Doctor Who Confidential (2005–2011): Season 1, Episode 9 - Special Effects - full transcript
SIMON: From bomb blasts to barrage
balloons, Spitfires to spaceships,
the Blitz has never been seen
like this before.
No. No! It's jumping time tracks,
getting away from us.
Doctor Who Confidential is about
to track down the men in the firing line
who have brought these special effects
to life.
Okay. Maybe not this T-shirt.
CHILD: Mummy?
SIMON: Recreating the look
of war-time London
was a challenge
for the entire Doctor Who crew.
It's a great episode to look at effects
since there's a remarkable number
of physical effects
that have post-production effects added.
I particularly think that Rose
flying over London
was extraordinarily difficult to do.
I remember these two episodes
landing on my desk.
You know, on page four, Rose flies
across London on a barrage balloon
during a blitz air raid.
It's a really easy thing for Steven
to have typed
and it's even easier to read
but to try and translate into reality,
is a nightmare.
I assumed I'd be reined in and
I have to say, they did not rein me in.
They let me do whatever I liked.
ROSE: Doctor!
The difficulty about Rose
flying over London
is that you're talking about
360-degree effects.
The main problem is
getting reference
for top shots of London.
We've employed a technique,
photogrammatery.
Basically, what we've done is
taken a top shot reference of London.
We've then, in the computer,
created the geometry for the buildings
so that there's a kind of
rough and crude 3D model.
We then had a start mat painting
and an end mat painting
and to project the picture
onto the geometry of London,
which means we can move the camera.
MAN: I can shout "ready" for you,
if you want.
It took us two separate days to film.
We filmed part of it...
with Billie Piper, who was completely game
and completely up for doing things like this,
suspended from a crane
inside our warehouse
against a green screen,
with a huge wind machine underneath her.
Okay.
I find when acting with green screen...
that you have to think twice as hard.
And it can be taxing,
it can be quite exhausting.
Then we went to a different hangar
that was even bigger.
It was an aeroplane hangar, actually.
And got an even bigger crane.
And this time...
we filmed her basically
against the night sky
with another huge wind machine moving
and just kind of all that flying stuff
and the flying around
and the big fall
from the barrage balloon.
(SCREAMING)
She's not very high up, but she's
more high up than I would care to be.
So there's a real drop,
there's a real physical danger.
With the CGI element, that sort of makes
her look hundreds of feet in the air.
There is a real wind blowing on her.
You can see real bits of rain
caught in the spotlight.
The whole picture has
a different texture because of that.
ECCLESTON: Acting to green screens,
imagining, it's just like being a kid again.
"If I'm supposed to be speaking
to a 62" alien
and, in fact, I'm speaking
to a yard brush,
if I can pull that off, then...
that's what I did all that training for
and it's all acting and it's all good.
The idea of imagining and me
jumping over, I mean, it's a hoot.
When we set about fitting the team
together to work on Doctor Who,
we did have a number of the people
in the visual effects community
beating on the door to come and work on it
because it was Doctor Who, which was great.
SIMON: The special effects team at
The Mill worked for almost a year
to create 1,300 effect shots
in the series.
Taking centre stage was the design
of Captain Jack's sporty spaceship.
Bryan Hitch came up
with a concept design
for Captain Jack's
convertible-style spaceship.
It's a very off-the-factory-floor,
hand-built, custom-made spaceship.
We went through a lot of talk
about Captain Jack's ship
and I went completely off
down the wrong path,
thinking it should be very flash and beautiful,
and I'm glad to say, everyone ignored me.
It's a sort of spaceship we see a lot.
It should be sexier and sleeker.
-I thought it slightly sleeker and yes, sharper.
-Sharper.
Sharper in every sense. Yeah.
But we ended up with something
that I think is absolutely right.
The ship's a bit cobbled together.
It looks like a few different
technologies have been jammed together.
Millennium Falcon-cum-camper van. I
think it'd be quite nice if he spent...
In the middle of it, there's a gas ring.
It's all slightly home-made,
in the way that the Tardis is.
A lot of Jack is a sort of different
version of the Doctor.
COMPUTER: ...communication device
indicates non-contemporaneous life-form.
It's interesting when you introduce
a new character
because, you know,
you have to use so many shortcuts
to tell the audience about them.
And, of course, you know, the obvious
thing with Jack is his spaceship.
I love that chair. His chair in the
centre is just beautifully, sort of, old
and she's old and a bit battered
and a bit complicated
and, you know, sort of says,
"This character's had a life."
The best chair in the business.
To see the set for the first time
is tremendously exciting
and to see one that has come out
as well as I think that one has...
