Producing a Life of Wir Choosin involved thinking outside the box and undertaking new ways of working in order to bring the production to life. Director/Producer Jennie Atkinson explains how the process came together.
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For this production, unlike the radio plays, I was working with a newly written script. Lesley Leslie and I discussed a few themes but one which struck a chord for me was the life of the gutter girls at the turn of the century and how many of them were so far from home here in Shetland, and conversely how far the Shetland girls had to travel to follow the herring. I could feel and hear the scenes in my head .... which I thought was a good sign!
Lesley wasn't initially too sure ..... but then she did a little research and suddenly we were off ! Being involved from the beginning meant that I could work with the characters, scenes and themes whilst the writing was being undertaken rather than adapting a stage play for radio. Consequently as production ideas (music, sound effects, scenes, photographs etc.) popped up in my head I was able to feed them into the writing and so when we did have a finalised script I was confident of not having to make any changes. Also my hometown was not far from Yarmouth and all my childhood holidays were in Lowestoft and Southwold, so I knew the area and how a Yarmouth person would have difficulties understanding a broad Shetland accent - something Lesley worked so well into the script.
On finalising the script casting and all subsequent rehearsals were undertaken via Zoom. The producer needs a good sized screen to see everyone (and this was a large cast). Sometimes wifi links are lost and at other times voices sound as though they are coming down a tunnel !
Photograph : Jennie running the rehearsals from her home in Tingwall with the rest of the cast in Lerwick and Cunningsburgh
The cast were working from a basic script but as other professionals were to be involved in the process I needed to take Lesley's words and prepare a Production Script. This included a resume of the play, the cast members, the individual scenes and where they take place, all sound effects and where the music would run through from scene to scene, whether it would fade or play through the scene. This information would later be used in editing but also marketing the production. It was something that required continual revision as different elements evolved and I changed my mind about certain aspects.
However as is normal with a stage play everyone gets on with the roles in their own time. Although there were no words to learn cast members were still going through their lines and we had zoom rehearsals for individual characters, particularly the scenes between Emily and Chrissy at the beginning of the play. Despite brilliant writing from Lesley we needed to explore how the friendship developed and also to get energy into the conversations so the play was driven from the beginning.
Photograph : Fraser Wood (Jasper), Amber Thomson (Leely but also our musician) and Karen Erasmuson (sourcing sound effects).
I was very lucky to have Amber Thomson (a member of the Group) to both research and play the music. I basically gave Amber an idea of the type of music I needed: something slow and lightsome for the Yarmouth scenes, a Shetland tune for the Shetland scenes and a Jig for the scene at the Tollbooth. They had to be of the period and short enough that I could use 8/10 seconds as a link for each scene. Despite her young age Amber has a wealth of fiddle music knowledge and she came up with three individual tunes which she played beautifully, and with such feeling, that they played a very large part in creating the atmosphere of the individual scenes. The tunes played were:
Unst Bridal March
Oot and In the Harbour
Scarce o' Tatties
When the time came for recording we were very fortunate that restrictions had lifted slightly and Shetland Arts invited us to the Mareel Auditorium where everyone was socially distanced (it is a huge area!) and Tim Matthews (Shetland Arts) recorded from his isolated recording area behind the balcony. The whole play was recorded in just one take - such a brilliant cast!
Photograph: Amber Thomson recording the music before the rest of the cast arrived.
Photograph : David Smith (Willie)
Photograph : Amber Thomson (Leely), Mandy Phillips (Lizzie) and David Smith (Willie)
Following the recording I then provided all the sound effects to Shetland Arts and the audio was edited by Tim Matthews. Karen and I sourced many of the sound effects from BBC Sound Effects but you have to be careful that crowds at a train station don't involve a modern "ping pong" 40 seconds in! So it does involve a lot of time going through many different sound effects to get the right one.
I recorded many of the crowd sound effects myself using five members of the cast. This meant that the Shetland voices were maintained throughout the production. It was done using our new recording equipment with each cast member in their own home and with me organising it from my home in Tingwall. I then mixed and edited these myself to create chatter, laughter, cheering and voices. Although I have a little experience of pulling together craft videos, this was a whole new skill to get my head around, but it worked!
Once the audio had been agreed, I then needed to provide Shetland Arts with all the individual photographs along with the time point when each had to be used. This was something totally new to me and extremely time consuming! Each segment of each scene had to be time determined so that the number of photographs changing at 30 second intervals could be determined. I listened to the audio about six times until I felt I had got it. Then I had to label each photograph with the scene number and its place in the sequence.
Although we had been granted the use of photographs by Shetland Archives, there were not many but they were of exceptional quality. So in order to ensure that the same photographs were used over and over I had to crop them into smaller pieces. So for example the photograph above was used as taken, but also cropped to create three other photographs:
Finding photographs for the Yarmouth scenes was particularly difficult. There was nothing online, so I had to resort to finding copyright free stock photographs from an online photographic company and Stuart Hubbard edited them to make them look old. I was very grateful for his help.
Adam Doughton (Shetland Arts) edited the photographs onto the audio and added floating dust particles and a side flicker which really gave the piece a vintage film look despite using still photographs.
By this time I was relieved that everything appeared to be finished ...... but there was one more thing to do. As part of Shetland Arts policy sub-titles needed to be provided as an option for anyone viewing on YouTube. I was very grateful that Shetland Arts took the script and added them to the audio, but it still took a considerable amount of time to go through and make sure they were right. Cast members spoke their Shetland dialect sometimes slightly differently than the script and then there are always little changes to make a written line "speak" better. It is close but not totally accurate!
In conclusion I have to say that although it ended up being a much larger production than I anticipated at the beginning and involved some incredibly time consuming and (at times) difficult to get my head around skills, I have enjoyed it immensely and was incredibly proud of the resulting production. However, it certainly wouldn't have come together without such a superb piece of writing from Lesley, an excellent and hardworking cast, a very talented musician, the support of IDG members in terms of research and sound effects and the help, support (and patience) of the Shetland Arts team from whom I learnt so much.
Jennie Atkinson
