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SHOOT STORY VERA
DIRECTOR AND DOP Darkwater was the third job that Ed and Lee Haven Jones, the director, had done together and it’s obvious that they click. “We did the first Vera and just got on like a house on fire and then went on to work on Shetland and then back again for this episode of Vera . We doubled down on things that we wanted to try like the ‘mad’ framing or how to cover a scene and a whole lot more. The editor was also someone Lee works with a lot which is really important because they start to cut stuff on right on day one without the director there so you need an editor who is cutting the way the director would want it done. Especially for Lee and me as we like the wide, graphic shots and letting characters create their own blocking in the sense that if a character walks close to the camera then that forms a close-up rather than cut in another shot. If you get an editor who just puts in as many shots as possible, you’re kind of working against yourself. David Fisher, who cut the episode, enjoys holding on to shots for a long time which I think fits with our style. “We are all so used to watching content that’s made to such a high
frames so you have a situation where you’re looking through something, like a door or window. I also try to make something as completely black as I can get in every shot and something as white as I can get, even if it’s a tiny little specular highlight, like the inky blackness inside a van and the doors open to a bright sky outside. It just helps draw the eye in.” NORTHUMBERLAND VISTA For Vera the Northumberland countryside is of course also a character, which means plenty of location shooting and different shot designs, although Ed admits that he now artificially lights the drama less and less. “I am embracing more and more of what’s happening naturally. I’ll now take some of the light away and use negative fill to create more contrast: so big black cloths everywhere to try and get some shape back into the rooms. Brenda Blethyn, the actress who plays Vera, looks absolutely great in natural daylight. I struggled with her in an earlier episode as I tried to present her with an individual design but then that didn’t really cut together with other more aggressively lit shots in the same scene. If you can get her in a
standard. Lee and I decided that we could take more chances and be more expressive about how stuff is composed and put together, otherwise programmes start to look the same and be cut together in similar ways. Everything will be on the same cameras with the same lenses and the same shot design. “It’s good to try something new and we were often told to calm down by the producer. You can take it too far but it’s better to be overshooting the mark and coming back onto it rather than always doing the safest thing possible. We just pushed against the norm in a friendly way. We’re also very fond of frames within
ABOVE Director Lee Haven Jones and
DOP Ed Moore. ABOVE Brenda Blethyn as DCI
Vera Stanhope and Kenny Doughty as DS Aiden Healy.
DEFINITION MAY 2018
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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