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tv production
cast and crew at least did not have the distractions of a more fractured shooting schedule.
“When you’re continually jumping about between two or three episodes it’s very hard to maintain an overall continuity for each episode. It ends up being a bit of a mish-mash really.
“But because each of these episodes tells a completely different story, the only common factor is that the main characters are the same. When you’ve got guest characters coming in, and different locations for each episode, it does really help.
“The amazing thing about all these six episodes is that they all touch something that is quite relevant to what it going on today,” Gibson adds.
For Andy Wilson, a much in- demand director whose TV work takes in such contrasting projects as Gormenghast and Cracker, it was the quality of the writing that drew him to Spooks quite late in the day.
“A Howard Brenton script was an impossible thing to turn down,” he explains. “I was thrilled to do it. I envi- sioned episode five, about a former government minister involved in ille- gal arms sales, a bit like a Jacobean drama. Very formal and very stiff, so you would listen to the quite complex dialogue that was going on; it seemed to fit Howard’s writing.
“We shot it in a very static, for- malised, symmetrical composition; in, if you like, a vaguely theatrical way. That seemed to work for the piece very well, which was a sort of revenge drama.
“And the last one I shot completely on a hand held camera to give it a more urgent, twitchy sort of feel.
Obviously the continuity comes in the characters. I think that’s what you can achieve in television.”
There are constraints, of course. A six part BBC drama is competing for audience share with shows that can boast much bigger budgets and – per- haps – household name stars.
But Spooks doesn’t do too badly, with a regular cast that includes Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Jenny Agutter and Peter Firth, and guest stars such as Hugh Laurie, Anthony Head, Tim Piggott-Smith and Nicholas Farrell.
“As with all television drama the greatest enemy is always time,” says Bobbitt. “People have very high expec- tations of what they’re going to watch.
“To meet those you have to really work hard at giving them the full breadth of experience. People see so much in the cinema, and at home on VHS or DVD, which is of a very high visual quality, you’re always attempt- ing to match that if not beat it in the TV work you do. It’s very challenging, primarily because of the time and because of the budgets.”
“But if you get these sorts of series right,” adds Wilson, “they seem to be exactly what people want. They’re intelligent and yet they’re racy, excit- ing and well shot and high gloss.
“That is what people want, and it takes an hour out of your day rather than a feature length slot. They’re very good and, above all, very well conceived.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Spooks was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
W SUE GIBSON BSC e were lucky that our
main location was a standing set. It’s called The Grid, the MI5 head- quarters, and was also
our production headquarters.
I decided to build as much of the
lighting into it as I could because of the nature of the piece and the fact that there were so many things in that office. I wanted it to have this time- less quality so that you wouldn’t know whether it was day or night and because it seems that they work there twenty four hours a day.
To actually be continually chang- ing the set from day to night would have been prohibitive really, so I chose an overall scheme of lighting that made it look a bit like an under- ground bunker.
There were subtle changes within that, whether it was a busy daytime scene or an empty night time scene, but ostensibly the main structure of the lighting was the same throughout. ■
I
We looked at The Ipcress File primari- ly for the composition and the move- ment of the camera. There was a fan- tastic use of ‘Dutch’ camera angles on that film, and strong foreground ele- ments in the composition.
The Insider was another, primarily in terms of composition. There were some fantastic scenes within it where Michael Mann really put some thought into making a one-on-one conversation, which can be the most boring thing in the world, seem really interesting.
It’s a fantastic manipulation of the image field through the choice of lenses and the positioning of the camera.” ■
THE DPS VIEW
SEAN BOBBITT
worked with Rob Bailey on the two episodes that I did and there were certain things that we discussed and a number of films I watched for research.
Photos: A selection of shots of the Spooks team including cast members Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and David Oyelowo