This production for the BBC is a police drama loosely based on events from the 1980's miners strikes. It's set in a contemporary ex-mining village where past actions and grudges threaten to tear the community apart.

Police paperwork

The story involves multiple police locations both Scotland Yard and Nottingham Police Departments in both time-periods. This meant that paperwork from 2021 and 1980 had to be recreated - remember foolscap paper - 9x13ins.

Suspect files, evidence and photo files were all created to add extra realism.

Police archives were also re-created which was an immense undertaking for the art department.

school harvest festival

It wasn't all serious. We had fun creating various pieces for the school harvest festival, set in a real school hall. We created two A0 and A1 sized boards displaying different harvest fruits and vegetables.

coach depot

In a dramatic scene based in a coach depot we had to design various tins that wouldn't look out of place in an 80's garage. These were printed onto vinyl and carefully placed onto tins which were then authentically aged down.

products

We created simple, boxed hair-care products for a warehouse scene that would be stacked on a pallet. We also had to design ID badges for the main actor and his supporting artiste(s) work colleagues.

ID BADGES

Certain characters had to have IDs created to add to their costume and make them look more genuine. Certain considerations, such as what logos you can and can't use, play a big part in dressing a set and characters.

social club

The Welfare features heavily in both time periods and it was my privilege to re-create the 1980's style posters to dress this set.

We also created beer pump labels for the bar, fake taxi company business cards, and a new cover for an 80's phone directory.

beer labels

We researched 1980's beer labels to create a selection of beer pump labels that were printed out onto thin boards and cut to size. The final outcomes looked great.

newspaper clippings

A number of newspaper headlines were used throughout the story and it was my job to make the made-up headlines look real on news-paper. To make these more believable we printed on both sides of the paper which gave them a level of realism as you could faintly see the reverse page's story bleeding through, especially when light shone through them.