The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (31 page)

Highclere, remodelled in 1842 by Sir Charles Barry
(the architect of the Houses of Parliament) for the 3rd Earl
of Carnarvon, is a sumptuous essay in ‘Jacobethan’ grandeur.
The high-ceilinged rooms are decorated with old masters
and fine pieces of period furniture. As director Brian Percival
enthuses: ‘It’s such a fabulous canvas on which to work.
It’s something that could never be built on a TV budget.’

One of the challenges of filming at Highclere is working
while surrounded by so many valuable antiques and artworks.
Charmian Adams, the production designer, says, ‘We continue
to use tablecloths in this series, although historically they
were beginning not to, because the table in the dining room
at Highclere is so valuable. We would have had to make little
coasters to fit under each item of cutlery, each glass, to protect
the surface. But Robert is very conservative so perhaps it makes
good dramatic sense. Also, for filming, a tablecloth is better
because it absorbs more sound.’

The coherence of approach, and the quest for historical accuracy, have contributed to the programme’s success. However, from the show’s conception, Gareth Neame, executive producer, and Liz Trubridge, producer, decided that if it was going to be a historical piece, it should not feel remote. Trubridge explained: ‘The period detail should be right, but it must be matched with lots of energy – and plenty of camera movement.’ ‘The pace of the stories is very fast,’ Neame elaborates: ‘It’s not a warm-bath of a period drama. We are saying, imagine you are one of these maids, or one of these titled women.’

GARETH NEAME
(EXECUTIVE PRODUCER)
ANY CLOSED WORLD DOMINATED BY HIERARCHIES
WORKS WELL ON TV. THERE IS THAT ENDLESS
FASCINATION OF A WORLD WHERE SOME
PEOPLE HAD EVERYTHING AND OTHERS HAD
VERY LITTLE, YET THEY ARE ALL THROWN
TOGETHER IN A PRESSURE COOKER.

It was an approach that appealed immediately to the director, Brian Percival. As he puts it: ‘Costume dramas – for the most part – expect a sort of reverence from the audience towards the material. As a result, they can be rather stuffy. I’ve always sought to engage the viewer in a visual way.’

Downton Abbey is, of course, a universe of two halves, the grand above- stairs world of the family and the busy below-stairs world of the servants. ‘We wanted to differentiate between the two different worlds,’ Percival explains, ‘the two energies within the same house. Upstairs the mood is serene. To film it we use wider lenses and slower tracking shots. In the servants’ quarters we use longer lenses and hand-held cameras. It feels a little bit more real, more naturalistic, almost like a documentary. We
feel
with them. You must be careful not to overdo it – just enough to create the effect, even on a subliminal level.’

Other, more subtle visual tricks are also used to enhance the mood of particular scenes. Nigel Willoughby, the director of photography, is eloquent about the possibilities of new technology: ‘With new digital cameras you can change the colour temperature at the touch of a button. It is a whole paint box. As long as you as you are consistent with each scene, it can be very effective. For example, everything we shot on Bates [in prison] is very cold, very blue. It has its own look, away from the warm world of Downton, and it reflects what prison is like.’

The below-stairs scenes are filmed
at Ealing Studios on a specially
built set. There they can create
the darker, more monochrome
workplace of the servants
without any restrictions.

The stairs lead to the green baize
door which separates the domains
of the family and the staff. In
reality, one world is in Ealing and
the other at Highclere, but for
accuracy the below-stairs rooms
on the Ealing set are laid out to
echo those at Highclere.

The ‘below-stairs’ world of Downton Abbey is filmed on a specially constructed set at Ealing Studios in West London, while the ‘above-stairs’ world is filmed on location at Highclere Castle in Hampshire. The reconstructed below-stairs rooms are arranged in imitation of the servants’ quarters at Highclere (which now house modern kitchens and public exhibition spaces). The stairs leading up to the green baize door which opens into the upstairs realm are an exact replica of those at the castle – made out of ingeniously painted wood, rather than stone – to provide a smooth transition between the two worlds.

Working with a set has certain advantages. Individual panels can be removed to allow cameras a clear sight of the action or for ‘smoke’ to be billowed into the kitchen from concealed apertures. The rooms are all open at the top, their ceilings replaced with a constellation of lights in large, spherical, white paper lanterns. (The whole set is taken down and reassembled between each series.)

