This month we speak to Poppy Gordon Clark, Location Manager and director of Eco Shoots, about Poldark, finding balance and sustainable production solutions.
Poppy started out nearly 20 years ago in Bristol and Liverpool but moved back home to Cornwall eleven years ago. ‘It’s where I’m from, it’s where my family live, and I wanted to bring up my own young family in Cornwall too,’ she says. ‘I always intended to come back, I never meant to be away for so long.’
The role of a Location Manager is much more than visiting beautiful places, though Poppy tells me that is part of what she enjoys about her work. ‘I get paid to photograph clifftops and walk on beaches, it’s fantastic! However it’s also wild, you’ll always have to get some tricky locations that are not straightforward. The logistics side of it can be hard, but most of the time it’s good fun.’
I have to ask; does she have a favourite location? Poppy tells me it’s too hard to choose just one, but if she had to, it might be Gwennap Head - a notoriously jagged section of coast somewhere between Porthgwarra and Land's End - ‘It’s so stunning, but it’s absolutely impossible! I don’t think the rest of my team would agree it’s a favourite,’ she laughs. With no vehicular access, shoots at Gwenapp head are not for the fainthearted but offer some of the most breathtaking rock formations and remarkable southerly views.
When it comes to her projects, Poppy tells me Cornwall-set Malory Towers is amazing to work on, with locations including the historic town of Bodmin, and Trevone Bay where they shot the natural pool that appears at low tide for the iconic school swimming pool. Her favourite production, though, has got to be Poldark, which she feels put Cornwall back on the map for filming. ‘It became part of my life for so long. I got to work with the same crew and location owners every year, and we all became part of the process. I knew the show inside-out. It became really enjoyable… by the end!’ she jokes.
Shooting Poldark certainly had its challenges, including cross-loading kit into 4x4s to move it from location to location on Cornwall’s rugged coast, but for Poppy attitude is everything. ‘Nothing is too serious. It feels very serious at the time, and it is really important, but if you’re behind by five minutes, or you’ve forgotten something, or something breaks down, it’s not the end of the world. It’s very easy to get caught up in thinking that everything must be right all the time. Actually if you take a step back, you can have a little check with reality, and realise that you can still make everything happen, but not be too stressed out about it. It took me a long time to realise that!’
Poppy tells me her team’s job is to create a bubble where it’s safe for the filming to take place without interruption from the outside world. ‘We create a barrier and protection around the cast & crew, as well keeping the public safe. It’s a balance.’ I wonder if shooting in a popular tourist destination like Cornwall without interruption can be difficult, but Poppy explains that she understandably tries to avoid filming in peak season. ‘There are plenty of other months where there’s space enough for everybody.’
Filming Poldark did attract a lot of visitors. ‘It’s always nice to work on something with unknown actors, so we don’t have that problem. It’s the fans that make the show, and that’s what keeps us working, but it’s quite hard for actors in an emotional scene with 200 people shouting their name. That’s the price of fame!’
When it comes to local people, Poppy says that generally, they are supportive and accommodating, even when filmmaking can be quite invasive. ‘We plan and plan and plan, and organise everything, but there’s a lot of firefighting that has to happen on the day. The longer you do it, the more you can predict how things pan out, but you’re dealing with real people in the real world, so you have to do a certain amount of negotiating and sorting things out. Every day is completely different.’
As well as looking after the crew and the public, Poppy extends her duty of care to the environments that she works in. With first-hand experience of the waste created by film sets, last year Poppy set up Eco Shoots with fellow Location Manager Monty Till. Their goal is to provide a hassle-free service that offers innovative and cost-effective solutions to combat some of the biggest eco struggles that the industry faces. ‘We provide sustainable alternatives to a lot of the kit that we use for filming, like generators and tower lights, and we do on-set recycling and used PPE recycling too,’ Poppy says. ‘It’s a massive issue in the film industry, so we’re trying to address that slightly. At some point, we do have to take responsibility for our actions. It’s great to be able to offer alternatives.’
At the end of our chat, I can’t help but blurt out how amazing I think Poppy is. ‘I don’t know,’ she laughs, ‘I think I should have been a sound recordist, it would have been easier!’ And with that I let Poppy get back to her team. They are ‘flat out’ on The Last Bus, currently filming at The Eden Project, but from what I’ve heard they’ll keep their cool no matter what challenges are thrown at them.
Written by Imogen Weatherly, with thanks to Poppy Gordon Clark.
