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 THE
COPS ON SET - Visual Style
The first time I watched
The Cops I almost switched over. Not because it was boring,
or offensive, but simply because I felt I'd seen enough
fly-on-the-wall documentaries to last me a lifetime. What
with Airport, Paddington Green, Telephone Box, Toilet,
real drama seemed scarce and reality inescapable. I didn't
switch channels. A double take reassured me that this
was action-packed enough, to have to have been contrived
and yet the immediacy of the style gave it an edge of
sickening reality. Tony Garnett, the show's creator, clarifies
this illusion of having caught a moment of spontaneous
action, as being a carefully deliberated visual style:
"The style is 'being there'. What is on the screen actually
happened and a camera were around to make a record of
it. And here it is." Much of this illusion hinges on the
way the programme is shot. "The Cops...is shot in a very
realistic way, generally covering scenes from the same
position but covering everything in one shot." says Harry
Bradbeer, one of the show's directors.
"We always talked about doing it hand held and always
being in the moment as such, so we tried and shot tests
to get a look that made it look not like film, but not
like cold video and we always wanted to make it feel as
real as it possibly could." continues Executive Producer
Eric Coulter. This had problems of it's own.
"The very first couple of days of shooting Series One
we kind of lost our nerve a little bit, I think, but Tony
quickly put that back in place, and we stuck with the
maxim that these events happen once and you have to capture
them. So, coming from that standpoint it then meant that
we wanted to go hand held. The camera could go wherever
it wanted to go. We'd work out certain things like hiding
behind doorways and eavesdropping, which were really good,
but sometimes if you did too much then foreground and
plants and doorframes became an irritation!"
"As the show went on you began to evolve that and find
ways of making sure there's lots of depth to the situation...they're
shooting on a very long lens to avoid having to do lots
of whip pans."
I asked Kath Mattock, Script Editor and Associate Producer,
how they managed to maintain a clear narrative within
such unconventional parameters? "We have the police in
every scene so the way that you construct a narrative
in that way is very, very difficult, you can't show anything
prior to the event of the police coming in, and you can't
show anything after the police have left 'cos that is
the rule. Because it cuts into a story late and out early
it eats material up massively...it's quite fast moving.
The whole thing takes a lot of time to plan."
Director Alrick Riley also agrees that planning is the
key." Each director works differently, but I work very
much to a plan. That plan allows me to be flexible. Remembering
all the time that it should appear to be unplanned, that
requires lots of planning!"
The long takes also require a huge amount of concentration
from the actors who are required to 'unlearn' a lot of
the television technique they may have picked up from
working on other programmes. "It's not like anything else
I've done, you really have to go in and know exactly where
you've come from, where you were two minutes ago and at
the end of a scene where you would normally cut, you don't
cut on Cops, you just carry on and it comes to a natural
end." says Michael McNally, who plays one of the new series
fresh characters PC John Martin. "It is scripted, but
there's improvisation involved as well...you're kept on
your toes the while time."
As are the audience. Events occur with an almost shocking
speed at times and although the issues tackled are realistic,
often topical and very relevant, we are not offered clear-cut
solutions or the usual moralising. Anne Harrison Baxter
concludes, "You just have that little window on the reality
of what is going on and to use that within a drama was
marvellous. It's not easy, but it's very rewarding viewing."
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© World Productions 2000
All rights reserved; Photographs © BBC, Channel 4 and World Productions
No material from these pages may be reproduced in any form without
the permission of the copyright owners.
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