Coronation Street fans can look forward to some visually stunning scenes as the show gears up for the final, dramatic exit of much-loved character Kelly Neelan, played by Millie Gibson, this week.
The show is bringing in the very latest special effects technology, which you’d usually be more likely to see in a big-screen superhero yarn than a small-screen soap, to wave Gibson off in a rooftop sequence that producer Iain MacLeod describes as “one cataclysmic explosion.”
The volume wall technology, which was supplied by Manchester’s Recode XR, has previously been used on big Disney hits such as The Mandalorian and the Avengers movies, and sets the actors to work in a blank space, while the background is a set of enormous LED screens. The image on the screens responds to the movement of the camera, so as the camera moves the image alters exactly as it would in real life. The technology, in layman’s terms, is an extremely hi-tech version of longstanding production favourite the green screen.
MacLeod said: “I don’t think any continuing drama, as far as I know, has ever used this technology before. I think we’ll be the first to do it.”
He added: “It leaves me with a heavy heart to say it, but we all know Kelly’s leaving the show. So we thought, well actually, the fact that Millie is going allows us to go really big and do something incredibly high stakes to maybe have some characters step on all these landmines that we’ve buried for them over the years. We’ve really thrown everything at this week to try and bring out all the big secrets lies, reveals, and schemes. As I say, it’s literally got very high stakes jeopardy. It’s visually incredibly impressive.”
