Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610353
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 37 graphically, as if it's "what the Krays saw in the mirror." The film is also, perhaps, a love letter to the London of the time. With the close collaboration of cinematographer Dick Pope and costume designer Caroline Harris, the Art Department, set decorator Crispian Sallis and myself (along with the rest of our wonderful team), built up layers of details, from the twins' first snooker hall to the glamour of Esmeralda's, their first West End nightclub. Supervising Art Director Patrick Rolfe had the onerous, chess-like task of wrangling all the various construction, dressing and strike schedules over 110 sets in every corner of traffic-choked London, working closely with construction manager Dan Crandon and propmaster Muffin Green. London is redeveloping at an astounding rate so Pat Karam's location department was challenged to find intact street locations. The film's East End became a Top: Mr. Conroy's Photoshop ® concept sketch of Richardson's scrapyard, an imagined location for the rival gang's torture chamber, filmed in a disused bus garage in East London. Above, left to right: A pencil sketch by Mr. Conroy to show the plan and dressing. A set still of the finished and dressed garage. labyrinthine mixture of blackened streets near Waterloo Station, Stoke Newington and Greenwich, all miles apart in reality. Everything needed considerable painting, coverups, and door/window plugs to bring them back to the polluted gritty streets of the '50s and '60s. The colours are muted and de-saturated to especially contrast with the glamour of Clubland. The Swinging Sixties hadn't quite made it to the East End. The audience is properly introduced to Ronnie in Long Grove Psychiatric Hospital, filmed in a disused institution, which again was made bleak and muted. This is contrasted with a psychiatrist being intimidated in his dark, luxurious, veneered West End private suite, which set decorator Crispian Sallis filled with fascinating detail. A sordid torture chamber was set in a scrapyard, where the rival Richardson gang's awful violence is almost incidental, as if it were improvised from