BBC to show Anne Frank drama in HD

When teenage wartime heroine Anne Frank hid in the cramped annexe of her father’s business in Holland, her experiences were famously recorded in a series of diaries she wrote during her two years in hiding. Frank’s diaries, first published in 1947, have since become one of the most widely read pieces of non-fiction.

Now, after two years of negotiation, the BBC has secured the rights, and the diaries have been adapted into a drama by indie production company, Darlow Smithson, to be aired across five consecutive nights on BBC1 in the spring.

The aim of The Diary of Anne Frank is to bring the experiences of its teenage author alive to a new generation of viewers. Writer Deborah Moggach reveals that the challenge of the project was to shape the unstructured diaries about life in hiding into five strongly-themed episodes. “Each episode has a slightly different character with a beginning, middle and end. One is about Anne’s love affair with Peter, another about the tensions of living in the annexe. The more I read them the more irresistible it became to use Anne’s own words,” recalls Moggach.

For the cast and crew, making the series in the cramped conditions under which Frank lived for two years were brought home by having to work in an exact replica of Frank’s living quarters — three small rooms and an attic — which she shared with the rest of her family and four others. Moggach, who spent a lot of time on set, recalls: “For six weeks, the actors and crew were closeted in the claustrophobic annexe and it affected us all very strongly. It was really difficult to shoot because it was incredibly cramped and we had to shoot up and down very steep stairs.”

Which was, of course, the idea. Although production designer Loana Hanson initially experimented with moveable sets, it was decided that this would lessen the oppressive feeling.

Shooting on the HDW-750P

Director Jones and DoP Ian Moss opted for Sony’s HDW-750P for the shoot — partly because of its relatively small size compared with other camcorders and partly because the crew was already familiar with the camcorder.

Because space was at a premium on set, focus puller Jay Polyzoides resorted to a remote Arri lens control system for focus-pulling in situations where he couldn’t get near the camcorder. “I used a wireless focus control when there wasn’t space for me to get close. For tracking shots going around corridors I had to head for the gantry and the rigging above the studio.”

Shot on HDCAM at 25P to give a filmic look, the camera team used a combination of Pro35 adapters and film lenses – which enabled the use of 35mm lenses to exert more control over the format’s depth of field. Two HDW-750Ps were used on the shoot, supplied by 24-7 Drama, the specialist drama division of hire company Visual Impact, as well as a series of Grade One HD monitors, radio control systems and matt boxes. 24-7 Drama’s Graham Hawkins recalls that DoP Ian Moss tweaked the gamma curve of his camcorder to get a very definite look. “The idea is that you can cut out some post production costs by giving a film a specific look, reducing the amount of work you have to do in post,” explains Hawkins.

For exterior scenes of the Frank family fleeing to their hiding place the production team scheduled a two-day location shoot in Amsterdam.

The on-line was carried out at facility Saint Anne’s Post with senior colourist Trevor Brown grading the series on Avid Symphony Nitris. Moggach recalls: “There was a constant discussion when shooting about how much colour we wanted. Rather than a period look, we wanted it to look more immediate — because Anne was an incredibly modern teenage girl, not a creature of history.”

“The wartime palette of colours are subdued, but there is colour. Like when they get some strawberries in the last episode they make jam out of them - that’s lovely and vivid.”

9 June 2008