There have been stages along the way
where I've seen drawings,
I've seen some computer illustrations
and I've seen a very basic model
of the spaces,
but that's nothing to the feeling you get when
you see it dressed as intricately as that.
There is an element
of a romantic encounter
between the spaceship
Captain and Billie...
and we'd like to emphasise it
with colour.
So I've chosen yellows, browns
and orange colour to emphasise...
the little bantering between the two.
You got lights in here?
-Hello.
-Hello.
Hello.
Let's not start that again.
I'm having the time of my life
coming in here and playing.
Being paid to play.
You know, being paid to be somebody else, to
play and play with guns and electronic stuff
and all this zhoosh. It's just fantastic.
-That all right?
-That was very all right. Thank you.
Do you want to do it?
So, you used to be a Time Agent
and now you're trying to con them?
If it makes me sound any better,
it's not for the money.
Your friend over there doesn't trust me.
And for all I know, he's right not to.
Captain Jack in a nutshell
is from the 51st century.
He is a Time Agent.
Who are you supposed to be, then?
Captain Jack Harkness,
133 Squadron, Royal Air Force.
American volunteer.
He starts out to be not a very nice guy.
He falls for Rose.
I think she looks great hanging
from that balloon.
Particularly with what she's wearing.
Excellent bottom.
He starts out as being a con man
and then he, kind of,
gets on the team with them
and decides, you know,
"Okay, I'm gonna help them out."
The Doctor's very suspicious
of Captain Jack when he first arrives.
Thinks he's a meddler, thinks he's a
mercenary, thinks he doesn't have any heart.
When Rose first meets jack,
she really fancies him.
And he really, kind of, seduces her
and plays her.
And she just loves him,
she just falls for him.
It's 1941.
The height of the London Blitz.
The height of
the German bombing campaign.
And something else has fallen on London.
A fully equipped Chula warship.
Mummy.
SIMON: Will even Captain jack be able
to save Rose from the menace
the design team have dreamt up?
CHILD: Mummy.
So, what do these gas masks look like?
-They really are scary.
-It's amazing.
-There's hair behind it.
-Oh right, brilliant.
It was tricky, the gas mask one, 'cause
it's one of the most scary effects,
I think, we've probably got.
Mummy.
-What's happening?
-DOCTOR: I don't know.
The description is fused, as if by burn.
I think it should sort of develop in,
as if somehow this is...
This has actually grown into this form.
This is impossible.
We won't go close-up on to extras. We've
got to have good shots of extras when...
You know, and they'll be wearing
gas masks and there will...
There'll be gaps, there'll be lines.
There will be.
If that was emptied
and you shone a light through,
what you'd be seeing is the inside
of the back of his helmet. That's how...
-The light gets through.
-Yeah.
The idea was we were gonna just copy
a real gas mask and try and make them
blend into the face.
You can't get them anymore.
Mummy.
Mummy.
Kind of at the eleventh hour,
we got a call saying that, you know,
we're having real problems
with these gas masks
and we had to dive in there,
and in about a week and a half
we had to sculpt the model up and make,
from scratch, complete gas masks
for, I think, about 28 people.
But one of the things it did give us the
advantage of was we could then design it
the best way we wanted.
The director could say, "Well, actually
let's make the eyes like this."
Because, otherwise, if you used a real
gas mask, you're stuck with that design.
My character that I play
is Dr Constantine.
And I have a hospital full of people.
They look as though
they're wearing gas masks,
but in fact, they're morphed.
The gas mask is them.
You'll find them everywhere.
And, I'm about to go the same way.
(COUGHING)
You're very sick.
Are you my mummy?
-Cut.
-Thank you.
What he was trying to do was, do the
whole, "Are you my mummy?" and then...
shut down, it was fantastic.
I know. I was feeling guilty about
putting him through that every time.
-Thought he was gonna have a stroke.
-Oh, actors love it.
-Gonna quote you. Call you back in.
-Showing off.
We all love a death scene.
Are you my mummy?
The morphing gas mask
out of Richard Wilson's head...
has been a nice,
challenging effect to create.
Chris Petts modelled Richard Wilson's
head in 3D.
And part of our aim was for it
to look like a very organic,
coughing up from within
of this gas mask here.
So that was obviously crying out
to be CGI
rather than do that
in sort of prosthetic stages.
That absolutely looks like a really
terrible, nasty thing to happen.
And, you know, there are limits. You
think of six-year-olds watching this,
how much physical pain
people can stand to watch.
I'm glad we pushed it 'cause I think
they're absolutely terrifying
and fantasy-like enough not to really
disturb very young kids too much.
But they're right to the limit. That's what
Steven's script does all the way through.
Pushes the fear and a certain level
of body horror, actually,
all the way to the limit.
