Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
H A M N E T | P E R S P E C T I V E 6 1 the storytelling and it is from there that the design grows. My first read of the script was in a hotel room in Sao Paolo as I recovered from a horrendous virus. Like Will, I was boxed in and my response poured out of me. I wrote pages of notes and collected countless images. I don't recall ever having such a strong and clear response to a text. What I wanted to say about Hamnet was that this is a family, like mine, like yours. I wanted to make it intimate, immediate and relatable. I wanted the design to be immersive and to bring the audience up close to this family. Period films can feel like they are museum pieces, something to be admired from a distance. The Hamnet script felt far more urgent than that. I wanted to present a world as vivid, textured and as tangible as the world outside your window. The novel is meticulously researched with detailed descriptions from beginning to end. Maggie O'Farrell became an invaluable resource as we dressed the sets and created the daily rituals and actions that underscored the lives of this ordinary Tudor family. There was always to be domestic activity and industry. Early in preproduction, we planted a herb garden in the grounds of Elstree Studios and each morning on our way to set we would forage before dressing. We would look at what was blooming and what was going to seed and decide what we would use them for that day. It dawned on me that we were following Agnes' rhythm. All the apples in the apple shed came from set decorator Alice Felton's mother's garden in Cornwall. Alice brought huge bunches of sage and rosemary from her garden and rose hips came from my mine. The original plan was that we would find a location for the Shakespeare house. The house exists in Stratford-Upon-Avon and it was certainly an inspiration but it was not viable to shoot there. We scouted many Tudor houses and in each one I gathered details, looking at the joinery, the decoration, the alterations. Our story takes place in the late 1500s. The Shakespeare house was already over a century old by the time Agnes joined Will's family there. We meet the Shakespeares after their prosperity has waned. They were once a middle-class merchant family and the house needed to tell the story of the change in circumstance. John Shakespeare was violent and unpredictable. The house would bear the scars—a broken spindle on the staircase, a cracked window pane, a stain in the plaster. E. HEWLANDS FARM FILMED AT CWMMAU FARMHOUSE HEREFORDSHIRE. SET PHOTO BY AGATA GRZYBOWSKA. F. HENLEY HOUSE EXTERIOR AND STREETSCAPE WAS A COMBINATION STREET FRONT SET BUILDS AND MODIFIED LOCATIONS AT WEOBLEY, HEREFORDSHIRE. SET PHOTO. G. HEWLANDS FARM LOCATION. ALL GARDENS, INCLUDING AN APPLE ORCHARD, WERE CREATED FOR THE FILM. SET PHOTO. E F G