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 OLIVER TWIST
“I found Fujifilm really vibrant and with a really interesting textural quality to the colours.”
continued from page 8
Producer Sarah Brown admitted: “Bleak House was the template inso- much that we wanted to try half hours again because Dickens lends himself to that kind of storytelling. From my point of view it made Dickens feel incredibly fresh and modern without short-chang- ing people who love the sort of cos- tume drama that the BBC produces.
“Of course, we didn’t want to copy Bleak House in terms of its visual style or how we were going to make it but we wanted to make it feel as fresh, but in a different way, as Bleak House had managed a year or so ago.”
With the decision to go all location with no studio work at all for its ten week shooting schedule, what Giedroyc certainly didn’t want was the recreation of a cosy London with “just cart wheels, shop signs and bushels of corn. I fought really hard to stay as authentic and as Dickensian as possible.”
Although locations ranged from Reading to Chatham and Tilbury, much of the filming took place in some of the less familiar London sites such as the extraordinary House of Detention in Clerkenwell, a Victorian overflow of Newgate Prison – “all underground cells and tunnels, an hor- rendous place,” purred Giedroyc. Then there was the “posh London” achieved with the likes of Fitzroy Square, New Square and Middle Temple.
Brown added: “We got very lucky in terms of what we found. Whether in a year or two we’d have been able to make it I doubt very much because with quite a few of the places where we filmed we were going to be the last people in.
“It was a real jigsaw puzzle. One of Coky’s great achievements, and the designer’s is how they managed to knit all these disparate worlds togeth- er and make them feel very much part of the same London. So, Oliver might turn a corner in Middle Temple and come out in Luton Hoo. Yet it some- how feels like the same London.”
Up until about a week before shooting a decision hadn’t finally been
made whether to shoot on HD or film. Giedroyc was working for the first time with DP Matt Gray (Mark Of Cain, Skins, Talk To Me). “He’s one of those cameramen who’s brilliantly forward- looking and excited by new formats.
“In the end we decided to shoot on film because I began to have hee- bie-jeebies about all the various loca- tions, the different light qualities, the need to be very mobile and especially quick on our feet because of the chil- dren for performances’ sake.
“It would perhaps have been dif- ferent in a studio where it was much more controllable and I’d have felt safer. Anyway, Matt agreed. In the end, there’s a texture to the film that’s just beautiful,” Giedroyc noted.
As well as some of the characters (and the way they’ve been recreated on the screen, whether it’s Alec Guinness, Ron Moody, Robert Newton or even Jack Wild), Oliver Twist is also full of iconic moments, perhaps none more so than Bill Sikes’ horrific death from the rooftops.
With ‘subterranean’ the recurring motif of this new version, purists will have to get their heads round a new exit for one of Dickens’ most double- dyed villains.
“Yes,” said Brown, “there are a handful of scenes from the book people particularly remember. When we decid- ed to reinvent Sikes’ death it wasn’t solely a financial decision although partly to do with that. To do it like the book well and effectively for the screen might have eaten up half of our budget.
“It was also partly to do with the way Sarah has portrayed her charac- ters. How she’s chosen to do his death is, I think, incredibly true to the char- acter of Sikes. People will watch it and I hope will almost forget how he died in the book.”
Another, arguably even more famous, moment, is the “Please can I have some more, sir?” scene in the workhouse.
Gray and Giedroyc looked at ear- lier film versions of the story,
notably Lean’s 1948 classic lit by Guy Green. “What we loved about it,” said Gray, “was the directness of the storytelling. We also took a classical approach in our camera engagement, Prime lenses and so on. Some of Green’s work on that is almost German Expressionist in terms of the way he directs light so I was keen to use some of that approach, as was Coky. In other moments, we use a slightly more contemporary, more visceral approach.”
Oliver’s timeless plea was filmed at a warehouse in Chatham. “Instead of those great huge spaces Lean and Green had, this was much more inti- mate, in a place with all this distem- pered paint on the walls.
“When you’re faced with such an iconic scene that a lot of people have memories of from various adaptations, it was particularly rewarding doing this,” said Gray.
Said Brown: “Of coursed there’ll always be purists about books espe- cially those of, say, Dickens, Austen and other well-loved novelists. Everyone has a view on who should play Fagin or Nancy and what that world should look like.
“On a more positive note, that means that a lot of people will come to it because they are excited to see how we’ve done it. You have to take the rough with the smooth. I really believe that we’ve done a version which, although there may be some departures from the book, feels overall very true to the spirit of the original.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Oliver Twist, to be aired soon on BBC One, was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and Super F-64D 8622
     Photo main: Timothy Spall as Fagin; above: Cast and crew on the set of Oliver Twist with Director Coky Giedroyc and William Miller; far right: Spall with Tom Hardy (BBC)
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