Chiswick Art Director Wins An Emmy

Paul Ghirardani wins one of seven awards for BBC's Little Dorrit

Chiswick's Paul Ghirardani has won an Emmy award for his Art Direction on the BBC drama Little Dorrit.

Paul, whose evocative interiors, exteriors and buildings were so admired during the popular adaptation of Dickens' novel, won one of seven Emmys awarded to the drama during the ceremony held at Hollywood's Nokia Theatre.

He told ChiswickW4.com, "In this year's Emmy's I was fortunate enough to have been nominated twice - Art Direction on Into The Storm and Art Direction on Little Dorrit, so I am thrilled to have won an award.

"Little Dorrit was a major undertaking for all involved, filming for four months in and around London and then onto Venice. On a project like this we work so hard to produce drama of quality and I am so glad that our effort has been recognised by the Academy."

The programme was named as best mini-series as well as picking up awards for outstanding writing, directing, costumes and cinematography.

In an interview with ChiswickW4.com last year, Paul explained, "I was approached in January by the producer with 16 scripts, one is bad enough but having to wade through 16 is phenomenal! So I had to try and formulate in my head a plan about how we were going to set about it.

“We began with build the exterior of Clennam house at Pinewood Studios but you can’t just build a house in isolation, we had to build streets and the square around it. We also built a series of alleyways one of which led to the gates of Marshalsea Prison. We then took those gates with us when we were filming at Hampton Court, they were the connector. Connectors are always a problem, you have to really go for them or else it doesn’t work. For example all the brickwork at Pinewood was copied in great detail to make sure it was a perfect match to the brick work at Hampton Court."

“We had to build the Clennam house with the end in mind knowing that in six months time we would be destroying it on camera. So we built in weak spots around the windows and doors so we could collapse it quickly. You have to plan quite far ahead.”

The full interview with Paul can be read here.

September 24, 2009