SCRIPTED RETURNS
PRODUCTION
SLIM FILM AND TV MD, SIMON CRAWFORD COLLINS, EXPLAINS HOW HE IS GETTING NZ-SET CBBC DRAMA, MYSTIC, BACK IN THE SADDLE WHILE ALSO BEGINNING THE LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE OF STARTING THE SHOOT ON AN ADAPTATION OF AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
Simon Crawford Collins’ Slim Film and TV had managed to shoot eight of 13 episodes of CBBC kids’ drama Mystic in New Zealand when lockdown struck. The show is now back in production in NZ. At the same time, production is starting on the company’s big budget adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days.
You got eight eps of Mystic finished by March, did you anticipate the lockdown? I’d like to say we were that wise, but it all came so quickly it was more luck than anything. We ended up dropping two scenes as the axe fell as we were filming them. We managed to plug the holes so hopefully nobody will miss where they were. But productions are always like that. Even without COVID you end up dropping a scene. Have cast and crew had to quarantine on their return to NZ? Our leading actress Macey had to. It’s a very tough quarantine - 14 days in a hotel room. You’re allowed one walk a day with a security guard. It’s pretty much all NZ crew, some Australian and ours as well. But it’s been complicated. We now have pretty much 75% new crew because New Zealand is so busy. It’s one of the few
countries that’s almost COVID free and where filming is well established. Loads of big productions are heading there so it’s a bit of a bun fight. Have you had to rewrite much? We’re pretty much shooting what we were with few little tweaks. For instance, we’re filming in a derelict warehouse, which was all rusty corrugated iron but people have been so bored during lockdown, that they’ve repaired it all. Are you back in the same studios? The studios where we were filming are now being used by another production, so we had to pack up the sets and rebuild them in a warehouse. I couldn’t get any studio space. It has been complicated, but with children’s TV, we’re wise with the budget anyway. How much more complicated has Around the World… been? Around the World in 80 Days is complicated to stop and really complicated to change direction. We’ve stopped in South Africa to go to Romania, because that’s in a better place than South Africa. So that’s unwieldy and expensive. It’s definitely not a COVID friendly show. If I had to choose a show to be making when a global pandemic
hit, it would be the last one. Visually we’re travelling around the world, but also because it’s funded by a group of European broadcasters, we’ve also got a lot of talent from different countries. So you’re having to cope with people coming in from different places. Currency fluctuations are being made much more severe by the pandemic. You’re trying to work out how much money things have cost you and how much money you’ve got because it’s all in different currencies and every day it changes. We’ve actually spent £40k on a COVID testing machine. but it is worth it for a production of that scale. Will COVID restrictions effect the look of the show? We’ll get away with it on screen. As programme makers, we may be crying because of the brilliant things that we had planned. Will it have quite that same sense of scale? Probably not. But it means that you have to really focus on the only thing that anybody is interested in which is your core characters. We all love to see a nice big, spectacular shot but, ultimately, do you care about your key characters and do you care about their journey? So that forces us to work harder.
Autumn 2020
televisual.com 37
MYSTIC
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