Engineering serendipity: The positive and negative aspects of making magic in film
Sometimes the cuts are so deep they stay with you for a lifetime.
(the image above is me directing in 1999)
In 1999, I was hired to direct a new show for Channel 4. When I received the scripts, I thought I was in heaven. These scripts were gold. “Gold”, was the word that stuck in my mind when I read them. I was thrilled. This was the best text I had ever been asked to work with.
The job turned into a nightmare.
The show was a legal drama set in Leeds. The problems began in pre-production. I was to direct the second “block” in the series. The first block had been directed by an illustrious and long-toothed television drama director. He was a safe pair of hands and an excellent director. As his rushes came off the production line, it became evident there was a problem. The show was shooting in Leeds, but the production offices were in London. While prepping in London, I became aware of anxiety from the executives about the output from the first block. It was a concern I shared. The scripts had a fizz and verve that was not being captured in the material from the first block.
I was called into a crisis meeting with the production company executives and the producer. The execs instructed me to inject “zhoozch” into the show. I had no problem with following this directive. It coincided precisely with my instincts. The first block had been fusty and conservative where the script asked for sparkle. The screenplay required the shock of the new. This is what I was being asked to create. Enthusiastically, I made my plans accordingly. Meanwhile the set was redressed. Out went the traditional legal drama wood panelling, and in came pastel colours and modernist shapes.
Meanwhile the producer on the show was becoming increasingly exasperated. Her vision of the production aligned precisely with the original director’s version for the show. That’s why she had hired him. She was appalled at the changes that were being made. Unaware of this undercurrent, I proceeded to plan my block as I saw it and as had been authorised by the executives.
These disagreements between the producer and executives resulted in many conflicts on the shoot. It was an incredibly fraught production for me. I encountered resistance at every stage as I attempted to turn this juggernaut around and to deliver the show the execs were demanding. The crew had been hired by the producer for the entire production and were fully signed up to the producer’s, and the original director’s, vision for the show. Don’t get me wrong. I have the greatest respect for the original director. He fully deserved his renowned status in the industry. He’s a highly accomplished director. I just don’t think he fully comprehended the moment. As a result of these tensions, for me, this turned into an extraordinarily difficult shoot. I was caught between two competing, and entirely incompatible, agendas.
Serendipity is an essential, and rarely discussed, element in the director’s world. Chance events happen all the time in filmmaking, for good or ill. In terms of serendipity, one particular element in this show sticks out.
Helen McCrory (Rose) and Kevin McKidd (Billy) played married barristers with a new baby. Rose had a big murder case to litigate. She was under high pressure, while also being a new mother. In the small hours the baby began to cry. Kevin’s character, Billy, knowing Rose had a massive hearing in the morning and needing her sleep, decided to take the baby on a nighttime car ride. A great way to get a baby to sleep. And off they went.
Get timleandro’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The script required Billy, with the baby, to drive out of town in his vintage Karmann Ghia and into the dawn, before stopping and watch the sunrise.
This presented a significant production challenge. How were we going to do this? We were shooting in summer, so the days were long. Previously I had simulated sunrises with a large HMI light in the distance, with moderate results. I wanted the real thing.
Magic hour, as it is known, can be brief in the UK. This isn’t Los Angeles. You’ll be lucky to get an hour of that fabulous light, especially in the north of England. The locations department found me a beautiful rural spot outside Leeds, with a layby overlooking a verdant valley, facing west. Calculating the times and the crew hours, we decided that the “sunrise” would be filmed at sunset. A late finish was a more practical proposition than asking the crew to shoot at 5.00am.
This required significant planning. We had a visual scene to create in which Billy and the baby would arrive that the location, get out of the car and watch the sun “rise”. Of necessity, in the order of shooting, the wide master shot including the sun, would be the last shot we acquired, because the sun was actually setting instead of rising. So, we had to shoot the scene in reverse order. This absolute deadline also meant there would be no flexibility in the shooting schedule. If we didn’t shoot everything on time then we wouldn’t get the scene. So, there was some pressure. We accomplished all of this. In fact, we completed all the shots in good time and were left waiting for the sun to set to collect the money shot. This is where the serendipity kicked in. Sometimes directors just get lucky, and sometimes, they get really lucky.
