DOWNTON ABBEY | DRAMA
FLYING HIGH
Helicopter Girls, in partnership with Marzano Films, supplied the aerials on Downton Abbey . The two companies joined together a year ago to become one of Europe’s leading aerial units, offering helicopter and drone aerials. This was an obvious choice for Ben Smithard, whose vision for a 50-mile steam train tracking scene required something a little larger than a drone. The drones were of course needed for the aerials around the house; Highclere Castle is a real building, home to Lady Carnarvon, so a helicopter would have been excessive and a tad noisy. Privacy was considered before the shoot and the team never flew the drones too close to the castle. Emma Boswell, director of operations, tells us: “The family owns racehorses, so there had to be a dialogue about when an aerial scene was going to take place, so the horses could be moved and wouldn’t be spooked.” The castle really lent itself to low-level aerials, so a lot of the film’s scenic shots were taken around it. “The closing shot of the film is a drone shot of the castle, which starts low and pulls out slowly to manoeuvre around the landscape at sunset. It was important to Ben that the light was perfect, so we were working to make sure we were able to shoot at the right moment,” Boswell reveals. The drones were also used to track the post boy arriving and cars driving up to the castle. The scene with the steam train was particularly exciting for Smithard, who told us that he rarely gets to use helicopters to shoot aerials. The aircraft was a Freefly Alta 8 with Mōvi Pro stabilised gimbal, carrying an Alexa Mini LF with Zeiss Ultra Primes. Boswell notes: “We had a separate iris hand unit for Smithard to control as he likes to work that way; he’s got such a clear vision about what he wants and he’s just a great person to work with.” Helicopter Girls, in partnership with Marzano Films, is now busy working on the 25th Bond film.
and choices, but with new opportunities come different kinds of problems, and those problems are pronounced in the film.” “But that’s all in the writing. Fellowes writes in these little moments, and if you watch carefully, you will see that all the leading female characters have something to say about their female status. And I think that actually, the female characters are more interesting than the male characters. There’s more happening in the women’s lives than in the men’s, but I don’t know why Fellowes wrote it like that.” Smithard esteems Fellowes’ equivalences to history in the script, because, like the “little moments” he describes the female characters as having, they’re subtle and also don’t distract from the fictional storyline. “There’s something that’s really interesting. There’s a character in the film, she’s one of the dressers in the royal household, and she’s having a conversation about Queen Mary, and unless you knew about Queen Mary and what she was like and what she did, then you would miss that.” He continues, “I can see why Fellowes didn’t embellish those details. It would have taken the story on a tangent that it didn’t need to go on. But from a writer’s perspective, it’s all about back story,
colours, lighting these scenes wasn’t always easy. “They involved a lot of characters; whether it be a dinner or a discussion in the library, I was usually working with 20 or 30 actors in one room. And trying to make those scenes look interesting and good, and effective, was quite a struggle, a challenge I should say, but I’m used to doing that, I seem to work on productions with quite large casts.” FELLOWES’ SCRIPT NUANCES The film sees the female characters become increasingly liberated as time moves forward. Lady Mary, who was introduced to TV audiences as someone likely to engage in a sex scandal involving a foreign diplomat, has accepted the huge – and by contrast, boring – responsibility of managing the family estate. And Lady Edith, who has for so long been at the forefront of insult, tragedy and heartbreak, has moved away to Edinburgh to start a family and build a career in publishing. “The female characters are starting to feel more empowered. In the series, the female characters’ personalities aren’t as strong because women were prohibited from being like that in the early 20th century. Towards the end of the series, the female characters start to have more options
OCTOBER 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 19
Powered by FlippingBook