The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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LMGI COMPASS | Fall 2022 • 43 Another location that visually expresses the ever-pervading sense of danger for the village of Aldwinter is the area of Tollesbury, just northeast of Maldon, where the River Blackwater feeds into winding inlets of the Blackwater Estuary. Overhead aerial shots of brain-like patterns intermingling through the ancient marshland perfectly exemplify form meeting function. Could the serpent be slithering its way through these twisting waterways? "It's one of those places where you'd see them looking for a lost girl and they're out under these big, big skies," says Lawrence. "You really feel that threat and how dangerous the sea and the saltmarsh can be." Dramatic skies are a visual motif that run through The Selfish Giant and Dark River, previous films directed by Bernard. In The Essex Serpent, however, the skies are even more impressive. Throughout the Essex set parts of the series, characters walk along the lower third of the frame—almost to the bottom of the composed image— of majestic wide shots as the sky fills the background. The striking use of negative space and the vast expanse of the land in Essex are in stark contrast to the show's settings in London. ENLIGHTENED LONDON "In London, we didn't ever really want to see the sky. It was something Clio thought up, and it was brilliant. In London, it was all quite trapped whereas in Essex, it was all about the sky and freedom," Lawrence says. "We wanted London to feel as modern as it could be," adds Normington. "We looked at a lot of graphic shapes and linear lines and prison-like shapes and architecture for London. Harriet and I get quite deep about all that stuff. When we get going, we're sort of specific and quite conceptual I guess." The concept could not be clearer than in the exterior of Cora's London home. In the first wide establishing shot of the brick mansion, filmed at London's Inner Temple, the windows feel like those of prison cells as Cora stares longingly out of a second-floor window on a grim, rainy day. The house interior was filmed miles to the north, in Hertfordshire. Much in the way that other Victorian-set stories like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde or The Elephant Man are steeped in the modern medical experimentation of the era, so is The Essex Serpent. One Whitehall Place, a spectacular Victorian building across the Thames from the London Eye and now a popular wedding spot, served as the venerable venue for an awards banquet for the British Medical Association. Barnard fell in love with photos that Lawrence had taken years prior that showed about 12 chandeliers lowered to the floor for the purpose of cleaning. Barnard thought the orientation was "visually amazing" for a proposal scene between the pioneering surgeon Dr. Luke Garrett, played by Frank Dillane, and Cora. After the location had been decided upon, the venue discovered that the mechanism to lower the chandeliers had ceased operating. Barnard adapted and filmed the scene on a balcony where the characters are spectacularly featured amongst the lights. The exterior of the award venue was Somerset House, a large neoclassical palace built in the mid-1500s. "The exterior we used to be able to film quite a lot," says Lawrence. "But now it's become a much-loved landmark in Central London with fountains and cafes. It's wonderfully successful, but it does mean it's less available for filming." "I think there's lots of period locations still around but finding Cora's bedroom in London