That's brilliant.
PATIENTS: Mummy.
balloons, Spitfires to spaceships,
the Blitz has never been seen
like this before.
No. No! It's jumping time tracks,
getting away from us.
Doctor Who Confidential is about
to track down the men in the firing line
who have brought these special effects
to life.
Okay. Maybe not this T-shirt.
CHILD: Mummy?
SIMON: Recreating the look
of war-time London
was a challenge
for the entire Doctor Who crew.
It's a great episode to look at effects
since there's a remarkable number
of physical effects
that have post-production effects added.
I particularly think that Rose
flying over London
was extraordinarily difficult to do.
I remember these two episodes
landing on my desk.
You know, on page four, Rose flies
across London on a barrage balloon
during a blitz air raid.
It's a really easy thing for Steven
to have typed
and it's even easier to read
but to try and translate into reality,
is a nightmare.
I assumed I'd be reined in and
I have to say, they did not rein me in.
They let me do whatever I liked.
ROSE: Doctor!
The difficulty about Rose
flying over London
is that you're talking about
360-degree effects.
The main problem is
getting reference
for top shots of London.
We've employed a technique,
photogrammatery.
Basically, what we've done is
taken a top shot reference of London.
We've then, in the computer,
created the geometry for the buildings
so that there's a kind of
rough and crude 3D model.
We then had a start mat painting
and an end mat painting
and to project the picture
onto the geometry of London,
which means we can move the camera.
MAN: I can shout "ready" for you,
if you want.
It took us two separate days to film.
We filmed part of it...
with Billie Piper, who was completely game
and completely up for doing things like this,
suspended from a crane
inside our warehouse
against a green screen,
with a huge wind machine underneath her.
Okay.
I find when acting with green screen...
that you have to think twice as hard.
And it can be taxing,
it can be quite exhausting.
Then we went to a different hangar
that was even bigger.
It was an aeroplane hangar, actually.
And got an even bigger crane.
And this time...
we filmed her basically
against the night sky
with another huge wind machine moving
and just kind of all that flying stuff
and the flying around
and the big fall
from the barrage balloon.
(SCREAMING)
She's not very high up, but she's
more high up than I would care to be.
So there's a real drop,
there's a real physical danger.
With the CGI element, that sort of makes
her look hundreds of feet in the air.
There is a real wind blowing on her.
You can see real bits of rain
caught in the spotlight.
The whole picture has
a different texture because of that.
ECCLESTON: Acting to green screens,
imagining, it's just like being a kid again.
"If I'm supposed to be speaking
to a 62" alien
and, in fact, I'm speaking
to a yard brush,
if I can pull that off, then...
that's what I did all that training for
and it's all acting and it's all good.
The idea of imagining and me
jumping over, I mean, it's a hoot.
When we set about fitting the team
together to work on Doctor Who,
we did have a number of the people
in the visual effects community
beating on the door to come and work on it
because it was Doctor Who, which was great.
SIMON: The special effects team at
The Mill worked for almost a year
to create 1,300 effect shots
in the series.
Taking centre stage was the design
of Captain Jack's sporty spaceship.
Bryan Hitch came up
with a concept design
for Captain Jack's
convertible-style spaceship.
It's a very off-the-factory-floor,
hand-built, custom-made spaceship.
We went through a lot of talk
about Captain Jack's ship
and I went completely off
down the wrong path,
thinking it should be very flash and beautiful,
and I'm glad to say, everyone ignored me.
It's a sort of spaceship we see a lot.
It should be sexier and sleeker.
-I thought it slightly sleeker and yes, sharper.
-Sharper.
Sharper in every sense. Yeah.
But we ended up with something
that I think is absolutely right.
The ship's a bit cobbled together.
It looks like a few different
technologies have been jammed together.
Millennium Falcon-cum-camper van. I
think it'd be quite nice if he spent...
In the middle of it, there's a gas ring.
It's all slightly home-made,
in the way that the Tardis is.
A lot of Jack is a sort of different
version of the Doctor.
COMPUTER: ...communication device
indicates non-contemporaneous life-form.
It's interesting when you introduce
a new character
because, you know,
you have to use so many shortcuts
to tell the audience about them.
And, of course, you know, the obvious
thing with Jack is his spaceship.
I love that chair. His chair in the
centre is just beautifully, sort of, old
and she's old and a bit battered
and a bit complicated
and, you know, sort of says,
"This character's had a life."
The best chair in the business.
To see the set for the first time
is tremendously exciting
and to see one that has come out
as well as I think that one has...
There have been stages along the way
where I've seen drawings,
I've seen some computer illustrations
and I've seen a very basic model
of the spaces,
but that's nothing to the feeling you get when
you see it dressed as intricately as that.
