Media Class Clips

Television costs money.

So much money, it would make your head spin around.

Even a programme like this, which is low budget in telly terms, costs around £47,667 per episode.

£47,667, per episode.

Well, it does.

And stop interrupting me.

Still, 47 grand, eh?

Imagine what you could do with that.

-It's not enough to do something sensible with, but it easy enough to do something silly with.

-Buy a car.

Clothes.

-I'd definitely give some money to charity.

-Pay off my debts.

-Clothes.

-Book a nice holiday.

-Get out of this country.

We should probably just have let them have it, to be honest.

Anyway, outside the world of telly, that figure might seem astronomically high.

How does it break down?

Well, even this sequence, in which all that's happening is

I'm talking to you, this costs more than you might think.

For starters, there's the camera guy.

He's hired together with all his equipment from a facilities house.

Furthermore, he's shooting on Digi Beta, because it looks nicer than this.

This is DV, which is cheaper and simpler to operate, but looks a bit bleary and grim by comparison.

That's better! Anyway, the camera guy, the camera itself, and the sound man cost around £850 a day.

-Here you go you fleecing

-BLEEP!

Then, there's the rest of the production team to consider.

We've got a series producer, who keeps things all together.

An assistant producer, who assists him.

Two archive researchers, who dig up old clips.

Another researcher who researches whatever it is that he does.

A runner, who has to fetch me coffee every time I clap my hands. Run!

A production manager, who balances the books.

A production co-ordinator, who co-ordinates shit, and this man,

who we pay to stand in a corner of the office feeding bank notes into a shredder. Not now!

And then finally, there's me - the talent. Amazingly, this lot costs around £1,900 a day.

-Here you go, you useless, sponging

-BLEEP!

Then, there's the cost of post-production,

ie an edit suite, where we chop everything visual together.

And add filters like this, or this...

Make the picture do things like this, or add graphics like this...

There's also an audio dub, so we can add voice-overs

and mix it all together properly so it doesn't sound rubbish like this.

Next, there's clearance. Let's say I want to show you a clip from an old episode of Clopper Castle.

I say, I say, I say, what goes up when the rain comes down?

I don't know. What does go up when the rain comes down?

An umbrella!

That's copyrighted material, which has to be paid for.

Unless actually, you're showing it for the purposes of

criticism and review, in which case you can often use it for nothing.

Unfortunately, I'm not criticising or reviewing that at all,

which means that old puppet nonsense has just cost the production £500.

And it's not just moving images we have to pay for.

Simply by holding up his copyrighted photo of former Environment Secretary John Selwyn Gummer,

I've cost the production another £50.

I don't even want to.

Every time you see a photo like this in the background of a TV show, chances are someone has had to pay

to clear it. And these are just the things you can see.

There are loads of other costs, which are on your screen now if you're that bothered.

Given how much our modest half hour sets the world back,

imagine how much it costs to make something like this.

Horses are notoriously expensive.

They insist on being driven to the set every day in individual carts.

Madness.

That's a court room. They had to build that 10,000 times actual size apparently.

That judge's wig, that's not a wig, that's a rare orchid.

Telly is a terrifyingly expensive business.

It's not surprising some shows try to claw back some of that cash any which way they can.

From bomb blast to barrage balloons, Spitfires to spaceships, the Blitz has never been seen like this before.

It's getting away from us!

Doctor Who Confidential is about to track down the men in the firing line, who have brought

these special effects to life.

OK, maybe not this T-shirt.

As soon as the scripts are there, we've broken it down into a schedule.

We go to a tone meeting, which is the first time where

the design team, the CGI team, make-up and costume come together.

We talk about what's at the heart of the episode.

Every scene is night. It's a blackout.

I also think we've got to think about bursts of colour and energy.

It's a great episode to look at effect.

There's a number of physical effects

that have post-production effects added.

Particularly things like Rose, flying over London, is extraordinarily difficult to do.

I remember these two episodes landing on my desk. Page 4, Rose's flies across London

on a barrage balloon, during a Blitz air raid.

It's a really easy thing for Stephen to have typed.

It's even easier to read.

But to try and translate into reality is a nightmare.

I assumed I'd be reined in and I have to say, they did not rein in.

They let me do whatever I liked.

Meantime, Rose is climbing up the cable.

I'm assuming what we've got here is a fire escape that takes you to the

top of a roof, and then there's another bit, which she couldn't otherwise access but for this cable.

We can then on location get her up to that, and maybe find another

location for the last bit of the climb, which might make it a bit more controllable.

-More shootable.

-Yes.

Which brings me to barrage balloons.

The problem with Rose flying over London is that you're talking about 360-degree effects.

The CGI team's feeling is that doing it against a green screen and

somehow moving or the background is going to look considerably pony.

She could have been completely in the studio, against green screen.

She's got to be hanging there, for real.

In a certain shot, she's actually in the open air.

It's on a very cheap hill, just outside Cardiff.

A very cheap hill!

And then, you have her against a night sky.

Green screen on the floor, on to which you can put anything you like.

Practical smoke.

Practical couple of searchlights.

What you get are some of the textures and effects on her, and the close-ups.

There's a real wind blowing on her.

You can see bits of rain.

The whole picture is a different texture because of that.

How much has the mill got to do? How much have you guys got to do?

I'm not worried about what we've got to do, I'm just worried about Rose

hanging on the hillside, in the cold, in a T-shirt, in December.

Purely that, really.

It took us two separate days to film.

We filmed part of it with Billie Piper, who's completely game

and completely up for doing things like this, suspended from a crane,

inside our warehouse, against a green screen, with a huge wind machine underneath her.

Guys!

I find when acting with a green screen,

you have to think twice as hard.

It can be taxing, it can be quite exhausting.

Then we went to a different hangar, that was even bigger,

it was an aeroplane hangar, actually, and got an even bigger crane.

And this time,

we filmed her against the night sky, with another huge wind machine,

moving and all that flying stuff, and the flying around.

And the big fall from the barrage balloon.

SHE SCREAMS

She's not very high up, but she's more higher up than I'd care to be.

There's a real drop, there's a real physical danger with the

CGI elements that makes her look hundreds of feet in the air.

And then, the mill come along and add the CGI London and the view of

the streets, and the beautiful romantic shots of London at night.

The main problem is

getting reference for top shots of London.

We've employed a technique, photogrammetry. What we've done is taken a top shot reference of London.

We have then, in the computer, created the geometry for the

buildings, so that there's this kind of rough and crude 3D model.

We have a sort of starting map painting and an end map painting,

to project the picture on to the geometry of London, which means we can move the camera.

Around the world, advertising has always been the biggest source of funding for TV.

Now, it's under threat. The amount of advertising revenue

coming into British TV

is in steep decline.

It's down £100 million in the last eight years.

One of the reasons is that TV is now competing against the internet for advertising.

That's a particularly bad problem here in the UK.

We now find the internet has a share of total advertising of about 25%,

and Google 2009, will be a media player almost the same size as ITV.

As digital technology now allows viewers to choose from hundreds of channels, and even skip

the commercial breaks, broadcasters are having to cut the fees they charge advertisers for airtime.

The cost of reaching say 1000 adults is roughly now about £4.50.

The average price about eight or nine years ago was nearly £7.

There's no other market anywhere in the world who has

seen the cost of their television advertising fall at that rate.

It's not just the commercial channels feeling the pain.

Public service broadcasters everywhere, such as the BBC,

are having to find new sources of funding, to meet the demands of the rapidly-changing media landscape.

Wayne Garvie's role is to find ways to supplement the income the BBC receives from licence fee payers.

The economics of the television industry

have changed fundamentally in the last few years.

Now, it's all about can you access funding from around the world?

You have to have an international strategy, and you have to be out networking internationally.

Over the past decade, Britain has come to lead the world in

the export of one particular type of television programme - the format.

-What are you here for today, Paul?

-To sing opera.

Some of the most successful in recent years are made by Freemantle Media.

All format really is is an emotional journey. It's a story.

HE SINGS OPERA

CHEERING

It has tears, it has laughter, it has everything, and a great resolution.

That can apply to a game show, to a talent show, it can apply to a drama.

They can all be formats.

HE SINGS OPERA

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, you work at Carphone Warehouse...

LAUGHTER

..And you did that.

From a business point of view, a format is something that

can be repeated every single day for decades.

53% of the world's formats now originate in the UK.

One reason is that in the past, we've been able to spend more on

our programmes than virtually any other country,

due to the strength of our public service broadcasters.

We're used to a lot of original, new programmes and short series,

commissioned every year by many channels.

Whereas in many other countries, they don't commission original ideas off paper.

This home market and its propensity by broadcasters to buy original ideas

has given us a terrific platform to become a world class exporter.

Strictly Come Dancing has been the BBC's most commercially successful formatted show.

Versions have been screened in over 40 countries,

including in America, where it's known as Dancing With The Stars.

This is a dance competition, and as much as you were lighter

on your feet, more so this week than ever,

you were still very heavy. Your shoulders were hunched.

-Bruno Tonioli?

-Four.

The media knows that it's a format has originated in the UK.

I think, every territory makes it their own.

It's their show.

Each country has their own celebrities, their own dancers, their own judges.

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

And it becomes part of the national consciousness.

The British show was fully funded by the TV licence fee.

But, a very different funding model for television dramas

and big factual series is envisaged by one of the show's creators.

We're going to see a future which is very similar to the film industry.

People are often puzzled, aren't they, by the credits that appear at the beginning of movies.

There seems to be 101 people involved.

Films are financed by a patchwork of money, collected from various places around the world.

We're now beginning to see this in television.

You only have to look at the credits at the end of a production to realise that, actually, shows that appear to

be British have actually also been part-funded by European distributors, American distributors.

That's going to be the model moving forward.

One of the biggest challenges facing the forest team was how to bring a static tree to life on the screen.

The solution is usually to move the camera but how did they do it?

The team's favourite tool was the cinebulle or film balloon,

here being readied by pilot and inventor Danny.

With Danny, Planet Earth took the cinebulle to all corners of the

globe but it was the trip to film the baobab trees in Madagascar

that was to prove the most memorable.

I have never ever been in anything like this before.

I am

slightly nervous of it,

partly because it is, basically, a deck chair with

a balloon on top and partly because I can see where my head is going to be.

It is going to be incredibly close to that burner.

I do have a fear of heights.

I mostly have a fear of falling through them on to the ground.

I think I am happy with this.

It has a little seat belt and

the BBC health and safety is always very good.

The boxes are always ticked, all signed off, the proper forms and everything.

I am

sure this will be fine.

Puzzled locals take the ringside seats.

Warwick takes the seat no-one else wants.

Set for take off.

FLAME ROARS

Oh, my giddy aunt!

CINEBULLE WHIRS

Finally they are off.

At last we've got the cinebulle here and we have got fuel.

As long as the wind stays good and they don't land in Mozambique,

we should be absolutely fine.

The shots we are looking for are shots that rotate around

baobab trees and show their three-dimensional structure.

Warwick and Danny will need to communicate together really closely to pull off the shots like that,

which will be interesting because you can hardly here over the fan and Danny's English isn't amazing.

I think they will have some interesting time up there.

-How much control do we have?

-What?

-How much control do we have?

-Not very much.

Danny is quite a flamboyant Frenchman and Warwick is reserved, sarcastic, rather English.

They are either going to get on really well or it is going to be a disaster.

Buoyed by assurances of Danny's exemplary safety record,

Warwick frames up on his first baobab.

Ooh!

BRANCHES SNAP

I go down. Sorry.

Luckily, neither the tree nor the crew seemed too damaged.

Stupid, I am stupid.

-You OK?

-Yes, just.

-OK?

-Just minor flesh wounds.

-With half a propeller and a rigged exhaust, the cinebulle is harder to steer.

-This is a good area.

We go straight through there?

Undeterred, the pair hit their stride.

That's nice.

That's great.

That's good, there's a nice constant speed.

Lovely.

Many of Planet Earth's finest images would have been impossible without

passionate and devoted specialists like Danny.

May they always be out there.

Here we go again.

Arghhh!

Hi there, welcome to a very special Match Of The Day unplugged.

Today, we have got an access all areas pass to take you behind the scenes on Football Focus.

Just so you can see how hard we work of course.

Welcome to the BBC sports studios in Vienna where we are rehearsing for Football Focus.

We have four cameras here. Camera one is doing the main presenter camera.

We have two cameras that cover the pundits,

one of them does a two shot, this does a single.

I operate this and pan between the two.

Then we have the crane camera which is being operated by Phil at the moment.

I can do nice little drops and moves in between the chat.

I'm the prompt operator, we both are.

Lisa is as well. I am doing it at the moment but we juggle the job between the two of us.

Whatever Jake reads out, we prompt it for him so it makes him look

fantastic and like he knows what he's talking about.

This is the BBC's production office. We have loads of different desks.

All the shows that we make out here, Football Focus, the highlights programme, Match of the Day,

they all are created and scripted and prepared in this room.

Through the door over there, we have the gallery which

controls the live studio even though the studio is a couple of miles away.

The gallery is here. Through there, behind you, are the edit areas. Go and have a look around.

This is one of the edits.

They are working hard at cutting a Dutch colour piece and I had better let them work.

I'm Steve and I am the editor of Football Focus.

It's Friday, just gone half past five in Vienna in the evening.

I'm just trying to finalise the running order and what we want in the show tomorrow.

The second half of the draw, the quarter-finals are yet be decided.

We name check them...

Typically in the job, what you have to do is take calls from the crews on the road.

They'll be telling you what they can get, what they are trying to get and eventually what they have got.

Then they have to try and put that together and feed it back to here in time for the show.

You don't normally know exactly what you have got until quite close to when you are going on air.

Sometimes not even then. That's part of the fun of it.

I'm Ian, the producer of the show.

I direct the programme as well.

My job is to take what Steve has put down on paper and try and make it into a TV show

and make it will happen with the graphics, VTs, cameras, light, sound, all that stuff.

Hopefully, everything will go OK, fingers crossed. Show should be a good one.

Computers shutting down, scripts have been written,

VTs have been watched, the show is about as prepped as it can be.

I probably need some make-up so I now have a very glamorous three-stop tube journey across Vienna to the studio.

What is it now? Quarter past 10 so we are live in less than two hours.

