We moved into our kitchen today. This is where we'll be filming on Macbeth for the next three days, and it's an immaculate new build by our art director James Hendy and his team. The original stage production at the Chichester Festival Theatre was entirely set in a kitchen, which doubled as a field hospital and other spaces as well. Our main location has a great range of different rooms and worlds -- but nothing really suitable as a kitchen. And so inside a large empty room we've constructed one, complete with working water and gas -- and a lift, which was also a key element of production designer Anthony Ward's original set. There are racks of knives, clutches of stuffed pheasant and a sink for the Porter to pee in.
It's a brilliantly sunny morning, but there was a heavy frost on our cars when we left the hotel before dawn. And it's easily the coldest day we've had so far, and as a consequence the camera lenses -- which have been stored in a cold camera store overnight -- have to be brought onto set early and laid out in their open boxes. This is so that that they can adjust to the change in temperature without misting up.
In metereological terms, as long as the rain holds off we're content. Our worry is that a heavy rainfall will be audible in some of the interior spaces where we're filming and so make sound recording difficult. So far this hasn't been a problem but we're still not halfway through (that's the end of tomorrow).
The scene this morning is the arrival of the Macduffs and the discovery of Duncan's murder. There's not much room on or around the set but this concentrates the attention of everyone and we get a good start, turning over before 9.30am. The cast are on set plus three children plus two camera crew plus boom op plus occasionally director, costumes, make-up, stand-by props -- well, it all gets a bit crowded a bit quickly. One of the legacies of this is the criss-cross of coloured tape on the floor for all the various marks that the actors have to hit as they move through the scene.
It's a good morning's shoot and everyone enjoys loin of pork with crackling or smoked haddock fishcake or a odd veggy thing that I honestly can't remember the name of -- but which people spoke about with enthusiasm. They continue after lunch with the reactions to the news of Duncan's murder. Later in the afternoon Rupert closes the action right down to work with just Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood on the two-handed scene in which Lady Macbeth welcomes her triumphant husband home -- this is intimate and disturbing and sexy, just as it should be.
Off-set the props team have been busy purchasing a lot of dead flesh for the kitchen scene tomorrow. It's remarkable how many pheasant, rabbits, chickens, quails and much else you can buy for a modest sum hereabouts. The room next to the production office resembles one of those seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes crowded with memento mori from the animal kingdom. Be assured though that no animal or game bird was harmed by us in the making of this motion picture.
Dorinda (02 December 2009 1:17 am)
'no animal was harmed by us..' - I like the distinction there!
Dead animals hanging from walls creep me out. Sounds as if this kitchen looks like the window of a chinese in soho; the kind where they hang skinned, half-roasted duck.
These early winter mornings, where the mist rises from the ground and the dew fills the air and sits on the leaves seem so appropriate for the eariness and deadliness of Macbeth. Fitting somehow, that bitter nip that hangs in the air.
Not a nice thing to be doing, filming in it for hours, but still, I'd like to see some atmospheric exteriors - or perhaps the style of the film is more insular than would allow for it.