Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

Russell McLean:The hardest VFX scene to do was probably the robot going through the window at the back of the van.

Charlie Brooker:In one of those Boston Dynamics videos, they put a banana skin down and this thing slips on it. The robot looks ridiculous, like a plastic lawn chair that’s fallen over. You go, “Haha!”… and then it rights itself, like a nightmare.

David Slade:That almost seemed like a Hollywood movie moment that had been engineered by a robot company.

Annabel Jones:We absolutely borrow that moment for our scene with the van window.

Charlie Brooker:The script specifies that the robot comes through that window, lands unceremoniously and looks a bit pathetic for a moment. Then it gets up and blows the driver’s head off.

‘If there is anyone there… This is just to say that I’m not coming back. Say I’m sorry to Ali and that she should give Jack a kiss from me. I’m sorry I didn’t get the replacement like I promised’

Michael Bell:The window’s glass breaking was a practical SFX effect, shot for real on the day. So when we put the CG dog in the shot, we had to make sure it looked like it was causing the break. That meant painting the glass back over the dog as it smashed through. Once it hit the floor of the van, we added an extra layer of CG broken glass over the top, so the dog had shards of glass bouncing off it as it lay there.

In April 2018, Metalhead won a BAFTA Craft Award for Special Visual & Graphic Effects.

Louise Sutton: Metalhead was up against some huge shows at those awards, so that was a really big coup for us. We’re so proud.

Russell McLean:I’ve had people asking “which bits” were CG! DNEG totally nailed it. This was the smoothest VFX process I’ve ever worked on. DNEG were great and David was very clear with his vision. With animation, it can be very expensive if you start trying different options for the same shot, so you have to be quite certain about what you want to do.

Michael Bell:Some reviews said they were pleased we’d used ‘a practical animatronic robot’, so we knew we’d done a good job. Just in case there’s still some uncertainty out there: it’s all CG. My favourite type of VFX is used primarily as a tool for storytelling. Metalhead couldn’t have been done without the VFX. It was needed to tell the story, but it’s also not singing, “Look how clever we are!”

Charlie Brooker:Among viewers, Metalhead is a divisive one, partly because of the expectations some people have of Black Mirror . They might sit down and go, “Right, what’s the message here?”, but Metalhead isn’t a traditional story. It’s more of an experience: a relentless chase. That wrong-foots some people. Also some people are like, “Black and white? What?” or they expect a big explanation that doesn’t come.

David Slade:Pride is a sin, but I’m guilty of it with Metalhead . It was all of the things I wanted to do. I was really blown away by Maxine. Listen, DNEG did an amazing job, but the best visual effect was Maxine.

Metalhead ’s final image reveals that Bella and co had been searching for a new teddy bear for a terminally ill child.

Annabel Jones:At the beginning, it had seemed that the film might lend itself to having no dialogue. But once the ending had been decided, you needed the set-up. The biggest distinction between Bella and the robot is humanity. She could hunt for survival, but the thing that undoes her is the quest to give some comfort to a dying nephew. Once we had that, you couldn’t really set that up without any dialogue.

Charlie Brooker:Hopefully, by the time you get to the end you’ve sort of forgotten they were at a warehouse at the start, looking for something. The best kind of twist is like, “Remember that? It was only 40 minutes ago but you forgot, didn’t you, you fuckin’ idiot. Don’t you want to know what was in that box? Here it is – pay attention next time. Now fuck off.”

Ahem. That’s not how this show speaks to its viewers.

Annabel Jones:Neither should this book.

Charlie Brooker:Right, let’s leave all of that in.

In Conversation

Charlie Brooker – writer and executive producer

Annabel Jones – executive producer

Penn Jillette – co-story writer

Colm McCarthy – director

Letitia Wright – actor

Douglas Hodge – actor

Joel Collins – series production designer

Nowheresville, Nevada. While British tourist Nish waits for her car to charge up, she visits the nearby Black Museum run by Rolo Haynes. This master of ceremonies tells Nish three stories, each of which corresponds to a ghoulish exhibit. These are the tales of a well-meaning doctor who is doomed to conflate pleasure and pain; a man who regrets having his dead wife’s consciousness installed in his head; and a Death Row prisoner who chooses a torturous digital afterlife to benefit his family. This last story resonates particularly strongly with Nish…

Charlie Brooker:I had a bit of trepidation in essentially following White Christmas with another portmanteau. Annoyingly, I wanted to do this portmanteau when we were at our busiest on Season Four, just at the time when it would’ve been great to do something comparatively easy. But no, the idea in my head had shitloads of stuff going on in it.

Annabel Jones:And set in America! Episode Six was supposed to be our very simple British two-hander. And then: oh, here’s Black Museum …

It was quite involved, finessing all the individual stories so that they build and interlock at the end, having Rolo feature in them all, ensuring all the tech felt as plausible as it could be, holding back the twist, and the final twist. And the detail! We agonise over every detail. And at the same time we’re in the final stages of editing USS Callister , in the mix for Arkangel , working on the VFX on Crocodile , filming Hang the DJ , casting and prepping Metalhead . Why would anyone work like that?!

I remember stepping off the set at Painshill Park in Surrey, where we were filming Hang the DJ . Charlie and I sat in the park café, desperately trying to grab some time to finish the outline of Black Museum . We’re both tired and we’re both stressed. In this public café, we’re having, for us, quite a heated debate. Because we’ve worked together for so long now, we can be totally honest with each other. It’s so important creatively to be able to disagree and argue passionately and know that it’s not going to destabilise anything.

He probably wasn’t even bloody listening. Probably thinking about the most scatological thing he can say in that moment. But God, it was a great script! A really good script.

Charlie Brooker:We’d been discussing some of these ideas for a while. For a long time, I’d been trying to work out this ghost story: the notion of a digital prisoner you could electrocute again and again. There was also ‘Dead Wife in the Head’, as we called it, which was the idea of someone having an ex-partner installed in a dormant part of their brain. And then the magician Penn Jillette and I had discussed this ‘Pain Addict’ idea before Season Three…