Blackburn on Action-adventure Xmas
Farren Blackburn, director of The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, is interviewed at SFX and gives some clues on what we can expect.
Asked about the tone of this year’s Doctor Who special Blackburn said: “There is a kind of mix. It goes through several worlds. It’s most definitely a classic action-adventure but I think it merges into the Edwardian children’s story and there’s a sort of Tim Burton-esque magic about it as well. There is an underlying suspense and tension and darkness to it as well. So I think it merges those three things with an awful lot of Christmas about it.”
Blackburn was also quizzed on his favourite scenes that he worked on: “The opening is just fantastic. It’s full on action-adventure.
“But there is also… I can’t say too much about where we go, but there is a turning point in the story where the young boy, Cyril, is attracted to this big glowing parcel under the Christmas tree and he does what every young kid is told not to do and he opens the parcel before Christmas Day. And it’s revealed that it’s a entrance into another world.
“Once you get into that other world that’s where the magic really starts for me. So all those sequences beyond that were fantastic to shoot. That’s where all the Tim Burton moments take over and I really felt like I was making a movie at those points. The director of photography and I, between us we talked about how we wanted this world to look and it’s ended up just magical – beautiful and dark at the same time so that was thrill as well.”