Workshop Trip to emmerdale - spring 2014
The young Workshop members were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to tour the Emmerdale Studios and have a look around the Emmerdale Village, courtesy of everyone at ITV Yorkshire!
An invaluable trip to anyone interested in working in the TV industry, particularly in soaps - which is an anomaly for actors as the filming is ongoing, six days a week for 12 hour days - it is not your normal acting job! And when you have finished your day's filming, you then have to learn your lines for the next day's shoot! It's not glamorous or easy, but if you love your art it is certainly worth it!
We were lucky enough to chat to a couple of the cast members, Michael Parr who plays Ross Barton and Emma Atkins who plays Charity - both of who gave great advice to our young actors and an insight into what it was like to work on one of the most popular long-running soaps on TV.
We toured around all of the internal sets at the studio in Leeds, marvelling at the amount of detail that goes into creating the believability of the 'homes' that the characters live in. We were allowed into the gallery to see the Director and Script supervisor shooting a scene in the Woolpack with three different cameras and then went into the studio to watch them shoot the scene itself. It is a very slick operation with everyone knowing their jobs and what is expected and getting on with it. They all looked like a great team who get on well and have a laugh, but get the job done at the same time. It is such a fast turn around that they all really need to be on the ball and as they live in each other's pockets and work together 72 hours a week - it's a good job that they get on!
First A.D.'s gave us an insight into their job, we talked to Supporting Artists, some of whom hard worked on Emmerdale for 20 years, the Set Designer gave us a sneaky preview of the new Salon which was to be featured in the up and coming episodes and the Executive Producer chatted about how important it is to keep the storylines of Corrie and Emmerdale on a completely different path! So much to take in! And we felt very honoured to be allowed to tour the set as Emmerdale do not offer tours to anyone outside of ITV - how privileged are we at the Workshop.
The village of Emmerdale was a whole new experience. About half an hour's drive away from the centre of Leeds is the purpose built village that they put together in 1997. They were getting fed up with shooting in the original village, as it was an actual village with inhabitants and members of the public wandering through and interfering with the filming. So they built their own village to have free -reign and to shoot without any disturbances. It was a bit creepy though, wandering through what looked like a normal everyday village, but with no-one around, it came across as a bit of a ghost town! And there are hardly any interiors to the houses, just bare rooms with rafters and concrete floors - it was very strange! Perfect for a zombie apocalypse as one of the group suggested...
We looked through the Vet's surgery and inside the local shop and then wandered around the graveyard. The gravestones had apparently been bought from a cemetery that was being redeveloped, but of course they didn't bring the bodies too (phew!)
It was a fantastic day that was so beneficial to the members of the Workshop and we cannot thank everyone at ITV Yorkshire enough! They even gave us Emmerdale goodie bags with pens, notepads and key rings all with the Emmerdale brand on them!
This is just the beginning of the trips to ITV produced programmes for the Workshop - next stop is Coronation Street and then we are hopefully off to Downton Abbey, Mr Selfridge, Whitechapel and Broadchurch! See the amazing perks you get for being an ITV WEST Television Workshop member!
An invaluable trip to anyone interested in working in the TV industry, particularly in soaps - which is an anomaly for actors as the filming is ongoing, six days a week for 12 hour days - it is not your normal acting job! And when you have finished your day's filming, you then have to learn your lines for the next day's shoot! It's not glamorous or easy, but if you love your art it is certainly worth it!
We were lucky enough to chat to a couple of the cast members, Michael Parr who plays Ross Barton and Emma Atkins who plays Charity - both of who gave great advice to our young actors and an insight into what it was like to work on one of the most popular long-running soaps on TV.
We toured around all of the internal sets at the studio in Leeds, marvelling at the amount of detail that goes into creating the believability of the 'homes' that the characters live in. We were allowed into the gallery to see the Director and Script supervisor shooting a scene in the Woolpack with three different cameras and then went into the studio to watch them shoot the scene itself. It is a very slick operation with everyone knowing their jobs and what is expected and getting on with it. They all looked like a great team who get on well and have a laugh, but get the job done at the same time. It is such a fast turn around that they all really need to be on the ball and as they live in each other's pockets and work together 72 hours a week - it's a good job that they get on!
First A.D.'s gave us an insight into their job, we talked to Supporting Artists, some of whom hard worked on Emmerdale for 20 years, the Set Designer gave us a sneaky preview of the new Salon which was to be featured in the up and coming episodes and the Executive Producer chatted about how important it is to keep the storylines of Corrie and Emmerdale on a completely different path! So much to take in! And we felt very honoured to be allowed to tour the set as Emmerdale do not offer tours to anyone outside of ITV - how privileged are we at the Workshop.
The village of Emmerdale was a whole new experience. About half an hour's drive away from the centre of Leeds is the purpose built village that they put together in 1997. They were getting fed up with shooting in the original village, as it was an actual village with inhabitants and members of the public wandering through and interfering with the filming. So they built their own village to have free -reign and to shoot without any disturbances. It was a bit creepy though, wandering through what looked like a normal everyday village, but with no-one around, it came across as a bit of a ghost town! And there are hardly any interiors to the houses, just bare rooms with rafters and concrete floors - it was very strange! Perfect for a zombie apocalypse as one of the group suggested...
We looked through the Vet's surgery and inside the local shop and then wandered around the graveyard. The gravestones had apparently been bought from a cemetery that was being redeveloped, but of course they didn't bring the bodies too (phew!)
It was a fantastic day that was so beneficial to the members of the Workshop and we cannot thank everyone at ITV Yorkshire enough! They even gave us Emmerdale goodie bags with pens, notepads and key rings all with the Emmerdale brand on them!
This is just the beginning of the trips to ITV produced programmes for the Workshop - next stop is Coronation Street and then we are hopefully off to Downton Abbey, Mr Selfridge, Whitechapel and Broadchurch! See the amazing perks you get for being an ITV WEST Television Workshop member!