12, 11,

-10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, one.

-BBC ANNOUNCER SPEAKS

On air.

The sun went down on Croatia's campaign last night.

..the stadium nicknamed the bathtub....

After torrential downpour which led to UEFA having to relay the pitch...

It's going well. Just trying to work out the timings now.

We've to get off air at the right time so hopefully we'll be able to do that successfully.

7, 6, 5, 4,

3, 2, one, stop talking. 15.

Two more quarter-finals to get our teeth into this weekend but no more for Croatia as they become

the 10th and latest team to bid the tournament farewell.

These competitions aren't good for the nerves, you know.

Perfect, thank you.

Mustoe Merriman Herring Levy, a London-based advertising agency,

has over the last year been working

on a new campaign to relaunch one of the most British of brands.

Dr Martens.

To do this, they are making a series of press advertisements

for a campaign to be seen in Europe and America.

With the concept agreed, all they have to do now is make them.

If I said to you, Dr Martens, you will say a black boot.

That's the danger. That is what we are facing.

During the 1970s and 80s, Dr Martens enjoyed phenomenal success as a fashion icon,

but by the mid-90s, with the arrival of trainer culture

and an increasingly competitive marketplace,

they could no longer rely on their previous cult status to shift their shoes.

They hope this advertising campaign, called World of Feet,

will redefine their brand and open it up to a much broader audience.

The whole idea of this campaign is to change consumer perception of the brand.

Understand we've got a wide range, we do sandals, we have kids, the fashion element,

the traditional element, and keep people's perception going.

From the boots the postman wears, the boots the guy on the London Underground wears,

through to wow, that's a shoe that I want.

That is really fashionable, that's me, I need to have.

Basically, 18-24-year-olds, there is a hugely over-targeted group.

That age group see so much advertising, they see straight through it.

They know exactly what the message is so it is quite a tricky line to tread.

# It's not class or ideology, colour, creed or roots

# The only thing that unites us is Dr Marten's boots!

# Dr Marten gave boots to the world

# So that everybody could be free

# They're classless, matchless, heat-resistant, waterproof and retail for only £19.99p. #

Dr Martens is a brand that hasn't needed to carry out advertising.

Sales have been phenomenally high.

# Dr Martens,

# Dr Martens, Dr Martens boots. #

Bo-ring. Don't you has-beens ever read the NME?

What happened to the revolution?

God, you'd think Devil Woman had never been written!

People perceive Dr Martens as the black boot brand.

The product we were taking to them was very different.

Open Air Wear which is not what you would expect of Dr Martin.

It is a sandal.

We had a need for a French, UK and USA advertising, so I went

with them and said we want one brand advertising for these three markets.

This is what it needs to do. It needs to change people's perception of the brand.

It needs to make people stand back and say, "Wow, Dr Martens make them?"

They came to us initially about a small project for sandals.

We went back to them and said it is all very well

looking at sandals and yes we can do some advertising for sandals,

but there is a whole big picture going on here which is

you cannot divorce the sandals from the rest of the range and the brand itself and the heritage behind it.

Unless you address that issue,

you are really wasting your time playing around at the edges with the sandals.

The first thing they did which was part of the pitching process

was they said, "There is no way which we can understand your brand

"or respond to this brief without understanding your brand properly."

They commissioned research into the brand.

I used to love those shoes.

I had to have a pair when I was in the 8th grade.

"My first pair of boots, I was upset when they went out" and that really sums it up.

She was upset when they went out because she likes them but they have gone out.

I have some nice graffiti on my responses.

The campaign we have got to is deliberately...

bizarre.

One of the problems with Dr Martens is as a consumer, I know what Dr Martens stands for,

I have icons and history and images in my head that are readily associated with Dr Martens.

Therefore, I ignore them.

I know what they stand for, I don't need to find out more. I don't need to be told more.

We needed a campaign that would shake people out of that complacency, those preconceptions.

The agency team visits Dr Martens' Northampton base to present

the four poster treatments to the American and British marketing directors

to get their final approval before they discuss the forthcoming commercial treatment.

The rule is you have about three seconds to capture somebody with a printed or press ad.

People are turning through a magazine or going through a newspaper

and they haven't bought that magazine or newspaper to look at the ads.

They have bought it for the articles. You have to interrupt that process.

You have to tell the whole story in a picture.

It's really hard when you look at the layout pad and you have got

a very bad drawing on it by an art director who can't draw.

They are not paid to draw, they are paid to come up with ideas.

You are looking at the scribble on a piece of paper.

In this case, it's a foot, upside down at a dinner table,

whatever the executions were. You are looking at that.

The first thing is try and imagine what it would look like for real

which in itself is quite a leap, particularly in this case.

Then you have to imagine the impact of that on the consumer.

There are lots of imaginative leaps

along the way and it is quite hard to learn how to do.

I remember when I first got into the industry,

during meetings and seeing people saying, that is a brilliant ad.

I'd look at it and think, is it?

I can't tell. I don't know.

I think if you don't please yourself with what you do,

there's no point in doing it really. If you're doing stuff that

makes everybody else happy and you're looking at it and thinking, I don't really like it, then it's a mistake.

Obviously, you were doing advertising, so that's what it's about.

It's not personal work.

If it's personal work, you've got a different agenda.

Creatively, it's a great job.

It's probably a perfect job for me because I love photography, digital work and it's...

it's this lovely

surrealness to this brief.

The bit that might possibly surprise to his how good it looks

because we're all very excited about it.

That shoe on the Jacuzzi was just fantastic.

Yes. I'm not starting with that one.

And starting with the men's power strap.

In the CD store, the record store. Are you ready?

-How about that?

-Wow.

How about that?

Those feet are so less ugly than they were before.

They've started putting in other touches but we want to get the basics right.

Make sure you're happy with the basics before we spend more time on it.

But there are some fantastic details already.

You've got, if you look up here, the exit sign in the mirror.

You've got... sandals, one there.

One in here. They're dotted around so they're small features

which actually, when you see the crops...

Some of these things will come up in the landscape shot.

Great attention to detail. It's lovely. Outside and...

we're divided in the agency, which is our favourite.

We're backing both of these horses but there's your Jacuzzi shot.

-Wow.

-That's you, look at it.

-Boom.

This ice is one thing they're not quite happy about.

They're going to carry on working on that, make it look a bit wetter.

-The attention to detail is absolutely amazing.

-Stunning, isn't it?

The last one,

ah yes, the garage.

Coldest of all our venues.

Which is just a lot of fun.

It's another one which is just taking steps, leaps forward.

But there's still things they want to work on here.

A couple of errors like here.

Pipes coming out of nowhere at the moment because they've comped that in.

They want to add some of the grease to this foot in the foreground, the same with this one in the background

that's working on the cars.

It's really funny because I thought these two were going to be the strongest.

-Did you?

-I prefer the other two.

-For me, the product is definitely less strong in that one.

Clearly, there's more work to be done on at least two of the four press advertisements.

Often you have irrelevant images that then have a product bolted on the end.

Like you have a shoe in the corner and you think, I don't know why we've got the rest of the ad.

I don't know how it relates to it. I think what's great about these is they're different and relevant.

They're completely about the product.

Also do something to get your attention and get you engaged.

People look at it and they aren't quite sure how to judge it.

I think that's a function of the fact that it's an advertiser coming in for a fashion brand.

That tends to be how fashion brands work.

You don't explain yourself too much, and that's what a lot of those ads that you look at now and think,

I don't know what they're saying but I like it.

# What have we got? What have we got? #

When the '60s arrived, the fashion image was transformed again.

And pretty much thanks to one man, David Bailey.

That's lovely. Hang about, that's marvellous.

Good, open your mouth, darling.

Before David Bailey, fashion photography in Britain was still a gentleman's trade.

Bailey broke through all that bringing an energy, charm and incredible life to his images.

Let your eyes come down to me. No, keep that hand where it is.

And lean slightly... that's it.

Head back where it was, and just your eyes I'm interested in.

For me, Bailey is the perfect fashion photographer,

combining technical brilliance with sheer force of personality

to create pictures that have a sense of total spontaneity.

He created some of the most iconic images of the '60s,

and many of them were of his great muse and lover, Jean Shrimpton.

It's a picture of Jean Shrimpton that I'm going to

recreate with my girlfriend under the watchful eye of the man himself.

I thought it would be a nice affinity between the two images if we use her,

even though she's got blonde hair and doesn't really have Jean's profile.

Yes, otherwise she's perfect. You could have got Naomi, I suppose.

That might have been closer.

But a photograph of your girlfriend is a slightly different experience

to photographing someone else's girlfriend.

Well, good luck, Rankin. Thank you.

There are plenty of Bailey photos I could have chosen but I went for this one

because you can see how it builds on Richard Avedon.

It's also got something new, a flirtatiousness that's

so Bailey you can really feel the intimacy between the two of them.

No make-up artists...

-Hairdressers?

-No hairdressers.

What would you do for the hair then?

Just use a bit of wind, and that's wind made by a little bit of white card.

I wouldn't have used a wind machine because that would have

blown too hard, so it's just a little whoof.

Probably now, they would put the light a bit more camera left so

that would have got rid of some of these shadows.

But I quite like that though.

I know, but...

it's not exacted perfect but as a magic moment and her profile, it's just beautiful, isn't she?

She just had a magic, this woman.

This was taken on a Rolly, Rolleiflex.

So we're going to have to borrow...

No, I've got one. That's the right one as well.

You've got problems. Just stand with your legs apart and face me.

That's good, like that. Good, Angel.

That's nearly right if that hand was nicer.

They're great, these cameras.

God, it's amazing, isn't it? And what do you reckon you shot that on a 135?

Know a shot this on that. Oh, fantastic.

So I've got no idea how to use this.

What can I say? I'll help you.

Before we started, Bailey dug out the prints from the original shoot.

That's beautiful.

There's three of them, I think.

How did you, would you tell her to do that?

-Yes.

-You'd have told her - I'm doing it wrong, actually!

It looks better on her!

Do you ever get that thing where you're shooting and you feel like it's quite a sexual experience?

I think photography is sexual anyway.

Unlike Mr Avedon, who thought it wasn't. Even with men.

I suppose I fall in love, when they're in front of the camera, they're everything to me.

They're the object of my love for that brief encounter.

How are you feeling about the shoot?

-I'm feeling I've got a lot to live up to.

-And what else?

I'm a bit nervous. But that's OK.

Nervous of me, or nervous of him?

I think the combination is the most terrifying.

The two of us together.

How far do you think you were?

You should be here, shouldn't you?

Yes, I'm there. Are you?

I don't even know if I can get this in focus.

-It's not easy.

-It's really not.

-I'm left eyed too, isn't that weird?

-Are you?

-No Polaroid?

-No, I'm not going to.

-I'm going to do it just straight.

-Live on the edge, are you?

-Live right on the edge.

-Good for you.

I'm going to just try to do it the way you used to do it.

I was better looking than you.

I know that.

Got some make-up for him?

We need a bigger card.

Just give me your position?

-That's good.

-That's great.

Yes, that looks great.

OK, stretch your neck.

Your hands, more like this.

That's great.

Yes, got that one.

Mouth open a little. Good.

Go on then, knock us out, girl.

That's great.

That's it, that's it, that's it.

Go on, go on.

That's brilliant.

Great, that's great.

-What a great camera.

-I actually really like it.

It's cute, it feels, when you're looking through it, you feel good.

Yes, you get addicted.

That's good.

Put your arm higher up at the back.

Good.

So now we're shooting digitally,

just to quickly compare it

to the experience of shooting with the Rollei and also to show Bailey what we can do with it.

OK, go.

Good, that's good. That's exactly what we want.

He's good, isn't he?

That's good, again.

Go.

Go much longer, the original's going to fade.

LAUGHTER

Chin down a little.

OK.

That's good, I'm happy with that one.

No cheating, no retouching afterwards.

-I'm not going to.

-That's very nice, Rankin.

Looks like a picture I did in the '60s.

LAUGHTER

And here is my version - shot on the Rollei.

If you're watching, Bailey, I did manage to get it in focus.

In fact, I think it's not bad at all.

On Main Street in Pittsfield Massachusetts,

lights are being rigged, props are being positioned

and the talent are taking their places.

Let's get Larry...

Let's get Larry in the car.

OK, here we go...

OK, floor frame.

We got lights inside the car we can still guide.

It looks like a movie, sounds like a movie

and smells like a movie.

But it isn't.

All of this activity is to make a single photograph...

by Gregory Crewdson.

I work with a production crew that all come out of film.

We work with cinematic lighting...

But we're only after creating one single perfect moment.

Not the car track.

Try to clear all those tracks.

As much of those as you can.

Crewdson even has his own director of photography and his own camera operator.

In position...and hold.

Relax.

'I do have a strangely disconnected relationship to photography.'

I don't even like holding a camera.

Um, I don't take the actual picture.

'What I'm truly interested in is images.

'The camera is just a necessary instrument.'

Smack right in the middle of his side of the street.

Over an 11 day shoot in a variety of locations,

Crewdson's team will make a series of multiple exposures,

which will be digitally combined to make six final images.

He'll produce an addition of six prints of each image, priced at approximately 60,000.

There's already a list of prospective buyers.

Let's get everybody in position.

And hold.

With his striking tableaux, which combine Hollywood production values with suburbia's bad dreams,

Crewdson has become hot property,

confident that he has an audience who will appreciate and, if they can afford it, buy his work.

So, I feel like...

the fire hydrant here is a problem.

Meanwhile, in his New York studio,

Gregory Crewdson is pulling out all the digital stops with retoucher Kylie Wright.

He's putting the finishing touches to the picture he began weeks before

on snowy Main Street in Pittsfield.

This is the earlier one where this building was really bright and kind of flat at the same time.

So we really amped up the contrast and we darkened it a lot.

Took the fire hydrant out in the final one.

Another thing we do, in all the photographs where we're on streets,

is we work with the electrical company to turn off all the streetlamps

because they're the wrong colour temperature for our film.

And then Kylie turns them all back on.

What we're finished with at the end of the day is it's own thing.

It's definitely photographic,

but something that's also something other than a photograph.

What I'm trying to do is create a world that feels subjective and recognisable.

That's the thing that keeps me engaged.

Final exposure.

That is a wrap. Fantastic job, everyone. Perfect photograph.

I'll start off by asking you both to say who you are and what you do.

I'm Jesse Armstrong and I write on Peep Show.

I'm Sam Bain, I write on Peep Show.

How did you get into writing? And I guess it's best to ask how the pair of you got into writing together.

We met on a creative writing course at university,

and shared a flat and started writing together after we left.

I ended up working in politics and I was awful at it. Terrible MP's researcher.

You were working in a video shop and we were both looking for things we'd be better at than what we were doing.

And how then did you graduate to actually writing for the TV?

Our first proper job was doing links and jokes for The Jack Docherty Show, right?

-Yeah, or The Big Breakfast?

-The Big Breakfast.

There's a lot of comedy writers come up through doing sketches on Radio 4 and a sort of comedy route...

um, and then end up writing sitcoms later.

The first thing we ever wrote was like a narrative, we always wanted to write narrative, and we ended up

trying to make a bit of money by doing that kind of writing in a room, which we were never terribly good at,

kind of...little zingers and that slightly tabloid, "I'll BLEEP top you, mate! I've got a better zinger!"

And we'd be in the corner going, "Oh, haven't really got a zinger... Um..."

The big thing I remember from early on of writing is that thing of assuming that everyone else

knows better. There's all these people around, as there are in this room,

camera folk and all the different departments and it's very impressive.

And you assume that somehow somebody knows what the hell's going on and it's not you.

And then later on you start thinking that maybe you have got some useful input to make.

We do all the storylining for episodes and...together,

and we do a lot of detailed scene-by-scene breakdowns of everything we write.

And then we go away and we write the dialogue separately and email each other chunks.

Which is the most difficult bit, is it...?

Plotting is by far the hardest bit. That's the bit where you really need someone else in the room

cos you get an idea and it's no good and it's difficult to get to the next idea unless you've got someone else

-to bounce off. So...

-It's like engineering or building a table,

it's just making sure it all works, and it can be quite exhausting.

When you were coming up with the characters for Peep Show, were those blank sheets of paper

or were those moulded around the actors?

Well, yeah, we knew that Dave and Rob would be in it, so we did design it for them.

That is a huge bonus cos as soon as you get them in the room, you're kind of...

the character's moulded to the actor much more tightly than if you're just casting it.

'I act out the characters on the page.'

I got it! I got one, I got one!

Congratulations, you've killed a sentient being(!)

I think it's sort of like being an actor in your own head.

It's like you are sort of playing and messing around and, yeah, it's...

-Channelling.

-A bit channelling, yeah!

Often, new writers don't bear in mind how much something's going to cost

and so they'll sort of write in, I don't know, a scene on a spaceship or something willy-nilly.

Because you've got all this experience, to what extent are you

bearing in mind the practicalities of actually shooting the thing?

I think you try and write with two heads on in that regard.

"Oh, let's totally disregard that, whatever is funniest."

But you're always going, "Don't put it on a BLEEP aircraft carrier cos that's just not going to happen."

-Um...

-And it's also sometimes more like pity for the actors. You don't want to dump David Mitchell

in a freezing lake in December

cos everyone will be unhappy, especially him.

That sort of stuff, it's almost a shame

because one does become quite aware of that,

of the physical endurance aspect, which is quite great for performers,

and it's probably not to the advantage of the comedy, but...

Shove him in the freezing lake! He deserves it!

How long does it take you to write an episode?

It takes about a month.

Aggregated out, because we do it in these weird bits,

like, we do a month of doing all our stories

and at the end we're doing lots of rewrites,

but the whole process takes six months to write six episodes.

We do a lot of rewriting, is what it's all about for us, really.

You have to pretend that you're writing the final script every time!

And it's a sort of mental game you play with yourself.

You can't think, "All of this will end up being binned, that I'm now spending hours writing."

You just can't do that. It's a kind of game you play, yeah.

And sometimes it stays, you know. And there will be stuff from the first draft, sometimes a whole scene,

which just stays, so, you know, you have to keep on believing!

How much do you actually enjoy the process of writing itself?

Sometimes you sit down and there's a scene and you feel excited to write it but it's...

I feel like it should be more fun than it is.

You know, the more fun the writing process is, probably the less good the show will be,

and the more hard work the writing is, the more funny the show will be.

God, how depressing! What a disappointment you two are!

Depressing. It IS depressing.

Yeah, the secret... We've discovered the secret of comedy, which is lots of work, endless work.

OK, all right...

..surprise me.

What year is it supposed to be?

A word in your shell-like, pal.

Life On Mars sends modern detective Sam Tyler back in time

to the politically incorrect era of 1970s policing.

-Who the hell are you?

-Gene Hunt, your DCI. And it's 1973,

almost dinner time. I'm having hoops.

He is confronted by crime-busting methods that make his hair stand on end.

Where I come from, you'd be looking at suspension.

