PRODUCTION


BIG PICTURE BECOMING YOU


not funny and cute, not scared of the camera.” Looking in multiple locations to find children at a certain phase in their development was a tough task. Both the children and the locations, which


included Tokyo, Nepal, Jordan and Borneo, had to look stunning on screen. “Everything had to have an immediate visual impact,” says Forsyth. “We wanted to give the viewer the sense of travelling around the world …..The point we were making is that this happens to children everywhere, whether you’re in Chiswick, or in a refugee camp in Jordan.” Selecting the right cameras to deliver the


highest quality took time and testing. The Apple team in the US were keen to join in the discussion around the technology. “You needed to put together a very special camera package for this series. It had to be cinematic, to give us the look without having a lot of people on the shoot,” says Forsyth. They worked with Panavision DXL2 8K cameras, using large format Red Monstro sensors.


A CHILD’S EYE VIEW To tell the story from the children’s point of view, there were several ground rules on the shoot, says Barbor-Might. Firstly, “never to get the camera above the kid’s eyeline, to see the world from the


kid’s perspective. We spent enormous amounts of time on our hands and knees. We were constantly building rigs to make the camera as low as possible.” Next ground rule: “to have the camera stable and


static, not handheld, it would float and move,” says Barbor-Might. Everything was shot on a gimbal. A third rule: “shoot details and wides, never


mid shots.” The large format paid dividends. “Suddenly you’ve got a larger field. It means that longer lenses are actually wider angles and the outcome is beautiful, with compressed depth of field, whilst still being in a slightly wider shot. … There’s no lens distortion on human faces and our show was all about kids faces – epic landscapes and beautiful faces. The kids’ faces looked dynamite, with wonderful unfettered emotions.” To capture the first moments of movement and


speech, there were time-lapse sequences with fixed cameras in houses, operated by parents, capturing inch-by-inch child development over months. The most up-date technology, however, wasn’t


the most practical for shooting in remote locations. “It was insanely ambitious” says Barbor-Might. On one shoot, in Northern Mongolia, where the kit had to be taken on a three-day trek to location, the camera broke on day one and another had to be flown out.


After that, a spare camera went on every shot. And with the latest technology came the job of handling huge amounts of data. “Woe betide the cameraman who left it running for 20 minutes,” says Forsyth. Sound was another challenge. “We found


early on that the boom mike is your enemy. The child looks up and thinks what is that furry thing?” says Barbor-Might. The solution was to use a radio mic the size of a ten pence piece. “We had to borrow a technique from drama and sew them into the clothes. We were sitting in hotels until midnight, sewing mics into onesies.” After the epic international shoot, as the


production entered post, lockdown arrived. There was still the matter of recording Olivia


Colman’s narration. Colman was provided with a mini-recording studio set-up at home, with user- friendly labelling. She recorded from the quietest spot in her house, which turned out to be from inside a wardrobe, where clothes muffled sound.


A FINE FINISH Colourist Aidan Farrell at The Farm worked on


the grade. He was able to go into the Farm’s Soho facility, operating within Covid protocols. In order for Barbor-Might to have a live stream, Farrell graded


32


televisual.com Spring 2021


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