A specialist technique, usually reserved for high end television, such as Game of Thrones, has been employed by Leeds-based ClockWork Films.
Princess Anne: The Plot to Kidnap a Royal will examine the 1974 kidnapping plot by using photogrammetry to bring the scene – The Mall in London – to life.
Photogrammetry is the science of extracting 3D information from photographs, by overlapping photos of an object, structure or space and then converting them into models.
“At ClockWork we are first and foremost storytellers and pride ourselves on delivering a narrative to the audience in the most compelling way we can – as such we’ve always got an eye on ways we can innovate in the manner that stories are told, thinking of creative storytelling devices,” explained Heenan Bhatti, Executive Producer and MD of ClockWork Films.
“So when our team looked at how to unpack a moment in time – with Princess Anne: The Plot To Kidnap A Royal – we looked at what innovative options were accessible to us that we could fuse with compelling real human testimony. It’s how we came across photogrammetry.
“This technique allowed us quite literally to put people’s memories under the microscope – to look at the micro-beats of a high drama and pivotal moment of history – and as something that we could use for a narrative purpose, to give insight and to unpack a series of key moments by feeling like part of the action in a frozen moment in time.
“It’s been the quite the journey: risky, creative and ultimately a definition of intent by our growing company.”
The documentary is ClockWork’s first film for Channel 4, and was funded by Channel 4 and Motion Content Group’s Diverse Indies Fund.
Bhatti explained how they came up with the concept:
“The film uses a central motif of a bespoke, specially built model of The Mall – the place where Ian Ball attempted to Kidnap HRH Princess Anne at gunpoint. Interacting with the model – along with vehicles and the figurines of all the central players in this human drama – key eye-witnesses from the night in 1974 re-live the events, which saw 4 people shot in the middle of London.
“While intimate and revealing, we wanted to bring the model to life dramatically in terms of visualising key moments of the story as it unfolded over a matter of minutes. No archive existed – albeit some news reports and stills after the incident; we discussed reconstructions but didn’t feel this was the right approach. And we explored trying to bring the model to life, using physical cameras. This was easier said than done: we discovered it would be a hugely complex shoot, involving a plethora of lens and tracks needed to film detail and movement, which would result in 10 shots a day being achievable. In the world of a fast-moving story-led documentary edit, this seemed like a hostage to fortune.
“As we were scratching our heads, our DoP for the model, Piers Leigh suggested an innovative 3D visualisation technique called photogrammetry, which up to now largely confined to dramas such as House Of The Dragon and big budget Hollywood films.”
That process allowed hundreds of still photographs of the scene to be made into a 3D digital reconstruction.
