and participate with them.
“When I can do that and play with the director it’s great. It was great with Paul and I feel it will be with Richard. We just met, we did hardly any ‘prep’, and now I’m going to shoot with him. He’s seen a lot of stuff that we’ve shot so far and he’s very confident and excited by it.”
Shooting on a combination of Fujifilm stocks, Strebel is, in some ways, the artistic conscience of the show, the man who ensures a visual consistency throughout. He came to project having worked in the past with producer Wohlenberg, and she is clear that he was the ideal man for this par- ticular job.
“The minute I got involved with this project we began discussing our references,” she adds, “what inspired this series and what we wanted to get from it.
“It’s so important that you set all these stories within a world that we are living in, without over stylising it. We needed visually to be able to tell these stories within that reality, and I think Lukas as a DP has done amazing work, which is very subtle.
“He has a huge understanding of what a story requires with regard to lighting, without ever going for an over-stylised approach to things. He has a sensitivity to storytelling, to find- ing ways subtly of lighting and shoot- ing things that feel incredibly real.
“He always seemed like the natural choice of DP, certainly to me, and when we all talked about it and looked at our reference material, he was somebody we all were mutually drawn to.”
Creating a series with the poten- tial to inspire a few debates, Wohlenberg believes Whistleblower is a timely production for the era we live in. So much so that she and her crew could be forgiven for looking a little apprehensively over their shoulders as the production wore on.
“Ever since we’ve been involved in this drama we begin to see the world in a different way,” she affirms. “It makes everybody quite alert, you read the papers with a different eye, and I think all the crew feel the same because these are stories that we all have a relationship with, and an opin- ion about. We are all affected by them in some way.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Whistleblower, to be aired in ITV1,
was originated on 16mm Fujicolor Super F-64D 8622, Eterna 250D 8663, Eterna 500T 8673 and Reala 500D 8692
22 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture