In which a Scottish director completes the unholy trinity and envisions the End of Days.
“To all fans of Good Omens, all I can say is that the love Terry and Neil put into the novel is followed in spades by me in this series, and by everyone else who is making it.”
With some reverence, as if it might crumble to dust, Douglas Mackinnon shows me his paperback copy of Good Omens. The cover is beyond tattered and struggles to contain pages bloated from being repeatedly rain soaked and sun dried. The whole thing is bristled with colored sticky notes. It could be an ancient relic, such is the care with which the Scottish director leafs through in search of a favorite line.
“You can’t wave this about and say it’s unexamined,” he says. “The detail I wanted to go into was often overwhelming.”
With Emmy award-winning television shows to his credit from Jekyll to Sherlock, Line of Duty, Knightfall and Doctor Who, Skye-born Douglas Mackinnon considers every step on his career path to be vital to the success of this, his most creative, bold and ambitious production to date.
“I do have a basic philosophy that your next project should be one you’ve been training for in your previous projects,” he offers, and goes on to stress how proud he is of everything he’s worked on. “In a way, all these huge projects became a perfect training ground for Good Omens. So, when I received the scripts in February 2017, I knew that I wanted to do it within the first ten to fifteen pages. By the time I’d finished reading Episode One I was messaging production saying, ‘I have to do this.’ It felt like I was just right for it, although it’s for others to judge if I’m correct in that.”
In adapting Good Omens for television, Douglas Mackinnon is well aware that he’s taking on a vastly challenging project. It’s one that might have defeated many others, but then this is a director who possesses the kind of unflappable nature, unblinking gaze and ability to harness the respect and loyalty of a crew that you might expect from the captain of a supertanker. “For me, outside family, the place I’m most at home is doing a project of this size,” he says.
Douglas is also immensely creative, with a pioneering attitude to blending live action and CGI (computer-generated imagery). “One of my beliefs is that CGI is moving into a different phase,” he says. “The vocabulary of television and film is now heading towards a point where it’s just another storytelling tool, which is what I’ve tried to do in Good Omens. It isn’t about saving the visual effects to the end because it’s spectacular. We do it when it’s right for the story, and from a place where it’s a normal part of the world.”
Douglas goes on to mention that he first came on to Neil Gaiman’s radar as a director for his work on the 2007 series Jekyll, written by Steven Moffatt. “It was just before CGI came into play properly on television,” he says. “Neil’s view is that it was slightly too early or ahead of its time as we were trying techniques that seemingly weren’t possible. In Sherlock and Line of Duty in particular it was about nailing performance down to tiny brushstrokes,” Douglas continues. “Now there are lots of directors who are amazing at handling CGI and lots who are great at handling performance, but the way forward is to combine the two. I’ve been lucky enough to explore both areas. It’s testing but hugely enjoyable.”
In reading Neil’s scripts for the television adaptation of Good Omens, Douglas saw both technical hurdles and opportunities, as well as the chance to explore his directorial approach to the full.
“I thought that I could work my way through and make something honest, visceral, spectacular and detailed,” he says. “It’s about CGI and performance all in one space. Then there were the logistical challenges, which have been unlike anything I or anyone else has seen before. There are certainly lots of weird and particular things that attracted me,” he adds, “but above all it was the enormity.”
Douglas was also drawn by the quality and complexity of storytelling in Neil’s scripts, which he says reminds him of his work with Sherlock. “It can be intimidating to people who read it for the first time. Initially you think you’re stupid, and wonder if everyone else is getting it, but in reality these are scripts for a modern time in that the place where they arrive is when the show is completed; when we give it lucidity.”
The table read-through allowed Neil and Douglas to refine and revise the narrative ahead of filming.
The Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett
The pre-production phase for Good Omens was time-limited and intense, according to Douglas. He also believes that this short window before what would be over a hundred days of shooting worked to the advantage of the show.
“We had just two months to plan,” he says. “All the laws of TV pre-production say that’s impossible, but there is an odd contradiction here because that very pressure makes everyone creative and push very hard. It’s also where the ideas start flowing, and the more involved I am here the happier I feel. So, the way I can help the two or three hundred people circling me is to make sure they understand what’s coming up and to get ahead for them, and use their remarkable skills and input as fuel. They come at me with hundreds of questions every day and hundreds of emails every night, and it’s my job to deal with them. The only way to get great material is for the director to be within,” he adds, and then emphasizes how important it is to go into a project of this nature with a crew that he can trust. “We hand select everyone,” he says. “We’re building a community, and preparing to go through an awful lot in six months. So we have to be able to work together, go for a drink together afterwards and travel through that with a sense of humor as well as a sense of purpose.”
On location, Douglas worked inside a tent, which acted as a canvas cocoon. This allowed him to focus on capturing the perfect footage, courtesy of a high-definition monitor, and to filter out distractions.
The Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett
With the production underway in September 2017, Douglas could literally be found at the heart of it all—on location and in studio—working from inside a small black tent alongside Neil and script supervisor Jemima Thomas. From an outside point of view, this may seem like a director seeking to isolate himself. In reality, according to Douglas, it helped him to find a way to stay connected with his crew while focusing on the shoot with a hunter’s eye.
