Interview with Jamie Campbell for Gap Year

5 February 2017

E4’s GAP YEAR, about a motley crew of travelers exploring Asia, touches down on E4 this February. Here we talk to Jamie Campbell, exec producer for Eleven

Q: What is the show about?

JC: It’s essentially five people who find themselves in the far-east; They are out of their depth. They try and make sense of who they are with, why they are there, and they try and keep their problems as far away from them as possible and try and have a nice time in this environment - which is hopefully funny! These guys are in a difficult environment and trying to sustain friendships, find out who they are, travel, make friends with the locals, have a good time – all of that is problematic and because it is problematic, hopefully it is also funny.

Q: Do you think it is true that you can never go on holiday from yourself ? Is that the question that the show is asking?

JC: It’s more of a statement that you can’t. What that means really is that you have baggage that you have to take wherever you go, even if our characters think that they can escape what’s going on back at home; If Ashley thinks she can escape the problems with her scholarship, or Sean think he can take time off from his work and it not be punitive, or if Dylan feels like her can start a love affair again, or Greg feels like he can start a new business empire, or May feels she can find her identity - those problems seep in and you can get away from them.

That’s part of the fun when you watch the show, you’ll see the characters’ problems from home seeping through the cracks and straight into what they were hoping would just be a fun holiday.

Q: If you were to take one moment from the show, a kind of Hero Moment that tells us everything we need to know about the show, what would it be?

JC: For me the defining shot of the show is, one of the opening shots of the show, a big wide shot of a massive intersection in the middle of Beijing where we crash zoom into Dylan and Sean standing with a guide book and Sean’s comment that’s basically ‘Is there a beach nearby?’ In some ways this summarises the show, it’s about people who are out of their depth trying to make sense of their environment, and us watching them and having fun, whilst we see them navigate that world.

Q: Also isn’t it attractive that people recognise themselves in what’s going on here, to a degree? We can all see ourselves in all of those characters at some point.

JC: Yes, the idea of flying out to the far east, whoever you are, feels like quite a luxury in 2017. These characters are going on a luxurious, fantasy trip, that is in many ways quite aspirational, which is what we liked, and also hopefully the fact that when they get there it is not everything that they wanted, is also quite funny.

But we were quite aware in the making of this that not everyone has travelled, not everyone has been out of their country. A lot of people like the idea of doing that and a lot of people can relate to the idea of doing that. So hopefully amongst there’s something quite nostalgic about this, or potentially quite aspirational, hopefully ultimately quite funny.

Q: When you’re creating a show like this how do you formulate these characters, you’ve got your basis but how do you then decide how to avoid clichés? Do you set out knowing exactly how the characters are do you build them as you go?

JC: The important thing for us in the initial stages was that we would film in the far east and we would film in China and it would be a comedy and it would be a drama and we would build characters out of this situation, so that’s really where it began. The process of us working out what the individual traits of each character would be came at a later point, the most important thing for us was that we would create a comedy drama that would be set in an unusual setting.

Q: The reason for Asia was what? Because it was the furthest possible environment for the group to be put in?

JC: It’s tempting to say it’s because there were a lot of nice beaches around Thailand at Vietnam and we thought that would be nice. But in practise when we first conceived it wasn’t going to be in the far east it was going to be in south America but Tom [Basden, creator and writer] had been living in Taipei and I think just out of laziness he said why don’t we set it in China and the far east, which turned out to be a very good idea, because there are very few places in the world where you can have a setting that feels genuinely exotic and untapped.

I think China as a starting point for a series feels quite exotic and we wanted to put our characters in a place that would feel out of context and out of their comfort zone and China really did that job. It served a dramatic purpose, but also there were some beaches which made it feel like in Thailand and Vietnam we were going to have some fun. It was basically ‘how can we get to the beach fast enough?’ was really the driving force – it was a very complicated way of spending a long time on the beach!

Q: What makes the story special from this part of the world? What’s the relationship between the location and our characters effectively?

JC: The main point of the relationship between the locations and the characters is that the characters don’t understand the locations and have never been to these locations, and that’s true of all the characters especially Greg and the point for him is that he’s been to all of the locations 20 years ago and is re-treading those footsteps and feels as though he has an expertise into the journey.

Part of his character arch through the series is that he realises that this expertise doesn’t really make him a better person and doesn’t necessarily help him to navigate his crisis anymore effectively.

