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 41 Above, top to bottom: Ms. Soode's study for the exterior of Wandsworth Prison also acted as a guide for visual effects extensions; it was shot at an old waterworks in South London. The Wandsworth Prison visiting area as envisioned in Photoshop by Ms. Soode was constructed on location in the same disused hospital used for Ron's Long Grove. Boothby was a bisexual Conservative Party minister with strong ties to Ron Kray; Ms. Soode drew Boothby's Buckinghamshire country house which was decorated and dressed for the scene. The film has caused many strong reactions in the UK, but one of my favourites is from a woman, a niece of one of the Firm, who said: "The look of the film felt like birdsong, just out there in the city sky." ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS FROM CRISPIAN SALLIS | SET DECORATOR The world of the Kray twins just leapt off the pages of Brian Helgeland's script, and I was immediately hooked. Brian wanted the film to be glamorous but it had to be real. Well, real plus thirty percent. I feel that for a set decorator to make a point on camera about status and wealth and style, and this film needed to make a point, I pretty much have to ramp up the volume by around thirty percent. By the time the film is cut and some of each set you've dressed hasn't quite been shot or is left on the cutting room floor, you need to have amplified what's left. Legend required this. The characters of Reggie and Ronnie, and the real life of London's Swinging Sixties demanded it. This was a film that was going to grab you by the throat, and the sets had to measure up. Tom and I started defining the style and finding the colour palette. Then, while he was looking for locations with Brian, I was out with my buying team snapping up everything in sight that had a part to play in the Krays' life. While I did that, I started hunting down period wallpapers, mostly from my old friend Trevor Howsam in Boston, Lincolnshire. Trevor even found spare rolls of the original wallpapers that matched Violet Kray 's Vallance Road house, the Krays' family home in Bethnal Green, London. I've had the pleasure of working with Tom several times now and we have a shorthand, largely developed over many days and nights at the start of each project. Legend was no different. We had to get the tone right: too glamorous and we would be sending it into pastiche, too real and the film wouldn't have bite. There had to be a style. We worked hard to get the balance right. And all the time I was checking in with costume designer Caroline Harris to make sure the colours and textures we were pursuing matched and coordinated with hers. The biggest challenges were the sets for Ronnie's and Reggie's flats in Cedra Court, North West London. As Ronnie lived above Reggie and Frances, Tom built one fabulous set with subtle changes to the two brother's apartments and we had to figure out where exactly to pitch each one. Tom nailed the shape quickly, then chose the wallpapers from our selection, and the paint colours to coordinate with them. From the earliest days, I'd show Tom photographs of key pieces of furniture that would act as springboards for mood and character. We chose to go with warm ambers and bronzes for Reggie's and cool blues and blacks for Ron's and the furniture stayed true to that with Ron's eclectic, flamboyant tastes leading actor Tom Hardy, when he first saw the set to exclaim, "Awesome, guys, you can design my man-cave any day!" Sets, such as the hotel suite in the brand-new London Hilton had to show the signs of the times as well as the influence of modern American styles coming from over the Atlantic. Balancing that, a sombre old bus depot was dressed as a scrap yard turned torture chamber for the Richardson gang's hideout. Then colour was everywhere in Blonde Carol's Evering Road basement flat for the party scene at the end of the movie where Jack "The Hat" McVitie is stabbed a million times by Reggie Kray. Tom and I felt, given the story by this time had moved on to 1967 that, with