By Randi Altman

Alfie Biddle

Some people took up knitting, making bread or drinking lots of wine during the pandemic. Others (OK, me) became obsessed with British crime dramas. One of those shows is Shetland, which is now streaming Season 6 on BritBox in the US.

The show takes place on Shetland, an archipelago located north of mainland Scotland, closer to Norway than Edinburgh. It follows DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall) and his detectives, Tosh (Alison O’Donnell) and Sandy (Steven Robertson), as they tackle what is a considerable amount of murdering for such a small and remote place. Much of the show takes place in different locations in Shetland, with a couple of set pieces like the police station and Jimmy’s home.

While gorgeous, Shetland’s climate can change frequently; it can get cold and windy very quickly but also turn bright and sunny, which oftentimes made shooting – and continuity — challenging.

Simon Walton

Season 6 was shot by Block 1 DP Alfie Biddle (who worked with director Max Myers) and Block 2 DP Simon Walton (who worked with director Siri Rødnes). Both recently completed work on Season 7, which is currently in post production at Scotland’s Blazing Griffin.

Days away from shooting Season 6, the pandemic shut everything down, providing Biddle with a year of valuable prep. “My many Zoom meetings with director Max Myers and the fact we got to re-recce the Shetland mainland early in 2021 helped immensely as well.”

We reached out to the show’s DPs to ask how they adapted their process to deal with the fickle climate of Shetland, and how they gave a well-established series a new look and feel while also celebrating the mood of past seasons.

What would you consider the biggest challenge to shooting Shetland?
Alfie Biddle: Weather was probably the biggest. We were hit with some pretty severe snowstorms, but because of the wind up there, we would usually wait 20 minutes and it would clear. Had it not been windy, our schedule would have probably suffered much more. Continuity was difficult at times — because of the wind, it was hard to put textiles up. But on a positive note, because of the snow, you were left with a desaturated, almost metallic image, which looked amazing.

Another challenge for me personally were the flights up to Shetland. They were pretty bumpy, and I’m not the best flyer! It was quite nerve-wracking at times, especially the night flights, as you couldn’t see anything apart from the occasional oil rig. There is a reason that route is nicknamed “The White Knuckle Express.”

Simon Walton: We shot much of the Block 2 exterior work on Shetland during the summer, which meant there was plenty of daylight due to where the Shetland Islands are geographically. During our block, for most part, we got lucky, and the weather was clear and sunny, which is why the episodes feel warmer in places. And I always try to block scenes into the light to give the actors the most shape in the landscape they are set in.

Conversely, we were very fortunate to have absolutely horrendous weather for the discovery of the missing girl’s body in one episode. This really helped with the bleakness of those scenes.

Let’s talk continuity, especially with the changing weather.
Biddle: The day before we started shooting, the wind speed was over 50mph, and we were lucky the plane took off to get us there. The was a big blizzard, but when you watch Episode 1, there are some beautiful scenes because of it. When Perez turns up to Eve Galbraith’s for the first time, for example, there was plenty of snow on the ground, but the sun was out, and the image almost looked monochrome and metallic. It was surreal.

Before starting on this, did you look at earlier seasons of the show?
Biddle: I studied all the previous seasons, and I absolutely loved Season 1; it felt so real because it was real. Some of the dolly work was so simple yet so effective, and the cinematography looked so natural. I took a lot from that. DP Ed Moore’s work on Season 4 stuck with me as well. His lighting is very cinematic. I used three of his silhouettes on my mood board for Series 6. To carry on the mood of a show, you have to immerse yourself in previous seasons.

An example of Simon Walton’s notes for the colorist.

Series 1 was so raw and authentic, I wanted to keep some of that in mind as a reference because I thought DP Gavin Struthers’ work was so stunning.

What was that mood you were after?
Biddle: Well, producer Louise Say wanted Season 6 to feel more epic, and we were very lucky to have scripts packed with tension and mystery. Director Max Myers wanted a fluid camera and a good amount of coverage to play with, especially in the police station. He wanted to keep the mood dynamic and energetic when the detectives are working a case while contrasting the weightier emotional scenes with a more traditional static camera. This gave a more cinematic feel to the series.

