Vultures Eps4: The Park Scene (Directors Diary)

With Vultures episode 4 now online I can finally begin to release my behind-the-scenes photos and talk about the shoot. If you haven’t watched ‘Vultures: The Case Of The Poisoned Dates‘ yet then click here to avoid spoilers!

First up, my shots from the park scene with Inspector Leeson (Paul Young), his deadly-Russian mail-order bride Tatiana (Edwina Whearty) and V.P.I detectives Niall Tennyson (Sean Hackett) and Dan McGrain (David Thompson).

We arrived early outside the Castle Park on a Monday morning in December. Following an insane weekend of filming in Ryan’s pub, we were all clearly tired but buzzing from the weekend and ready to go. The sun was shining but it was still bitterly cold. As we waited for the park to open, the early morning traffic stretched back up the road beside us. Cars filled with grumpy people about to be late for work; staring out their frosty windows at a bunch of weirdos in costumes, smiling and laughing with bundles of equipment in our hands. We drank take-away tea and watched in awe as a squirrel came over the park wall and showed no fear as it scurried across the road through the standing traffic. Squirrels continued to distract us all morning.

We got into the park and aware that we were working against a tight schedule we began the shoot, the sun was flaring over the hill providing some really awesome lighting for the stalking sequence. We moved quickly on to the tree sequence, all the while being slightly distracted by squirrels as they played around us. Fresh supplies of tea arrived and as Paul attempted to climb the tree and Tatiana attempted to pull him down, we shot from above using an extended tripod (”no fancy stuff!”), moving onto handheld coverage of him being flung to the ground and crawling away. The grass was frozen and frosty, everyone had wet feet and Paul was crawling on his hands and knees… more tea! The shoot continued, Paul let out endless hilarious cries in terror, everyone tried not to laugh too much, the squirrels ignored us and scurried around.

We moved on to a wide shot as McGrain and Tennyson attempted to save Leeson, the colours in the park and sky looked awesome, and we still couldn’t ignore watching squirrels. Next came the running shots and we were into the scuffle and “the boob lift”. The park was getting busy with joggers and people walking their dogs. It must have been strange, to be in the park on a frosty Monday morning and come across seven guys with camera equipment, circling a Russian looking girl in a large fur coat, loudly discussing something called a “boob-lift”.

Against the clock I quickly snapped some character portraits of Tatiana Leeson. The park is an awesome place to shoot, especially on a sunny day, plenty of light and awesome colours. With the fight scene shot, we moved on to the dialogue between Tennyson and McGrain. The sun had slowly moved around behind the trees and there was awesome colours on the fallen leaves, creating a lovely warm glow to the scene, despite how bloody cold it was.

You can check out all my behind the scenes shots from the Park scene here on my flickr account and there’s plenty more photos from episode 4 to come.

Random Fact: Vultures have been known to eat dead squirrels.