User blog comment:Matthew Robinson 1982/Directing Corrie in the '80s/@comment-3154982-20161121224411/@comment-30491588-20161122064937

Hi 70s Fan

Thanks for commenting. Glad you found the sutff interesting. You asked a couple fo questions.

Well, Bill Podmore had been producer for about a year by the time he asked me in to direct my first episodes – 1977.

Commendably, he’d already started on Corrie’s ‘Golden Age’ era, making big waves, shaking up the cast, writers and stories. His next aim was to modernise the ‘look’ of the show by importing fresh young freelance directors (I was ‘fresh’ and ‘young’ then) rather than relying on Granada’s staff directors who understandably were bored stiff by the show, regarding it as a terrible chore.

So, with Bill’s blessing, I bounded in with my new brush – getting the cast to think about what lay behind their lines, thus doing other than parroting their words like automatons. I also worked with the crews to try out ‘developing shots’ (not easy in Granada’s tiny Corrie studio), encouraging the vision mixers to capture characters’ listening reactions rather than sticking doggedly on the characters doing the talking (all standard techniques in non-soap drama).

By 1982, though, I think even Bill would agree his enthusiasm for the show was on the wane. (Note how he didn’t turn up for the Producer’s Run.)  You could sense the decline in everyone’s lack-lustre look - cast, production teams and technicians alike. I could have just swung in, done a standard job, and swung out.

But in the end, for those two episodes, I tried my best to bring back a bit of the old spark. And unless the cast – actors after all – were telling me porkies (perhaps they flattered every director), I seem to have succeeded to some extent.