SHOOT STORY | DOCTOR WHO SER I ES 1 1
PAST FORMATS THE CHANGING LOOK OF DOCTOR WHO Over the years of shooting Doctor Who the programme has used many formats but is mostly remembered for the very video-y look from the late 70s and 80s. Format-wise there have been many camera choices, including 16mm film, 35mm film, Sony Betacam Cameras, Sony HDW-F900 and now ARRI Alexa XTs. Different formats included the film formats, HDTV and now digital cinematography with maybe UHD on the way. Master formats have included HDTV, digital intermediate in 2K, ProRes 4444 XQ (3.2K) and Digital Betacam. But for Series 11, this is the first time that the BBC has allowed Doctor Who to shoot in the anamorphic format which is hugely exciting for Doctor Who fans everywhere.
NETFLIX COMPETITION The feeling was that in 2018 there is major competition from production juggernauts like Netflix and Amazon Video and to make a Doctor Who for this era you have to bear that in mind. The production values, for instance, are so much higher than they used to be. The brief Denis was given was quite wide at the same time as being non-specific on what was expected: but he saw that as a good thing. “It gives you a free range of where to go and doesn’t bury you in what went before. They weren’t tying me down to recognise what went before or to go down the ‘family friendly show’ route. Once you are shooting you can then be more precise in what you do to achieve that new look. “Shooting in a filmic way is something that is hard to quantify for me. I will light something in a certain way that I think is aesthetically pleasing for me; if it’s filmic that is for someone else to decide. But I’ve shot enough film and anamorphic to know what is meant by that. You want something that is not over-lit, nothing shining in your face, that kind of thing. Something that will fit in with the story. “Shooting anamorphic with that slightly wider landscape gives you that scope that I guess is the shorthand for whatever ‘filmic’ is.”
SHOOTING IN CARDIFF Once those expectations of what the show was going to look like were firmed up, Denis moved on to the specifics of the day-to-day shoot. “To add to the drama I tried lots of smoke and lots of light and dark between scenes. In fact for the first one we did, the pilot, we ended up doing a lot of exterior night shooting. We ended up doing big set pieces rather than shooting stuff in a studio with green screen. So there was practically no green screen in the first pilot that we did.” As Denis was in the seat to design a look for the show he was able to set down some guidelines that could be followed by other DOPs – Denis shot one more episode in the series. That included his use of only primes and in this case Cooke anamorphic primes, “I tend not to use zooms very much, I like the idea of choosing lenses and being specific about a shot. Generally I’m not a fan of putting a zoom on and constantly moving the focal length just to get a frame. But I knew with Jamie the director that there would be a whole load of moves so there were a number of handheld shots as well.” But for Denis and Jamie all options were open, if it felt right they would follow their instinct – again this goes against the grain of some of the venerable Netflix USA shows where there is a distinct template for shooting.
I tend not to use zooms very much, I like the idea of choosing lenses and being specific about a shot
IMAGES Denis was free to create an entirely new look for the all-new Doctor Who cast.
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