The thematic colouring of the servants’ quarters extends even beyond Downton itself. ‘We’ve kept that monochrome downstairs palette going in other ways, as it relates to characters from that world. It is there in the look of Mr Bates’s house and, of course, in the prison.’

BRIAN PERCIVAL
(DIRECTOR) I TRY TO INVITE
AUDIENCES INTO THE WORLD OF DOWNTON
ABBEY. WE ARE NOT ASKED JUST TO STAND BACK
AND OBSERVE; WE ARE ASKED TO BE PART OF IT.

There are different challenges to working on location at Highclere, as a stately home that has a new life as a popular visitor attraction and events venue. The soundman has taped onto his elaborate sound-station, with its banks of monitors, flashing lights and dials, a large handwritten note saying ‘FRIDGE’. It is to remind him to switch off the large catering fridge in the nearby modern kitchen during each take, otherwise a resonant ‘hum’ can be heard in the background. Outside, ingeniously constructed hollow fibreglass pedestals surmounted by urns are used to cover up the conspicuous modern floodlights that surround the house.

One other feature of filming at Highclere is the temperature. Set on rising ground, the house attracts chill winds from every direction. ‘It’s got its own microclimate,’ says Trubridge. ‘Even on a hot day it’s cold. On a cold day it’s freezing.’ The pervasive chill lends a curious element to filming. Cora rehearses one scene looking un-countess-like in a floor-length black Puffa coat, with Ugg boots on. Everyone else is similarly swaddled. Even Carson is in a Puffa.

LIZ TRUBRIDGE
(PRODUCER) THE FIRST DAY
EVER THAT WE SHOT AT HIGHCLERE IT WAS
MINUS 6 IN THE COURTYARD. SIOBHAN [O’BRIEN]
DROPPED HER CIGARETTE IT WAS SO COLD!

Matters can be exacerbated by the need to film scenes out of sequence. (The production is shot in ‘blocks’ of two episodes, with the scenes rarely shot in order.) The first day’s shooting on Series 3 – in mid-February – was depicting a summer’s day. All the cast, dressed in light summer costumes, had hot-water bottles, blankets and coats waiting off camera, to warm them up between takes.

The bedrooms of the Crawley family are now created at Ealing, but constructed to the exact proportions of the Highclere bedrooms. ‘That was one of the things we learnt from the first series,’ explains Trubridge. ‘It proved very difficult to film in the bedrooms at Highclere. They were just too small. It was awkward getting the camera crew in, and it was hard to control the temperature, as you weren’t supposed to open the windows. At Ealing it is much easier. The space is altered by set builders – repainted, repapered, re-dressed and refurnished – as it changes, say, from Lady Mary’s to Lord Grantham’s room. Each transformation takes only a day – a miracle of speed and efficiency!’

While in a grand country house there was a division between the bustling, unseen, below-stairs rooms and the calm grandeur of the family’s upstairs quarters, in the world of television the division is between on screen and off. Each deftly crafted scene is framed by a huge amount of work. As Daisy and Mrs Patmore cook in the kitchen or Mary and Matthew flirt in the library, just out of shot there hovers a whole army of costume people, make-up artists, prop providers, scene builders, designers, producers, assistant directors, sound engineers, light riggers, camera operators, cooks and runners – all dedicated to realising the vision of the director and writer and focused on bringing Downton Abbey vividly to life. Some are standing by. Others are actively engaged: the camera, fixed on a dolly, is being rolled along a short length of rail-track by one man. Or, during a kitchen scene, two men are operating a ‘smoke’ machine, billowing clouds of vapour through a hole at the back of the range. In ‘video village’ – in front of a bank of small video monitors – the director, producer and DOP (director of photography) sit hunched in their canvas chairs, watching the scene unfold. But between each take this army springs into action. In an instant the set fills with frantic activity; make-up artists leap forward to apply dabs of ‘mattifier’ (to prevent the actors’ faces becoming shiny) or to make minor adjustments. ‘The most infuriating thing’, Vaughan confides, ‘is to have one hair sticking up. We have a stiff bristle brush and can flatten it down with that.’ Hugh Bonneville is so tall he has to bend at the waist to have his make-up touched up on set.

Hot-water bottles, thick Puffa
coats and any other warm items
of clothing are essential kit during
rehearsals and in between takes,
in order to fend off the freezing
temperatures at Highclere.