What direction were you given on the look? What were some influences? And how would you describe that look?
Biddle: For me, in addition to the look of Season 1, the film Skyfall was a reference, especially for exteriors. I loved the richness of the colors in the landscape.

Walton: I worked very closely with Siri, who shared her visual deck for how she wanted the show to look. In terms of following past series, we were given examples of what the producers and execs were keen to replicate; the brief was to make it feel more cinematic.

Biddle: The look is somewhere in between Series 1 and Series 2 and 3. I found that the Fuji look kept the skin tones true but also brought out the natural colors of the landscape. And while I wouldn’t say the show feels particularly warm, I do think the amount of sun we had contributed to there being more color than there would have been if the weather had been gray and bleak. I would use the term rich to describe it.

How did that brightness you refer to affect your process?
Biddle: With most of the residential locations having big windows, the sun did directly affect us. We almost had to treat a location with big windows as an exterior. If it was very sunny, we would sometimes have two 1.2kW HMIs through at least a full silk inside. If the sun went in slightly, we could then pan one off. It was good to have quick fixes like that rather than to wait for cloud or full sun.

I wanted to keep reminding myself of contrast. No matter how challenging the locations were, I wanted to be able to have contrast in the scene with the dark side of an actors face nearest to the camera. I thought this was the best way to keep the look as natural as possible.

We didn’t set out to make this series brighter, but we did have a lot of sun, so it might seem that way at times. But there were definite scenes where we wanted it to be dark. The scene with Creggan (the former soldier with PTSD) in Episode 3, for example, is dark before the Molotov explodes. This is partially story-led, as we only wanted to see outlines of figures by the car. I really liked the way we did it, as it’s dark and gloomy and then…boom!

You shot it all with ARRI Alexa? Was it shot in HDR?
Biddle: We shot with the Alexa Mini with Cooke S4 and ARRI Alura zoom lenses. We didn’t shoot in HDR, but Colin Brown at Blazing Griffin uses DaVinci Resolve, and through the ACES workflow we could view what it would be like in HDR — or, to be more specific, the dynamic range that HDR would have given us. It blew me away, especially the detail in the highlights. HDR would definitely change my approach, and I would love to shoot something soon in that format.

Alfie Biddle

Did you have a LUT, and did you work with a DIT?
Biddle: We built a LUT that was pretty close to a Fuji print stock with post house Blazing Griffin, and this is what we set our look template with. In terms of emotion, the series had plenty that we needed to capture. It was interesting with our focal length techniques because I had originally planned to use wide angles specifically for Perez as he deals with the death of his mother and his father’s deteriorating mental health. As we delved more into the scripts, I found we could use them for more of the characters, such as Lynda Morton and Eamon.

Simon Walton

Our DIT, James Hogarth, was great. We loaded some LUTs into the Alexa. We mostly used a light version based on a Fuji print LUT and James balanced our dailies as we went along.

So there were more extreme close-ups this year? It wasn’t my imagination?
Biddle: Yes! Part of the visual language we wanted to convey was using a wide-angle lens close to the actors at times. We felt this helped to put the viewer “in their head.” Rather than put a 50mm lens on at 5 feet, we would put a 25mm lens on at 2.5 feet. We used it sometimes for Perez when he was looking at the board in the station. The widest we went for a close-up was a 14mm with the character Eamon in the decompression chamber before he takes a call from Perez. I’ve never used a 14mm for this kind of shot, but I definitely will in the future. I loved the result.

Simon Walton opted for Steadicam for the beach and water sequences.

Simon, for Block 2, the water work had to be challenging. Can you talk about that?
Walton: We used underwater housings, which are bulky and very difficult to operate, particularly with a very strong tide pulling the sand from under your feet with every shot. We used two cameras with a wider and tighter lens on each camera often shooting 90 degrees to each other.

Simon, how much ground did you have to cover for the scene where Perez and Tosh have to find Sister Carolyn on the beach?
Walton: We decided that Steadicam was the best way to achieve the day, as it was a vast distance to cover from the car to the ruins. We also used a quad bike with a Garfield mount on the Steadicam for the dramatic running shots when Perez races for the ruins. We broke separate parts of the beach down into their own smaller scenes to give the feel of travel along the beach to show the distance covered.

