Gaffer Tim Wiley on lighting Gangs of London 2

Gangs of London – one of the biggest Sky Original dramas – is back for its second season. Millions of viewers around the world got hooked on the show back in 2020 and eagerly awaited the return of this BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated series. The new episodes are finally here with the story plot picking up a year after the death of Sean Wallace as a new ruling force looks to cause trouble in London’s criminal landscape.  

Director Corin Hardy aimed to make the ‘most dangerous show on television’ with a tense and ultra-violent season two, packed with even more action and bloodshed.  

Captured by cinematographers Martijn van Broekhuizen, Laurent Barès, Björn Charpentier, and Petrus Sjövik, and lit by gaffer Tim Wiley, Gangs of London 2 has a cinematic feel with distinctive aesthetics for each episode achieved through skilfully crafted camera shots and lighting setups.

Gaffer Tim Wiley turned to Pixipixel to supply the generators and lighting equipment package. We recently caught up with Tim and learnt more about the lighting approach on this production.

Wiley knew the Gangs of London set well as he worked on the first season alongside gaffer Mark Taylor. “Gangs of London is a vast production and our approach to lighting was taken episode by episode. Some of the film locations and builds were trickier – very club like and funky. For a lot of the scenes, we used one major light source such as the Mole Beam fixtures” shares Tim.

“For instance, we used 4K Mole Beams on Genie Booms that raked in really steep in through the windows and then we generally let that light bounce around off the floor which gave us a very gradual fall-off. It looked amazing! For that reason, the Mole Beams were my favourite lamp on this job. They just did exactly what we wanted.

For the club scenes our approach was completely different, with flashing lights and a lot of Astera kits. We had 120 Astera tubes built into the set and used 40 S60 SkyPanels for colour changes and chases.”

Dave Oldroyd from Pixipixel comments: “Sustainability was very important for the Gangs of London production team. The lighting equipment we supplied was to a large extent a reflection on their efforts to reduce environmental impact. The kit list was heavy on energy efficient fixtures such as LED lights and VoltPax batteries which offer clean power while reducing the running hours for the generators and hence lower carbon footprint.”

Fuel use is considered to be the greatest contributor to production’s carbon footprint. Over a year ago, Pixipixel started to fuel its transport and generators with HVO, after estimating it will reduce its fleet emissions by up to 90% and prevent 105 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere annually.

“Gangs of London 2 was the first television production to use Pixipixel’s HVO-powered generators” continues Dave.  

Tim Wiley added: “This was a green show and we had to do what we could to keep it as environmentally friendly as possible. It all worked extremely well.”

“We shot eight episodes over four months in late 2021 and the biggest challenge was always having everything in the right place at the right time. Thanks to Pixipixel, this was always possible. The team was amazing and bending over backwards to make sure I had what I wanted. The job could not have gone smoother.”

Gangs of London 2 is available on Sky Atlantic and NOW from 20th October 2022.