As with the best CBBC genre shows, Silverpoint appeals to an all-age audience, with its tale of a mysterious object found in the woods near a holiday camp. Lead writer Lee Walters, series producer Trevor Klein and composer Jessica Dannheisser discussed the creation and challenges with Paul Simpson.

 

Let’s go right back to the very start. Where did the idea for Silverpoint come from?

Lee: I was doing a Disney show with the executive producer Steven Andrew and we were in Belfast. He was interested in doing a sci-fi series set in the woods and he asked if I would come up with some ideas.

My original thought, the moment he said that, was about a thing near me when I was a student called the Gravity Hill, a place in the woods where you drive your car to the bottom of this hill, switch off your engine and the car will just slowly roll up the hill. They’re all over the world – South America, Brazil, they’re scattered all over.

It’s insane. You don’t believe it’s going to happen, you think it’s ridiculous and then you do it… It really does freak you out. And what it is, is an optical illusion. What’s really happening is there’s a little dip in the hill but it’s so indiscernible that you don’t really notice it and you literally get out of the car like, ‘What the hell is going on? This is insane.’

Gravity hill sounds like something out of a sci-fi story so I started thinking, ‘Well, what if that was real? What if you found something in the woods that had this energy force that could pull objects up? And that it wasn’t an optical illusion.’

That started the journey. Some kids are going to find it, it’s going to be in the woods, so why are these kids in the woods? You just start answering questions and you find yourself with an adventure.

As you continue through the series you’ll see that it’s misdirection, playing with genre, making the audience think one thing and then pulling them another way. So making them think it’s a spaceship and then pull them the other way, oh no it’s not.

It was being driven by misdirection whilst also having a basis of what would be a fun explanation for why a mysterious power source was discovered in the woods by four kids.

That was the nucleus of the idea and then it was really about, what are the themes? The overall theme of the show?

I was always really interested in kids who are at that age of between being a child and being an adult, that grey area where they’re kind of challenging their parents, where they feel that they have some independence but they’re still children. I think this is the good stuff for drama and conflict. That led us to the theme of control. The first series is about trying to get control and the second series would be about trying to find control  and then getting it.

So it’s about these kids finding this thing and people wanting to take it off them. It’s theirs, they want to have it and feeling empowered by it and exploring that journey.

Then of course, we were embracing every genre that you’ve seen in there, all those references that I loved, particularly to going back to the 1980s and movies like Explorers, or Flight of the Navigator or The Last Starfighter.

If you have an object that soaks up your thoughts and imagination and just feeds off what you’ve seen, and you are fourteen and all you’ve seen is pop culture, that’s what you’re going to get back. It’s a bit like Joe Dante’s Explorers. They’ve been watching our television so they present to the kids, they speak, through television programmes.

Did you know from the start what the object is?

Lee: Yes, I knew what it would do. I get frustrated when I watch a TV series and you get to the end then you read interviews and the writers don’t know what’s happening. I wouldn’t buy a book that only had three chapters and somebody’s saying, ‘Well I’m going to write the next few chapters, don’t worry, just read the first three chapters and we’ll think of something.’ That would frustrate me. I want to know the author knows what they’re doing and has an end.

So when we pitched the show to the BBC, that was a massive part of the pitch: I was able to say, ‘I have three series in my head. I know how the third series ends, I know what’s going to happen in the second series and I know how the first series ends. and I’m telling this story so I can add little Easter eggs into the first series that will pay off in the third series. There is an overarching journey these kids are on, with a beginning middle and end and we’re not making it up.’ I think that was exciting to them.

What was fun, I think for me as well, was to not only embrace and have fun with those movie references we all know and love but also to have a series that changes genre with every series. The first series has a very mystery adventure sense but the next one will have a more Battle Royale sense to it. The characters remain true to who they are on this journey but we keep changing genres.

How much had you worked out who our core group were going to be, before you started plotting? Or did the plotting develop out of knowing who they were?

Lee: It’s a writer’s trick to always put conflict in emotions, so if you put a cowardly character with a brave character, it always adds, so in this situation you put someone who wants to follow the rules with somebody who breaks the rules, so that’s your Louis and Kaz. I know this will then give us conflict and really nice drama.

So there’s those very primary colour personality aspects that you want to put in but at the same time we all know the ones at school [who don’t fit in]. I know I was the geek, I was the one in the corner. I wasn’t the sporty one, obviously.

It was fun to me that there was a group, this camp for the misfits, a group which we learn that you put the problem kids in, the ones who don’t quite fit in. And what you then get is this bunch of kids who would never be friends, who would never get on, have nothing in common but become the bestest friends of their lives because of this thing they find.

So then it was about finding very different people. A young girl who was very mollycoddled who never says a word; a boy who’s always trying to prove himself, he knows he’s short, he knows he’s got to fight to get his voice heard; the erudite boy, in his own little world sci-fi geek; and this truculent girl who is out for a fight. So it was, how different can I make these characters? Then just shove them together and mix them up and see what happens. So there was a conscious effort to create different ones.

