Whole scenes will be taken out, put back in and switched in order, until Neame, Fellowes and Trubridge are satisfied and it is sent to ITV. Once all the executives involved have signed off the cut, it is ‘locked’. Since the edit process has been carried out on a flexible, digitised version of the film, the finished cut has to be reproduced using the original HD footage to produce the final, or ‘online’, product.
The grading can then take place, whereby the show’s colourist Aidan Farrell, at finishing facility The Farm, digitally enhances the images that have been shot. On a practical level he can make day look like night, or a summer shoot appear to have taken place in deep midwinter, if needed – but his role is really about adding further contrast, hue and texture to the footage, to strengthen the mood and atmosphere. Farrell sees this process as the driving factor behind Downton’s famously rich feel. ‘Going back to series one, at that time period dramas were quite brown, desaturated and old-looking,’ he notes. ‘We wanted a completely new look for the genre, so we went for really bold colours.’ Orchestrating the whole sequence of events is Jess Rundle, the post-production supervisor, who plans the viewings with the executives and makes sure the show comes in on budget and on time.
Finalising the visual aspect of the show is far from the end of this process, however. Just as what is seen on screen is dramatically refined, so is the audio aspect. Each episode is scored with around 20 to 25 minutes of music, made up of some 20 to 30 ‘cues’ – the individual pieces of music that underpin the drama. As a rule, comic scenes tend to use less music, while the more harrowing, emotional storylines demand more. Either way, the score acts as a key storytelling tool, says John Lunn, the Emmy Award-winning composer who has written for the show since its start. ‘I’m not trying to conjure up an era in the incidental music, although I’m not ignoring it either,’ he explains. ‘It’s not the function of the music. It is to tell the story and also, in a long-running series where people occasionally miss an episode, the music works as a shorthand, emotionally.’
As his music hinges so much on timings, he only works from the finished edit. He has a team helping with the recordings and orchestrating the music, but he writes it alone, improvising on a keyboard as he watches the action. The final versions are performed by a 35-piece orchestra conducted by Lunn at one of London’s iconic music studios: Abbey Road, Angel or Air.
Many themes and motifs recur in various forms. ‘The house has a theme, and there are quite a few themes for relationships, rather than specific people,’ notes Lunn. ‘Anna and Bates get about four or five, as their storyline keeps changing. Then there’s another four or five for Matthew and Mary.’ Even death does not signal an end to those. In Matthew’s absence, Lunn plans to use the music to ‘almost suggest his presence’ in his grieving family’s thoughts.
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