04x08 - Shadow Play

[bunniefuu]

Let's all meet the Vashta Nerada.

Shh! This week we'll have silence
in the library, so come quietly

with Confidential as we shadow
the Doctor Who production team.

It's certainly not light reading

as we go behind the scenes
for the filming of another
page-turning Doctor Who script.

♪ I've been waiting... ♪

Ha-ha-ha! It's kind of cool.

Donna? Yeah?

Stay out of the shadows. That's
not darkness down those tunnels.

This is not a shadow.

It's a swarm.

A man-eating swarm.

♪ I've got this feeling that there's
something that I missed

♪ Don't you breathe

♪ Don't you breathe

♪ Something happened
that I never understood

♪ You can't live

♪ You can't live

♪ I can do most anything... ♪
'What if shadows themselves,'

what if the darkness itself
could get you?

Cos whatever you say, wherever you
go at night, the one thing you're
definitely gonna see is a shadow.

There is danger involved
in this world. Dark danger.

Vashta Nerada, perfect Doctor Who
monster because they are

the shadows. They're the dust in the
shadows, but they are moving shadows

and Doctor Who is about
shadows and darkness,

gothic corners
and what's out there in the dark.

♪ Every second
Dripping off my fingertips

♪ I can do most anything

♪ Wage your w*r

♪ Wage your w*r
I can do most anything

♪ I'm not a soldier
who says he's not afraid to die

♪ I can do most anything

♪ I am scared

♪ I'm so scared
I can do most anything... ♪

Run!

What an individual
Vashta Nerada looks like...

Vashta Neradi? Vashta Nerad-ai?

What a single one looks like,
we may never know.

Which I suppose is unusual in that
there's not a prosthetics creation
or a computer-generated creation,

but I guess it allows
you to imagine...

And you know, they're described
as the piranhas of the air.

Where there's meat,
there's Vashta Nerada.

You can see them sometimes,
if you look.

The dust in sunbeams.

As David said to me

today, in character,
the dust in the sunbeams,

it suddenly resonated how scary
this episode is, really.

Everybody out! Go, go, go!

Move, move, move!

Move it! You want people
lying in their beds at night,
pulling their sheets close

and saying, "I don't know
what THAT shadow is."

Every shadow. No. But any shadow.

It's a great idea that it's
not every shadow but any shadow

could have your leg off.

'And they can clearly work
at a ferocious pace.

'They can strip flesh off the bone
in milliseconds,

yet you can't quite see them, you
can't quite put your finger on them.

You wouldn't want to put your
finger on them, they'd have it off.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

The library, yeah.
Yeah. Taking up, please.

And action.

Out here,

every book ever written.

Whole continents.

Jeffrey Archer, Bridget Jones,
Monty Python's Big Red Book, brand
new editions, specially printed.

Steven's written these
two episodes

and set them in the
biggest library in the universe.

It's a whole planet made of books.

This library planet idea's
been around for years.

After Steven Moffat wrote the
Empty Child for series one,

I said to him, "What else do you
want to write? We'll have anything,
please, any time. Thank you."

I proposed a couple of ideas,
the first of which was the library.

I think at some point
we'd been going to do that story
every year, I think.

So I feel... And it's magnificent.
So I feel like we've waited a long
time to arrive at this library.

The library's something terribly
futuristic, it's something from the
far, far future. And yet it's...

It's full of books
which are, which are...

..practical,

material things, which are
almost old-fashioned now.

You know, they're not downloads,
then not on a screen, they don't
exist in any kind of digital form.

They're real, tangible things.
And I think that collision
of antiquity with technology

is very appropriate to the world
of the Doctor, I think.

We're near the equator, so...

this must be biographies!

I love biographies.

You read that script and think,
"Blimey. We're gonna have
to travel a long way away."

We couldn't find a lot of buildings
in Cardiff. And then there's
literally an empty library

on a huge scale in Swansea
just before it's pulled down or sold,
was sitting there.

It was like the episode
was handwritten for the most perfect
location. It was gob-smacking

cos we'd never have been able
to ordinarily go into a building

like that and close it down
for the length of time we needed.

I mean, we were in there
for almost two full weeks,

and, you know, we needed
to completely take over that place.

We'd never have been able
to do that. It would have cost us...

You know, we would probably have
had to build all that as a set.

We wouldn't have been able to get
the kind of scale and the levels

and the beautiful dome
and just everything
that location offered to us.

If our first sh*t...
If we set up for two wide sh*ts,
one high and one lower one...

Yeah, fine.

Again, get a navy, plain foreground,
something in the foreground,
and just a bit of creepiness.

In the episode the library
did give the impression

of more than one room.

We are changing
the background colour.
We go from blue to yellow to red.

So we only have one location
but we kind of give the impression
it's more than one room.

Our design team have done a really
great job, I think, and when we
came here on a recce,

the Swansea Council were taking
all the books out, which is the
opposite of what we wanted.

We wanted this place full of books
and, fair play,

they have filled it
with a mile long of fake books.

There's not a single page behind
these covers, they're all pretend.
But I think they look real.

Most people at one time in their
lives have been scared of the dark.

