The most popular and most shared Toylocked pictures are those which depict scenes which touched viewers’ emotions. Some of these were easy to put together, but required a lot of thought to get the tone right.
Sherlock and John’s farewell on the runway, at the end of His Last Vow, was a enabled by the purchase of a Playmobil aeroplane on eBay. Playmobil toys have helped with many of the pictures, and there is a young member of my family who has benefited greatly from my purchases! I was not entirely happy with this picture – I took it in my garden, and you can see shrubs in the background – but I like the position of the toys and I do think they look rather sad.
An emotional but funny scene in The Six Thatchers, when Sherlock is seen telling baby Rosie not to throw away her rattle but we think at first he is talking to John, allowed me to use some new props:
The bottles of baby milk, the baby oil, the baby and its bib are all from online suppliers. I really love the tiny version of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”, which I bought on a whim and found a space for it in this picture. I made the rattle itself from yellow felt and put it in Sherlock’s left hand so it was more visible.
One of the key moments in Sherlock and John’s friendship is in The Hounds of Baskerville when, having had a row in the pub the night before, they start talking again in the churchyard. John walks down the steps, and Sherlock calls him back: “I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one.”
I was on Dartmoor anyway (see my first blog from 15 October 2018 on taking pictures at Hound Tor) and this picture is taken in the churchyard at Widecombe in the Moor, the right area for the story if not exactly the right churchyard (as the scene was filmed at St Hilary, Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales)! By balancing John so his heels were on a bit of grass, I managed to make him appear to be walking away looking down at the ground. Sherlock looks very small and lost with the huge gravestones behind him.
Near my home is a large cemetery which includes a number of old graves as well as modern ones. I wanted to create a picture around the gravestones in the garden of Musgrave Hall, as depicted in The Final Problem. I liked the idea of Sherlock’s false memory of Redbeard, and found a “puppy in my pocket” on eBay which looked very like the dog in the show. The pirate hat and patch are made of paper (see my blog “To Cap It All” from 13 November 2018 on making hats), and the dog’s bandanna is from a small piece of spotted ribbon. I was really pleased with this picture – even the dog seems to look wistful…
But of course, the most famous cemetery scenes in the show are based around the grave where John believes Sherlock to be buried. Here John makes his heartbreaking speech at the end of The Reichenbach Fall.
First, I had to make a tiny gravestone. I cut a piece of thick card, covered the edges with black masking tape, and stuck shiny black card on the front and back. Luckily, the stone in the episode is relatively simple, and I found some gold stick-on lettering which caught the light nicely.
I found a spot with old gravestones in the background, but not too close, and fixed my little Sherlock gravestone by pushing cocktail sticks into the bottom of the card and into the ground. The first shot is relatively close up, with John making his speech.
This picture was shared multiple times on Facebook, and was seen by over 120,000 people. I know this is because the scene itself resonated with people’s feelings, but I am glad that the picture worked for people.
In the show, the camera pans away and we see Sherlock watching from under a tree. To add to the emotional weight, I added the words from The Empty Hearse where John recalls his speech to his dead friend, and Sherlock replies that he heard John’s wish. Hearts broke.
This picture was also popular, although not shared quite as widely. I like the image of poor little John, almost dwarfed by the grass and leaves, grieving while Sherlock watched helplessly from a distance.
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