Doctor Who
Press pack - phase two
Starts on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ONE, Saturday 26 March at 7.00pm
Introduction - Special effects
Christopher Eccleston is Doctor Who
in a new 13-part series for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ONE transmitting on Saturday 26 March
2005. Billie Piper stars alongside Eccleston as the
Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler.
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This is phase two of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Doctor Who press pack...
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The Mill - computer-generated
(CG) effects
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There were many reasons why Oscar-winning London-based effects house The Mill came on board the new series of Doctor Who, but one in particular stands out for Chief Executive Robin Shenfield.
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"Visual effects can be the tail that wags the dog," he says.
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"But with Doctor Who the storytelling was so good we knew it was something we really wanted to do.
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"It's soul-destroying to do great effects work on a project lacking in other areas because when it gets panned, it feels like your work is being panned, too.
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"Whether we take something on really depends on the quality of the scripts and the team that's working on it."
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Then there's the attraction of working on what visual
effects editor Dave Houghton refers to as "the biggest digital effects
in British TV drama to date".
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To illustrate the point, The Mill won their Academy Award for their work on Gladiator which included 100 visual effects shots produced over seven months.
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The team working on Doctor Who are producing around 100 per episode each month.
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"The range of effects we're using is quite extraordinary," says Robin.
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"Everything we do that's cutting edge is in this production."
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Recruiting additional talent to work on the show proved not to be a problem once The Mill signed up for the series.
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"Visual effects is a very specialist business and if a project is a stinker it's harder to get the specialists you need," says Robin.
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"But people were beating a path to us because they so wanted to be involved - the appeal of working on Doctor Who is extremely seductive."
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Visual effects producer Will Cohen says: "The show is a national institution and people working out how best to do a shot would often say something like 'But it's Doctor Who, it has to be good'."
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The effects in the show have to be almost better than good, says Robin, "because today's audience is very visual effect-literate".
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Will cites the gaseous entities that feature in one episode: "They started off just as ectoplasm but then became faces that had to speak.
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"In another story, one computer-generated character needed four minutes of lip-synching, which is a huge undertaking in a TV project."
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Robin adds: "The series was very stimulating for our team because we were able to input our own creative ideas, much more so than in film. We were contributing, not just executing."
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Special effects/visual effects – facts
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The Mill has been at the forefront of visual and special
effects (VFX and SFX) for 15 years. Credits include the Academy Award-winning
Gladiator for which they won the Oscar for special effects.
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Approximately 800 special effects have been created for the new series of Doctor Who compared with only 100 for the multi-Oscar-winning Gladiator.
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No other British TV production has been this ambitious in scale with the number of SFX and VFX created for a series.
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It has taken a team of 21 people, working over 10 months, doing six-day weeks of 12 hours per day to bring the new series up to date.
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Episode two involved the highest volume and biggest diversity of effects. This episode entailed characters built entirely in CG, entirely CG space and environments, green-screen composites and matt painting. This episode alone sucked up over a fifth of The Mill's total VFX work quota.
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