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In the dark days following the death of Heath Ledger, Terry Gilliam was grieving the loss of a close friend and couldn't bring himself even to contemplate what would happen to the film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, that they had both been working on when the young Australian actor sadly passed on.

"It was a terrible time," he says. "And frankly I was just devastated by the loss of such a great guy. The film didn't really come into it at that point."

But gradually, encouraged by his collaborators including his daughter, Amy Gilliam, who is a producer on the film, he began to accept that finishing it would be a fitting tribute to Heath even though, at first, he couldn't see how they could do it. Ledger died in January 2008 with the British end of the production completed but with weeks of shooting still planned on sound stages in Canada.

A couple of days ago, I managed to catch up with Richard Dodd, director of photography on some of the classic TV shows of yesteryear including HOLBY CITY, THE ROYLE FAMILY and the superb CRACKER.

On the set of his latest project, the fifth series of BBC drama WATERLOO ROAD, Richard talks future plans and the move to the new format, HD.

Q:  Hi Richard. Pleased to meet you. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you started out in the business.

A: Strangely enough,  and unlike most people in the profession today, I arrived from an unlikely start point. As a young man I was training to be a mining engineer in the coal industry and actually worked underground at a local coal mine.

The blackness down a mine when you switch off your helmet lamp is extremely intense and at convenient moments I would do this and visualise my future.

ANGELS AND DEMONS is out in theaters from today, and here we have a sit down Q+A with Mr Robert Langdon himself, Tom Hanks.

When Langdon discovers evidence of the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati - the most powerful underground organization in history - he also faces a deadly threat to the existence of the secret organization's most despised enemy: the Catholic Church.  When Langdon learns that the clock is ticking on an unstoppable Illuminati time bomb, he jets to Rome, where he joins forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and enigmatic Italian scientist.  Embarking on a nonstop, action-packed hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even to the heart of the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra will follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that mark the Vatican's only hope for survival.