Coffee & TV open “Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story” for Netflix

From the release:

Coffee & TV’s Steve Waugh and Danny Boyle have co-directed the title sequence for Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story which launches on Netflix today.

Created by 72 Films and directed by Rowan Deacon, the documentary series utilizes archive footage and interviews to examine how the disgraced television star Jimmy Savile managed to conceal his crimes for over five decades.

Rowan tasked Steve and Danny to build the sequence’s narrative around Savile’s gravestone and detailed epitaph. The gravestone and its destruction were recreated in CG so it could be used as a metaphor to depict the scale and nature of Savile’s betrayal of a nation.

Watch the director’s cut:
 


 
Danny Boyle: “We really wanted to vividly portray the story of Savile’s reputation using his gravestone as a metaphor, from the grandeur and stardom he achieved in his life right through to the collapse of his ‘national treasure’ persona under the vast weight of evidence surrounding his awful crimes.

“The challenge was to create a piece that was both cinematic and narrative-driven using only the gravestone as our subject so the pre-production process was quite involved.

“Starting with visual and contextual research, storyboarding, and a full previs process to figure out how best to build the narrative using such sparse material. We wanted to give the grave a demi-mystical, monolithic appearance so we played with the sense of scale using stark cinematography.

“We carefully highlighted certain phrases from the epitaph that now in hindsight bore double-meanings with regards to reality we now know. We made it so the gold glinted but wasn’t polished and we destroyed the grave, not in a dramatic explosion, but in a sad crumble. We wanted everything we did to convey the content and tone of the documentary.”
 
Coffee & TV open Jimmy Savile A British Horror Story Netflix | STASH MAGAZINE

Coffee & TV open Jimmy Savile A British Horror Story Netflix | STASH MAGAZINE

Coffee & TV open Jimmy Savile A British Horror Story Netflix | STASH MAGAZINE

Coffee & TV open Jimmy Savile A British Horror Story Netflix | STASH MAGAZINE

Coffee & TV open Jimmy Savile A British Horror Story Netflix | STASH MAGAZINE
 
Client: 72 Films
Series director: Rowan Deacon
Series producer: Laura Watts

Production: Coffee & TV
Director: Steve Waugh, Danny Boyle
CG supervisor: Richard Coley
CG: Josh George, Rich Coley, Ben Cantor, Alessandro Costa, Adam Lindsey
2D Comp: Dan Ruiz, Ozgur Tapari
Colorist: George Neave
Producer: Lydia Evitt