TV PRODUCTION

Gordon Hickie faces Helen West, Crown Prosecution Officer

	From left to right: Trainee, Nicky George; Focus-Puller, Peter 'Skip' Howard; Grip, Barry Head; Camera Operator, Ian Adrian; Clapper-Loader, Penny Shipton and DP Gordon Hickie. (PHOTO: TONY RUSSELL)

Producer Alan Wright always prided himself on being able to determine whether a programme has been shot on videotape or film, but when he watched Attachments, a BBC drama series, he really wasn't sure. Director of Photography Gordon Hickie had shot on digibeta, but he'd made no concessions to videotape with either lighting or filtration. The impressed producer phoned Hickie and asked him to be Director of Photography on Helen West, a drama trilogy for ITV based on the novels by Frances Fyfield.

"Alan admitted to me that after seeing Attachments, it did go through his mind momentarily to shoot Helen West on tape," Hickie recalls, "but he decided it would be a retrograde step for the lead actress and frowned on in the American market; film was the only real choice."

1st Assistant Director Paul Judges (left) and DP Gordon Hickie.

Hickie shot with an ARRI SR3 camera equipped with Canon zooms, Zeiss primes and No. 1 and 1/2 Tiffin BDFX filters. "They're very good for skin tones and keeping eyes sharp," he says. He used Super 16mm Kodak Vision 320T (7277) film for interior shots and Eastman EXR 100T (7248) film for exteriors. "I've always been a great fan of 7277. Sometimes when I'm shooting I think, oh no, I'm going over the top, there's no way I'll be able to see all of that, yet when I get the rushes - it's all there. Everything. It's wonderful!"

There was a substantial amount of filming in and around London council estates. "We've been a wee bit squashed into some tiny little flats, so I tried to put as much lighting as I could outside on 'cherry pickers' to keep the interiors clear," recalls Scots-born Hickie. On daylight shoots I've used anything from 12kW HMI PARs down to a 125 watt Pocket PAR and at night, on the 'cherry picker', 20kW tungsten lamps gelled with 1/4 CTO and 1/4 plus green to merge into the orange sodium street lighting of London. I've never been one for 'Hollywood blue' nights!

"As far as sets go, I don't believe in taking out ceilings and walls. I prefer to shoot a set as if it's a real place; it's more helpful for actors and more realistic for me and I try to limit lighting to what I'd have if it was a real interior. I think the audience picks up on that, even though it may be subconsciously."

The crew began winter night shoots on the council estates at 5PM and worked till the legal limit of 11 p.m. "The police were amazed we didn't have any trouble because it was quite a tough area," says Hickie. The only trouble was with the weather. He particularly recalls one summer afternoon in June. They'd just tracked Amanda Burton, who plays a Crown Prosecution Officer - and the link between the programmes - walking along in bright summer sunshine and entering a building. As soon as the crew set up inside, they looked back to find a pitch-black sky; seconds later, a torrential downpour began, which continued for so long Hickie decided to put diffusion over the windows and doors and shot her from inside as she entered the building, lighting the diffusion with a 12K PAR to give the effect of a sunny day outside.

"The weather doesn't change," muses Hickie, "but fortunately cinematography does. The digital age has at last given cinematographers their own darkroom, with all the manipulation that stills photographers have enjoyed for over a hundred years. We now have tremendous tools that give us enormous subtlety in our work and a real control over the finished product."

And Hickie's future plans? "I'd like to shoot dramas on Super 35mm or anamorphic. But fewer council flats, please!" he adds.

The Helen West trilogy is due to be screened on ITV in early 2002.

Data File

Helen West

Producer - Alan Wright
Production Manager - Tracy Garrett
Directors - Justin Chadwick, Coky Giedroyc, Myles Connell
1st AD - Paul Judges
Director of Photography - Gordon Hickie
Focus-Puller - Peter "Skip" Howard
Clapper-Loaders - Penny Shipton, Genny Atlas, David Jensen
Editors - Fergus MacKinnon, John MacDonnell, Matthew Platts-Mills

An Arrowhead Production for ITV

Gordon Hickie

After a course in Mechanical Engineering at Edinburgh University, Hickie made the decision that his chosen career would be filmmaking, the hobby he had actively pursued and enjoyed since the age of 13. After three years as Assistant Cameraman in Edinburgh, he went freelance and since 1980 has been a London-based freelance Director of Photography.

Credits include:

FEATURE FILMS -
Between Two Women, The Big Swap, Driven and Leon The Pig Farmer (Chaplin Award, Edinburgh Film Festival; International Critics Prize, Venice)

SHORT FILMS -
Café De Paris, The Waiting Game and 8 For 8:30 (BBC Short Film Award)

TELEVISION -
Holby City, Attachments, The Ghost of Greville Lodge and London Bridge