Surviving Disaster: Munich Air Crash
BBC 1 / DISCOVERY - 2006 - Director/Writer
Based on transcripts from the remaining survivors, I wrote and directed a drama about the Munich air crash 6 Feb 1958 – one of the worst tragedies in sporting history. Eight of the ‘Busby Babes’ Manchester United football team and manager were killed or injured in the plane crash, which shocked the world and left Britain in mourning.
Key to making this work on a £250k budget was taking the drama into the powerful inner connections between the star-studded players and their manager.
I cross threaded a number of the players’ personal narratives in the lead up to the crash to build a powerful portrayal of the teams inner dynamics.
If I can keep away from CGI I will go to great lengths to shoot drama on authentic locations, so key was finding an original era Elizabethan plane (at an airport in Vilnius). We then made scaled models of the plane for the crash sequence and staged the drama on a reconstructed crash site.
