BATTEN down the hatches. There’s a storm heading for Emmerdale - and life in the village will never be the same again.
The Bafta-winning Yorkshire soap celebrates its 50th anniversary with an hour-long special on Sunday - exactly half a century after the first episode aired, on October 16, 1972.
The anniversary episode centres around the wedding of Kim Tate and Will Taylor. As with all soap weddings, things don’t exactly run smoothly. When a devastating storm rips through the village, the repercussions are felt throughout October.
Ian Bevitt, director of Sunday’s anniversary special, says the biggest challenge was “shooting a storm in daylight in the summer!”
The storm scenes were shot over recent weeks at the village set on the Harewood estate and in the Leeds studios.
Says Ian: “We had to use wind machines, debris and clever camera angles to suggest the encroaching storm. There were many stunts and set-pieces to orchestrate, but the brilliant crew and technical advisers we had on helped immensely with that.” Did all go to plan? “Well, the weather helped us. It was sunny when we needed it to be sunny, pre-storm, and cloudy and dark when we needed it to be. Some of the less controllable aspects - horses and cows, for example - proved quite challenging, but we got there in the end.”
Ian worked with Tim O’Mara, who directed the rest of the anniversary week of episodes, to co-ordinate the special effects. “Tim and I had several extra weeks to sort things out. They were necessary to do special effects tests, animal behaviour tests,” says Ian. “Plus we had many production meetings prior to the actual shoot.”
Says Tim: “It’s been an amazing collaboration of all our teams, especially the art department who’ve had to design and prepare for three major stunts and the destruction of the village. The scripts were very ambitious and beautifully written and I hope we have done them justice.
“I also filmed the 10,000th special for Coronation Street, but this is even bigger! We started talking to Nader, our Head of Production, four months prior to filming and got very early storylines and treatments and direct access to the writers. This meant we could help shape the narrative and make the ideas work visually and give a better idea of the budget requirements.
“Back in July we had a writers’ conference and a gathering of over 30 key crew at our facilities base on the Harewood estate. We had to discuss the levels of storm we could play. In my episodes it reaches its climax and I have to convince the audience the winds could hit over 100mph - flipping cars, uprooting trees, smashing windows, flinging roof slates and capable of ripping the doors off the Dingle garage. We also had to film inserts for each other’s blocks and Ian had to set up stunts that I filmed the aftermath of.”
The main challenge? “We had to shoot every scene with a number of wind machines, and film stunts with massive wind machines in close proximity - this takes time and space and means every frame had to be checked and every take then ‘wildtracked’ for dialogue and SFX. We worked alongside a team of 10 SFX specialists who were going straight to Scotland after our shoot to work on Highlander.
“No shoot goes exactly to plan; weather intrudes and crossovers between artistes from one block to another can result in stand downs. I lost my lead cameraman after one day due to Covid. Ian had to work with cattle and sometimes they don’t listen to direction. But I’m very pleased with our rushes. The performances are outstanding.”
There are nods to the first ever Emmerdale episode. “Eagle-eyed viewers will spot similarities with the opening of the very first episode and the 50th episode,” says Ian. “And there are nods to older characters no longer with the show.”
Tim adds: “I was trying hard to give the village a voice as it’s been the main character of Emmerdale since the first episode. We’ve featured some iconic symbols of the village in the main street and sprinkled visual references to its history that we hope fans will appreciate.”
Tim is no stranger to filming Emmerdale disasters: “I burnt down Home Farm in 2013,” he says. “The fire sequences were amazing but had to last for the full hour. That was technically the most difficult and dangerous. But my favourite episode was the 2017 Christmas Groundhog Day special featuring Robert Sudgen reliving a nightmare, it was so unlike anything we’d attempted and used some different filming techniques: black and white montages, horror genres, thriller dream sequences and bringing Val Pollard back to life! A challenge to make but such a clever idea from then series producer, Iain MacLeod.”
Ian started his drama directing career on Emmerdale in 1999. What makes it so popular, 50 years on? “The village setting is so beautiful and real and tells the story visually through the four seasons. No other soap does this as well. Emmerdale also still plays with the class system, the rich up at Home farm contrasting with the Dingles. The cast and crew put a lot of hard work and love into what they do and I think it shows on screen.”
* Emmerdale is on ITV on Sunday, 7pm.
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