Where The Heart Is - shot for the first time in HD

"HD is the format of the future"

The community nurses of Skelthwaite are back on duty this Summer for a tenth series of ITV Productions' Where The Heart Is, shot for the first time in high definition, using HDCAM. All previous series of the popular ITV1 drama were acquired on 16mm, but for producer Ian Hopkins, HD capture presented the way forward. "ITV are looking to move their flagship dramas like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Poirot over to an HD route and I wanted Where The Heart Is to be a test run for those."

With no international sales consideration for the drama (although the first series is now on DVD) and SD-only delivery, Hopkins' decision rested on his feeling that "HD is the format of the future and I wanted to keep Where The Heart Is at the cutting edge."

Hopkins sought advice from Provision, the ITV equipment hire arm which supplies more than 50 annual dramas for the broadcaster, including Emmerdale, Cracker and Coronation Street.According to Provision sales and business manager, Adrian Bleasdale, it was the production's choice to test the HDW-750P HDCAM camcorders, which are becoming "the workhorses for drama." Sony Specialist Dealer Top-Teks, both with SD downconverter boards and picture cache boards, supplied two HDW-750Ps. A standard Provision playback trolley, with a nine-inch SD monitor and 14-inch Sony HD screen was also provided.

"We tried to make the shift from film to HD as gentle as possible, to support the director and producer and send Sony trained specialists on location to work with the DoP," says Bleasdale. "Although the kit requirements for HD drama are becoming standardised, we wanted to make them feel comfortable working with a new format."

"The main design requirement for the show is to look natural"

For Russell Glavin, one of three series DoPs (who alternates his schedule between Heartbeat and The Royal) it was a first experience with HDCAM. "I approached the shoot as I would any Digital Betacam or film production," he says. "Which was not to consciously make an effort to do anything differently. I wanted to maintain the same disciplines of lighting and filtering in order to maintain the look we'd established over the previous eight years."

Starring Denise van Outen and Lesley Dunlop, Where The Heart Is relates the day-to-day private and working lives of a group of district nurses situated in a small West Yorkshire valley. The 50-minute episodes are shot over 99 days in 22 day shooting blocks at a former woollen mill, now Northlight Film Studios, in Huddersfield and on-location across the Yorkshire Dales.

"The main design requirement for the show is for it to look natural," Glavin observes. "There are no sharp camera moves or neon lit night shots and no gunfights or car chases. Skelthwaite is a regular small town with sets that include a health centre, pub and houses, so we use lots of natural light for exteriors and interiors, which I shoot very much how I'd shoot film." For example, he wasn't afraid to take a light meter reading and judge the stops without referring to a monitor. "The key thing we wanted to achieve with the camera set-up was matching the 200ASA film stock we'd previously used by adjusting the gamma patterns in the menu," he says.

Bad weather and additional scenes have delayed Glavin's chance to oversee the grade of the first four episodes, but when he does he's keen to use the flexibility of the HDW-750P to adjust any colour or light parameters. "In the grade, I'll be able to see if anything needs tweaking across the whole piece and set the camera accordingly." A scene in the first episode required a mock up of a planetarium comprising dozens of lightbulbs and candles. "I was initially concerned with an HD camera's ability to pan across flickering lights and to hold the highlights, but I was very impressed by its quality," he remarks.

"Sometimes you can get a staggered effect when you pan in video and I was wary of panning across the wet slate roofs of the houses because the light dances on them in an unusual way, but the camera has held up well and we've had no problems." aterial is down converted to SD and edited on Avid at YTV's studios in Leeds. "Even with an SD deliverable, the picture quality achieved by acquiring in HD comes through," says Bleasdale. Series directors include Ian Bevitt, Paul Walker and Moira Armstrong.