Behind the Screens
When I’m not out and about taking photographs , you may find me on the set of a television drama or soap opera here in the North West of England and trust me, it’s not a glamorous as it sounds! In fact, it involves many long hours, in all weathers and most of what you see on screen takes an enormous amount of planning, setting up and problem solving to get it onto to your television. Whilst wherever we go, we attract a lot of interest (and we usually take over most of the locations we go to), most are surprised by the effort and resources that go into being able to make just a couple of minutes worth of drama. There’s a lot of, what appears as, inactivity whilst shots are being choreographed, set-up and rehearsed before the cameras finally roll. But what is sure is that it needs an army of people to make it all happen - it might seem like an exaggeration, but it really does take people from the top of the ladder all the way down the bottom to make a valuable contribution, plus, there’s a large amount of people who you won’t even see on the set itself who help to bring the vision to life!
Erin
Tom
In Britain, we have a proud and long-standing association with the soap opera. These are the fictional worlds that have inhabited our screens for years and continue to broadcast daily on our televisions. They’re dramas on a smaller scale to what you might seen in the late evenings or streaming. They rely on an ensemble cast and usually gravitate around one fictional location. Soaps often get knocked by some people and they have well known characteristics such as there’s normally always a pub (that gets blown up). It seems that most characters in the soaps are related in some way shape or form and there’s usually an argument with some creative ways of insulting each other, without swearing, before it ends up in a fight. But, soaps are great places for bringing up new talent both on and off screen, they’re long-standing which means for many it gives them security and they are able to very quickly tackle issues that effect a lot people and are usually more relatable to the audience then the bigger dramas. Making soaps is extremely hard work. These places are like factories, churning out the drama with tight deadlines and the constant need for new material. It’s an unrelenting cycle which never ceases and has great demands in sometime challenging circumstances. This is where the people come in. A network of individuals who start and finish this process before starting again and again and again! It’s a very close, family like atmosphere where you build bonds that extend out of the confines of the studio and people who you’ll probably spend more time with than your own family!
Suz & Cathy
Simon
Emma & Becky
Rebecca
Soaps, however, are having a challenging time at the moment. The landscape of television drama as changed dramatically (pardon the pun). As I write this, I have just come off working on the famous cobbles of Coronation Street, a soap that began in 1960. Could they have even imagined what the media landscape looks like today? Soaps, as well other dramas made by the traditional broadcasters are having to compete against the big American streaming giants who are able to put in a vast amount of money into their productions. The scales are unevenly balanced and twinning this with our new viewing habits, streaming whenever and wherever we want rather than sitting down at the telly for a certain time and switching the channel, all build up to put pressure on the more traditional programmes. Creatives at soaps have had to make changes to meet the new demands of the audience and this as result in changes to the way these programmes are made.
This time last year, I was working at another soap when the news was broken that the changes were on the way. I was a contracted member of this production, which in the television world is a rarity in the predominately freelance world that it is and the bosses had made the tough decision to change the way that they needed to make this soap. As a result of this, the staffing structure was also in need of some change and we were made aware of the prospect of redundancies. In our turbulent economic world, this is probably a very relatable situation and something that puts strain on all parties involved. The atmosphere immediately changed and the uncertainty, nervousness and second-guessing swept across the building. Following on was a hugely emotive, tiring and complex period as the decisions where being made. It’s easy to complain and target the ones making the decisions but it’s important to stress the the strain isn’t all on general staff. But, I must say that for the ones who had to undertake the decisions, this must have been an enormous burden. I was in Bruges on the day that I was told that I would not be continuing on in my position, not the most ideal news you want to hear when you’re on holiday, so I immediately ordered another pint of glorious Blonden Os Belgian beer. My situation, though devastating, cannot be compared to others. People with families, bills and mortgages to pay where the financial impacts could be felt the most.
Francis
One day, I was on a film shoot and one of the crew members came up to me. She had decided to take the voluntary redundancy, a chance to spread your wings and go onto new horizons. She said to me;
“Tom, I don’t have any pictures of me at work. Would you mind doing some?”
Of course was my natural reply and little did I know what a project it would become! It’s actually quite a true point that many of us don’t have pictures of us doing our work, mainly because everything we work on is usually secret and we can’t reveal anything until the show finally airs. In a world of LinkedIn and using social media as a platform to showcase your work and potentially get more of it, it’s become quite important in some circumstances to be able to have demonstrative material. I brought my camera in and started with the one person and it grew and grew and grew. Portraits of the many different faces that help to make a soap from all corners of the building. I never realised what a morale boost this was going to be and now some of these images are being used, by each person, as a way of demonstrating their talents. I was getting an ever growing list of crew who wanted to take part and I ended up having to release the final pictures in a series of three blocks. Over one-hundred people where eventually captured and is a bookmark in the long history of production, something to look back on and remember. It’s actually quite emotional. One person asked me why I was doing it and someone came up with the perfect word to describe it as that was;
“Posterity”
And I couldn’t have summed it up better myself. Something that is so simple but has such an impact - who’d of thought.
So, here it is. I present to you Behind the Screens. So, next time you watch the credits of a film or television show - yes, it really does take all them people to get it onto the screen in front of you!
“Did you know that the term ‘soap opera’ comes from the original radio dramas that were once sponsored by soap manufacturers?”
IMAGE (TOP): Tom & Howard