Taking Bristol Old Vic from stage to screen
28 Feb 2023
You may have seen our recent announcement that our thrilling, edge-of-your-seat version of Hamlet starring Billy Howle is coming to cinemas nationwide from 6 April.
This is just the latest release from Bristol Old Vic On Screen, the newest strand of our work.
But how did this come about? And how does a 257-year-old theatre take the leap onto the silver screen? We caught up with Head of Digital Publishing, Giles Chiplin, to find out.
Hello Giles! So how did Bristol Old Vic's digital work first come about?
Initially, during the theatre’s closure through COVID we were looking for ways to connect with our audiences. We came up with a free offer on YouTube to introduce old titles to new audiences, and to let people who loved the work when they saw it in the theatre rediscover it anew.
We found there was something in that offer that we could apply to the new work we were creating too. Our first experiment was a remount of Touching The Void in Summer 2021, staged in front of a socially-distanced audience.
We broadcast four performances live over the internet and saw that there was something about the experience of an audience being at home, watching actors on our stage sharing that live collective experience that was hugely exciting.
This also gave us four opportunities to film the production which meant (with the magic of post-production) we could create a ‘definitive’ film of the stage show. By working with Sky Arts as our TV broadcast partner for Touching the Void, we could then share the film with a new audience too.
Our second film Wuthering Heights was a wonderful collaboration with Wise Children (who are also great innovators in this field). Since the start of Bristol Old Vic On Screen, we have collaborated with hundreds of theatre makers as well as a growing team of creatives from the film and TV industry.
Ultimately its all about making high-quality films of our stage work and introducing a growing audience to all the brilliant things that Bristol Old Vic has to offer.
This all seems to have happened pretty fast
It really has! The speed of the acceleration of this arm of our business has been really rapid.
We’re just coming up to our second anniversary and in that time we’ve had two films premiere on Sky Arts with another in the pipeline, Hamlet is about to be released in cinemas across the UK and earlier this month we live broadcast our sixth production from the theatre, a co-production with Complicité.
So what’s unique about how Bristol Old Vic On Screen works?
The biggest thing is that we do everything in-house. Over the last two years the theatre has made a big commitment to developing this work, including investing in equipment and the infrastructure of our auditorium needed to film and broadcast our productions live across the globe, but also in the development of the staff needed to support making digital work at this level.
For each film we also work with a team of freelancers, but keeping as much of the process as possible in-house means we can retain a lot of creative freedom over the final piece you see at home.
Another thing that feels unusual is our distribution model, which extends the life of our films far beyond the live broadcast. We have worked with a number of partners from TV such as Sky Arts and the BBC, to online platforms such as YouTube and Digital Theatre, which have enabled us to share our productions with new audiences in new territories.
We also spend a lot of time and attention crafting our films, so an audience can be assured that any film from Bristol Old Vic on Screen matches the quality of the shows you see on our stages.
How did Hamlet come about?
For this production we are working with Altitude Films, who are our exclusive cinema partner for Hamlet, releasing the picture in cinemas nationwide on 6 April.
We first met with Altitude 16 months ago (we were keen to explore the event cinema market and Altitude were looking to broaden their remit to include filmed theatre performance).
We kept talking for a year or so and they were really keen on this production. We kept them up-to-date with the production developments (things like design, casting and the script), they came and saw the show and our technical setup, and the rest is history!
What can people expect from this version?
I think audiences watching Hamlet in their local cinema can expect everything that the live performance offered – a magnificently performed, wonderfully clear and very high impact production of Hamlet – in a beautifully shot film than enhances all the amazingly detailed work that John Haidar and his company created during their time at Bristol Old Vic.
Tom Morris, who directed the film of this production, has not been afraid to allow the camera to wander from the characters speaking the verse, which means that the larger ensemble scenes really come alive as you catch (in close-up)glimpses of concern or flashes of realisation being fired on all fronts from this remarkable company of actors.
One of the big successes of this production was the clarity of the storytelling. We had many audiences who were new to Shakespeare (including lots of school groups), who may have headed in to watch the performance with some trepidation, but came out exhilarated.
I think that the opportunities that filming and editing this production for cinema have offered has only enhanced this clarity.
Mixing the audio for a cinema was something that Bristol Old Vic had never done before and listening to Max Pappenheim’s sound design in a movie theatre, I was acutely aware of colours in the sound that I had never picked up on when watching the piece in the theatre.
John also did a masterful adaptation of Shakespeare’s original text, which runs in at a very pacy two and a half hours (including an interval!).
We are also really pleased to be able to offer cinema audiences an exclusive conversation between John Haidar and Emma Smith (professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford), which will play in cinemas after the film, where they discuss John’s approach to editing the text, the history of Hamlet in performance and film, and the process of rehearsing and opening this production at Bristol Old Vic.
Working with Altitude, we’re just really excited to introduce a new audience to the play and to Bristol Old Vic for the first time.
