Coronation Street’s behind-the-scenes secrets revealed | Soaps

With over 300 episodes broadcast each year, producing Coronation Street is no mean feat.

A titan of the continuing drama industry, the ITV soap will celebrate 64 years on air this December – an achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without a team of dedicated cast and crew.

From the show’s production hub in Greater Manchester, household names are currently filming scenes that will air in February 2025.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, production staff are working tirelessly to execute their vision while producer Kate Brooks oversees each department and ensures the millions of die-hard viewers continue to tune in each week.

‘Everyone’s got their own, different ways of doing things’ she told Metro, seven months on from assuming the position from interim boss Verity Macleod.

‘No two days are the same on Coronation Street, so it keeps us on our toes.’

Pre-production: Story conferences

Making Corrie is a lengthy process, with a number of difficulties faced in planning long-term.

Monthly story conferences are held to discuss ideas for the next four-week block of stories, with the team charting stories for each character group on laptops.

Explaining story strands

‘Every story starts usually as a D or an E strand. Every episode is made up of an A, B, C, D and E strand’ said story producer Kieron O’Sullivan.

• A story: ‘The big dramatic story of the episode that usually has about seven scenes of the episode.’
• B story: Around four scenes per instalment.
• C story: Roughly three scenes each episode.
• D and E story: Two scenes each.

‘Once you get a few A stories out of it, it drops back down from B through to E. As that story’s dropping down, the next story’s going up. There’s always that constant flow.’

‘We have massive research calls as well, and I’ll write an agenda for the writers,’ Kieron added.

Every three months, the same team gathers together to plot the long-term stories, which will stretch over the next 18 months to two years.

Pre-production: Keeping cast informed

When a big story is coming up, Kate arranges a meeting with cast about what they can expect. These meetings happen ‘pretty far in advance if it’s a sensitive story’.

‘Once it’s been confirmed that this story is definitely what we’re going to do, I’ll sit down make sure they’re happy with it.

Creating a new character

It is during the long-term story conferences that ideas for new characters or families are discussed.

‘Sometimes [we’re] lacking a certain type of character in the show, so we need to fill that hole,’ Kate explained.

‘I’d never bring a character into a show that didn’t have a purpose or a story. They need to shake things up in some form.

The look of a character is also something that is discussed early, with head of hair and make-up Gillian Walsh explaining that the character’s job, lifestyle and upbringing are all factors that will effect their styling.

‘There’s normally a back-story that’s given to me and I’m trusted to come up with that character,’ Gillian said. ‘I’ve been working in Weatherfield for 20 years so I do know these people.’

‘I will do their very first day in, their makeup and hair. Even if it’s a man, their haircut or if there’s any tattoos or piercings. All the cast have a day-to-day look, like people do in real life.’

‘I like to do it as early in advance, so they know what direction their character is going in and so they know how to play certain things. Especially if there’s a relationship on the cards, they want to know when to throw in a flirty look and when not to!’

Pre-production: First draft notes

After receiving the first draft of the proposed stories, Kate gives notes back to the storyliner, story producer and story editors.

‘They’ll go back and compile them into episodes, and I’ll read that version again and give notes back,’ she added.

‘We then present them to the network, so we still get notes from them. Anything too radical I’d run by my big bosses because I don’t want to get sacked!’

Competing with other soaps

There is bound to be some overlap with other soaps occasionally, though Kate explained that they go out of their way to try and avoid this.

‘ITV covers two soaps, so it’s a very rare day when both Corrie and Emmerdale are telling the same storyline at the same time. We purposely work with each other to make sure that that doesn’t happen, because we don’t want our audience to get bored.’

Kate also admitted that she keeps abreast of rival soap EastEnders, though ultimately what they air is beyond her control: ‘A lot of soap fans will say we’re telling the same stories, but we plan stories over 18 months in advance and we didn’t know EastEnders were going to do it.

‘So, while we can keep an eye on Emmerdale and Corrie, EastEnders is a completely different kettle of fish.’

Pre-production: The first script draft

Once the writer for each episode has been commissioned, they must construct a scene-by-scene breakdown of the episode. They then attend a commissioning meeting where they ask any questions they may have.

The first draft script is then written, before everyone meets to chat about what may need changing – from a twist in a story, to whether there are too many characters in an episode.

‘Then the story editor will go back to the writer with an edit,’ Kate explained. ‘The editor will give the writer notes, then the writer will go away and write a second draft.’

Pre-production: ‘Pinks’ meeting

With the writer having worked on the feedback from the team, the second draft is brought to a ‘pinks’ meeting – named after the pink paper the scripts were printed on in days gone by.

Kate then approaches the director at the pinks meeting, explaining: ‘I’ll talk about the vision for the episode, and anything we want to do stylistically.’

‘They’re then published as pre-shooting scripts, and then shooting scripts.’

Stunts

We love a soap stunt, and the planning of one of these major TV events starts up to a year in advance, with production stuff doing everything from booking special effects teams to hiring real-life firefighters and medics.

‘That whole planning stage takes a while,’ 3rd AD (assistant director) Kieran Bussoopun told us. ‘The 1st AD will break [the scripts] down into manageable sizes, which then makes up the call sheet.’

