Page 31 - Fujifilm Exposure_24 Stephen Fry_ok

M
a drama? Is it a sitcom? It’s hard to say.
THE DP VIEW
DANNY COHEN
y biggest challenge? There’s was a key scene where Lachlan (James Lance), the conceptual artist, had put together
an exhibit in a large and totally empty swimming pool.
When you do the recces you start with massive plans about how you’re going to do something fantastically outrageous and the amount of light- ing gear you’re going to put in with, ideally, five days of pre-lights. When it actually comes down to it, you probably have an afternoon to put it all together and then shoot it.
We used this old Victorian swim- ming pool which was closed down years ago and kept it all very low-key.
I worked closely with the production designer, Mark Leese, who had a lot of fun coming up with something that was vaguely believable as a concep- tual piece – both visually arresting but also completely bonkers.
The idea was to incorporate lighting into the piece. It would then not only work visually but also help light the set as well. So we had this 15ft high mountain of empty litre water bottles with lights under it so it’d glow.
That was at one end of the pool. At the other was an old gar- den shed with lights inside. Then you had frogmen walking around, in wet suits with their aqualungs, whom we gave water torches so they were continually illuminating part of the action.
The scene probably accounted for about five minutes in one episode. The constraints of the budget meant we had to scale back what had per- haps started as something jaw drop- pingly amazing.
What we actually came up with was much more realistic and said everything it needed to say to work best for the story – that it was a really bad work of art. ■
Danny Cohen’s recent work includes Menace (C5), Daddy’s Girl (ITV) and this year’s BAFTA-winning live action short, My Wrongs 8245-8249 And 117.
Photos: (above left) The pool and (above right) Annie Griffin in sunny silhouette - the writer and director of The Book Group and below, the cast members of The Book Group
Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video • Exposure • 29