Catherine The Great, Sky Atlantic/HBO

How to film a world that doesn’t exist any more? A world of such dazzling opulence its makes the Windsors and Trumps seem slightly suburban, rich with geopolitical events of epic magnitude and budget-busting enormity: vast battling armies, brutal peasant rebellions and towering gold palaces – all set in the endless landscape of 18th-century Russia. Tricky.

This was not just a story of huge scale but a deeply intimate one too. Tracking the Russian Empress through the last decades of her turbulent reign, it was a profound and deeply moving exploration of the personal cost of power.

The more I thought about the show, the more it felt half-Rembrandt close-up character study and half-panoramic Bruegel landscape. The film-making challenge was somehow to capture both the psychological detail of Catherine’s personal journey and a widescreen landscape of impossible scale and drama.

The answer, perhaps, was to put the audience into Catherine’s headspace: our point of view would be her point of view. We would experience the story as she did – on the inside looking out, not outside looking in.

That meant no establishing shots, no drone shots – to which I’ve always had a slight aversion – and the avoidance of that ‘kerchunk’ moment as you cut from expensive exterior to more affordable but vista-less studio interior.

So could we just be there, in the middle of it all, up close with the Empress, seeing what she saw and, in the process, revealing the world she moved through? Could we film it as it was in Catherine’s time: 18th century, pre-industrial revolution, candle lit?

As production designer Tom Burton and I started to figure things out, it became clear that there was no single place that would replicate the world of the story. Piecing it together would involve a patchwork of multiple locations and sets in combination with a high level of photoreal VFX.

Together with producer Jules Hussey and heads of production Christine Healey and Joanie Blakie, a plan crystallised for bases in Lithuania (smaller locations, good facilities and people), Latvia (more scale with medium-sized palaces) and St Petersburg in Russia (huge 18th-century palaces, churches and the real centre of Catherine’s world), with VFX plate shoots in Sweden and Croatia for set extensions and snowy Russian vistas.

“A light morning’s work might involve starting on set in Lithuania, travelling through a series of grand rooms in Latvia and ending up in a palace in St Petersburg”

The practical details were challenging, especially as all these different location elements would continually be in play across the whole show.

For instance, a two-page walking dialogue sequence – normally a light morning’s work – might involve starting on set in Lithuania, travelling through a series of grand rooms in Latvia and ending up in a palace in St Petersburg – with incidental views outside the palace windows being added via plate shoots and VFX.

Any decision in one department would quickly and significantly affect all the others: a show-stopping cathedral location in St Petersburg would let us in, but only on a specific day in mid-winter and at night.

Could we light for day? Would the costumes be ready in time? Could we split the scene and shoot the audience in Lithuania – to give us time to make costumes for a crowd of hundreds – and just film the principals in Russia? Where did the budget for production design end and VFX begin?

Even more than usual, we had to collaborate and figure things out collectively. All the heads of departments – Tom, DoP Stuart Howell, costume designer Maja Meschede, make-up designer Kirstin Chalmers, sound recordist James Harris, VFX supervisor Sean Farrow and editors Stuart Gazzard and Selina MacArthur – were in constant discussion with first AD Andy Mannion and Jules, keeping track of a brain-scrambling matrix of actor and location availability, and budgetary issues such as local spend percentage and tax rebates.

Moving parts

Of anything I’ve directed, Catherine The Great has had the most moving parts – the different aspects of the film-making process all interlinked in a more complex way than ever before.

It’s also been one of the most enjoyable and productive collaborations, with Nigel Williams, Charlie Pattinson from New Pictures and David Thompson from Origin all striving to put the money on screen and to push at every step the creative ambition of the show.

Along the way, Kate Rhodes James assembled an extraordinary cast, led by Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great. Rupert Gregson Williams wrote an astonishing score, Martin Jensen and post house Boom unlocked a rich sonic landscape, and colourist Aidan Farrell brought through the painterly promise of the pictures that Tom, Stuart and the team worked so hard to achieve.

As a director, I strive for invisibility and hope that the writing and the sublime performances from Helen and the rest of the cast tell the story, and that shot by shot, the audience surrender to the magic trick of film-making and are, for a brief moment, somewhere else.