Behind the scenes during a day of filming in the grounds of Brasenose College, Oxford for Endeavour series 5, episode 5. Stepping in for Directorial duties for the day was Rob Quinn who directed the previous episode.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developed in Kodak D76. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour series 5, episode 4 in Oxford, August 2017. This set of pictures shows a scene outside the Free School on Holywell Street (which is actually the Holywell Music Room) where Endeavour and Joan Thursday have a conversation in the Black Jag but this scene didn’t make the final edit. After that there was a location move to the Botanic Gardens for a picnic scene which was meant to take place on a sunny summers day but it was now approaching the evening and the sky clouded over -this is where a huge light was brought in to act as the sun.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in Kodak HC110. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour series 5 FILM 5 in Oxford. It was a sunny Sunday morning when special branch arrived at Brasenose College to take the college porter for a ride. The final scenes from this Endeavour FILM were filmed first thing in the morning and then the rest of the day was spent filming various scenes within the college grounds.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Fuji Superia 200 film, Pakon scans.
Glenn Close visited the Oxford Union for a Q&A event and here are some of the pictures I made to document what was a fascinating, funny and quite moving talk. The video from the event isn’t on the Oxford Union YouTube page yet but hopefully soon. I highly recommend it. My go to film for Oxford Union events is usually Ilford HP5 but on this occasion I decided to give Delta 400 a try and I do like the results. It feels like there is slightly less grain and a tad more shadow detail than HP5 but I need to do a more controlled comparison to really tell. In any case I’m very pleased with these results.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Ilford Delta 400 @ ISO 1600, developed in Ilford DDX 1+4. Pakon scans.
The Oxford University Photography Society organised a field trip to visit the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol a couple of months ago and I went along with a group of society members to have a tour of the place and to see the latest exhibition that had just gone up. Martin was a great host and after making us all tea’s and coffee’s he explained a bit of the back story of the foundation and then showed us around the building including a peek at some beautiful vintage prints and book dummy’s from other photographers that he’s collected over the years. Then after being shown a selection of photo books that are part of the ever growing library – some of which are extremely rare and valuable – we had some time to have a Q&A with Martin before having an opportunity to finish off our visit with a viewing of the current exhibition of street portraits by Niall McDiarmid.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our visit and I certainly came away with appreciating the beauty of photography in a printed form, whether that’s as a print or in a book. If you haven’t been to visit I highly recommend it and I’m very much looking forward to my next visit.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, Voigtlander 40/1.4 Nokton, Ilford HP5 @ ISO1600, developed in Kodak HC110 1+31. Pakon scans.
Sunday morning in Oxford’s University Parks, what a perfect place to film a punting scene for the tv show Endeavour. If only the sun would co-operate. After a very overcast start the sun did peek through the clouds just long enough to light everything up. I have some colour shots that will follow in a future blog post.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 50/1.5 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X film developed in D76 1+1. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes photography during filming of a night scene for Endeavour series 5 FILM 2 in Oxford. The scene of an arsonist setting fire to a house was filmed after the scene that follows it where you see the fire brigade and the distraught family in the morning. The art department did an amazing job with this house to not only make it look fire damaged but to also clean it up as if nothing had happened, all in the same day. This was a tricky scene to film with the flames going up timed with the driver lighting his cigarette while getting the flames to reflect in the driver’s door window without making it obvious that the flames were coming from a gas burner. This was all done on an Oxford street and not on a studio backlot so you can imagine how exciting it was for the local residents to come out and watch. The light level on the street was very low (street lighting in the 1960’s wasn’t what it is now) and that’s where working with a rangefinder camera can make it that much easier to focus than with an SLR.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 35/1.2 Voigtlander Nokton, Fujicolor Superia 1600 film (expired), developed in Fuji Xpress C41 kit, Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes photography during filming of Endeavour series 5 FILM 2 in Oxford Covered Market in June 2017. The space inside Brown’s Café was quite limited so I decided to stay outside to stay out of the way. I quite liked the reflections in the windows and how you could see through them but also some of the people standing outside looking in, myself included. I’ve previously posted other shots from this roll that didn’t contain potential spoilers but now that this FILM has been broadcast here in the UK I’m posting some of the shots that I previously left out.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Ilford HP5 @ ISO 1600, developed in HC110 1+31, Pakon scans.
These behind the scenes pictures from the filming of Endeavour 5 FILM 1 were from a day of pickup shots that were filmed in September 2017 while the rest of the FILM was shot in April. This was a busy day for the cast and crew and they managed to film quite a few different scenes. In the final edit you can’t tell but I wonder what the original edit was like. When the scenes with the cat burglar were being filmed I couldn’t help thinking of the old Milk Tray adverts and ‘all because the lady loves Milk Tray’.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Ilford HP5 @ ISO800 developed in Kodak XTOL 1+1. Pakon scans.
Now that the first FILM from Endeavour series 5 has been broadcast here in the UK I will begin sharing behind the scenes pictures that I held back because they contained potential spoilers. Up until now I haven’t shared any pictures containing actor Lewis Peek because his character is new in series 5 but now that George Fancy has made his appearance you’ll see him popping up more often. Filming for these shots took place in April 2017 which is the same time of year the first FILM takes place.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 50/1.5 Voigtlander Nokton, Fuji Superia 200 film, developed in Fuji Xpress C41 kit, Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour series 5 episode 3 in Oxford. Some of the filming took place on the roof of the building where Blackwell’s Art & Poster shop is on the corner of Turl Street and the Broad. As the episode hasn’t been broadcast yet at the time of this blog post I haven’t included any shots containing spoilers, those will follow some time in the future after the broadcast of this episode in the UK. The DOP on this episode was Jamie Cairney who worked on the first two series of The Detectorists which I just recently finished watching. It’s so beautifully shot and I’m excited to see how this Endeavour episode looks. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it. As I was watching each episode I couldn’t help wonder how much fun it would have been to do some behind the scenes photography on that show.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developed in Kodak HC110 1+31. Pakon scans.
Liv Tyler came to the Oxford Union for a Q&A event and I went along to do some documentary photography. It was nice to hear Liv talk about her career and her route from modelling into acting. You can watch a video of the event here.
When it came to developing this roll of film I decided to try a different developer from my usual tried a tested Kodak HC110 because Liv was dressed all in black and I didn’t want to risk the fabric from blocking up. For this roll I used Kodak XTOL developer which is good for maintaining shadow detail when pushing films and I am very pleased with the results here.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, Voigtlander 50/1.5 Nokton, Ilford HP5 @ ISO 1600, developed in Kodak XTOL 1+1. Pakon scans.
