John Wyver writes: with Monday 12 October now confirmed for BBC Four’s initial transmission of Drama out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, I’m going to continue my series of posts about the making of the documentary. The first two are here (‘Starting Out’) and here (‘The Interviews’), and in these notes I want to reflect further on the use that editor Todd MacDonald and I made of the archive resources – including the exceptional drama Leeds United! (wr. Colin Welland, dir. Roy Battersby, 1974), pictured above.
John Wyver writes: another week, another clutch of links to articles and videos and the occasional Twitter feed that I have found of interest – as always, I compiled this from the online sites I visit regularly and from all sorts of stuff that pops up in my Twitter timeline.
• End of the line for universities: historian Glen O’Hara at his Public Policy and the Past blog with a grim but important analysis of the current state of higher education in Britain.
… constructing and distributing a vaccine may solve a set of political and economic problems while also creating a set of new ones. We imagined that an effective inoculation would be a cause of celebration. It may turn out to be a symbol of global injustice and a trigger for grievance across the world.
• It’s not hypocrisy: Lili Loofbourow is great for Slate on the past week in America, but not only on that but on our situation here too:
We are overdue for a real reckoning with what it means to be degraded by our own leadership. And make no mistake: It is degrading when people lie to you openly and obviously. Leaving the polity aside for a moment, it’s the kind of emotion we humans aren’t great at coping with… [And] if you can’t cover it with cynicism, it simply hurts.
• Short cuts – woke conspiracies: a rapid-response piece by Will Davies for LRB about culture wars, the BBC and the nationalist and libertarian right, made all the more urgent by this morning’s speculation about Charles Moore and Paul Dacre.
John Wyver writes: with the 50th anniversary of the first Play for Today broadcast in 1970 fast approaching, and with our BBC Four documentary about the strand, Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, scheduled at 21.00 on Monday 12 October, this is a page drawing together the various related activities. I aim to keep this updated (and welcome further suggestions), and once we’re past 15 October it may remain useful as a list of resources.
The events that I know about are listed in what I believe to be chronological order. Note also that, in addition to @Illuminations, the dedicated Twitter feed @PlayforToday_20 carries news as well as lively discussions about the series and individual productions, and I expect this to become even busier in the coming days.
John Wyver writes: this is the second of a series of posts, which began here, in which I am chronicling the making of our BBC Four documentary, Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today. The 90-minute film will be broadcast in mid-October to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of this important strand of single dramas that ran on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. As before, although there is nothing by way of a narrative spoiler, you may prefer to wait to see the film before reading this.
Any such film about the history of television and film almost inevitably features both archive extracts and interviews, and there is a long tradition of such productions in which innumerable small variations in the use of both elements have been employed. I’ll discuss our use of the archive in a couple of future posts, but here I want to muse about our filming and editing of the interviews, including with filmmaker Ken Loach, above.
John Wyver writes: welcome to another clutch of links to articles and videos and the occasional Twitter thread that have engaged me over the past week; thanks, as usual, to those in my social media timelines that selflessly share good stuff that then finds it way here.
• Buying myself back – When does a model own her own image?: maybe you’ve read model and actor Emily Ratajkowski’s essay already, but if you haven’t get to The Cut right now (where it is illustrated with the image above) – it’s a compelling contemporary tale about copyright, consent and control.
• On constructing the “ideal” woman: … and this is a fascinating response by medieval historian Eleanor Janega, with some remarkable images.
John Wyver writes: Illuminations has delivered to the BBC our 90-minute documentary Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today which marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Play for Today series. (The header image is the main title card, created as part of the film’s graphic design by Ian Cross.) The first Play for Today was The Long Distance Piano Player, shown on BBC1 on Thursday 15 October 1970. Some 300 single dramas followed over the next fourteen years, and all but 37 still exist.
The documentary, which features interviews with some of those who made the series together with a veritable cornucopia of excerpts, will be shown on BBC Four around the time of the anniversary. Other planned activities in a full programme of events include repeat screenings of a number of the plays on BBC Four, a Radio 4 documentary, a BFI Southbank season from mid-October to the end of November, the release of seven titles on a BFI Blu-ray box set, an online academic conference and more.
While I’m cautious about self-justification and/or vainglorious puffery, I think that the documentary, which I have written and directed, and which has been brilliantly edited by Todd MacDonald, has a number of interesting and innovative aspects. To start a discussion of those, I am going to write a series of posts over the coming couple of weeks that explore different aspects of the production process, including working with archival elements, our distinctive graphics, and the edit and visual language of the film. I’m not sure it’s possible for there to be spoilers in such a chronicle of how a film was made, but you may prefer to take a look at the documentary first (which will be on BBC iPlayer for a year after transmission) and then return here.
John Wyver writes: we’re in the midst of the online edit for Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, to be seen on BBC Four in mid-October (and watch out for more about that here over the coming days), but there’s time to breathe and to compile this week’s links – thanks, as usual, to those in my Twitter who share great stuff.
• The descent into political insanity: no apologies for kicking things off with Chris Grey’s latest, endeavouring to make sense of an extraordinary week through the #Brexit looking glass:
This represents a very serious moment, not just in the history of Brexit but in modern British political history more generally, and it is vital not to be inured to its significance by the continual outrageous acts of the Brexit governments.
culture-war skirmishes… are how rightwing electoral prospects are now advanced; not through policies or promises of a better life, but by fostering a sense of threat, a fantasy that something profoundly pure and British is constantly at risk of extinction.
John Wyver writes: links to articles and videos that have engaged and interested me over this last week of summer; thanks, as ever, to those in my Twitter feed who have highlighted good stuff.
• Boris Johnson – the anti Prime Minister: exceptional writing from Jonathan Lis from Byline Times: ‘corruption at its most decadent: botching a crisis or destroying a national infrastructure not for political gain, nor even for financial reward, but ultimately for pure personal sport.’
• Night and day: for New York Review of Books Fintan O’Toole is predictably excellent on Joe Biden and America today.
John Wyver writes: apologies for missing last week, but here’s a new collection of stuff that I’ve found interesting and, in the case of the videos from #DNC2020, inspiring. Thanks, as always, to those in my Twitter timeline.
John Wyver writes: Sunday evening on BBC Four sees the premiere of our screen version of the Almeida Theatre’s production of Albion. This is an Illuminations co-production with the Almeida Theatre and The Space for BBC Arts, and while the start time of 10.10pm is perhaps not the most congenial (the broadcast will finish at three minutes to 1am on Monday morning), the recording will then be on BBC iPlayer for 30 days. I recommend it warmly.
Albion on screen is an adaptation of Rupert Goold’s very fine stage production with Victoria Hamilton (above), Daisy Edgar-Jones and a dazzling cast of Mike Bartlett’s contemporary tale of memory, loss and identity. The screen director is Rhodri Huw, with whom we worked in 2018 on the Almeida’s Hamlet with Andrew Scott, and the associate producer is David Gopsill.
Paul Freeman is the camera supervisor and Andy Rose the sound supervisor. Sarah Hull is production manager, Morag Macintosh the vision mixer and Stephanie Rose script supervisor. The post-production edit was carried out by Steve Eveleigh at Bestlight Pictures along with David, the audio mix was done by Andy, and we worked with StormHD for finishing and file delivery.