The serendipitous aspect of this accomplishment was that, when planning, we could not know what sort of weather we were going to encounter on the shoot. It could be cloudy. It could rain. All we could do was hope. But I took my chance. The long-range weather forecast had been positive when we drew up the schedule, so there was reason for hope, but this was Yorkshire so these things can’t be relied upon. We had no contingency. Shooting at 9pm in the country, if the weather didn’t play ball, I would be screwed. But as a director, you have to take your chances. That is the game, but it takes some nerve. This was exactly the sort of directorial highwire act that production departments rarely understand. They ask: why not just shoot the scene in the daytime and grade it to look like sunset? This makes perfect sense to the production department. It removes all the pressure from the situation and doesn’t require a late finish. Such logistically driven production solutions mitigate in favour of production efficiency and make the crew’s lives easier, but also result in generic and dull outcomes. The wonderful script deserved better than that. So, I took a chance in the hope that I would get lucky. However, I knew that if, for any reason, we didn’t get the scene, I would be hopelessly exposed. This was on me. I was under no illusions about the consequences of failure.
As it turned out, the evening was crystal clear, and the sunset was blindingly spectacular. We couldn’t legislate for that. The result was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever shot. It was utterly glorious. I felt blessed. I had been really, really, lucky. It was an amazing accomplishment. I had engineered serendipity, and the angels had smiled on me.
The scene cut like a dream. The quality of the light striking Kevin McKidd and the Karmann Ghia looked like a Ridley Scott movie at his best. Thelma and Louise had nothing on this. This outcome was significantly beyond my expectations. I knew we had made something truly great.
The scene was essentially silent with no dialogue. The pictures told the story. So, music was required. I chose a piece of commercial music which I felt powerfully met the moment. I chose, Take Yo’ Praise, by Camille Yarbrough. This was a scene about a father committing to his child, and to his wife. He was going the extra mile, literally. He was taking the weight off his wife’s shoulders while also bonding with his baby boy. He was deserving of praise. To my mind the music and the moment chimed perfectly, and my editor agreed.
But then, the negative aspect of serendipity kicked in. A sequence of events which I could have in no way anticipated, or legislated for, now ensued. The producer, who had a bad attitude to my work because, even though endorsed by the execs, it conflicted with her original failed concept for the show, watched this scene and complained about my choice of music. She insisted that I changed it and put the Verve’s, Bittersweet Symphony on the scene. Bittersweet Symphony is a wonderful song, but it is melancholic and onanistic. It didn’t meet the moment. Its tone of depressive self-indulgence conflicted with the essentially life-affirming tenor of the scene. The scene was about love. The generosity of love literally shone from every luminous, golden, sun-drenched, frame. But the producer insisted. She informed me that she was a musical “expert” because she had once managed a record store. I had to acquiesce. To refuse would be to be labelled as “difficult” (she already thought I was trouble). It was still a great scene, even with the dissonant song laid over it. With gritted teeth, I followed her order.
So, the show was cut and presented to the executives. Sitting in a room with the producer, executive producers, and broadcast executives, at the viewing of the show, the sunrise scene became an issue. There was a feeling that something was wrong with this beautiful scene. What was it? After much to-ing and fro-ing, the issue came down to… the music. The bosses didn’t like the music on the scene. I sat there, biting my lip, while the producer defended her musical choice. I have never known a choice of music to be such a bone of contention in an executive viewing. Eventually, to break the impasse, one exec decided to… CUT THE SCENE, and all the bosses agreed. They cut the scene! Bam! My beautiful, gilded, scene, the product of so much hard work, the outcome of a glorious set of perfectly serendipitous circumstances, was instantly killed stone dead, and I just had to sit there and eat it.
The scene had always been vulnerable because there was no dialogue in it. Script-based television executives often don’t understand visual storytelling. If they can’t hear actors talking, often their impulse is to cut the scene. They will sit in the viewing with the script on their knee, reading the text and listening to the dialogue. Television drama is often radio with pictures. This scene was entirely visual, but it was full of story. Even so, it would probably have survived the execs’ tender mercies if not for the producer’s egregious choice of music.
After the viewing, one exec said to me with a smile, “you can use it for your commercials showreel, Tim”. They were laughing at me. With this comment, the exec was telling me that he knew it was a great scene, but they were cutting it anyway. They were enjoying my discomfort for no other reason than because they could, and there was nothing I could do about it. They had no idea of what I had been through to get this scene, the risks I had taken, and they didn’t care. Cutting the scene did not improve the show. It made it worse. They didn’t care about that either. This was “management”, whatever the hell that is. They had cut the Gordian Knot, this fabulous scene, to manage a difference of opinion with a disgruntled producer. But, if it doesn’t make a better show, then what is the point? This is the director’s life. Serendipity can be a wonderful thing, but it is a double-edged sword.
