DEFINITION May 2018

SHOOT STORY VERA

huge Northumbrian landscape on an overcast day with a little bit of fill to get under her hat, then she looks fantastic. “Now I just try and keep to a simple single source. This might be very big lights through windows but I back them off far enough so the light just naturally bounces off everything and ends up looking much more natural. I always say to directors that I’ll try and light from outside rooms because then the director and actors can work more freely in the location and they are not tripping over kit and other stuff. It works for me as well as inevitably as soon as you have lights in the room I feel you start to feel the source of it. It may seem a bit ‘lit’. You’re getting so close to lights, you’re feeling the change in brightness. Moving a foot towards a light that starts six feet from you is huge, whereas if you have a much bigger light 60 feet outside the window, that same one- or two-foot movement hardly makes a difference; it starts to feel a lot more believable. I’LL LIGHT FROM OUTSIDE ROOMS BECAUSE THEN THE DIRECTOR AND ACTORS CAN WORK MORE FREELY

SCENE ANALYSIS Most of the days of shooting Vera are about six or seven pages but there are heavier days. “These tend to be nearer the end of the schedule as that’s when you shoot all the police station stuff and it’s slightly lighter when you’re out on location,” says Ed. Most of the shooting is of the location, to show off the magnificent scenery, but there are builds, like the wooden house in the initial first few establishing scenes of the Darkwater episode that need special attention. “That house was a build. On that day we had about four, four and a half

pages to do because it was quite difficult to get to. You’re also chasing the light a little at that time of year, so you’re mostly going on instinct. I have found that even though you’ve got all the equipment there, it’s best not to be too prescriptive with the team in advance. What you actually do is just let them know about the big things in advance; if you know you’re going to need a 9000W HMI round the corner you let them know that because you can pre-rig all the cable and get that stuff in. “That whole scene plays almost entirely free from lighting. I did have to use a little bit of light as we were losing the light and there were rain effects on the windows and it sometimes helps to put a little bit of hard light back in. But now the digital cameras are so sensitive I always use Master Primes or some sort of lens that’s around T1.3. I find the shallow depth-of-field also helps on the wider shots. When you’re backed into a tight location, the fact that there’s a bit more focus fall-off on a Master Prime is great but mostly I use it just to suck in as much natural light as possible because otherwise stuff like a candlelight scene just doesn’t work. You end up having to supplement it with some sort of artificial light which just takes time. That opening shot of Vera in the wooden house is almost entirely natural light, candlelight and then maybe there is an M40 or some sort of HMI doing a little bit of something with the rain on the windows.

ABOVE Lee Haven Jones with the ALEXA Mini.

BELOW Using the ALEXA Mini made it easy to get into tight spots on location.

DEFINITION MAY 2018

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