It’s important in terms of the characters and the locations that there is a bit of a gulf, that the characters feel uneasy at times, amazed by their surroundings at times and definitely unfamiliar with it, it’s an important factor.

Q: Let’s dive into the characters and talk about developing them, let’s start with Greg because he’s the generational element who stands for something else. How did you make sure you avoided the clichés of the aged traveller?

JC: When we discussed the idea of Greg initially, we wanted him to contrast with the four characters that were a lot younger and fresher – Dylan, Sean, May and Ashley. He would be a really older character in his late thirties, because Tom, Joel and I are all in our mid/late thirties it felt like we could bring some experience and weight to the dramatization of that sort of person.

We like the idea that Greg would have lots of experience, in his own mind at least! And therefore he would think he could bring something very different to the group – turns out the that experience doesn’t necessarily make him a better person or help him avoid his midlife crisis but it certainly make him distinct in the group.

Q: Once you had Tim Key on board how did that change the development process of that character across the series?

JC: We all thought it would be a coup if we got Tim, and Tom wrote the part hoping that Tim might be able to play the role. I think Tim coming on board was part of the scripting process and then when Tim actually agreed to be in it, it was obviously very exciting for us.

Q: Talk about the process of developing Sean and Dylan’s characters. Here are two young men from London, their look on life is so vastly different from Greg, even just on the basis of the move of technology in the last 10 years, they are totally different animals, they talk differently etc. How important was it for you to make sure that felt genuine?

JC: The contrast between Dylan and Sean and all the other characters is very important – not just with Greg. There’s an age differential between those characters and Greg but there’s also in someway a worldly difference between Sean and Dylan next to May and Ashley.

We like the idea that those two American women would bring something more intelligent to the mix and that they’d be more worldly than the boys, they seem more educated in some ways and smarter in some ways.

We like the idea that the Brits would have bullishness and arrogance to them but that they might not be able to handle the world as well as the two American women. To the same degree it was interesting the idea that there were two young British guys who feel very confident and that Greg’s confidence as a more mature bloke is a different trait to bring to the group. So, sort of ‘I’ve done this all before, you guys have everything to learn’ and in the end I think with all the characters what were trying to create the sense that no one really knows what the fuck they’re doing and particularly when you’re travelling everyone thinks they’re having an authentic experience, everyone thinks they know better than everyone else, but ultimately the world and the environment tends to be the winner.

Q: And the difference between Dylan and Sean’s character as personalities, how important was that to keep that fresh across the storyline?

JC: The dynamic between Sean and Dylan is critical across the series and we wanted to establish a really clear friendship where there are fault lines and into episode one Sean is someone who wants to have a really great time and get back together with Dylan as it were and go and have a great lads holiday.

The fact that Dylan clearly has a different agenda is really the starting point for a relationship that will be quite turbulent across the series. It’s really important to us that Sean and Dylan have the potential for an idyllic friendship but that things keep getting in the way, the environment gets in the way, Dylan’s pretentious ambitions get in the way, the fact he’s chasing Lauren gets in the way.

Sean by contrast is easy to please, he just wants to travel with Dylan and have a great time together – if only things were that simple!

Q: For what is effectively a British production – how interesting was it to bring two key American girls into that environment?

JC: It was really important to us this show feels international, and to that extent we wanted international characters, we wanted English speaking characters and we wanted a really accurate reflection, where we could get it, of the local places that we went to, so we employed local actors and crew, as you can see you lead characters are either American or English, it was important that all of those characters felt authentic.

Q: What makes the girls relationship as important as Dylan and Sean’s relationship?

I think Ashley and May have their own special dynamic. May’s drive in the series, in the outset at least, is to have an authentic experience reconnecting with Chinese Asian family and really that’s her main concern and nothing will get in the way of that.

In some ways Ashley is an annoying impediment who is stitched on her journey. May is still prepared for her to be there and prepared to pay for her journey to some extent, but ultimately she’s gone to get together with her Chinese family. When that all falls apart for May, she’s got to recalibrate when she thinks about this environment, what she thinks about being in China, being with these four people that she doesn’t necessarily get on with and she has to really go to Ground Zero in terms of her character, and part of that is working out who May is.

Her journey across the series is very important: what is means to be American, what it means to be Chinese-American, what it means to be in the far east where the Chinese and Asian people that she encounters don’t necessarily take her seriously as a Chinese American.

I think the thorn in the side of that journey tends to be Ashley who can be much more easy sometimes and breezy and frankly is syphoning off May’s cash wherever she can!

For Ashley the question of authenticity is also quite important because she has a college degree looming for which she has a scholarship but the scholarship is questionable and part of her journey across the series is her working out if she can actually go back to university and whether that’s important or whether being in the world is more important or just having fun.

I suppose those are the questions that, we felt, people of that age tend to be concerned with. People of my age seem to be concerned with ‘are we going on an authentic journey?’ ‘to what extent can we say that we’re happy with work?’ Do we need more education?’ ‘Should we just have fun?’ All those questions which feel very lithe when you’re in your late teens and early 20’s, we wanted all our characters to ask. For Ashley it’s a particularly pertinent question because she’s got a lot riding on her scholarship and education.

Q: Practically speaking, you’re taking an entire show and dumping and moving round Asia for a period of 6 months, that’s tough! How do you set about trying to make that work as a producer?

JC: I mean it was clearly a mistake! I regret every moment where we decided to go to China! What were we thinking? I just wish we’d just gone and done it on a beach in Devon somewhere.

Ultimately it was something we said to Channel 4 that we were going to deliver and it was pretty tough. We didn’t actually get the permission to shoot in China until a matter of a week/week and a half before we started filming.

We’d tried to get permission for 18 months. You realise there’s one thing you can definitely say about China and that’s that they love bureaucracy. We had this surreal process where we knew the Chinese government were reading drafts of the script to see if they were going to let us film. I had this vision of Chinese officials reading the script in tandem and either laughing at it, and finding it hilarious in Chinese translation, or just being completely bewildered. Whatever was really happening there, it took a long time for them to say yes. We had submitted this script to one particular government department and nine months after they’d done that they came back and said “this is the wrong department, you need to submit it elsewhere”. So we submitted it to another department and that took six months or so.

The British Embassy was very helpful in moving that process to the ultimate conclusion which came at a very late stage. It was a really tricky process, and in the end we were delighted that they did give us permission but we had heard before we started this journey that there hadn’t been anyone western drama series that had filmed in China. There had been a lot of movies from the west but no drama series.

We went on a voyage of discovery to find out why that was. Having said all of that, we couldn’t be more delighted with what we shot in China, when you put in context and against the fact that it took so long to get the permission to shoot in China, when we actually got, for example on to The Great Wall and it was a beautiful sunny day and you had all the actors up there, it was tranquil, everything went smoothly and we were getting beautiful shots – it really felt worth it.

When we filmed live at the music festival at the Great Wall, towards the end of the schedule, it felt like we we’re doing something quite innovative in some ways and when we were filming on the subways and at the train station in Beijing.

Our company makes factual films as well and we employed a documentary technique in some of those scenes where we were shooting live amongst real people and locations. To do that in Beijing felt very exciting. So to answer your question: the process of getting to shoot in China was arduous but ultimately really worth it.

Q: But also the whole show is 100% location, you constantly have to adapt to different locations. As a team how did you find the differences, were they very dramatic? Or did you live in a bubble until you got going?

JC: It was a terrible idea! We should have stayed in the UK.

Q: Used a green screen!

JC: Yes! It would have been a lot cheaper and a lot easier. The reality is that we filmed across five different countries, each of which had its own idiosyncrasies and quirks. That was both challenging but also part of what excited us about making the show in the first place – it was incredibly rewarding shooting live at the Full Moon Party in Thailand, or shooting on the underground in Beijing, or live at a music festival by The Great Wall. It’s a very different shooting experience to shooting in a studio in Pinewood or shooting in a much more controlled situation on a sound stage or in the UK full stop. There were real logistical challenges.

Tim Whitby, who produced the show, survived the experience and delivered something that we’re all really proud of. It was not an easy production experience. I have to say, we were really lucky that no one got seriously ill and everyone got on. We were very lucky.

Q: You’ve got five very different personalities in the main cast; with those five how difficult was it to give them fairly equal screen time?

JC: We wanted to make the show feel like it was a gang show and that there’s a really satisfying story for the characters across the series.

So, if you watch, Sean in Episode 1 will hopefully be a very different place from where Sean is in episode 8. By the same token we wanted each episode to feel like it had a satisfying story in its own right, hopefully you can tune in to episode 4 and even if you haven’t seen the previous 3 episodes you should be able to enjoy episode 4 in its own right.