“From action to cut, that’s the bit that’s going to be on telly. I want to be a hundred percent absorbed in it, and the tent helps to create that environment,” Douglas says. “My background is in stills photography, and so I’m super aware of the image quality and focus. Quite often camera operators today aren’t working off eyepieces but small screens. So, I ask for two twenty-inch monitors inside the tent that are of the highest quality. I’m not precious about the screens people watch my work on, but a lot of people have fifty-inch screens in their living rooms, and that’s where I have to start from. Watching it on tiny little monitors seems perverse to me.”
The Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett
Throughout filming Douglas made sure he was available to cast and crew to listen to their suggestions and work on the scenes collaboratively.
Sophie Mutevelian © BBC
While the tent might help Douglas avoid distraction, he encourages crew to communicate with him where necessary. “I want to be in touch with people, and not too far away from the floor, and I really love a zoo atmosphere in the tent, where people just dive in. I don’t believe in hierarchies but I do believe in structures,” he says, “and my job is to direct and make choices. But I also try hard not to inhibit someone from saying they can do better given the chance. So, if David Tennant comes in and says can he do one more, I think why not? It’s David Tennant! The same would apply to a props guy or sound operator or anyone who shouts out. There are directors who won’t listen and blank everyone out, but for me I’ve got to hear. So if nobody is talking to me I assume they’re OK. If costume and makeup say nothing I assume they’re happy. Silence means approval, and that’s where the fun starts, but if anyone comes to me then I had better listen.”
Good Omens is a supersized production in every way. With well over two hundred speaking parts, a host of varied locations and six episodes to complete within a tight schedule, Douglas set a course that kept everything on track without compromise. As a director, he knows exactly what he wants, and has a talent for corralling cast and crew into pursuing as many takes as necessary with passion and commitment throughout.
Once filming was completed, Douglas’ attention turned to directing Academy-Award winning Frances McDormand’s voice-over for God.
Neil Gaiman
“Directing is all about using your eyes and your ears, and saying, ‘That’s the shot I want,’” he observes. “I love that it’s so simple, and that difficult, and it takes a long time as a director to trust in it as a concept. I’ve been hired for my eyes, and the tastes that people are interested in, to actually get it right. Nobody ever tells you that as a director, and you need the confidence to say, ‘It’s me that I want as well,’ and then you can start.”
There is no doubt that Douglas has risen to the challenge of directing one of the most ambitious TV series in recent years. He’s passionate about the story, having read the novel long ago, and delighted that its co-author and screenwriter also serves as showrunner.
“Neil fuels passion and that works in both directions,” says Douglas. “If he comes across someone who rises up to his passion level then he will meet them with it, which is all you can ask for. I’ve had the privilege of working with some great showrunners and Neil is certainly one of them,” he adds. “The ideal situation between the director and a showrunner is that they’re fully collaborating and the work is in charge. That’s how it felt all the way through with Neil. We have discussions, but I can’t think of a single occasion where we disagreed. If we had different opinions about anything we just shot more than one version so that when we got to the cutting room we would have a choice.”
In South Africa, the heat, dust and wind created challenging filming conditions at times. While the Scottish director endured in a T-shirt, many of the crew took to covering up as best they could.
The Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett
“What’s interesting is that Neil’s essentially a prose writer who also writes for television and film, whereas many others are scriptwriters full stop,” he says. “It means he’s starting from a place where he thinks anything is possible. And nothing pleases me more than to surprise Neil with something we’re doing, like a technique, because he’s like a child in a toy store.”
There is an unrelenting creative synergy between Douglas and Neil in which both work to deliver what they refer to as “the television draft of Good Omens.”
“When you’re working with each other for the first time you evolve a filming vocabulary,” Douglas suggests. “You start figuring out what each other is thinking but more importantly what the project wants of you. Good Omens wants to get made,” he says. “It has its own energy that is way bigger than Neil or me and it comes alive in front of you. In doing so, we know what a Good Omens shot is. Every frame has that DNA built into it.”
Douglas contemplates the coming of the Four Horsepersons from the comfort of his Good Omens director’s chair.
The Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett
Watching Douglas orchestrate a project weaving green screens into scenes with a view to creating a narrative in which live action and CGI are indivisible, it’s evident that this is television at the cutting edge of creativity. In conversation, it’s also clear that this is a director who is passionate about every aspect of the production. It isn’t just a job, it seems, but an opportunity to steer a fantastical story that he adores from the page to the screen without compromise. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that Douglas has been instrumental in assembling a cast and crew that share his enthusiasm and vision. Whether they join him as fans of the novel or converts to the script, they have united behind him in aiming to deliver a series that makes both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett proud.
“I want this to be something people can’t switch off because they feel like they might miss something,” says Douglas. “We’re not making it for the fans, but to make fans, and everyone should know that we love the novel down to its core. Of course, everything in the book can’t be in the series, but we hope that everything people love will be in it,” he adds, and then pauses to reflect on the adaptation he has steered here. “I want it to be joyous, and I hope that the rest of the world gets it too. That’s all I can do.”