THE OBSERVER

Sunday May 7, 2000

Even better than the real thing

Two years ago, Dominic Savage inspired a debate about TV ethics with his 'faked' documentary, Rogue Males. Now he's back, with a new docu-drama format to suit his style. Tina Ogle is impressed.

When the Mirror chose to splash on its front page the headline 'Channel 4 Fakes Film' in early 1998, all hell broke loose in the world of documentaries. Film-makers queued up to condemn the alleged construction of scenes in Rogue Males, a Cutting Edge film about men living on the edge of the law in Salford.

It was a turning point for documentaries, and for the man who made the film, Dominic Savage. Film-makers since have fallen over themselves to show exactly how their work is constructed, with no artifice allowed. And Savage has taken what he sees as the next logical step and moved into drama.

It is a neat conceit for the BBC to choose Savage, who was accused of faking key scenes in his film and even using actors, to lead its current initiative into drama-documentary collaboration. In Nice Girl, Savage has taken a documentary idea and employed actors to improvise a drama about the high price to be paid for having children too young. It is a hot issue, with the tabloids going into a frenzy about Coronation Street 's decision to lead the pack with a storyline about 13-year-old Sarah-Louise Platt's impending motherhood. The BBC, which is striving to capitalise on the popularity of docusoaps while cutting the traditionally high costs of drama production and creating fiction with impact, has gambled and won with this first attempt. Nice Girl is raw, powerful drama, which should raise more than a few hackles with its uncompromising sex scenes and liberal language.

But first that controversy over Rogue Males, which Savage has never had a chance to address. 'All the way along I felt quite justified in everything that was done in that film,' he says. 'My instincts were that the story I was telling was authentic and real. The furore was that the way it was done was misleading, and I suppose it was. Certainly I'd signpost the scenes that were constructed now. But what they were doing was criminal, and in wanting to protect them legally and being able to film it only in a way that protected them, I got into trouble in a documentary moral sense. But some of the papers made out that the whole thing was a complete sham, that they were the repertory company of Salford brought in to mock up a load of scenes, and that was so untrue.'

While the controversy was deeply unpleasant at the time, and Savage feels he was made a scapegoat, it has not damaged his career. He does think it has harmed documentary making, however: 'It seems that people are scared to actually try things now, and that inventiveness and innovation have gone. And real people are now too tuned in to the whole thing; it's very difficult to find people who don't want to become stars. One of the best things to do now is to make tough documentaries abroad.' Or, given the opportunity, to turn your factual skills to drama.

Nice Girl, the story of a teenage bride and mother whose husband leaves her for her sister, arose initially from an idea about separation. After the BBC approved the idea, Savage advertised in newspapers for people who were willing to talk about splitting up. He then interviewed about 40 people from around the country, researching the subject in the same way he would a documentary.

A number of the people he talked to were very young, and so the idea developed into its current form. 'It grew into a drama about splitting up, but mostly about having kids too young, which is the more dominant theme. It's really a double tragedy.'

Savage, with the advice of screenwriter Tony Basgallop, then set about constructing a story. 'I knew that I wanted to tell a strong narrative that kept the audience all the way through, but I wanted it to say something and, above all, I wanted it to be a sympathetic portrayal of the situation.'

After six drafts, he produced a description of scenes featuring a handful of characters, chiefly Joanna, the wronged woman, her husband Steve, and her sister Mel. The story may smack of the excesses of Jerry Springer, but everything in it happened to someone that Savage talked to. 'I couldn't have done it if I'd not known these things were true, the basis of reality has to be there.'

Next came the casting of actors, a process new to Savage, but which he found not dissimilar to finding the subjects of a documentary. The company of largely young unknowns had to have a talent for improvisation as they were faced with scene descriptions rather than a script.

Rehearsals were forbidden, but a fortnight was spent discussing the characters before the shoot. Port Talbot in Wales was the location, and scenes were shot in houses and in pubs and nightclubs, complete with their regular clientele. 'If we'd closed things down and brought in our own extras, it wouldn't have felt as fresh. When you watch the film you're never sure whether it's real or fiction, and I like the boundary that it sits on.'

The documentary feel is furthered by the use of hand-held cameras and no lighting, an approach that lent a great deal of freedom to the production. 'The crew was light and we were there on location, so we could do things when the mood felt right for it, which was very liberating. With documentaries you tend to think as you make and change as you go along, which I really like, and it happened to a certain extent on this.'

Despite the freedoms that technology and improvisation brought, Savage still found the predetermination of drama a little disappointing. 'The essential difference when making it, with the real people you know it's really going on and with the actors you know it's not. So it's not as satisfying in a way, when you do a scene, although it's representing something it's not real and it's less surprising. With a documentary you never know which way they're going to take you and it makes it very edgy and distinct.'

Despite these reservations, Savage plans to continue in drama for the foreseeable future. This is not because of a lack of opportunities to make further documentaries. His follow up Cutting Edge, The Outsiders, did well critically, and he has had many other offers. He has branched out into directing commercials, an avenue that opened up after Rogue Males. 'I think the ad people appreciated the controversy,' he says wryly.

He won a British Television Advertising award for the recent Oxo campaign, the high-profile replacement for the Oxo family, and also shot the British Gas campaign that saw real engineers at work. He has two drama projects in development: a film about runaway children which will be executed in a similar way to Nice Girl and a more conventional eight-part drama for BBC2, Residents. This sprang from an original idea from him about vigilantism and has been developed into a series by Nice Girl collaborator Basgallop. 'It has the template of a soap,' says Savage, 'but what happens to the characters will be much darker and very different.'

His move into drama was undoubtedly prompted by the problems surrounding Rogue Males and a desire to tackle subjects that he feels are increasingly untenable in a documentary format.

'I want to do all the tough subjects, family films, sexual abuse, rape and you can't do it, you can't put real people through it, it's a tricky moral ground. Drama is the ultimate visual expression of a story and a situation. There's no one saying, you can't do that; you can do anything you want and still entertain and inform.

'I want to make films that emotionally engage and have a message. The message of Nice Girl is that you can ruin your life if you have kids too young, and you can ruin their lives too, because they don't get a fair upbringing. 'I've used the freedoms and the story-telling ability of drama, but I hope that it is gripping and contemporary and has the qualities of a good documentary.'

• 'Nice Girl': next Thursday, BBC2, 9pm