Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1531774
To settle this house into London, the production decided to find an existing neighborhood as the jumping-off point. Being in a real neighborhood gave us a scope and scale to introduce the characters in their lives. We saw it at the beginning of the film in the cricket match and when George heads to the train station. We made an exact (but destroyed) copy of the central section of this neighborhood for our backlot. My hope was that seeing a larger environment pre-destruction would help sell the scale of the destroyed piece. We tried to do this in George's final run home by bringing him through dressed location streets as he turns the final corners arriving at Clifford Lane. George's destroyed home is one of those sets you spend the entire movie building. It starts first and finishes last. Senior Art Director Stephen Swain oversaw the entire process—from first pencil sketches to the very last fallen beams and bricks. Images from the Imperial War Museum are striking and unsettling. Often facades of buildings and houses are ripped away by bombs, revealing interior lives as you would open a dollhouse. The result of the war on family life is very much the heart of this film and we wanted to really show this, even seeing Rita walk by a woman still sweeping up when the walls around her are gone. Steve and I will often find small moments like this that leap off the page in research photos and we'll bring them directly into the scene. A. HANWAY HOUSE STILL. BEDROOM. PRODUCTION STILL BY PARISA TAGHIZADEH. B. HANWAY HOUSE PARLOR. PRODUCTION STILL BY PARISA TAGHIZADEH. C. HANWAY HOUSE DESTROYED. SET PHOTO. D. HANWAY HOUSE DESTROYED. EARLY PENCIL SKETCH BY CHARLIE COBB. E. HANWAY HOUSE NEIGHBORHOOD POST BOMBING. PLAN AND ELEVATION BY STEPHEN SWAIN IN PENCIL. A C B D E