Guttin' Quines required much research into costume and setting to make our film realistic. I really wanted to make the viewers feel like they were a part of the bustling harbour, and make our intended audience reminisce about their grandparents. I wanted to honour their history and try my best to make everything as believable as possible. It was a difficult task, but I like to think I pulled it off with the help of my fantastic art department.
Below, I have linked my Milanote page and my initial research Pinterest board to give a clearer idea of my historical undertaking.
Production Design - Milanote
We were very lucky to still have the support of the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Pittingweem, so I had access to all the previous props used on our test shoot. I knew we needed more, however, so I contacted Titan Props to start collecting more barrels, baskets and general seafaring equipment. They had quite a large selection of items, including many meters of rope, netting, and fabric, which really helped to texture the scenes.
I contacted many breweries in Edinburgh to see if there were any barrels they could loan us for our shoot. I made the most successful contact with Port of Leith Distillery, but unfortunately, this came too late for us to plan a means of transport for the barrels so we had to abandon this idea. Luckily, Titan Props had 4 barrels we could take from them, and with the moving van Alana provided for us, we were able to collect them with the rest of the props. This meant I had to be extra contemplative with the barrels as we had so few. I didn't want the harbor to look empty, as we wanted it to look as bustling as possible, so I had to carefully plan where to place them in order to utilise them to their full extent.
As well as the larger props on the harbour that were there to dress the set, I wanted several practical props that extras could use to give life to the scene. These consisted of:
Wool and knitting needles
1920s bike (personal favourite)
Washing line with wooden pegs
These props, though simply in the background, gave so much to the background of our set and helped push these feelings of a busy day at the harbour. I had read that these women would never have had their hands still, always working and sewing and crafting, so I wanted to reflect that in my work. It was a lot of fun working with Duncan to plan all of these separate little acts and how they would play into the scene.
Another thing I had to think about were the gutting knives. I obviously couldn’t use the real, wickedly sharp knives that would have been used back in the day, so I had to come up with an alternate option that still worked on screen. What I found were curved butter knives with wooden handles, blunt enough to be completely safe and old-fashioned enough to blend in to the scenes. A perfect combination!
In terms of crafting, I had to make a lot (and I mean a lot) of cardboard and tinfoil fish. These were used as padding for our trough and for the baskets, as we couldn't get enough fish to fill them completely. I also utilised the fake fish I made for the test shoot, along with hordes of fake fish toys that would give extra height and depth to our real fish. Below is one of hundreds of my tinfoil fish!
For costume, I used my research to scour charity shops and vintage stores to find the perfect layering for each outfit. I bought many cardigans, skirts, jumpers, shirts and scarves, anything that would keep our actors warm and look period accurate. It was all about layering, as I knew our actors would be facing harsh cold and wanted them to be as comfortable as possible on set. I had so many pieces of costume by the end of the shoot that I probably could have opened my own shop!
As well as shopping for clothes, I visited Alana's local theatre to borrow some of their costume supply. I also used some of the same outfit pieces from the Scottish Fisheries Museum that I had used in the test shoot, but we had changed our minds about the kind of time period this film would be set in between then and the shoot, so the initial costumes did have some reworkings. We felt they were too Victorian when what we were trying to represent was slightly more modern, with their shiny aprons and sturdy woven cardigans.
I now had the freedom to properly age the clothes I had bought, as we could not get any of the original rental outfits dirty. Again, I wanted to make my designs as accurate as possible to the time (nothing would have been pristine, every piece of clothing would be well worn and patched up). I spent an evening at Alana's with the rest of my art department, staining, ripping and seam unpicking, adding more reality to each item. I had previously researched where the most patching and tearing would have taken place (elbows, wrists, stretched neckline) to make my ageing as believable as I could. I also researched how to achieve staining most realistically, and followed charts like the one below, which helped me pick out the most useful mediums!
I used mostly flour, paprika, cinnamon, coffee and sesame oil on my costume pieces.
We had multiple costume fittings, and I spent many days piecing every outfit together before the shoots with the help of our costume assistant, Hope. Having everything planned out beforehand was a huge help, as we usually started filming very quickly after the extras arrived on set, so having all the costumes packaged together and ready to go made everything super speedy.
I also made so many cloots I actually lost count! I found myself sewing even more of them on the shoot as they were the first things to get absolutely demolished by the fish. They were a made simply with a bed sheet and black thread, so I became extremely adept to sewing them on the go.
The first three days of shooting were on the harbour. These were definitely the trickiest, as the weather conditions and the location proved to be more of a challenge than i expected.
On the first day we set up all of our important props and made a plan for shooting the next morning. I laid everything out, taking pictures to make the early morning shoot to come easier and quicker by knowing where everything should go ahead of time. It was a very large space to fill, so most of my decision making was about how to make the harbour feeling bustling and busy. There had to be a perfect balance between spreading the props out so no piece of the harbour felt bare, and cramping bits together to give the feel of this hectic space.
