Coronation cheat Zoom calls may be used to include older characters
SOAP LIFE WILL REFLECT COVID CRISIS
CORRIE bosses are going to “cheat” their way to a new normal using Zoom calls to include older cast members.
Library shots of child actors, who are not yet allowed back on the Salford set, will also be in operation along with clever camera angles to make couples appear intimate.
And despite all location filming being scrapped, some stunts will still be shot – with characters kept at least two metres apart at all times.
Older characters such as Ken Barlow (Bill Roache), Rita Tanner (Barbara Knox) and Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls) will not return to the set for the time being but will still make occasional appearances.
Show producer Iain MacLeod said: “Have we considered having the older or medically vulnerable cast on Zoom calls? The answer to that is yes.”
He added: “Our request to directors has been to, ‘Cheat it’. Use camera techniques to make it look like married couples are closer than they are and create a bit of intimacy.
Otherwise it will look peculiar if they are unnaturally distancing.”
The episodes containing the soap’s first references to Covid-19 will hit screens on July 24.
MacLeod said he had “agonised” over how to introduce the pandemic to Weatherfield and is hoping viewers will be forgiving when it appears to have sprung up overnight.
He added: “Characters will be acknowledging the disease and it will be a kind of day/night transition in terms of our fictional universe.”
MacLeod said the new scenes were stripped back and used fewer people and props.
He added: “This is a programme about social interactions and romance and punching someone in the Rovers, all of which require you to be closer than two metres to your co-stars.”
While some characters will be given a story which accounts for them not being off screen, others will be isolating out of sight in upstairs rooms.
Several stories had to be scrapped, changed or paused because they involved cast who were not currently available.
But a car stunt, to air in August, will be filmed within weeks. Actor Ben Price, who plays Nick Tilsley, said it had been hard to remain distant during his emotional storyline with Jane Danson (Leanne), in which their son is battling a life-limiting illness. He said: “The scenes are incredibly touching and there was a moment where, as Nick, I wanted to give her a hug, but I couldn’t.”