Back in 2020, directors Irshad Ashraf and Paul Wilmshurst met as part of Back on Track, a Directors UK and ScreenSkills opportunity for directors returning to the industry.
Their partnership would eventually take them to Budapest, where Irshad shadowed Paul on his episodes of The Day of the Jackal starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch — out now on Sky Atlantic.
Below, we hear from Irshad and Paul about the mentoring experience and lessons learned from the set of The Day of the Jackal.
Irshad Ashraf
After twenty years directing factual programs, I took paternity leave which gave me some time to evaluate my career. Having just directed the TV adaptation of a stage play for BBC 4, I decided to continue directing more drama. Around this time, Directors UK and Screen Skills launched the Back on Track scheme offering mentoring for creatives returning to the industry.
Back on Track sounded perfect for me and I applied saying I was a docs director with drama aspirations. My application was accepted and I was paired with the brilliant Paul Wilmshurst – a partnership that has been a fabulous success. I have to thank Ruth Pitt and Susie Townson who ran the scheme and paired Paul and I together, it was their initial vision that brought us together.
Since our first meeting, Paul has been helping me develop as a director by sharing his knowledge, making introductions and giving advice. Early on, Paul introduced me to his agent Amanda Davis at Curtis Brown and we stayed in touch. A few years later, as my career was progressing, Amanda offered me representation at Curtis Brown.
Photo: Marcel Piti
Both Paul and Amanda have helped me with opportunities that would otherwise be difficult to find. As a person of colour, and also from a working class background in the North of England, I have few contacts or links to an art form I love and have always wanted to contribute to.
Without Directors UK and ScreenSkills pairing me with Paul, I would not have been able to progress the way I have. One thing we’d discussed a lot was gaining some experience on set, and we made plans that fell through because of Covid. Thankfully, I was able to join Paul on set recently, when he invited me to shadow him as he directed episodes of The Day of the Jackal, starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.
I joined Paul in 2023, when he was filming on location in Budapest. Immediately upon arriving on set, I saw the scale of this production — something I just hadn’t had experience of before. There were hundreds of extras, hundreds of crew - a large, complex unit with many moving parts being marshalled by the incredibly good-natured and talented 1st AD Shelley Lankovits. At the heart of it, directing a scene where a large crowd charges out of a building to escape a gunman, was a remarkably relaxed-looking Paul Wilmshurst.
He was just about to do a ‘crew show.’ A crew show happens after director, cast and DoP work out the action and camera positions; they then call the rest of the crew – camera, sound, art, etc., to watch actors run through the action so they can figure out what they need to do for the scene.
During the crew show, DoP Dale Elena McCready introduced herself to me which made me feel incredibly welcome. For the rest of the night, I watched Paul, Dale and Shelley working together to shoot this vast scene from multiple angles, both in and outside the building, using track and crane shots.
Photo: Marcel Piti
The aim was to shoot a sequence that shows Eddie Redmayne’s character, The Jackal, melt into a panicked crowd to avoid his pursuers. Watching on the monitors, I noticed every take captured the mass crowd panic, but also clearly showed The Jackal in the crowd without him ‘getting lost’ behind faces or people running in front.
Paul explained Eddie’s movement had been walked through with military advisor Jeremy Bearder and that Eddie was in fact flanked by stunt specialists dressed as crowd who were ‘guiding’ the line for Eddie to walk so non-stunt crowd did not block him in shot.
Paul and Dale used a Scorpio 45 telescopic crane instead of a Steadicam, which was something I’d not seen before. Cranes are typically associated with aerial shots, sweeping down from an epic wide to a detail below. But here I saw one deployed at head and shoulders level, telescoping horizontally, parallel to the ground.
Throughout out my time on set, Paul made it easy for me to approach people and ask questions. This was really helpful when I was curious about a certain set up; people knew I was there to watch and ask questions, so were happy to talk about their professions.
Photo: Marcel Piti
I spent lots of time with Paul at the monitors. Here, I saw the work of script supervisor Gabriella Winkler up close. The focus required to monitor every take for continuity, to report in real time if every take is ‘good’ from a continuity perspective, then log the take for the edit, requires a lot of skill.
Producer, Christopher Hall, and co-producer, Emily Shapland, were generous with their time and were talking to me throughout the week. One day, Chris arranged for me to visit another The Day of the Jackal unit being directed by Anu Menon. Here, I had the opportunity to watch Eddie Redmayne rehearse emotional relationship scenes.
Observing the very intimate rehearsal, I saw where the actors wanted to be in the space. I then stepped back to the monitors and watched how the scene was recorded – how the camera position and lighting was decided in order to capture what had just been rehearsed. Lighting is an art form, and the teams who create lighting are artists. Seeing DoP Laurie Rose and his team create exquisite lighting that complemented what the actors were doing was a real learning experience.
For the actors, the key is to time their performances to peak during the actual recording – not during the rehearsal or technical run throughs. What happens is that when actors bring the full emotion to a scene, it can go in a new direction or develop a new thought.
The challenge for the crew is to re-set quickly enough to capture the moment, if this is what the director wants. During one take, there was a palpable explosion of emotion. I could feel it stood back on the monitors and the whole crew could feel it. On ‘cut’ there was a rush of excitement as the actors asked to keep going and the crew quickly reset to go again – lightning was striking and everyone was trying to bottle it.
What I learnt during this moment was not to step in, everyone knew what was happening, everyone knew we had to go again quickly and everyone did it. On this visit, that is the key skill I learned: if you are surrounded by brilliant people, let them be brilliant.
Photo: Marcel Piti
Paul Wilmshurst
We had always talked from the beginning — when we first started this mentoring process — about how it would be useful to spend some time with Irshad shadowing on set. But back then there were few opportunities, and Covid made things even less possible. Fast forward a few years and The Day of the Jackal seemed a perfect opportunity to give it a go.
Carnival Films were happy to help, and in the end we managed to arrange a week in Budapest with Irshad staying in the crew hotel, spending all day every day on set, and even finishing the week coming out on a group late-night karaoke session. We were shooting some vital beats for the end of episode 7, dealing with the aftermath of the shooting - so there were fairly complex logistics in terms of location, vehicles and crowd numbers. Irshad had access to everyone in the team, and he used the time productively, observing, asking questions, watching rehearsal and shooting, commenting and making suggestions. Irshad was a welcome presence on set, and - selfishly - I found there was a considerable benefit in having to break down what we were doing and explaining my thinking and choices as we went along.
Obviously this was a pretty massive undertaking, and it gave Irshad access to a large-scale high-end drama production, with all of the benefits and complications that go with working with a large and highly skilled team and very experienced and technically accomplished actors. It was lovely to have a week together in the middle of what was a challenging and also exhilarating shoot.
The Day of the Jackal is produced by Carnival Films, which is part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group, and was commissioned by Sky Studios and Peacock. The series is available on Peacock in the US and on Sky in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution handle international sales of the series.
