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Award- winning production designer Gerry Scott talks to Quentin Falk
Photos above: Gerry Scott; below: scene from The Way We Live Now
Idon’t think you should really notice the design,” says Gerry Scott. “It’s very important that it doesn’t stand there saying, ‘Hey, look at me!’ You’re con- tributing to the drama of the piece, to the characters, trying to fill in the social background in a quiet, backstage, supportive role. No, it should never scream out.”
From the garden of her own lovely period cottage in Buckinghamshire, Scott leads me into her studio where the book- cases are crammed with volumes of reference. Then to a sitting room where on the mantelpiece a couple of BAFTA awards are modestly perched like bookends and the walls are decorated with some of her original paintings.
The trophies are for The Way We Live Now and Wives And Daughters, winners from, to date, five nominations since Scott was first cited in 1985 for Silas Marner. She was also mentioned in dis- patches later for Clarissa and Love In A Cold Climate. Add to this her work on other classic TV adaptations like Pride And Prejudice and Middlemarch and it becomes clear that her work, however ‘supporting’ in nature, is inextricably linked with the very best of the BBC.
Scott, who quit the Beeb to go freelance about seven years ago has, she admits, become to a certain extent ‘typecast, but the fact that she seems to have so cornered the market in costume biggies can’t be down to mere coincidence?
“I can only assume it’s to do with reputation. These projects usually start with a producer who generally has quite a time of it trying to get it all together in the first place. If they come across someone they feel they can trust it’s another thing they can tick off their list of major problems.
“I am and have always been very conscious of budgets. You hassle for money at the start so you don’t have to go back to them again. You need to be absolutely clear at the outset
what’s available then, as far as I am concerned, that’s the end of it. If you can’t raise the money to make it a do-able production in my terms, then it’s best not to do it at all.”
Scott, born in Bradford where her engineer father once played soccer for the City team, ascribes her budgetary naus to way back when she was earning to help pay for the early short films (some on which she also worked) of her ex-husband Tony Scott when he was at the Royal College of Art.
The pair had first met at art school in the North where she was training to be a painter. Later she moved to the South Devon College of Art where she also taught but left some 18 months later to get a job in London to help support Tony. She toyed with the idea of becoming an assistant to a still photogra- pher or even an illustrator but then Tony’s brother, Ridley Scott, suggested she apply to the BBC to get her ticket.
So she joined up as a tempo- rary holiday relief assistant in the blossoming design department and after 18 months, when some- thing like six years was more the norm, got a designer’s job much to her shocked surprise.
“Knowing how long it usually took, I thought I’d probably be long gone before it would ever happen so when it came so quickly suddenly leaving wasn’t quite such an option.”
In fact, she stayed for 20 years helping to continue the good
work she ascribes fulsomely to her own revered mentors like Cliff Hatts and Sally Hulke. She finally left when the things that had kept her at the BBC for so long “were beginning to break down.”
Scott regularly uses the “we” when she refers to her work, not royally, of course, but in the sense of team effort. “We do the research because we need to understand the background which is often fascinating. We get it all fixed in our heads and then put the books away. At the end of the day these are not historical documents but rather drama and, as I’ve said before, the design has to serve that drama and those characters.
“Naturally a huge amount of cheating goes on,” Scott adds and, just as naturally, there’s always someone out there who will pick up on the odd mistake – like the person who once sent her a letter about the handle of tea- cup being wrong.
Not long ago she was back at the BBC for a meeting and a couple of producers she knew said, “Oh, we must be doing frocks and country houses...”. Scott thought, “Whoops!” and retorted with “we can do other things, you know.”
To perhaps prove a point and as a kind of refresher, she signed up for the fiercely contemporary two-part thriller Messiah II. Then it was back to the drawing board.
bricks and mor tals
arts and crafts
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