In the development process, in the writers’ rooms and through the directors, you get texture, so the death of Louis’s father was something we added later because it gave him more of an emotional core. It added some weight to the episodes and where he was going – and also we can sympathise with him. I love the Jodie Foster movie Contact and you need some kind of human element in there.

We desperately tried to find actors who would fill those roles and make them come to life, which they did. So we got very lucky. Krish is Glen: when the camera switches off he will drop something, it will fall over, it’s just who he is, and break something, he is exactly that character, so that helped as well.

Had you got all of season 1 written prior to going into filming or were you still working on it? Were the actors aware of the trajectory of their characters before they began work?

Lee: We had all the scripts written. We had a year off because of COVID which gave me a lot of time. There was that year of lockdown, the writers had gone away, so I was working on scripts. Normally with a lot of series there’s this mad scramble to get things and you’re writing while you’re filming. There was, to be fair still, quite a bit of that, as there always is, but in an odd twist of fate, the lockdown meant that it gave us an opportunity to refine the scripts.

So yes, we came with fully fledged scripts and also going back to the original point, because I’m creating a series that is based over three series and I know how every series ends, you can’t move too far away from that. We have very clear, almost like chapters of a book. Each episode is defined; we have to have this happen because we need to go here and we’re going there.

What we were also exploring was, how can this be more fun? Like with episode 3, we’re thinking about The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and we’re thinking ‘Oh god what if something goes wrong? I want to test it.’ But we’re following the logic of kids, so how can we get some comedy out of this? Let’s have some chickens on their little farm and then we can throw a chicken in there, then we know. The writers ended up being very funny.

The car, the Beetle, came out of the writers’ room: to have an abandoned car on set which will become a big part of the story was just a fun way again of a kid wanting to grow up, a kid desperate to be older than their years. Sat in an abandoned car wishing they could drive it, they’re not old enough to drive it but imagining and then of course later in the series, getting their chance.

So it was thinking, what’s the better idea? What’s the thing that can symbolise where we want to go? And add humour as well.

Trevor: But for the cast, we gave them, I think episode 1 to 8 originally as a block and then held off giving them 9 to 13, which was our last filming block, until a bit later on. I think there was a period where they knew what happened right up to the end of episode 8 and were desperate for more scripts, and harassing Lee and harassing me saying ‘What happens next!’

I think we were holding off because we were just doing our page turns with the block three director, Amy Coop, at that point, and wanted to just factor in all the notes, as we do with all the directors, before issuing them more widely. It led to some really good speculation. It was quite nice having them all wondering, ‘How are they going to do this?’

Lee: We held back. There was a lot of the cast and crew saying ‘What happens next?’ And then even now, I’m getting things from the cast: ‘What happens in series two?’ That’s why I love this genre, the mystery box format, because it really is tantalising and trying to guess and imagine.

Jess, how did you get caught up in this?

Jessica Dannheisser: I was brought on board as a composer relatively late in the process but I already had a relationship with the lead director, Dan Zeff, and had worked with him before. I was very happy to be brought in on it because it was right up my street. I loved the idea of it.

I dived straight in and started creating a palette but basically had to go straight into scoring, which was great. I like being presented with a locked edit as far as possible, a complete edit. Often you work a bit before that but actually it was quite nice to receive these episodes and be like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ and really understand the world as it was going to be and get into it that way. I really enjoyed it.

What did you find the biggest challenge? I’m thinking particularly of the early episodes. There’s what I’d call ‘a Jerry Goldsmith sense of wonder’ about it. 

Jess: That was definitely conscious. I really felt like this deserved a cinematic score. The screen felt like it would sustain something quite big and cinematic because the production value is so high and the world is so complete. I felt like it deserved something that was really elevated and helped keep it in that cinematic landscape. So we discussed John Williams. Michael Giacchino’s Super 8 was a reference and earlier on it was about doing something quite thematic and, very importantly, not kids’ music. This is a cinematic, thematic show and the score needs to support that.

For all three of you, what’s been the biggest challenge involved with creating this?

Trevor: It’s quite broad. With these shows, on these budgets because you know what you’re competing with, the challenge is how to get the most value on screen. You’re always having to make hard decisions. Certainly what attracted me to this was making a sci-fi show for kids. That’s something I love and something that I grew up watching. It’s a big responsibility as well, I think. There isn’t a lot of sci-fi aimed at their age group, particularly the Marvel stuff which is fantastic as its own thing but it’s operating at a slightly different budget level than we are, to put it mildly.

So at every stage it’s thinking, ‘OK, competing in that landscape for that attention, where can we really get the value on screen in a way that’s going to cut through?’

That’s the best bit about kids TV because the people that work on it are really good at somehow making things go further, feel better, feel bigger, work smarter, work more efficiently.

Jess already mentioned the director, Dan, and working with him setting it all up and our amazing production team, our line producers Charlene and Mary and the production office and the talented ADs, the DoP Martyna setting up with us and later Ray… everybody working really hard to push push push to get that value on screen.

