LMGI COMPASS
|
Spring 2019
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39
Photo
©National
Trust
Images
John
Millar
"It was very different seven or eight years ago when television
was a much smaller beast. Now, the scale has grown exponentially.
The Crown, for example, is enormous," with 85 percent shot on
location. "It's as big as most films I've done. But, on a movie, you
prep for two or three months, shoot for two or three months …
you've got one director, one schedule, and every time you finish
a day—that's it! Whereas in TV, we shoot in blocks. So you'll be
filming with one director, prepping with two others—and then
we do this charming thing where we shoot two full units of two
hundred people running around in different parts of the country
at the same time, which can do your head in!"
"We've never been busier for heritage locations," says Tom
Howard, LMGI, supervising location manager for The Secret
Garden, with Julie Walters and Colin Firth. "Look at what's out
there—Mary Queen of Scots, The Favourite … we've got great
stories from those periods, we've got the assets, we should be
making more of this stuff because it's all here. In many cases,
the actor might be standing on the exact spot where the event
happened. I remember taking an American director to London and
it kind of blew his mind. Within a few steps you can take them
through a thousand years of history. He said, 'My God, this is
older than America. We were just setting off in boats when this
was built.' And you walk them around and they go, 'Can I use this?'
'No, that's not Georgian. I know it looks good but it's the wrong
period. You need to be looking on this side of the street!'"
On the other hand, "We're not obsessed with accuracy," says Pat.
"It's not a documentary." In The Crown, the royal family often visits
their residence at Sandringham in Norfolk; "it plays a big part of
their life." But Stephen Dawdry, lead director for Season 1, preferred
Englefield House, an Elizabethen residence and popular film loca-
tion outside of London "because the feel of it was much better."
The peril with that approach? "There's a book by Hugo Vickers
called The Crown: Truth & Fiction. He points out everything we got
wrong!" But Pat is quick to point out that UK architecture does
not always compartmentalize by time and style. On The Crown,
"Even though it's taking place in 1948 and whenever it ends up,
the locations tend to be Georgian buildings. Buckingham Palace
has elements from the 16, 17 and 1800s, right? Like most of these
houses, they weren't all put up in one go."