With flares and Ford Cortinas at the forefront of the action,

Life On Mars is a brilliant pastiche of classic '70s cop shows

like The Sweeney. But it's a tale with a fantasy twist

that challenges our grasp on reality and offers a provocative take on recent social history.

TYRES SQUEAL

So what's behind the success of Life On Mars?

Is it just a nostalgic romp for lovers of bad shirts and glam rock?

Or does the show prove that British audiences are hungry for drama

that pushes back the boundaries?

Let's go back to the very beginning of Life On Mars.

The first moment. Where are we? What happens?

I remember we... I really remember the room, it was a chintz room,

a tiny little attic room in this hotel.

We sat there with our flip chart and said, "Right, where shall we start?

"We've got an empty canvas, blank canvas."

And a million ideas, I'm sure, went through these boys' heads

but the first thing that Tony said was,

"Look, come on, let's be realistic. Everyone wants cop shows."

We'd all just written City Central, a cop show for the BBC and we thought,

"No more cops." And we all agreed. "But...

"just before we move on, if there was a cop show in the world

"that we'd like to write, what would it be?" And, erm...

The Sweeney was the answer from all three of us.

"OK, let's do The Sweeney, let's just re-do it. Let's just re-do it."

"No, we can't re-do The Sweeney. They'll just...

"It'll...be pulled apart." Talk about standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, we said - what if we took somebody from our world and threw them into The Sweeney

and saw how they coped with the prejudices then?

And crudely, it was just that, wasn't it?

Then we had to work out how to do it.

And the only way that you could do it, to do a period piece,

was to obviously take someone back.

MUSIC: "Life On Mars" by David Bowie

HE SIGHS

Phew...

TYRES SCREECH

We talked about the crash and how to show how it's done,

and we worked out there would be the song on the radio

that would be the same.

MUSIC "Life On Mars" by David Bowie

-We had that idea before iPods were invented, didn't we?

-Yeah.

-Because the actual shot is listening to his iPod in the car...

-Yeah.

-..and they didn't exist then.

We pitched it to every single broadcaster in the country.

Some of them, more than once.

And some of the longest minutes of my life have been spent pitching Life On Mars to commissioners

-who just went...

-There's that great moment

where you'd sit down with them and they'd say,

"What have you got, boys?" And we'd say, "Right, it's a cop show."

"OK, good."

"OK, so, he has a car crash and he falls back in time."

-"Mm-hmm."

-THEY LAUGH

And they'd be looking at their watches, looking out of the window,

looking at the ceiling, looking at their cufflinks.

Erm, yeah, it was tough, it was a tough sell.

There were seven years of enough very important people in suits telling you it was crap.

-It only got rejected six times, probably.

-Yeah.

-Six or seven times. And actually,

that was really healthy for it.

It was kind of - what does not defeat it makes it stronger.

It just kept getting better,

until Julie picked it up at the BBC, Julie Gardner,

and kind of, the final piece in the jigsaw slotted in, I think.

The 36 drafts I did of that script between 1998 and when we shot it...

-The first 35 were...

-BLEEP!

-I only came good in the last two days.

-You just pulled it out of the bag in the last one!

-Yeah.

It was waiting until all the stars were in the right place.

I think that's why the show took seven years before it was made.

If it had been picked up straightaway and made at that time,

-it wouldn't have been the hit that it was...

-No, that's true.

..and what we've done is, in a roundabout way, all the...

stars have converged and we were in the right place, at the right time,

and I think that's why it worked.

You know, obviously, people responded well to it

for all of the reasons that we've spoken about - the characters, the clash of cultures,

the fact that it's about one style of policing and another -

but I think it says an odd thing about a mainstream audience, doesn't it?

About a mainstream British television audience,

that they are more sophisticated, than not you think, but some people might think.

-You have a high opinion, I think.

-Yeah...

-Not everybody does.

For seven years, we said, "Let the audience be the judge of this idea."

And I think that almost the broadcasters caught up with the audience, to be honest with you.

And my personal response from friends, or people in the industry, has been astonishing really.

Much more than anything else I've ever written, I think.

And even though your programme was in development for many years,

Doctor Who came out and I think helped, do you agree?

It showed that there's a big audience for science fiction,

which is what that is, science fiction. Yours isn't quite science fiction, but it just proved again

-that there was an audience out there that was prepared to sit there and watch this.

-More relevant

was that Lost went out on Channel 4 and I think their first episode

got six million. So, you think, "Wow!

"There is that audience out there for an intelligent post-watershed."

What was - revelation is a big word - but what was different was that it was on BBC One

and I think for the first time, it was allowing...

a show with an American sensibility onto a primetime thing.

And I think it's shown that there is an appetite for that and you can do it.

What's pleasing about it is that it's a high-concept American pitch,

but it's an incredibly English-specific show, specific to our childhoods, you know?

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