91Èȱ¬

Press Packs Hotel Babylon

Hotel Babylon
Starts Thursday 19 January at 9.00pm on 91Èȱ¬ ONE

Category: TV Drama
Date: 11.01.2006
Printable version

When Gareth Neame, former Head of Drama Commissioning at the 91Èȱ¬, decided to leave the corporation to join Carnival Films as its new Managing Director he knew exactly what his first project would be.

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"Once I read Imogen's book – in fact I think I first read it part-serialised in The Mail on Sunday – I immediately set about optioning it. I was leaving the 91Èȱ¬ for Carnival Films and approached Jane Tranter, who had been my boss for the last six years, about developing it as a potential returning series, which she agreed to do," he says.

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"I've always tried to identify bold and original ideas in the drama series that I do and that goal, combined with a fascination about hotels – both the environment and the stories that can take place in them – made me think this was the perfect precinct."

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And as Neame began to start work on the idea, he found more and more people who were similarly taken with the concept.

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"When I came to the company I was lucky to be joined by two long-term colleagues from my department at the 91Èȱ¬, Christopher Aird and Janine Bennett," he adds.

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"Gareth and I joined Carnival on the same day, 4 January 2005, and now the 91Èȱ¬ are transmitting our first drama series just over a year later," says Aird, who has produced the show with Neame.

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Once Neame had the rights securely in his grasp and had the go-ahead from the 91Èȱ¬ to develop scripts, he approached Tony Basgallop and invited him to become the lead writer on this new venture. Neame had been impressed with Basgallop's work on the highly-acclaimed 91Èȱ¬ series, Outlaws.

Hotel Babylon

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At this stage, Imogen Edwards-Jones attended storyline meetings and arranged research: "She was absolutely crucial to ensuring the drafts of the scripts were on the right track," Neame says.

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"I knew pretty quickly, on reading the book, that the way to adapt it was to use the individual stories and anecdotes and the character ideas but not necessarily to use the narrative structure," explains Aird.

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"We needed to create a returning series with a completely different structure from the way the book worked and this is what Tony worked so tirelessly on, but we all agreed very early that the book had potentially a wealth of material not just for one series, but for many.

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"We augmented the hotel stories in the book with many other stories and incidents we had read about in newspapers and so on and as more and more people became involved with the production, everyone seemed to have their own 'hotel story' or experience," adds Neame.

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"The thing to aim for, of course, with this particular format is to create characters that the audience will enjoy watching and provide those characters with a wealth of episodic stories so that the drama takes on a life and identity of its own and has potential to run and run," he continues.

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"Initially, Tony came up with a lot of characters which he and the other writers – Howard Overman, Toby Whithouse and Harry Wootliff - whittled down to our final mix of characters; it was a really organic process.

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"Fairly early on we knew which parts of the hotel we wanted to concentrate on and therefore which departments would need to be characterised," says Aird.

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"Characters we initially saw as peripheral faces began to take on a life of their own, to become solid personalities within the framework of the whole drama," he adds.

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"Characters like Gino and James and Ben began taking shape and started to form the backbone of the comedy element in Babylon."

Hotel Babylon

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Once the initial script and other episodic storylines began to take shape, the two big challenges facing Neame and Aird were firstly to get the show green-lit by the 91Èȱ¬ and secondly to find a location suitable to build the enormous set which would be required to turn Hotel Babylon into real life.

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"Because I had envisaged the show being made in an entirely controlled environment, it was always going to be impossible to film in a real five-star hotel. Because of the length of time we would be filming and the amount of disruption we would inevitably cause, we needed a site that would enable us to purpose-build our hotel from scratch," explains Neame.

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"And this allowed us to conceive a hotel entirely to our own specifications, while making sure that the whole budget was going on the screen and not being wasted on incidentals that the audience will never benefit from, such as travel and transport."

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"The show is very fast and energetic with a lot of scenes," says Aird, "which means we were shooting a vast amount of material on a daily basis. Shooting with two cameras, and in-situ, were a necessity."

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As Neame and Aird were developing the scripts with the team of writers, Line Producer Matthew Patnick was busy looking for the right studio in which to build the hotel set.

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As the plan was to leave the set standing once it was completed, meaning a potential rental of many months, it soon became clear that a proper film studio would turn out to be prohibitively expensive and that the team would have to create their own studio from scratch.