There's no monsters in
these episodes,

the monsters are the shadows and your
own imagination.

My job is to translate what is
written and the director's wishes

into that really. It's a matter of
making shadows that move.

I put lights on high stands

and lower them so the shadows get
shorter and longer.

And moving flags in front of the
lights so the light's in the
static position,

but the flag might move, thereby
giving the impression that the shadow
is moving towards the person.

That shadow.

It's gone.

We need to get back to the TARDIS.
Why? Because that shadow hasn't gone.

It's moved. Steven is so clever
because he comes up with a monster

that's actually invisible.
That's a shadow.

And then he somehow manages to turn
that on its head and give you

a skeleton in a space suit
that chases people.

Back, get back! Get back!

It was great with those
movements in those suits, because

you've got to have fun with it
and be scary at the same time.

I always think it'll be a success if,
Monday morning, there's some kid

in a playground somewhere
lumbering like poor Proper Dave.

He doesn't have to put a suit on,
but doing that, it's a classic zombie
walk that I know Ailsa

came in and worked out for us,
and you need it, you need that
choreography.

The actors need that choreography,
the other actors need it
to respond to.

But what's better
than classic zombie lurching?

But this time it's in a space suit. I
just think it's such a strong image.

He suddenly comes out and staggers
slightly in the transition stage.

Basically... Yes.

It's almost...
Yes, but don't let it go weak,

because remember, out of that,
you're suddenly becoming stiff.

♪ Send in your skeletons

♪ Sing as their bones
come marching in again... ♪

The first input is actually what
the script says, how they are.

They're stiff,
they're standing awkwardly,

they move clumsily, and so that
is the essence of the movement.

We've got a walk where you come up
and over the top of the foot

and then down, so it gives it
that slight juddered motion.

And it literally is, it's like a...

That's it. I'm gonna do a bit
of the sort of beginning of it,

then they've got, like, a movement
artist to sort of take over.

A bit sort of knocked knees
and a bit sort of zombie movements,
you know. And action.

♪ What if I say
I'm not like the others?

♪ What if I say I'm not
just another one of your plays?

♪ You're the pretender

♪ What if I say
I will never surrender?

♪ What if I say
I'm not like the others?

♪ What if I say I'm not
just another one of your plays?

♪ You're the pretender

♪ What if I say
I will never surrender? ♪

Please tell me some kids on Monday
are doing that. Then we've succeeded.

So why has it got a face?

This flesh aspect was donated
by Mark Chambers on the
occasion of his death.

It's a real face?
It's been actualised individually

for you from the many facial aspects
saved to our extensive fleshbanks.

It chose me a dead face
it thought I'd like?

That statue's got a real dead
person's face! It's the st century.

That's basically
like donating a park bench.

It's donating a face!

The Nodes, I think, are gruesome.

They're a truly gruesome invention
in that they're a dead face.

In having come up with the idea,
slightly randomly,

of there's gonna
be an information thing

I'll make it creepy and put a real
face in the statue, that'll be cool.

Please, enjoy.

As ever with Steven's ideas,
they sound astonishingly simple
and brilliant when you read them,

but making them is a nightmare,
because that's a prosthetic which...

The rest of the body becomes
a piece of CGI, then there's

the build of the actual real Node
itself on set to get it turning.

Very complicated idea, but very
simple at the heart of it, which is
just... It's a talking statue.

With the idea you have to
chop off the front of the companion's
head and stick it on a statue.

That's just the way it goes.

It's nice to be...

a cliffhanger. It's exciting.

I teleported Donna
back to the TARDIS.

If we don't get back there
in five hours, Emergency Programme
will activate. Take her home.

We need to get a shift on.
She's not there.

I should have received a signal.
The console signal's move,
there's a teleport breach.

Maybe the coordinates have slipped.
The equipment here's ancient.

Donna Noble! There's a Donna Noble
in this library. Do you have the
software to locate her position?

Donna Noble has left the library.

Donna Noble has been saved.

Donna! How can it be Donna?
How's that possible?

I think the best cliffhangers
will present you with a situation
that there is clearly no way out of.

That's the worst possible thing
I can think of doing to Donna,
therefore I must do it.

Donna Noble has left the library.

Donna Noble has been saved.
The faces on the Nodes are
the faces of dead people.

Clearly Donna's dead.
It knocks you, it winds you.

For Donna to be a Node,
you have to be dead.

It's like, "Gosh, Donna's dead."
Donna Noble has left the library.

Donna Noble has been saved.

I defy anyone at the end
of episode eight to know
how episode nine begins.

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it coming,
the beginning of the twist

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it coming,
the beginning of the twist

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it coming,
the beginning of the twist. ♪

Donna Noble has left the library.

Donna Noble has been saved.

As ever with Steven, it's so
brilliant and classy, the key to
all this. I can't tell you any more!

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it

♪ I can feel it coming,
the beginning of the twist. ♪

Donna Noble has been saved.
Hopefully what you're asking
in episode eight is...

How does it all tie together? What's
going on with that girl? What's her
relationship with the library?

What on earth has happened to Donna?
Is she dead? You'll find out.