That was really the battle, every day: ‘OK, so what are the problems that have come up? How do we get past them or find a smart solution to try and stick the landing?’

Lee: Another person to mention is Kris who did the visual effects. There was a huge creative input and he really went above and beyond. Jess, everyone did.

The effects had to feel like something new, they had to feel ambitious and could compete with streamers. Particularly episodes 4 and 5, the visual effects and what Kris has achieved is amazing, with the pressures and time limitations we put on him.

Trevor: There are over 600 VFX shots, when we totted them all up at the end, which is more than we had expected going in, and more than Kris, I think, expected. It was a real labour of love for them as well and it was really nice to work with their studio and FX artists to get there.

The other challenge we should probably mention briefly as well was of course the weather. We’ve got a wonderful show set mostly at a summer camp outside that we’re filming in Northern Ireland, where the summer can have four different kinds of weather in one day! We were having to schedule and reschedule and our scheduling assistant director Leon was working constantly to try and fit that jigsaw together when the weather would scupper us.

Sometimes there’s rain, as you’ll see, but there’s a really big sequence in episode 7 where we really did need it to be sunny for three days because it was a huge visual effects shoot, loads of extras, some big kit that we don’t normally have in. We needed the weather to be good – it was the only time it could be in the schedule – and we got three days of identical gorgeous sunshine. So we did get some luck as well definitely.

Jess: I guess I was trying to achieve a similar note to Trevor trying to achieve the scale and the cinematic scope of it when my production budget maybe wasn’t as much!

Personally this is my favourite kind of genre, one of my favourite types of things to score. I love everything differently and scoring a lot of the factual programmes that I’ve been doing has been really interesting but it’s a different kind of approach when you’re scoring drama. In some ways, for me personally, it’s a bit more satisfying because you really get into the characterisation.

For me the challenge was artistically, creatively, finding the balance between the light and the shade, because a lot of it is quite heartfelt and sometimes quite psychologically dark, in a way, yet it’s a family show. Getting the balance between something that tells that story and evokes the emotional heart of it without going too dark or morose. Finding that balance between the orchestral and the electronic

Another reference for me would be Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and their scores because some of it goes a bit more electronic. Again, it’s finding what will work and the balance of those two elements working together, orchestral and electronic. And also knowing when to hold back.

Like any score it has its own challenges but overall I think we really established a palette in the first block of episodes, the first four with Dan Zeff, and then that kind of developed and grew from there, but we really honed in on the themes and the ideas.

I wanted it to be very strong and thematic, for people to recognise things when they come back, if not consciously but subconsciously. That there’s an arc, a throughline to the characters. I hope we achieved it, I think we did.

Each of you have got different perspectives on this show, if you were selling the idea to watch it to somebody, what would you focus on as its USP?

Lee: Well, I have many times, had to sell it to somebody (laughs). Hundreds of times!

The thing I always focus on and what excites me is the genre. If it’s a superhero story, you know how it’s going to end, you know there’s going to be two villains battling each other, but with sci-fi and in this genre you have no idea where it’s going.

Obviously we’re not Marvel but we can make a really good story and we do. It will grip you and pull you along and you will want to watch the next episode. That was a challenge and I think that’s what we’ve achieved and it’s certainly something I’m proud of.

It’s just a love of story, the love of turning the page, the love of staying up till 1am when you know you’ve got work the next day but you want to watch the next episode. It’s burrowing into that and trying to get kids really excited to go on this adventure with these characters.

Trevor: For me, I’d just add it’s the thrill of having a show you can sit down and watch with the whole family. You can be a kid or a teenager, you can be an adult, you can sit down, you can believe it. You’ve got truthful performances, you’ve got real feeling characters that something remarkable is happening to and you can go on this adventure with them. And tap into that inner kid and that joy that we all had watching those sorts of shows growing up.

Jess: I don’t know what I can possibly add to this!

Trevor: The score’s amazing. I think it’s something for the small screen that feels like it should be for the big screen. It really has a cinematic feel in my opinion and especially as the show progresses, it really goes off completely and develops into something that’s quite big and that’s incredibly exciting.

I think we got a lot of bang for our buck, you get a lot of scope for what might have otherwise been a smaller show.

You’ve always remembered that they are kids and that’s what sold me on the programme. I love the genre melding and going Cabin in the Woods with this, with that but it was actually that moment where you remember it’s children.

Trevor: Yes.

At the heart of this, they’re not mini grown ups, they’re not like the companions of the Doctor from the classic series, that sort of age that had to act as surrogate adults. They’re kids being kids and that really worked for me.

Lee: Oh good, I’m glad to hear it.

I think the important thing is to present as close to truth as you can because when you put something fantastical onto something that is unbelievable, it doesn’t quite work but when you put something fantastic onto something that is very truthful, it’s far more satisfying. So that was certainly the hope, to try and create three dimensional kids.

Silverpoint airs on CBBC on Sunday afternoons and is available on iPlayer.

Click here for our other coverage