There is an element
of a romantic encounter
between the spaceship
Captain and Billie...
and we'd like to emphasise it
with colour.
So I've chosen yellows, browns
and orange colour to emphasise...
the little bantering between the two.
You got lights in here?
-Hello.
-Hello.
Hello.
Let's not start that again.
I'm having the time of my life
coming in here and playing.
Being paid to play.
You know, being paid to be somebody else, to
play and play with guns and electronic stuff
and all this zhoosh. It's just fantastic.
-That all right?
-That was very all right. Thank you.
Do you want to do it?
So, you used to be a Time Agent
and now you're trying to con them?
If it makes me sound any better,
it's not for the money.
Your friend over there doesn't trust me.
And for all I know, he's right not to.
Captain Jack in a nutshell
is from the 51st century.
He is a Time Agent.
Who are you supposed to be, then?
Captain Jack Harkness,
133 Squadron, Royal Air Force.
American volunteer.
He starts out to be not a very nice guy.
He falls for Rose.
I think she looks great hanging
from that balloon.
Particularly with what she's wearing.
Excellent bottom.
He starts out as being a con man
and then he, kind of,
gets on the team with them
and decides, you know,
"Okay, I'm gonna help them out."
The Doctor's very suspicious
of Captain Jack when he first arrives.
Thinks he's a meddler, thinks he's a
mercenary, thinks he doesn't have any heart.
When Rose first meets jack,
she really fancies him.
And he really, kind of, seduces her
and plays her.
And she just loves him,
she just falls for him.
It's 1941.
The height of the London Blitz.
The height of
the German bombing campaign.
And something else has fallen on London.
A fully equipped Chula warship.
Mummy.
SIMON: Will even Captain jack be able
to save Rose from the menace
the design team have dreamt up?
CHILD: Mummy.
So, what do these gas masks look like?
-They really are scary.
-It's amazing.
-There's hair behind it.
-Oh right, brilliant.
It was tricky, the gas mask one, 'cause
it's one of the most scary effects,
I think, we've probably got.
Mummy.
-What's happening?
-DOCTOR: I don't know.
The description is fused, as if by burn.
I think it should sort of develop in,
as if somehow this is...
This has actually grown into this form.
This is impossible.
We won't go close-up on to extras. We've
got to have good shots of extras when...
You know, and they'll be wearing
gas masks and there will...
There'll be gaps, there'll be lines.
There will be.
If that was emptied
and you shone a light through,
what you'd be seeing is the inside
of the back of his helmet. That's how...
-The light gets through.
-Yeah.
The idea was we were gonna just copy
a real gas mask and try and make them
blend into the face.
You can't get them anymore.
Mummy.
Mummy.
Kind of at the eleventh hour,
we got a call saying that, you know,
we're having real problems
with these gas masks
and we had to dive in there,
and in about a week and a half
we had to sculpt the model up and make,
from scratch, complete gas masks
for, I think, about 28 people.
But one of the things it did give us the
advantage of was we could then design it
the best way we wanted.
The director could say, "Well, actually
let's make the eyes like this."
Because, otherwise, if you used a real
gas mask, you're stuck with that design.
My character that I play
is Dr Constantine.
And I have a hospital full of people.
They look as though
they're wearing gas masks,
but in fact, they're morphed.
The gas mask is them.
You'll find them everywhere.
And, I'm about to go the same way.
(COUGHING)
You're very sick.
Are you my mummy?
-Cut.
-Thank you.
What he was trying to do was, do the
whole, "Are you my mummy?" and then...
shut down, it was fantastic.
I know. I was feeling guilty about
putting him through that every time.
-Thought he was gonna have a stroke.
-Oh, actors love it.
-Gonna quote you. Call you back in.
-Showing off.
We all love a death scene.
Are you my mummy?
The morphing gas mask
out of Richard Wilson's head...
has been a nice,
challenging effect to create.
Chris Petts modelled Richard Wilson's
head in 3D.
And part of our aim was for it
to look like a very organic,
coughing up from within
of this gas mask here.
So that was obviously crying out
to be CGI
rather than do that
in sort of prosthetic stages.
That absolutely looks like a really
terrible, nasty thing to happen.
And, you know, there are limits. You
think of six-year-olds watching this,
how much physical pain
people can stand to watch.
I'm glad we pushed it 'cause I think
they're absolutely terrifying
and fantasy-like enough not to really
disturb very young kids too much.
But they're right to the limit. That's what
Steven's script does all the way through.
Pushes the fear and a certain level
of body horror, actually,
all the way to the limit.
That's brilliant.
PATIENTS: Mummy.