Oliver Richards, a second year student in the department of Theatre, Film and Television spent his summer working as camera trainee on the new ITV1 series, ‘Eternal Law.’
The drama, which aired for the first time earlier this month is set in York. ‘Eternal Law’ is the story of a small legal practice where all the barristers are angels sent by God to save the world, one legal case at a time.
Richards originally started out with the ‘Eternal Law’ cast on work experience and landed himself the paid position of camera trainee, when the camera team was split into two and he was promoted. Richards talked to Vision about his experiences working on this ITV1 drama about guardian lawyers.
“I learnt a lot”, Richards commented to Vision, “it was a lot like doing a feature film shoot with so much going on.” Clearly enthused with the whole process, Richards went on to explain how the “awesome camera” they were using and the different filters, produced an “etherial look” in the shots. “It’s cool stuff”, he said.
For any avid viewers of ‘Eternal Law’, they will clearly remember the scene when in the second episode, ‘Zak’, the angel leading the defence case, squats on a roof and talks to the daughter of his client. “I helped shoot that scene” Richards explained. He told us how the close ups were done on different days to the wide shots, and how the weather had to be digitally changed to match these. “I did lots more in episodes 5 and 6. There’s a really exciting fight scene,” he went on to tell us, “and things get a lot darker.” “It was great, the days were really long, but the free food was amazing, and the people were really nice. It made me think about what I want to do after I graduate.”
Richards and 30 other York University students even had the opportunity to be extras in the Gallery Club scene which features in this week’s episode, although apparently this was “really awkward…we had to dance, in the middle of the day, without music.”
“Really awkward”, might be how some viewers of ‘Eternal Law’ will choose to describe the entire thing. With sadly plummeting ratings after only two episodes, the Telegraph commented that “even though it was written by the team that brought us the similarly tricksy but very cool ‘Life on Mars’, this time the result was a mess.” A bizzare watch, ‘Eternal Law’ manages to entertain though the ludicrousness of it’s premise. The third episode airs on Thursday, 9pm on ITV1.
I think Eternal Law is a brilliant series. That has an excellent cast and is very well made. And the stories are really good. I for one certainly hope they make more. Thank You ITV. Malcolm Gould The Foureyed Poet.