999 What’s Your Emergency was on it’s 3rd series when Blast Films approached The Complete Camera Company to take care of the fixed-rig element of the show. For this series they chose to go with an upgraded, full HD multi-camera system which would greatly improve the viewing quality. The decision was made to follow the police and paramedics in Cheshire, a very busy location in the UK, over a 10 week period at the end of 2015.

 

Following The CCC’s initial recces with Blast it was decided that 27 cameras would be rigged across 4 ambulances and 4 police cars. This meant that the vehicles would be chosen at the start of the shoot; each vehicle had a Producer/Director who would travel to each crime scene, and The CCC provided a centrally located camera technician to handle any on-site technical issues.

 

The Complete Camera Company crew rigged the 999 vehicles over an 8 day period, with a team of 3. One of the most challenging issues when filming 999 is rigging a fully-functioning ambulance with camera equipment. In order to cover the action fully, four cameras were rigged in each ambulance, but this had to be fitted around a significant amount of lifesaving equipment that was already present. Leaving room for this the ambulance crew, and the patients, meant that The CCC had to find ways of rigging the remote cameras in unobtrusive places with cabling, batteries and recorders stored in the cab above the driver.

 

Keeping kit safe in police cars that were careering around the streets of Cheshire was also a challenge. In order to make sure that the kit could be seen and therefore taken care of, The CCC built large Perspex sheets for each boot. This way the equipment could be managed without preventing Police Officers from keeping their belongings in there. The CCC also incorporated remote fobs that were used by the PD’s to trigger the cameras to record whilst still outside the vehicle - particularly important when paramedics were administering lifesaving treatment in the ambulances.

 

999 uses both a fixed-rig format and hand-held cameras operated by the PD’s on location to capture a variety of content. With a programme that uses fixed-rig as a contributing factor rather than as its sole format, it is particularly important to integrate successfully into the production. The Complete Camera Company did this by supplying user-friendly equipment that could be easily operated and maintained by Producer/Directors who already had a very heavy workload, allowing them to manage a rig and film handheld on their own.

 

Filming spanned such a wide range of content so it was important that the team remained sensitive to many distressing cases. It really was an incredible insight into the lives of people in Warrington and Crewe. The show received an enormous amount of support from viewers online and on social media, and many viewers seemed keen to have Episode 2 in particular – centred around legal highs - shown to teenagers in schools.

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FACTS AND FIGURES

Filmed: Winter 2015

Aired: July 2016

Channel: Channel 4

Location: Crewe & Warrington.

Cameras: 27