Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker:I’d been inspired in part by the [US robotics company] Boston Dynamics videos. Those robots are nightmarishly familiar, in terms of their shape and some of the movements they make. And at the same time, there’s something completely unknowable and alien about them – they don’t have any kind of face, or anything you can project any sort of feeling or emotion onto. Sometimes they move in a way which gives you this horrible sense of vertigo.

David Slade:Charlie and I were both terrified by the Boston Dynamics robots. Not only are these things very much a reality, but there’s a menace to them. The reptilian part of our brains finds them very scary, because they’re the first big threat to human civilisation.

Louise Sutton (producer):We needed to make our robot dog look terrifying without anthropomorphising it. But as soon as you start animating something, it has a character! We went through so many different versions: four legs, two legs, a dome on the top…

Joel Collins:I believe military robots will have Kevlar in the future, because robots are quite fragile. So we put some of that armour on our robot’s back end, like fabric covers. Our director David came along with ideas, wanting the design more angular. We’d got quite far with the dog and David pushed it to the final hurdle with me. We carried on working until we nailed it.

Charlie Brooker:We wanted the robot to dispatch people in a very brutal way. When it shoots the top of the guy’s head off in the warehouse, it feels very real and horrible. We’ve had gore before in things like Playtest , but there’s something extra nasty about the matter-of-fact nature of these killings.

There’s something nice about it being a completely unceremonious and brutal slaying device. It just goes bang , which is scarier than if it delivered a speech about how it was going to kill you. It doesn’t even try and cool look, by playing rock music while it kills.

Louise Sutton:Having agreed what the robot would look like, we went to the VFX company DNEG and started to build on top of that. If the robot didn’t look terrifying or believable, the whole film would just not stand up. So we went to somebody who we knew would deliver that level of intricate animation.

Russell McLean (VFX producer):DNEG’s CG character work is excellent. I think they had people fighting within the company to work on Metalhead !

Michael Bell (VFX supervisor, DNEG):Having been a massive fan of previous seasons, I instantly wanted to be involved.

The more challenging the project became, the more excited I got. I knew we were doing something completely unique.

The legendary British actress Maxine Peake, from TV’s Shameless and Silk , was cast as Bella.

David Slade:Once we’d got Maxine, I knew the camera would largely be close on her face. My goal was to access her astonishing ability to reach inside of herself and pull out truth. To do that, she needed to trust me. I needed to trust her, and set up an environment that was immediate and uncomplicated.

While flying from Los Angeles to London to start prep, I decided Metalhead had to be black-and-white. All of the visual themes I was trying to orchestrate – weight, heaviness, metal, stains, scratches, rust – were pushing me towards taking away all the colour. There would be utilitarian advantages too, such as a clearer and sharper image, and it helped streamline the choice process.

Annabel Jones:David felt this was a world that had collapsed and there was no hope or colour left. In black and white, it just feels more desolate and destroyed.

Charlie Brooker:Shooting in monochrome suited the spartan nature of the story. And that helps bed the CGI in, in a way.

Russell McLean:The film being black and white actually made the FX a bit harder. But it was exciting to do it that way, because I’d certainly not seen anything with that kind of CG character in black and white.

Louise Sutton:It was nerve-wracking, because we actually shot Metalhead on two of the few monochrome cameras in existence. There was no going back! It took an enormous leap of faith.

David Slade:I don’t ever worry about that. I figure that if I’m passionate enough about something, then everybody will get on board. And after about three weeks of convincing, they did. Then, once the decision was made, I basically made the entire production monochrome, so we could start thinking that way. When the wardrobe or location photographs were coming in, I’d make sure they were all monochrome photographs. Even my memories of this production are monochrome!

Susie Coulthard (costume designer):As we only had three human characters, we needed to make sure our choices were correct, as so much screen time would be given to the ‘hero’ outfits. We went for a gold shiny coat as one of main layers for Bella – something which would not have been chosen, had we been shooting in colour. We also took some great Richard Avedon references from [Laura Wilson’s 1985 book] In the American West .

Louise Sutton:We went off to shoot with stunt drivers, stunt coordinators, puppeteers, cameras on the backs of trucks, drones… we had all the equipment in the world. For the scenes where you see Maxine driving the car, we had a pod built on top for a remote driver, who could then steer the vehicle. One of the things that really draws you into the film is that you’re right up and close to the action. David’s a very intense director, who really captured the relentlessness of that chase.

David Slade:The word I kept saying, over and over, when asked what I was looking for, was, “Life!” There are many ways to shoot people in cars, and I wanted something fast and loose, but also quite simple. Using a pod driver on top of the car enabled me to sit with Maxine and say, “There’s no-one in the car but you.” When she’s in the driver’s seat of this car going at 30 miles per hour, it’s quite easy for her to access her fear.

Annabel Jones:Obviously, we shot the whole film without the dog there, and the great Maxine Peake had to act against nothing, putting her faith in David, DNEG and our post-production team, to be able to create this robot character.

David Slade:There was one physical dog prop that we used, so Maxine knew the size and the scale. But there was no greenscreen, and everything was kept as far away from that antiseptic studio experience as possible. It was real locations, with no built sets. We were shooting in fields, climbing over fences while carrying gear, rather than flying around in helicopters.