Residence Pictures work on BBC’s The Gallows Pole

Set in the moorland hills of 18th Century Yorkshire, England, is a country divided. As the aristocracy are building the first cotton mills and factories, the common people are starving. David Hartley (Michael Socha) has been away from his family’s remote moor-top dwelling for seven years. On his journey home to Cragg Vale, West Yorkshire, David gets lost in the moors. He’s dragging a mysterious looking bag of tools with him and on his last legs.

Working with Director Shane Meadows on his first foray into period drama was a special project and the first to land at Residence Pictures back in October 2022. 

The Gallows Pole was shot across 5 Sony cameras simultaneously (3 x Sony Venice 2, 1 x FX6, 1 x FX9) resulting in hundreds of hours of footage. Each episode was conformed, graded and delivered in Baselight using an ACES workflow so that we could fulfil multiple deliveries in a variety of colour spaces to both BBC and A24.

Following an early collaboration on Dead Man’s Shoes, colourist Paul Harrison worked with Meadows and Danny Cohen BSC to craft the grade. Their approach for each scene was to start by capturing the feel for the lighting, costumes and art direction, then add nuance by lifting or adding colour or shadow to create a palette that worked with the show overall but gave each scene its own identity. It was a process of honing in incrementally to reach the final look, which evolved each time they visited a scene.

Paul Harrison on crafting the grade: “Occasionally a project comes along that is really exciting, and as a Colourist I know it will be an absolute joy to grade. When I saw the offline edit of The Gallows Pole, I knew it was special.We were able to draw on the work of the old masters for inspiration; it’s rare that a Caravaggio comes to life on my monitor! The quality of the light in some scenes was breath-taking. I felt like each frame was a painting at times. ”

The world of David and the Stag-men was something else entirely, we tried a few different routes but ended up feeling that a weirder, ethereal/nether worldly look was needed.

Owen Hulme on achieving the most out of the online: “Working with Shane Meadows is always a collaborative process and we enjoyed the same on The Gallows Pole. As well as clean up on the period piece we also had fun working across some complex multi layered sequences and finessing a psychedelic end credit treatment.”

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Colourist: Paul Harrison 
Online Editor: Owen Hulme 
Production Company: Element Pictures 
Director: Shane Meadows 
Cinematographer: Danny Cohen, BSC 
Producer: Nickie Sault 
Opening Title Sequence: Ed Kevill-Davies, at Coffee & TV