We were trying to make a gang show where you’re invested in all five characters – you probably have a favourite, but each of them (I haven’t counted the lines) but hopefully each of them does have a roughly similar line count and providence across the series. We definitely wanted to feel like there was no specific lead who is more important than the other characters. Audiences will inevitably choose their favourites but I suppose we were trying to create a democratic gang, if you like.

Q: How delicate was the balance between comedy and drama? Are you conscious not to include too many one line gags about travelling?

JC: I think in some ways comedy-drama is a very difficult genre to get right; To make sure than something has a dramatic spine and is engaging dramatically but is also consistently funny. That’s why Tom Basden is such a great creator and show runner on this, he gets the tone and it’s so difficult to get right.

There are so few comedy drama series that I have in my head which are really successful and that’s because the tone is so difficult to get right and Tom is one of the few writers who can really pull it off. The answer to that is: We always wanted to make you engage emotionally with the characters and care about the characters and feel like there is a dramatic journey that they are going on, but in the process we really want you to find it funny and to laugh.

It’s a very delicate balance and we’ve thought about it really hard right from the beginning of the process right through to the end of the edit. In the edit you are able to push the dial to some degree either towards comedy or drama, even at that late stage we’re thinking about what the ideal tone should be that we want to establish – hopefully we’ve struck the right balance.

Q: How helpful is the fact that the cast are unknown?

JC: I think that having a cast that’s less known has its own benefits. I think if you know an actor well you tend to project things on to that character and I think there’s something good in terms of dramatization and characterisation from that point of view, but also there is something that we love and find really exciting about finding new talent.

Tim Key is better known and well loved in the UK and is quite established. The other four leads are less well known and that’s actually quite exciting for us, the idea of breaking them into significant roles in a show like this is the process of finding those actors and then developing the characters with them, is part of what makes the process exciting.

Q: One thing I’d like to pick up on is Janeane Garofalo’s character, why is it important that she’s there at the beginning to help set things up?

JC: I think the character Sam, is almost an immediate obstacle for Dylan and Sean. Dylan has a particular agenda that Sean isn’t aware of at the beginning of the series, but Sam cuts right through it and is like “why would you guys even go to China? As a travel expert I can tell you, if you want a lads holiday that is not the place to go!” Hopefully that gives a bit of context for the series, which is that these guys are immediately in the wrong place.

Q: That support from E4 gives you the opportunity to go to those places and then throw those places away in your mind. In a way what you do beautifully in the show is concentrate on them and their little spat rather than this enormous beautiful structure.

JC: For me part of the way that the show is constructed is that it could have all taken place in Basingstoke in the UK in quite an unromantic and un-exotic environment. Frankly, it would have been a lot cheaper if we had done that and it possibly may have been better! But the point is that we grafted normal arguments and normal problems for normal characters into a setting that was quite exotic. In many ways the settings don’t really affect the problems, it is just a more glamorous and exotic setting. We felt it was a good attitude for the show, you could have an amazing vista, you could have the great wall, the Full Moon Party in Thailand or downtown Ho Chi Min but actually your problems don’t change. To that extent we had a mantra for the show which was ‘you can’t go on holiday from yourself’ and really the problems you had in Basingstoke are probably going to be the ones you find yourself with in Ho Chi Min.

Q: You did mention the documentary style, but it's really very filmic and feels very rich and quite expensive. Was there a discussion before hand about the visual approach?

JC: We initially conceived the shows as quite stripped back and almost that we would go and film it like a documentary and that radically changed as we developed it with E4.

Once we knew what the budget was, we kept our documentary attitude, which was basically - for a relatively modest budget we are going to film in five different countries across the far east, so in a way, we carried a documentary attitude in to it, but the actual approach to the filming and the aesthetic was very filmic, we wanted to achieve something that was aesthetically impressive and bold and took you into those environments in a way that was aspirational.

Ultimately we want people to watch it and want to be there rather than “Jesus I can’t think of anything worse than being there.” Hopefully we achieved that. I’d say that even the proposition of filming across five different places, including China, which is a different one to get into, quite literally, it required a bit of attitude and maybe that’s something that we learned making documentaries which we have done for quite a lot of our careers.

Gap Year will air on E4 this February.