DEFINITION July 2018

SHOOT STORY A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL

screen at the BFI in London. The image held up really well so you had the ability to screen it in cinemas if you wanted to. The quality is there.” PANAVISION LENSES Another constant in Danny’s shooting life is his use of Panavision glass and in this case Primo lenses with the RED Weapon. “I’ve used Primos a lot and they are a little bit more sympathetic, a little bit more forgiving. It helps make it feel that it wasn’t shot last week and gives it a little bit of a look. That in conjunction with an interesting LUT really helps. Primos have an interesting fall-off. Master Primes are really sharp but sharp edge to edge, Primos fall away slightly around the edges, they’re not as clinical. We started with a film LUT but when we graded it, one of the

busy shoot with lots of locations,” he says, “a chunk of work around London and then we went away for a bit to Devon and Wales, so there was a fair bit of running around. “For me if you have one LUT that you can manipulate then you’re not going to be chasing your tail basically. With this type of television, you really don’t have much time for anything. I think digital cinematography with on-set grading included helps people see how the end product is going to look. The flexibility and cost of digital definitely has its advantages. We shot on RED Weapon cameras in their equivalent to ARRI Raw but we shot at a slightly different compression to the last film I shot with RED. We didn’t need that much data. “Interestingly, one of the first screenings of the show was at a big

things I really wanted to do was reflect the changes throughout the episodes as we moved through the decades. “I wanted to start with less contrast and more saturation to make it look older and a bit garish. When it comes to its climax I wanted to increase the contrast and reduce the saturation so the faces looked a little bit harder but a little drained of colour. I thought that would help with the storytelling from 1963 to 1979 and also help the time passing with its subtle changes.” Danny didn’t use any diffusion for the look as he thinks diffusion at night affects the blooming of the lights that are in vision. “That slightly distracts me and for this show mainly the men didn’t have to look like Hollywood starlets, put it that way. If they had a bit of an edge and a few wrinkles, that would help the story.” LIGHTING For the programme there were a few sets but much more location work, which meant working out lighting schemes that were very practical mainly because of the lack of time. “In a way it was all about what practicals would be in vision and where the light sources were coming from. We shot it from October to December so one of the big deals was that you would lose the daylight around four in the afternoon. So the schedule inevitably would be affected and you might have to black out and shoot an interior

IMAGES Danny shot the drama on RED Weapons with Panavision Primo lenses.

ONE OF THE THINGS I REALLY WANTED TO DO WAS REFLECT THE CHANGES

DEFINITION JULY 2018

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