Production Design and Art Direction from Bruce Hill
WOOLWORTHS CHRISTMAS COMMERCIALS. BBC/ PRAGUE/04
One of the hardest jobs I've been involved in! They loved the designs but they were too expensive and there was no time to draw them up properly and budget before the set build started. Another ridiculously tight schedule. Putting all this into perspective. I'd just done 3 weeks in Greece, with a French/Greek production team, followed by 3 1/2 weeks in Madrid, with Romanian clients and Spanish crew, so I wasn't entirely sure what language we were going to be talking anyway.
The earliest day I could fly to Prague was the end of the first build day so a lot of the construction took place from e-mailed drawings alone. My evening arrival was met with a three-hour production/build meeting discussing materials and drawings rather than a rest at the hotel. It was a very big and theatrical set (the ones I like) requiring unique materials, many of which were only available in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. When abroad it's always difficult to translate unusual or special materials without having samples to hand. The Czechs did really well despite two overnight builds and people flaking out (and disappearing. I'm sure we started with two local art directors!). We had gauze (fine mesh material for the sky) from Germany and got some silver slashed curtains from the UK, the rest I selected in Prague. I wanted to use these for the background star effect (as opposed to star cloths with light bulbs) as it looks so good in comparison.
The set was designed to accommodate puppets, cutting traps in the floor in places for puppeteers. Thankfully the puppeteers were very amicable, working with us as opposed to making life difficult (no such thing as rostrums in Prague to make things easy) and they were also tremendously funny, cracking jokes at often the most inopportune moments.
The shoot though was seriously tiring. We had 4 articulated truckloads of props arrive from the UK including 120 Christmas trees (all requiring decorating, twice) and over £5000.00 worth of chocolates for making our towers of product. Directing was Steve Cope (BBC), with Laura Gould producing, (she had to return early due to a family illness) and Bob Williams DOP (worked with the lovely Bob in Madrid on Renault). Thanks to them at least moral was high. Wherever I was on the 120' stage I was being called from the exact opposite end and, as I was the only person in the art dept who spoke English, it was only me who could answer the questions. Walked a few miles there, I reckon it was about three months work in a month and it felt like it! Next time I must take out a UK props master and an assistant.
Barandov Studios are excellent though, and Partnership Pictures (whom I've worked with before) consistently friendly and professional, I bet they get really fed up with us English expecting everything for nothing.