The hallway in 221B Baker Street is usually quite dark, and not enormously welcoming. But it is the scene of a lovely moment in A Study in Pink, when we see Sherlock and John beginning to become friends.
I was really pleased with the shadows in this shot – I set it up in a darkened room and lit it with an old, rather yellow-beamed torch which threw shadows onto the back wall.
The staircase was from an online dollshouse supplier. I wanted to show the rather dilapidated nature of the stairs, so I covered a small part of each step with masking tape before I sprayed the staircase with paint, to give the effect of wear and tear from countless feet. I made a cardboard frame around it to block it in. From the back it’s not so elegant:
The wall in front of the stairs is covered with a dollshouse wallpaper which was the nearest I could get to Mrs Hudson’s choice of paper for the hallway:
The same staircase set worked for Jim’s arrival at Baker Street in The Reichenbach Fall:
Jim has two FunkoPops. The other one is wearing a crown, as seen at the Tower of London in The Reichenbach Fall. This meant that the only way to use this Funko authentically was to set up the scene when he is in the Tower, trying on the Crown Jewels. To give the impression of the glass case in which the jewels reside, I bought a plain perspex display box and stuck silver masking tape round the edges. The shattered glass is just pieces of broken plastic and some sugar crystals. The throne is from an online supplier, and it sits on a cardboard box covered in purple felt. The fire extinguisher which Jim used to smash the glass is from a Playmobil ambulance. I had several goes at getting the lighting right – eventually I took the picture in a completely dark room, with two torches shining at different angles into the box to create reflections. Here he is, the cheekiest criminal in the world:
And while we’re on the subject of everyone’s favourite villain, one of the most challenging scenes to recreate was the infamous meeting at the swimming pool at the end of The Great Game. How do you create a little swimming pool? By sticking black masking tape stripes along the bottom of a blue cat litter tray, that’s how.
Then I had to make the changing cubicles. The sides of the cubicles are fine white corrugated cardboard. They are held together at top and bottom with thin knitting needles. The curtains are squares of blue and red fabric threaded on the top needle. The back wall is covered with the same tiling paper I used for the police cells (see my previous blog on interior scenes).
The floor was tiling paper from an online supplier, wrapped round a chopping board. And the water was highlighted by placing a small lamp in a plastic bag in the water, out of shot, held down by a ruler:
It was very tricky getting the right amount of background into the picture without losing the detail, but end result was suitably dark and a little bit sinister!
The living room of 221B is a familiar and rather comforting place. I didn’t want to get too wrapped up in trying to match the furniture exactly, but I did want my depictions to be recognisable. At the fireplace end of the room, the wall is covered with a red and gold paper I wasn’t able to match, so I simply found a patterned paper which had the right feel. The furniture and fireplace are from the usual suppliers, as are the books and most other props. Sherlock’s skull is made of Fimo clay.
I decided to recreate the scene from The Blind Banker, where Sherlock tries to decipher the code graffiti’d round London, while John struggles to stay awake.
I took screenshots of the graffiti and printed them out in various sizes. I printed out some pictures of Chinese vases and lanterns. The pages of writing pinned to the wall are actually sections of the text of A Study in Scarlet, the first of the original Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes novels, printed very small indeed!
The other end of the room, of course, has the instantly recognisable dark wallpaper. I created lots of scenes using this (downloadable versions available everywhere online!), of which the most complex was the moment in The Lying Detective when Sherlock, out of his mind on illegal substances, is manically leaping about the room, quoting from Henry V and obsessing about Culverton Smith.
There are papers pinned to the wall and hanging from tiny clothes pegs. I wanted the pictures and clippings to be as authentic as possible: there are tiny photos of Culverton Smith; there are headlines which appear in the scene itself; there are relevant words on post-it notes; and the pages of tiny printed text this time are from the original Conan Doyle story The Dying Detective, in which Holmes tricks Culverton Smith into a confession of murder by pretending to be dying from his poisons. Oh, and the gun is from my Sherlock edition of Cluedo!
Toylocked 