Gillian explained that they need lots of hands on deck to change up the actors’ looks between scenes if they’re filming a stunt, or that they will use stunt doubles so need to match up wigs and costumes.

Pre-production: Director’s prep

The director spends most of their pre-production time preparing camera plans for the shoot.

‘You take the plans of the sets and then you work out where you think the characters are going to be,’ director Suri Krishnamma explained.

With up to 80 scenes in a single block, that’s a lot of work!

The director will also meet with the other departments to discuss any special requirements.

They may also meet with the sound and lighting team ahead of the technical recce, which typically only happens before filming on location, or before a fight scene.

Pre-production: Hair and make-up

Gillian’s preparation for each block of filming begins 12 weeks in advance.

‘It takes three weeks to film one week’s worth of episodes and before that the makeup supervisor on each week’s episodes would have a weeks prep,’ she explained.

She has to ensure there is enough time between filming scenes for actors to change up their looks.

Production: Preparing to shoot

A day on set at Corrie is meticulously planned down to the last minute, to ensure that everything runs smoothly – a difficult feat when filming 30 pages of script a day!

In one day, there can be up to four crews filming at the same time.

Before shooting, Gillian and her team of make-up artists are ready to go from around 7am.

‘It takes roughly 45 minutes hair and makeup time for a female, 15 minutes for the boys unless they’re having a haircut.’

Production: First scene of the day

When filming begins, communication between departments is integral.

While the 1st AD takes control of the floor, the 2nd AD communicates between the different crews to ensure that everything is in place.

Meanwhile, 3rd ADs like Kieran Bussoopun will be on the set, organising supporting artists.

‘If we’ve got a scene in the Rovers where we’ve got a lot of principal cast, we need to be checking our plans to make sure we’ve not put a supporting artist where Ken Barlow (William Roache) is supposed to sit,’ Kieran explained.

‘I will get it in my ear that we’re ready for Kate Ford, who plays Tracy Barlow. So, I’ll say to the 2nd ADs, “Hi, Kate’s in make-up so we’ve got an extra five minutes to wait.” The runners will then escort her to set.’

For one scene, the crew have roughly 40 minutes to an hour to get everything done, including a line run and a rehearsal with the actors.

Production: Shooting continues

Once filming is complete on the first scene of the day, the ADs are already preparing for the next one, ensuring the actors for the next scene are ready to go.

It is integral for each shoot to run on time, as Suri explained: ‘You can’t run over in your scene because that actor who’s in your scene might be needed in the scene for the crew who are involved in the next block.’

The crew have only a few minutes to prepare for the next set-up, which could be in a completely different studio (Corrie has six!).

‘We’re lucky because everything is here. A whole crew move of 30 people takes time as well, so we have to calculate all the time it takes.’

Post-production: Editing

Once a scene has been filmed, all of the rushes (raw footage) are fired over to the editing suite, where editors like Bill Knowles work their magic.

‘My day-to-day is putting together six or seven scenes,’ Bill told us. ‘I’ll put the scenes together as per the script with a script supervisor, who checks the continuity.’

‘At the end, I need to watch the whole thing to make sure it all makes sense!’ he told us.

Then, he will sit with the director of the block for two days, where they will rework the episode to make a ‘fine cut’, trimming it down if it’s too long.

‘Once Kate’s happy with it, we have a thing called “picture lock”, so the story remains as it was presented there, and the episodes will go off to the finishing team, who clean up the pictures, the audio and paint out boom shadows,’ Bill said.

‘The further it gets to the finishing stage and gets to colour grading and audio dubbing, it’s getting closer to the episode going out. They usually deliver the finished product two weeks in advance.’

Post-Production: Publicity

With the episodes ready to go, it is now down to senior publicity manager Alison Sinclair and her team to decide how much information to release to the public, in order to build up enough excitement that people want to tune in.

Alison explained that they work three months ahead of when each block airs to prepare press releases and interviews in order to publicise.

Press photoshoots

Occasionally, the press team will organise a photoshoot to publicise a particular storyline.

When deciding what to release to the audience, Alison explained that most press releases are done ‘with the viewer in mind’.

‘We’re wanting to tease what’s coming up, so we’ll tell them about things that they want to happen,’ she explained, using a recent photoshoot of actors Alison King and Vicky Myers, who play Carla Connor and DS Lisa Swain, as an example.

‘We felt that at the point it was going to start happening on screen, we probably owed the public something. We definitely did that beautiful photograph with the public in mind.

‘We knew that would get a great response, and the actresses were both up for doing that.’

‘Myself, Rachel Newton and Caitlin Connolly, our job is to promote and protect the show, the brand and the cast. To do that, we have to be across everything,’ she told us.

‘We’ve got to keep in mind that our job is to put bums on seats, as if we were a theatre show.

‘To do that, you’ve got to do a certain amount of teasing to get the show talked about, without giving away the crux of an episode.’

The episode hits our screens

And with that, we get the joy of sitting down to watch an episode of Coronation Street, blissfully unaware – until now – that it has been up to two years in the making!

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