Now that the pesky Covid bastard has got us between the eyes I have no excuses left not to update the ‘Withnail Photos’ blog, I bet you couldn’t wait…
It is remarkable looking back on a single black and white contact sheet of 36 exposures to see how a scene was created and even more extraordinary that 2 iconic images came from that one roll of film. Back in the day an average shooting day would be 3 rolls of film, on my current assignments those numbers are blown out of the water with an average of about 1000 images (approx. 28 rolls of film) per day. Maybe it’s the lack of booze on set or the association with ‘digital is free’, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
We were only in Stony Stratford for a day’s shooting and covered 2 classic scenes, ‘The Tea Room’ and ‘Booze or Boots?’, starting with the exterior scene with Monty and the Rolls in the drizzling rain and then moving into the Penrith Tea Room.
The Tea Room scenes were always going to be shot quickly as we anticipated that the local middle aged extras could well have issues with Withnail’s foul language which is why the coverage is concise, we never even see Mrs Blennerhassit. I think I shot the scene on 50 f1.4 lens on a Nikon FM2 body, wedging myself into a spot between the camera dolly and a boom operator. I’m still amazed by that day.
