When Yes Means No

Fear and Loathing at The Bank of England

Welcome to The Doc Vault - behind-the-scenes dispatches from the frontline of documentary filmmaking. I’m Rob McCabe, and this is the first of many tales about the chaos, craft, and close calls that come with making real-life TV.

Let’s start with two of the most seductive words in the industry: exclusive access.

To a documentary maker, they’re like tariffs to Trump - strangely beautiful. The holy grail that can turn a decent idea into a money-making, award-winning, bill-paying commission.

Be it embedding with emergency services, following an elite sports team, or documenting a real-life courtroom battle, fighting off the hordes of other interested filmmakers to be told you’re the one being ‘let in’ is a massive deal.

But there’s a catch. Being told you’ve got access doesn’t actually mean you’ve got access. Instead, it’s the tantalising, teasing promise of access. It gets you through the door, but usually a whole heap of painful, anxiety-inducing, non-stop negotiation lies ahead.

It’s something I’ve encountered throughout my career, but no more so than during my bizarre time behind the scenes at the illustrious, secretive, and highly paranoid Bank of England. It was 2018, and as Series Director for a two-part BBC doc my task was to follow then Governor Mark Carney and his team as they attempted to prepare Britain for a potentially catastrophic Brexit deal. I hoped for high stakes, economic earthquakes, huge political tension, and maybe some time spent in a secret underground vault with lots and lots of gold bars.

Previously, I’d filmed the rich and famous give birth at London’s Portland Hospital; barristers preparing to defend people accused of a serious crime; mass murderers in a high-security Bosnian jail. But the suited economists of Threadneedle Street would turn out to be a much greater test.

The first challenge for myself and Producer Emily Bunt was the gaping wide gap between the Bank’s comms department and everyone else. Keen to freshen up the institution’s archaic image, the comms teams had enthusiastically sold the project internally and helped get us inside, but it soon became clear most of the bigwigs were deeply uneasy about getting involved. And matters weren’t helped by Jeremy Paxman.

A few weeks before filming began, Paxman had lunch with the Bank’s Deputy Governors, and after being told about the imminent documentary project, he replied along the lines of ‘why the hell would you want to do that?’. With one short comment which pierced them to their risk-averse banking hearts, he instilled a fear and paranoia which would underpin the next 18 months. Thanks a lot, Jeremy.

And then there was the security team. Despite the Bank’s physical geography and key access points being visible to the entire world on Google Earth, it was explained to me that I’d not be able to film people walking down corridors … or wide shots of people sitting at desks … or shots that showed too many windows.

Why? Because, I was told, terrorists and other criminal undesirables who were looking to attack the Bank would join up all the shots to create an internal map of the building and use this to carry out their dastardly plans.

It would have been useful to know all this before signing up, but I tried to be upbeat. I suggested we edit the film so the geography was impossible to decipher, mixing up different areas of the Bank so we didn’t reveal an accurate layout … AND the Bank’s security people would be able to watch the cuts prior to broadcast to check nothing was given away.

Their answer? “It’s important we remain agile to the risks and cognisant of those threats.” In other words, no.

So just a few days in, the big chiefs didn’t really want me there and it seemed I wasn’t really allowed to film much because my work threatened to undermine security, open the door to bad guys and destabilise the entire UK economy. Mild panic attacks started to punctuate my days. This was a big commission for Raw Television, and I had to deliver. But an uncomfortable truth was dawning on me: whilst the Bank had invited me in and issued me with a shiny new lanyard, its inner sanctum remained resolutely closed.

Weighed down by their excessive fear and restrictions, things became painfully slow. Everything I wanted to film had to be discussed, negotiated, and pre-planned - days or even weeks in advance. The everyday, unfolding, natural flow that normally underpins a good access doc drained away. Even without this crazy nervousness the Bank of England is a challenging place to find drama and suspense. Filming became a tedious slow burn dominated by mathematicians in quiet offices, looking at complex graphs on computer screens.

And getting to Carney himself? That was an even bigger struggle. The ‘rock star central banker’ (as the British press dubbed him) was the main show in town. Charismatic, handsome, ridiculously intelligent and incredibly hard working - wherever Carney was you could be sure that the really big decisions were being made. But whilst he might have signed the access agreement allowing the cameras in, having him appear on them was another matter.

Problem number 1: Carney didn’t ‘get’ the nature of our filming. He didn’t fully comprehend this was a documentary series, not News. It wouldn’t be on the television tonight or in tomorrow’s headlines, but would be transmitted months after filming, at a time when the financial markets had long since moved on. Whatever he said on camera would be too out of date to upset the economy, but Carney didn’t want to risk it.

Problem number 2: Carney was an adept politician (then with a small p, now fully fledged). He was always going to play a long, careful game with one eye on his reputation and ambition and never offer himself up completely. One of the Bank officials told us ‘No one ever forms a personal relationship with Mark’. Crikey.

Problem number 3: He had an issue with his bald patch – and I’m not being childish or superficial here. He really did, and he didn’t like it on camera. So, filming him observationally (even following him down a corridor and into an office) was virtually impossible. In fact, at one point I had to prepare a written request to film him walking from his office to a big committee meeting. It took two weeks for it to be submitted and discussed by the Governors, and they said … no.

So, in the end, how did we get there? How did we manage to capture a never-seen-before interest rate decision? How did we get access to the Bank’s incredible £100,000,000 notes (yes, 100 million) stashed away in a metal box deep underground? How did we eventually follow Governor Carney down a corridor, into private meetings and sit him down for a couple of interviews?

The answer: a mix of patience, determination, occasional belligerence and a big dose of humour - the key ingredients of the documentary maker’s toolkit. Because if ‘yes’ can actually mean ‘no’, you have to keep believing that ‘no’ can eventually become ‘yes’.

---

If you enjoyed this you can subscribe for free and get my next musings direct to your inbox…