BEST DRAMA SERIES
THE MEMORABLE STORY OF AN EPIC PRODUCTION
The Great (MCR Television)
For more than 30 years 3 Mills Studios has provided a stage for many world-class TV drama series, whether that be our current returning TV series The Great (MRC Television) starring Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult and the living and breathing set of a decadent 18th century Russian Court, or Apple TV’s ex-MI5 Spy Thriller series, Slow Horses (See-Saw Films) with Gary Oldman and Kristen Scott Thomas.
A thriller with a difference, The Tourist took Covid downtime to work drama, tension and spectacle into the Australian Outback. Executive producer Chris Aird tells the tale
Slow Horses (See-Saw Films)
Our iconic studios have also inspired some of the most successful independent filmmakers, such as Wes Anderson, Andrea Arnold, Danny Boyle and Tim Burton. As a dry hire studio with 9 stages, 10 rehearsal spaces, offices, costume space, HMU, dressing rooms, workshops and prop stores, our productions have ultimate flexibility to own the stage without any restrictions to their creativity.
Bold and action-packed, with a cinematic aesthetic and offbeat style, The Tourist is no ordinary thriller. Nor, indeed, is it much like any TV thriller its writers and producers, Harry Williams and Jack Williams, had come up with previously. But from his first reading of the script, Chris Aird – the series’ executive producer and head of Drama at Two Brothers Pictures – was hooked.
“It was a real step change,” he says, citing the copulating tortoises blocking the road during a car chase as the point where the penny finally dropped. “Whereas the thrillers they’d done before were all quite straight, it was different in tone, with a dark offbeat humour and a leftfield atmosphere.”
From a production point of view, two things
immediately struck him. The first was the Australian setting (and all that would involve). The second was the opening.
“The first ten minutes involved scale of production I’d never done before,” he readily admits. To re-cap, the action begins with ‘The Man’ – played by Jamie Dornan – stopping for petrol in the Outback then finding himself hunted down and chased by an enormous lorry apparently set on killing him, which eventually runs him off the road and leaves him to die. “It was the biggest set piece I, like many involved in the production, had ever been involved in.”
Patience pays
Yet despite this, the production time frame posed the greatest challenge.
Aerial view of 3 Mills Studios
3 Mills Studios is a proud continuing sponsor of the Televisual Bulldog Drama Series Award and congratulate this year’s nominees and winner, The Tourist.
3mills.com BD 08
televisual-bulldogs.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36
