Technically, I love Coronation Street - there’s no question about it. As a die-hard fan, I find that when talking to other Corrie aficionados, they too are often interested in the technical side of the street’s production, but ‘Behind the scenes’ is rarely discussed in the mainstream click-bait media. It's all about the cast, their private lives, spoilers, what my Nan called ‘tittle-tattle’, and salacious sensationalism. You’ll rarely read about the writers, the lightning teams, or even the episode directors. The latter is an important part of how we watch the show, and in this Super Soap Week, I was hugely privileged to be able to chat with this week's Super Soap Week director, David Kester, to talk about how he got this special Corrie week together!
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| Corrie Director, David Kester |
Hi David, Firstly, what a brilliant set of episodes. In terms of Coronation Street, a few scenes step out of the soap genre a little bit. Can you talk us through that and how you approach it?
Yes, well there are a few things when it comes to that. The first is the fact that it's just one story throughout the whole week, which is unusual. That's not something we normally do. Also the fact for Super Soap Week it's quite unusual not to have it centred around one massive stunt or a whole sequence of stunts. I think that that is its biggest strength, it's just a great thriller and it's set around the characters. And rather than being just one stunt, this is set around Stephen Reid throughout all of the episodes. It makes the jeopardy go on a bit longer. We use several ‘thriller’ devices which you wouldn't normally use, throughout this week.
Watching on the big screen, we got an element of strong sound throughout the episode. How important was that to you?
It's really important. Watching any kind of thriller, you will notice how important the sound is. Also, in soaps/continuing drama, you don't use music normally, so you need to use something to build up that tension, in a way that using music normally would in a traditional drama or movie. We've kind of used it in a subliminal sense in a lot of places.
How did you feel having the whole (Weatherfield) community involved in the episodes?
It's great because every character reacts differently. Jenny is heartbroken, Tim is acting in a certain way, and Carla is trying to hold it all together to get him (Stephen Reid) bang to rights with her business in jeopardy. DS Swain is playing it cool, and Peter Barlow is also a loose cannon. It was great as everyone was different. We've also got classic Corrie with comedy from the Platts with everything done in character. It's a gift to Corrie fans. They stay in character, rather than stirring the plots.
A lot of those scenes are on location, urban, and in woodland. How important was that to you as a director?
It’s really important! We spent a lot of time looking for that, and especially the urban one. It wasn't written like that originally but we wanted to make it feel urban as it's more Coronation Street. That place was incredible, we sent a team in to make it safe for filming, who just went in and cleaned up all of their syringes and awful things that were lying around on the ground. They came in to make it safe for working and then we went in and replaced them all with our (prop) syringes and (clean) bits of rubbish. It's a great location, it's not a million miles away - it's hiding in plain sight. You know Tim is in danger there as it's a bit maze-like, he won't be found easily, You've got trains going past every five minutes. it's almost there, but just out of reach.
You used volume walls* again for these episodes, how useful was that?
It's good for this episode. When we did Toyah and Imran’s car crash, we had two people in a car talking so we used a low loader with four cameras on the edge of the car. The whole point about this was that Todd (Stephen) is in the back, and Joe (Tim) is in the front, and that dynamic is (in itself) very dramatic. We can see Stephen’s anger and it’s only the audience (not Tim) who see him grab a tie to put around Tim’s neck!
Thanks, David
*volume walls are used in place of filming the actors driving on actual roads (and in real-life locations) using expensive low-loaders and multiple camera shots. It's a modern version of the ‘green screen’ being used behind a stationary vehicle, to make it look like it’s moving. Corrie recently used them in that Kelly Neelan hostage roof scene.
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| That's a volume wall - not real scenery |
You can find out more about David Kester via this superb Corriepedia page.
Having had several interviews with the soap's superb cast, I’ve only ever had one other (email-based) interview with a Corrie director (Mickey Jones) We once had an (off the record) blog afternoon tea session with two Corrie writers - Ian Kershaw and Debbie Oates. I’ve also interviewed writer Jonathan Harvey (over the phone) but never had a face-to-face interview with an actual TV director - a techy Corrie treat and one for hard-core Corrie fans. Loved it! Thanks to our editor, Glenda, for giving me the opportunity.
What are you thinking about this week thus far? Admittedly I’ve not seen them yet (other than a montage and Friday nights at last week’s press event) so I’d be interested to know your thoughts! Drop me a #Corrie tweet @rybazoxo or reply via this article link. TTFN!
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