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Dozens of potential sites were assessed and considered before the team made the decision to convert a former distribution warehouse in Buckinghamshire.

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"We were governed by a tight schedule from the outset," Aird points out, "We knew we had to be on air early in 2006 and as it was going to take 12 weeks to construct the hotel and convert the building to make it suitable as a studio, we just selected the best building we had available on the date we had to start building and off we went!"

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By now the producers had been working with Production Designer Paul Cross to agree on the style and design of the hotel for many weeks, and Cross's plans for the hotel had to be finished, costed and ready as soon as the venue was chosen, so that construction could begin without delay.

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Cross had visited almost every five-star hotel in London in his quest to find the inspiration for Babylon, and his office became a collage of colour, fabrics, textures, ideas, drawings and models for the hotel.

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"We all did our bit exploring luxury hotels, both front of house and below stairs, in order to get a feel for the atmosphere and vibrancy of the industry," says Aird.

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"Many people have asked us which real hotel we have based ours on." The producers don't really seem to want to be drawn on this one! "Actually, in the end, Hotel Babylon kind of evolved as an amalgam of three or four very different hotels and it has an identity of its own," he assures us.

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The finished set is slick and luxurious – the kind of chic boutique/hip hotel that seem so popular these days – and its interiors reflect the high production values for the drama set by Neame, Aird and Cross.

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"I really wanted Hotel Babylon to feel like somewhere we would all aspire to stay in, or at least imagine working in. Everything about the show had to be luxurious and beautiful - from the set and décor down to the costumes, photography and music, all in order to reflect our five-star theme," ventures Neame.

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As part of this search for a luxurious and aspirational feel, more akin to an American drama series, Neame decided to shoot the show in High Definition, a new format to drama that is becoming more and more popular; and his confidence in this shooting method was endorsed when lead director Alrick Riley came on board.

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Riley and Director of Photography Sean van Hales had already collaborated on a number of other dramas in HD and they were very comfortable that they could achieve the required feel.

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"As Hotel Babylon is a non-generic premise we realised we could draw on a rich and diverse range of styles inspired by programmes we admired, such as casino-based US drama Las Vegas and the recent hit Desperate Housewives," explains Aird.

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As the set was taking shape and the writers had their heads down, casting of the main characters was well underway under the supervision of Julia Duff and Craig Stokes, with actors coming in on a daily basis to meet with director Riley.

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At the same time, the crew was being engaged. Talented Costume Designer Michael Johnson - whom Aird had worked with on the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and whose work on Cutting It had so impressed the producers - was engaged. Johnson embraced the glamour and style of the show and has made a distinctive contribution, as has Hair and Make-Up Designer, Meinir Jones-Lewis.

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Once Tamzin Outhwaite and Max Beesley had committed to taking the lead roles, a strong line-up of supporting actors were hired and everything was finally in place for the start of an intensive 18-week shoot in mid July.

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"By then, we were less than six months away from the transmission of the eight-part series, but not a thing had yet been shot. It was a focussing experience!" says Neame.

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An episode was completed every two weeks on the set, by Riley and the two other directors, Iain B. MacDonald and Keith Boak.

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Exterior filming and aerial photography over London was undertaken by second units. Post-production was all taking place simultaneously, with the production and indeed the music recording session for the first episode taking place just a few days before principal photography wrapped.

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Creating the substantial and complex score that the producers wanted, again in keeping with the house style, was talented composer John Lunn, who has collaborated with Neame on many previous projects and who had recently completed a highly-acclaimed score on the 91Èȱ¬'s adaptation of Bleak House.

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Considering the stylish five-star look that the show has, a visit to the less than remarkable former industrial warehouse in the 91Èȱ¬ Counties that contains the set of Hotel Babylon is something of a surprise.

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Even though the production team wanted a controlled filming environment (and by this they really mean quiet!) the venue wasn't quite as straightforward as they'd hoped.

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"Local residents were initially cautious about our arrival on the scene because they believed we might be noisy and disruptive, rather than the model local business that I knew we would be!" quips Neame.

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"But in fact the environment was at times a little too noisy for our needs, rather than the other way round!"

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During the summer, pilot training at a nearby airfield caused hold-ups to the shooting and as the autumn went on, a brand-new housing estate began taking shape on the plot next door!

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But in the finished series, all these nuisances of filming feel a long way away from the glamour and luxury of what appears to be an impressive five-star hotel.

HOTEL BABYLON PRESS PACK: