DRAMA | DRACULA
The tricky part was getting the lighting to match, because fire can be unpredictable PRACTICAL MAGIC Episode 1 mostly takes place inside the set of Castle Dracula, built by the set designer, Arwel Jones. It is dimly lit, but not too dark – as Slater Ling chose to supplement the torches and candles in vision with lighting units off camera. Ingeniously, he stays true to his love of elementary light by using candles in reflective boxes to add light details to faces and architecture. He jokes: “Murphy called them Barker lights, after Ronnie Barker and the fork handles gag, because we had small boxes that could hold four candles and large boxes that could hold 12. They sat in a tray with a curved high back that was covered in soft silver reflective material and they were placed all around the castle.” Above the staircase, Murphy fitted a 30ft by 30ft softbox with controllable Arri Skypanels inside. When Dracula was asleep during the day and Jonathan attempted to seek out the mysterious woman living in the castle, the lights evoked daylight ambience. At night, they were changed to have moonlight ambience. In the dining room, with its flagstones and dinner set for one, there were three ceiling tabs above the table that could be opened separately or as a unit so that the ceiling was never in frame. It also created a space for more
ABOVE Jonathan Harker, played by John Heffernan, arrives at Castle Dracula, which is actually Orava Castle in Slovakia
of Dracula adaptations, as the 1958 film that starred Christopher Lee was filmed there. It’s not obvious, but the transition from Slovakia to studio transpires as one shot. Jonathan arrives at Castle Dracula and enters through its doors. The camera continues to track him as he walks through a tunnel. He then looks towards the ceiling and begins to take off his hat. As his hat brushes past his face, the exterior disappears and the camera pans around him to reveal the maze-like staircase inside the castle. Slater Ling explains the process behind capturing the shot: “I managed to squeeze
a small machine that was capable of going quite high on the arm into the entrance of Orava and my gaffer, Paul Murphy, lit the ceiling with a balloon. I was able to continue the tracking shot by lighting the tunnel with torches and candles and then Matt Wood, our VFX supervisor from Space Digital, did a clever morph that brought us back to Bray Studios. “The tricky part was getting the lighting to match, because fire can be unpredictable. You’ve just got to make a lot of notes, and make sure you’ve jotted down the exact placement of the lighting and its distance from the actors.”
14 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 2020
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