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8th May 2015
Grand designs
Title of film: Save the Children, Grand Designs
Director: Karen Cunningham
Production Company: Pop Films
Karen Cunningham pays wonderful homage to the series about building one's own dream home

The boy’s mimicry of Grand Design’s anchorman Kevin McCloud is perfect. What was the process for getting this performance?

As usual I spent a long time casting to find the right boy. He had a natural ear and I knew straight away he would be able to impersonate the presenter in the way I wanted, and we worked together to achieve this.

In fact, the performances are very natural from all of the children. Did you shoot spontaneously and edited the best bits or was the process more of a systematic “grown-up” way of storyboarding, shoot, and nailing it after several takes?

We only had a day to shoot and because it involved children it was a very short day so again the casting was key. I like everything to feel very found as if our camera had just happened upon the scene. I also shoot a lot in order to achieve this and often on more than one camera.

Any major challenges throughout the production?

Just the usual – time and money . But I had a brilliant producer and crew who threw themselves into the challenge and wanted to support STC.

Credits
Save The Children, Grand Designs Creative Director: Jessica Crombie Agency Producer: Lucia Zorro Agency PM: Dominik Danielewicz Director: Karen Cunningham Producer: Sukey Richardson Casting Director: Hannah Simons DP: Richard Mott Production Designer: Tom Gander Sound: Crispin Larratt Post: Envy Sound: 750MPH Editor: Owen Oppenheimer at The Quarry
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