The British
television company Channel
Four commissioned the production company Windfall
Films to make a six-part series to celebrate the 2000 A.D. millennium.
The series was conceived, filmed and edited between September 1998 and
May 2000.
I was involved
as an advisor and in some of the filming. I decided not only to contribute
to the series itself, but document what I could about the process of
making a television series for British television.
Through
the kindness of Windfall Films, and particularly David Dugan and Carlo
Massarella, and with much support from Sarah Harrison, I assembled a
set of materials which surround the actual films. A brief
description of the process was published in 2001.
There is
a book to accompany the series:
'The Day the World Took Off, The Roots of the Industrial Revolution'
by Sally & David Dugan, Channel 4 Books 2000
-
preparations:
the discussions which lay behind the series; a discussion of the founding
of the production company
-
conversations:
unscripted seminars in which five scholars talked about the history
of the world over the last ten thousand years
-
explorations:
additional filming in various locations (China, Japan, Britain, Nepal,
Australia, America, Venice, Istanbul) and on a number of themes
-
creations:
examples of the way in which the film was shot and edited
-
narrations:
the six films themselves (each 50 minutes)
-
reflections:
discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the film by those involved
The films
were made on either high quality (digibeta) video or on a small digital
video camera. The material was then copied onto VHS, digitized onto
an Apple Mac, roughly edited and compressed to MPEG 4.
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