THE GENTLEMEN PRODUCTION
my camera operator Alex Bender were dancing around. Charlie came up with some ingenious creation on his dimmer board, allowing us to dim the background lights separately, so they could rotate. It sounds easy, but it was apparently very tricky for him to do.” Green took several creative liberties when bringing the scene from script to screen. “On paper, that [sequence] read as, ‘Jack Glass (Harry Goodwins) is having a fight, he’s winning and then we cut to Susie (Kaya Scodelario) and Eddie (Theo James) watching it, and they’re excited’,” he shares. To make the whole thing more lively, Green and his crew ‘decided to shoot it at 1000fps, then speed it down to 24 when [Jack] hits the canvas, then whip off that and push into Susie and Eddie’. He concludes: “We were always trying to keep the camera moving,” with the result a fast-paced montage of grit and glory. CLASS ACT The Gentlemen excels at feeling flashy and high-octane, with each scene operating like an elaborate dance. Like Green, Creevy came with a few music videos under his belt – this background lending itself to the show’s visual language. “You learn so much on music videos; you get to be super creative and
generally have to do it fairly quickly,” explains Green. “This helped [us make] more off-the-cuff creative decisions. “Under prep, we would definitely talk about what we were going to do creatively, but generally that was just written down on a bit of paper,” Green continues. “Many of the decisions were made on the day. Between myself, Tammo van Hoorn, the camera operator, and Terry Williams, the grip, we would come up with some pretty fun, stylistic ways to approach each scene.” The Sony FX3s proved critical for this task. “You can stick them on anything, and we managed to get them on all kinds of things – guns, whisky bottles, we even got one in a pigeon cage, we chucked them on cars and all over the place,” enthuses Green. “It helps you feel like you’re there, that’s for sure.” Impressively, most of the show’s effects were done in-camera, whether on an FX3 or a VENICE, paired with Tokina Vista prime lenses. On-set, ‘life got pretty fun’, admits Green. Being a New Zealander, he was impressed by the show’s old-school English locations, including Badminton House, which served as the Hornimans’ own Halstead Manor. “On top of that, everyone was great and having a lot of fun. If you have the chance to work with a fun, professional crew, you can’t lose.”
YOU CAN FEEL the punches, the sweat, the blood COMING OFF THE BOXING GLOVES”
IN TUNE Working with a talented team, Green (left) lent on his background in music videos to bring a creative, stylistic approach
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