Small Island was filmed by Ruby films for the BBC earlier this year in Belfast, Dublin and Jamaica, based on the popular book by Andrea Levy. I was commissioned as the stills photographer and ended up covering 8 days in total, 2 of which were in Jamaica.It will be shown on BBC1 on Sunday 6th December 2009 and Sunday 13th December at 9pm. I urge you to watch a brilliant drama!
The first location was in Dublin, they tried to get a suitable location to double as a typical London Georgian street in Belfast, but couldn't. It was a cold February day, and it is always a bit nerve racking turning up on set for the first time and meeting all the new actors, directors etc, but it was also great to see so many familiar faces amongst the local crew from the North. Day 1 for me was spent covering exteriors of the main house owned by Queenie and the arrival of Hortense, which was filmed at night, always very tricky when shooting.
My second day was back in Belfast, in Ormeau Park, East Belfast which was doubling up for a foggy Green Park in London in the late 1940's. They had a fog machine which I had never seen before, basically a big plastic sausage skin they blow smoke into, and it made for some really atmospheric pictures. This is where I shot the 2 separate images of Hortense and Queenie, as used on the cover of the re-release of the book above.
The next day for me was in Portaferry, where the art dept had converted the whole town square into wartime Britain, it was a fantastic day for me, shooting a major scene in the film I won't talk about here so I don't spoil it for you! Then there was a break for me for a whole month which is quite unusual, so it was a bit strange turning up in the Painthall (a converted ship yard paint hall, now a film studio) in March to pick up where I left off. Not all filming days are really suitable for stills, and they choose which ones to cover quite carefully. I had a couple more days in the Painthall including the main publicity shots which were art directed by Jo O'Leary from the BBC.
Then another 2 weeks before I flew out to Jamacia to join the rest of the crew in Kingston who had gone out earlier. This was a photographers dream, they had re-done the centre of Spanish Town, now a notoriously rough town near Kingston, to recreate the 1930's, including pouring tonnes of sand over the tarmac-ed roads to make it look authentic. It was stunning out there and the other fantastic scenes included sugar cane plantations, hurricanes, and military parades. Apart from my horrendous jet lag and the searing heat I had the time of my life, not forgetting, on our Saturday night off, a trip with my fellow crew to the live recording of the Jamaican version of the X-Factor, complete with drive by shooting...
It's a wonderful drama and I really hope you all watch it this week-end...
If you want to view more of my stills they are on my website at the link :
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