The first day didn’t quite go the way we wanted it, with the harbour manager disrupting hours of our shoot time, construction bleeding into the sound and the initial plan for the trough falling through. The tarp that was supposed to hold the fish was just not working for any of the shots, as you could see it peeking over the sides even though I had nailed it down. It just didn’t look good or accurate, which was my mistake in believing the tarp would do a good enough job on its own without support from the bottom. Becuase of these factors we ended up scrapping the first day, which felt like a huge blow at the time, but it made us much more efficient and conscious on all of our other days, making us work at 200% and getting the best out of all of us.
The following days went much smoother. Ben, one of my art department assistants, helped me find discarded pieces of wood around the village and we drilled it to the top of the trough to create a strong platform the fish could lay on easier. It looked much better than before and we were confident it would last the whole shoot. We had to problem solve extremely quickly, and it’s given me some valuable experience I will never forget!
The trickiest part of everything for me was laying the fish out between every shot. Because we didn’t have quite as many real fish as we were hoping for it meant we have to change their positioning often so they filled out the entirety of the frame. This meant I was constantly moving these ice cold, dead and smelly fish around for hours, running back and forth between the monitor to double and triple check there was no empty space on the trough. It got even more gross when it came to adding fake guts to the fish! I chose the best looking ones to place near the actors and filled their gutted bellies with fake organs, created by our SFX artist page, oil and fake blood. It was a very difficult, messy, but fun endeavour and I’m happy to have experienced something so challenging to help me move forward in my career path!
Everything else about the harbour was easy in comparison. I set extras up with their props, made sure the actors were dressed and changed the scenery around depending on the day in the script. I had to take a lot of continuity photos for this reason, as sometimes we had to go back and forth between story days on the same shooting day, but this was all stuff I had done before. Despite the cold, I thoroughly enjoyed the shoot and revelled in the challenge!
Below I have included some early shots of the harbour, before we started shooting, with the trough made for us by the wonderful guys at Men’s Shed!
Here’s a bonus photo of some fake fish guts made by me and Morven. These had to be brighter than the more realistic fish guts created by Paige, as they were being used to stain the aprons of the fish gutters to make them more realistically messy. It was made with soy sauce, fake blood and modge podge, filled with fake bones made of clay and cut up twine to represent flesh.
The church was our easiest set by a mile, as there was not much for me to change at all about the scenery. I always feel like dressing sets like this too much takes the viewer out of the story, as it will have been this simple back in the day, clear of any bells and whistles. I provided the actors with candles, books and a donation basket, but didn’t tamper with their surroundings too much at all.
I mostly focused on costume on these days as Hope wasn’t with me, so I had to dress and maintain all the extras myself. As I had planned the costumes ahead of time this wasn’t too much of a task, with the exception of a woman who came to the shoot with bright pink hair and nails. I had to quickly come up with a solution to this and dig through my costume bag for accessories. Luckily I had a pair of silk gloves and a black shawl on hand, so these sorted the situation out pretty quick!
I was happy for some quieter and less cold shoot days after the harbour, so I really enjoyed our time at this church location.
The cottage set was a super fun set for me to work on as I got to play with all sorts of props to build this scene.
We had already scouted the location ahead of time so I knew what we were working with when we arrived on the shoot day. The room is used year round as an exhibition, showcasing the homes blacksmiths would have lived in circa 1940s-50s. This was excellent for me, as a majority of the props were already there for me to play with, as well as wallpapered walls, furniture and flooring that would fit our aesthetic. I researched the different props they already had on display to gauge whether I had to remove them or not (the radio, lamps, magazines etc) and started to think about what I could replace them with.
We struck gold with our location, however, as they had hundreds and hundreds of period accurate props in their attic that I could play with. I spent quite a few hours up their picking and choosing what worked best for the scene and the best props for the job! They had oil lamps, an authentic metal washing board, a tin bath, wedding fabric - basically everything I could dream for dressing this set. I was completely spoiled for choice! I spent our day at the cottage first removing all of the out of time objects and replacing them, setting up the shot to frame Jeanie in homely comforts. Our characters weren’t rich by any means, but they would have had a comfortable life with a few precious knick-knacks, and these would have reminded her of her life with Robert, so I wanted to reflect this in our frames. I even got my hands on a framed antique photo of a sheep farm that would have been Jeanies keepsake from home. Every prop in the frame has a purpose either as something practical Jeanie would have really used, or a keepsake from Robert.
We ended up cutting a few of our cottage shots, which was a shame for me as you could see a lot more of the production design in the missing scenes, but it works a lot better for the story, so unfortunately they had to go!
A little note about the potatoes: I spent a silly amount of time painstakingly dressing them with mud and dirt so they really looked like they had been plucked straight from the ground. They were a pain to peel, but they looked great!
Below is a shot of the cottage in its original form, before I removed the objects that didn’t belong.
I don’t have a lot of photos of it post makeover as it was an extremely busy day, but I hope the work I did can be seen well in the final product!