'The Suspect' director James Strong has admitted the opening scene was "reminiscent" of a scene he worked on for 'Doctor Who'.
Aidan Turner stars in The Suspect
The filmmaker at the helm of the new ITV thriller - which started on Monday night (29.08.22) - has discussed the first scene, which saw psychologist Dr. Joe O’Loughlin (Aidan Turner) on a high window ledge trying to stop 17-year-old Malcolm (Gabin Kongolo) from taking his own life.
Reflecting on the logistics of shooting such a tense scene, he admitted it was "an incredibly complicated process".
He told RadioTimes.com: "I've been fortunate enough to do a couple of those sorts of things – there was actually an episode of 'Doctor Who' called 'Partners in Crime', where David [Tennant] and Catherine Tate are hanging out a window, so that was kind of reminiscent of this."
Joe was strapped into a harness, but he dropped a second one meant for Malcolm - which viewers learned was due to early onset Parkinson's disease - and had to remove his own equipment and give it to the teenager.
However, Malcolm lost his footing and they both fell from the ledge, with them both hanging on for dear life until the emergency services arrived and helped them to safety.
Further going into the shoot, Strong added: "Firstly, you've got to work out what shots you want, so you do storyboards or shot lists – a bit of both – and you kind of imagine a sequence in your head, and then you work out how to get each one of those shots ...
"It then breaks down to what we could do at a real location – and then obviously working with the constraints of that location, and what the insurance will let you do, and what you can do with visual effects.
"So all those things are considerations – time, money, all that stuff."
Meanwhile, he was determined to film practically as much as possible, with stunt doubles shot high on a ledge of a real London hospital, and the two actors shot on a "quite high" ledge created for the scene.
He said: "VFX is so good these days, I probably didn't really need to have have people on a ledge. But psychologically I felt you would know, and you can tell."
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