How did you blend the look of the location-based work in Shetland and the studio shots in Glasgow? For example, matching the light and time of day for interior and exterior?
Biddle: Because we had a lot of sun throughout our exterior shoot, I felt we could overexpose our windows for some interiors, and it would still feel like it was part of the same scene. Our fantastic production designer Emer O’Sullivan would hang various nets or blinds on the windows in our Glasgow locations, and they picked up the light very easily. We then used haze and/or Black Pro-Mist filters to blow the highlights further if we wanted.

The police station seems to have “natural lighting” through the windows with some practical lighting coming from lamps, etc.
Biddle: We used 4K HMI bounces outside the police station windows for daytime and ARRI SkyPanels for the dusk and evening scenes. All the overhead fittings had Astera Titan tubes inside, which were amazing and allowed us to be so quick in manipulating the intensity and the color. We used a lot of practicals, especially the desk lights. I think some of Series 3 had fewer pracs in the police HQ, which also looked really good, but I love to use practicals as much as possible.

Example of note given to colorist by Simon Walton

What about Perez’s house, which always seems so warm and inviting?
Biddle: Again we used a combination of HMI and SkyPanels for Perez’s house and had Astera Helios tubes in the kitchen set. I found the lights above the bar really useful as they gave a nice glow to the image, but they were useful eyelights at times. Since the ceiling piece in that part of the kitchen was not removable, most of the light had to come from the side, so having those practicals in there was very useful.

Can you talk about the gorgeous drone shots? Challenging because of the wind?
Biddle: It’s difficult to get a bad drone shot up there, as the scenery is so cinematic. The wind does sometimes play havoc, but the company we used — Shetland Flyer, run by Rory Gillies — was so accommodating. Their experience of flying in high winds was invaluable because they had to do some tricky flying.

Alfie, you mentioned the rapid decompression sequences at the end of Episode 1. Can you talk about that?
Biddle: That was a great sequence to shoot. We were at the Hyperbaric Centre in Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland, and it is a real training facility. That being the case the walls and doors are around 8 inches thick, and you can only get in or out through the hatch at either end, so if your equipment doesn’t fit through that hole then it’s not coming in.

We rigged the practical fluorescents with Astera Helios tubes, and Max and I came up with the idea that once the pressure started to drop, the red emergency light would start to pulse. We also used a Lensbaby to add a feeling of disorientation and panic for Eamon. Along with the sound design, it’s pretty gut-wrenching.

Simon, can you also talk about Creggan’s flashbacks? Did they involve some in-camera effects as well?
Walton: With the flashback scenes, we were trying to create the feeling of PTSD, the inspiration for which was taken from Fight Club. We achieved the effect with camera shake and tracking movement.

To recreate some of the night footage shot earlier on location, I suggested we create it in the studio in a black box. We used flame bars and a smoke machine to match what was shot on location.

An example of a note that Simon Walton gave the colorist Colin Brown.

Alfie, what about your nighttime work and the nighttime drone work?
This is one of my favorite sequences from the series. On the recce we determined that if the night was clear and calm (which it was), we would try to time shooting the scene of Sandy driving onto the beach for around 45 minutes after sunset. I wanted to keep Shetland looming in the background for night exteriors whenever possible rather than use a big light to light the beach. It looked much more natural to me this way, but again, the weather really allowed us to do it!

In terms of the drone work, this required some expert skill, as the drone was quite far from the operators and the hero vehicles due to there being a lack of good vantage points at that location. We wanted it to look quite dark to match the interior driving shots, so we were aiming for headlights and a little sky detail. It was fabulous to get clear skies and no wind because if it had started raining, we couldn’t have flown at all.

Did either of you work with the show’s colorist? If so, how was that relationship?
Biddle: I can’t speak highly enough of Colin Brown. He was such a delight to work with and has such a good eye. From the first time I went into the suite, he had already started doing what was in my mind. I have to mention the other crew: Gaffer Stuart Farmer was top notch, as was our grip department led by Jamie Coulter. B camera operator Alick Fraser was incredible, and Jonny Kerr and his camera teams were so great.

Walton: I was unable to attend the grade but gave notes to the colorists once they sent me their first pass.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for 25 years.