Fergal Costello - Director

Making of Channel 4’s ‘Thick As’ - From ‘I hope this will go well!’ to ‘Well, that went suspiciously well!’

So after the Brain in Gear experience with BBC, I was lucky enough to have a few contacts in the BBC who recommended me to the Producer of ‘Thick As’, Luke Mason, who works with the BBC and had developed the project for over a year and is a soul-brother in the career journey. We share a lot of the same thoughts and notions about the work, so we quickly got along and making this thing with him, writer/creator Ciaran Bartlett and my brother from another mother/Director of Photography Phil Blake was a goddamn joy of joys.

BUT BEFORE THAT! I’M GONNA BREAK THIS UP INTO THREE CATEGORIES AS ALWAYS.

Pre-Production - Getting the job, casting and rehearsal.

Shooting - I love this shit.

Post-Production - Me, Luke, Ciaran and Phil in a room for a week and a half.

Prep - ‘So, am I doing this, yeah?’

On August 27th, 2019 I got an email from Luke checking my availability for a Comedy Blap for Channel 4 to shoot in October. Playing it cool, I said ‘No thanks mate’, only I didn’t.

I said the equivalent of ‘YESPLEASETHANKSVERYMUCH’, and organised a meeting with him and Ciaran in Belfast to discuss the script and what I’d do with it.

We met in the lobby of a hotel I forget the name of, despite having walked past it now approximately 157 times since shooting the piece. I chatted about wanting to root the piece in a reality and let the humour come from the honesty in the performances, the need for rehearsal to find the pace of Ciaran’s beautiful dialogue and wanting to have the piece exist in a world of colour, while never sacrificing the realistic aesthetic we’d set out to achieve. We had a great chat, about an hour and a half’s length where I then made a balls of it and brazenly said ‘So, am I doing this, yeah?’

After a horrifically awkward moment of silence, they said they’d let me know.

Confident I’d ruined it, I then proceeded to get drunk with my girlfriend and wonder aloud if maybe I should have been a historian after all.

Didn’t ruin it. Got the job.

After getting the job, thank Gawd, it was time to get to work, which means my patented ‘Overlong Director’s Document!’ Pic below of the first page.

Audition and Rehearsal

‘Thick As’, for me, lives and dies on the interpersonal relationships between the characters so casting was just insanely crucial to the success of it. There needed to be pure empathy buried in every one of the characters, even the bad guys.

We did a series of video auditions then into live-auditions to find our Megan and Paula and a series of chemistry tests to find out who of the finalists had the most believable sense of friendship and history between the performers. We all mutually agreed our winners were:

TARA CUSH and CHLOE HODGENS

Rehearsals began soon after.

I love to shoot and cut rehearsals together, here’s the rehearsal scene from the Living Room climax in the episode, with our filled out cast of Ian Beattie, Tracey Lynch and Shane Todd. All fantastic. As an enormous Game of Thrones fan, it was a huge thrill to work with Mr. Beattie, one of the biggest but sweetest ball-breakers on the planet. ‘Fuckin’ directors’, was his constant refrain whenever I offered a note. Legend. Dave Elliott to was a highlight as the hard-done-by shopkeeper. He was so fun and great at playing exasperated.

Roughly put together, but important to get some idea of the pacing and execution at which it needs to perform.

From this guideline then, Phil Blake, the director of photography and I would start building a shot-list. I generally don’t do shot lists but rather settle on core images I want to capture then build a sequence around those, but because this sequence was so eye-line dependent, we felt a clear road map was essential. Sample of the scene above in shot-list form:

The main scene I watched from another movie to stay in the visual headspace of what we were making was this phenomenal scene from ‘Silver Linings Playbook’.

I’m a huge obsessive of David O’ Russell’s films, they’re all manic and crazily energetic but obviously deeply personal to him every time. No-one shoots an argument like him and his camera often ‘finds’ the actors which I’m a massive fan of. The naturalism. It’s no surprise to find out he has huge anger issues. That video between him and Lily Tomlin arguing is insanity.

Sonically, I wanted the music and incidental music to have a bit of Stone Roses to it. Initially, I had imagined a more Curtis Mayfield vibe to it, a bit more Superfly. There were correct concerns that this might age the piece or make it feel a bit out of time which I initially didn’t entirely agree with. But then, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. It’s gotta be somewhat modern, Paula and Megan are super young!

I wanted the film to have an easy confidence and swagger to it from moment one, which is why it opens with a walk and talk to a track that doesn’t sound unlike Fool’s Gold.

Production - I love this shit.

The shoot was a terrific experience, long days and lots to do. But we finished on time and on-schedule both days which was thanks to the extraordinarily hard working cast and crew, and very little to do with me.

Some images below of the shoot.

Post-Production - Luke and I in a room.

Once we’d wrapped, I took one day off, then immediately cracked into the edit as we had to deliver essentially a week later. It was mainly Luke and I with Phil popping in when he could and Ciaran coming down from Belfast the odd day to check in on the edit. It was a really nice, calm experience. I think the tension and nerves of it only hit me after when I had a bit of a crash of tiredness and other stuff.

The editing days would go as follows.

• Morning walk to work through the Dublin winter air.

• First coffee.

• Fail at deactivating the edit suite alarm and set it off very loudly.

• Contact Phil’s girlfriend and have her text me the alarm code which I never saved.

• Deactivate the alarm, enter the office.

• Edit for an hour.

• Spin in the spinny chair.

• Let Luke in, who’d have a brownie and coffee for me.

• Talk to Luke about The Office UK and Extras.

• Edit for two hours.

• Spin in the spinny chair.

• Eat lunch in the ‘too-expensive-place’.

• Send off the new edit to the appropriate parties.

• Wait for feedback by watching Game of Thrones stuff.

• Phil arrives and points out a glaring editing error sending me into a rage.

• My girlfriend arrives with food because she’s an angel.

• Feedback comes back.

• I start the feedback, leaving some for the morning.

• Leave the edit suite with Luke and Phil, worry I haven’t activated the alarm properly.

• Pint.

And so it would repeat for a week and a half. Check out my final editing timeline.

My man Mark Murphy composed the rocking, confident and swagger-loaded score for ‘Thick As’, composing the main theme and incidental music in just two days. I worship Mark, just elevates everything he works on to another level.

Our final two days of finishing the beast was locked in the Sound Mix with the wonderful Liam Yelen in Element Post-Production. Look how pretty the studio was!

Once that was finished, at approximately 19:40 on the 5th of November 2019, ‘Thick As…’ was completed and sent off to Channel 4, we were done!

It’s had a wonderful response so far, and we’re all praying to the movie gods for a series. I know I don’t feel finished with these characters, I love them and want to see what’s next for them. Come on movie gods!

I’ve been lucky on the productions I’ve worked on as a director so far. I’ve had the opportunity to work with smart, warm-hearted people and I hope to continue with this very fortunate streak! I hope all of the above was of some help or interest to someone!

Thanks,

Ferg x