PRODUCTION. HAPPY VALLEY
“You haven’t got time on these schedules to go off-piste, so you have to investigate early on where the key elements of the story are”
DEVIL IN THE DETAILS Beginning with first script read-through, Perry began to formulate a detailed shot list for every single scene
A 360° image capture of the car’s journey through the Yorkshire countryside was filmed by Ian Sharples of Driving Plates. “It wasn’t like doing spaceships in The Mandalorian ,” Perry adds. “We stuck to the brief of a gritty, northern drama, but used quite a sophisticated way of filming a complicated scene while not bumping you out of reality.” Perry says the rationale behind the decision was time. He says he had nerves about using the technology because there was so much riding on the scene. “You have four guys in a car all killing each other with blood everywhere,” he adds. “The car starts on a normal hillside road and then leaves the road, then people jump out the car while other things are going on. If you were to do that in the
real world it would take you three weeks, because each time you slash someone’s throat and blood splatters everywhere, you’ve got to reset and clean the car up on location – then you have to repeat the whole journey time and time again. In a volume, the actors can still see where they’re driving, so can respond to a real- world scenario as it happens. But there are no low-loaders or massive resets. It would take hours to reset each time on location, but takes 15 minutes in a studio.” TIGHT SCHEDULE Perry has worked with O’Brien for several years, including on Gentleman Jack , Mother’s Day and Against the Law . Their modus operandi is focusing on the details from the very first read of the script. For Happy Valley , they created an exhaustive
shot list for the entire series – from where the actors need to be to how they’ll move through a space, there was a properly formulated plan for every scene. The two previous series (2014 and 2016) were shot on an Arri Alexa Mini with Cooke S4/i lenses, so the same kit was used for consistency. “It made the decision for us. We were shooting a lot of small council houses, small kitchens, small rooms – Arri is a rock-solid format,” Perry adds. When it came to camera movement, Perry used Shot Designer by Hollywood Camera Work to figure out how the moves would be connected from one shot to the next. “You haven’t got time on these schedules to go off-piste, so you have to investigate early on where the key elements of the story are – that gives you a decision about how the camera is going to construct those scenes,” he says. “The biggest task tends not to be technological. It’s getting something done in the time available. When you have big, technical things to achieve in a tight British TV schedule – that’s the challenge.” Happy Valley Series 1-3 are available on BBC iPlayer
MAN WITH A PLAN Perry used Shot Designer to work out and compile all his camera moves
78. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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