EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE BIG PICTURE
PRODUCTION
DOLLY ALDERTON’S COMEDY DRAMA TELLS THE STORY OF THE LOVE BETWEEN BEST FRIENDS AND THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF NAVIGATING YOUR TWENTIES
N DETAILS
Broadcaster BBC One Commissioned by Piers Wenger Produced by Working Title Television, part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group. Pictures Creator, Writer and Executive Producer Dolly Alderton Director, episodes one, two, three and four China Moo-Young Director, episodes five, six and seven Julia Ford Executive Producers for Working Title Television Surian Fletcher-Jones, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan Producer Simon Maloney Casting Director Aisha Bywaters Hair & Make Up Designer Janet Horsfield–Lucas Costume Designer Matthew Price Production Designer Charlotte Pearson Cast Emma Appleton, Bel Powley, Marli Siu, Aliyah Odoffin, Connor Finch, Ryan Bown, Jordan Peters, Jill Halfpenny, Nicholas Farrell, Sophie Thompson, Daisy Jacob, Izabella Cresci, Craig Parkinson
ew BBC comedy drama, Everything I Know About Love, adapted by Dolly Alderton from her own book, centres on childhood best
friends, Maggie and Birdy, and is billed as a raucous girl gang show, set in a 2012 London house-share inhabited by four twenty-something women as they negotiate “bad dates, heartaches and humiliations.” For producer Simon Maloney, Alderton
adapting her own book, as well as exec producing on the show, took it to another level. “The world she builds translates so well to the page and to screen because it comes from a place of lived experiences and really understanding and loving the characters she’s writing about.” To help her realise that vision, director China
Moo-Young was brought on board “She has an extraordinary eye, exquisite taste and an incredible energy and vision, I knew that China would love the themes of female friendship and the unique way that Dolly writes,” says Maloney. He suggested China
to [exec producers] Surian Fletcher-Jones, Alderton and Eric Fellner and “after meeting with her, they too felt the passion, drive and care that China would commit to the project.” Moo-Young and Alderton quickly crafted a
decision was made to shoot on the Alexa Mini LF and “we kept it to 2-3 lenses (Canon K35s and Leica 50mm) to give the show a consistent look across the series. Árni really loved the slightly softer look of the K35s, plus they’re very fast and we had so many night scenes.” The shooting style was “intuitive” to allow the
actors freedom to play the comedy and the drama and move where they wanted. The show aims for a “rich, stylish distinct look without there being too much contrivance to the framing or camera movement,” says Moo-Young. “Lens flares happened. We wanted the show to feel rich and colourful in its palette but not garish. The camera was very point of view driven and we were almost entirely hand-held, gimbal or sometimes steadi-cam.” The story is set in London and partly in New York,
“EVERYTHING NEEDED TO BE GROUNDED AND A LITTLE ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES - AS YOU ARE IN YOUR TWENTIES”
close collaboration. “Dolly and I worked extremely closely from the very beginning, throughout the shoot and into post - she was across everything,” says Moo-Young. “It was a wonderful collaboration as we really shared a very similar vision and taste.” As to that vision, Moo-young started by showing
Alderton images by photographer Elaine Constantine – “her work captures young women with a sense of momentum, celebration, fun and style that I felt was the ethos of the show.” Discussions followed about shows and films they both liked – from Girls, through to rom com When Harry Met Sally and indie movies like Frances Ha, Me Without You, Lost In Translation, “even Haim music videos.” The tone they set on was “real and not slick”
says Moo-Young, as the thrust of the show is a “very honest portrayal of young women trying to navigate the messiness of their twenties” and so any “artful contrivance about the cinematography” was out. “Everything needed to be grounded and a little rough around the edges or off kilter - as you are in your twenties!” Together with her DoP Árni Filippusson, the
but, says Maloney, as the show was a BBC regional commission “a percentage of the budget needed to be allocated outside of the M25. So, one of the first big challenges of the show was to make sure that it felt authentically grounded in London because the city is so integral to the story.” Manchester was
chosen as a London stand
in “doubling as London is convincingly achievable there, especially Camden which is at the heart of Everything I Know About Love. Canals are such a prominent feature both in Camden and in Manchester which helps a lot.” Space Studios was used to create the house-share set along with episodic sets and also served as the unit base. The plan was to shoot in London for one week
and in NYC for three days “which meant needing to authentically replicate as many interiors and exteriors as we could in Manchester for both cities before drilling down on getting the most production value we could out of the days we had in London and NYC,” says Maloney. Covid, of course reared its head but luckily only
caused one stand down. The edit was done remotely during restrictions but, says Moo -Young, everyone is experienced in that now. “We ran the cut live through Evercast and it worked well. It’s always better being in the room with your editor and that will always be my preference but you adapt, and it’s certainly made everything more possible. My lead editor Anna Dick was based in Folkestone, and I was at home in North London so we could both drop our kids at school and then start work which was a great bonus.”
Summer 2022
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