Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610353
40 P E R S P E C T I V E | N OV E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5 a minimum of construction, a brutal prison exterior was created. The prison interior was a mixture of sets built into a remand facility beneath a disused courthouse. One of the film's larger sets was a market street in the East End where Ronnie tries to persuade Frances to return to him. The location department found a street with shop fronts that were now lived in; each single one had to be transformed, with shop façades, signage and dressings. A colour magazine article about a photographer who documented the quotidian shops of 1960s working-class England, that I clipped fifteen years ago, proved to be invaluable reference. The trick was to make old props feel new and new things feel like they were of the time. This was contrasted with scenes in the Mayfair House of aristocratic government minister Lord Boothby, as well as the country residence of the Prime Minster, Harold Wilson. Lord Boothby was a bisexual associate of the openly gay Ronnie Kray. Crispian provided Boothby with rich velvets, elegant ivory curtains, exotic artefacts from all over the world and layers of the finest crystal wear. A fascinating real-life detail was that the brothers ended up living in modern apartments, one above the other, in North West London. The built set for Reggie and Frances' apartment was made cooler, calmer, perhaps with borrowed taste, all mirrored, bronze-tinted surfaces. Ronnie's, however, was a darker, denser, packed Aladdin's cave of gold, chrome, ritual swords and hidden cameras—with which he blackmailed the establishment figures that attended his orgies, like Lord Boothby and Parliament member Tom Driberg. A high point in the Krays' club ownership was the Hideaway Club, just off Piccadilly. Reggie shows Frances the exterior on a snowy night, which was shot in a quieter street in the East End, with again lots of shop fronts created and dressed, along with VFX set extensions to show the scale of the streets. I saw this club interior as silver and black, a large multilayered space with dark navy and silver velvets, lots of crystal glasses and silver buckets. The increasingly disturbed Ronnie hovers on the balcony, disconnected and distant from the centre of the action. Frances, separated now but feeling trapped and isolated, can't take the pressures and contradictions anymore and takes her own life. Reggie visits her body in what was scripted as a funeral home, but that I suggested should be a mortuary, to take advantage of an atmospheric location. He descends, Orpheus like, down the stairs into a cold terrazzo room, putting back the wedding ring on her finger...even in death she can't escape him. The police are closing in, and changes are seen there too, from the Victorian old Scotland Yard, to the modern Tintagel House, where the police are piecing together the jigsaw of the Firm's activities. But it's Ronnie who is really broken, and events close in on the twins. The final threads weave together at a party in Blonde Carol's, Evering Road, North London. It's now 1967, so sets, costumes and hair all show how much material culture has changed since we first met the twins, with much more vibrant and saturated colours. This also acts as a counterpoint to the sudden and absolutely brutal violence of the night as Reggie murders Jack "The Hat" McVitie, a petty criminal, in an act that eventually brings the twins down. Top: Elo Soode's Photoshop concept sketch of the Greek café, the scene of an assassination attempt on the rival gang leaders, the Richardsons. Extensive location construction was built into a disused garage space with suitable relationship to the outside road to enable a van to be driven at high speed into the café. The van was set onto tracks and the entire front of the café was a breakaway. Center: Mr. Conroy's quick first rough concept, done in pencil and digital wash, of the Hilton hotel suite where the Philadelphia Mafia meets with the Krays. Above: A more developed Hilton sketch by Mr. Conroy served as a light and color study of the extensive constructed set, built with green screen and motion control into a 1960s office building.