May 2022
Enola Holmes 2 / Legendary Pictures
16/05/22
Central London
I had only just watched the first Enola Holmes film on Netflix when I received a call asking if I was available to manage a Victorian set film….. to be called Enola Holmes 2!
I had been in Shropshire for 5 months working on ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ and was in my wrap week so an offer to start straight away on the second Enola film was an exciting offer. Scouting had been taking place since February of 2021 so coming aboard in early June made me feel I was a bit behind the curve.
In this second story Enola’s investigations take her into the dark world of Victorian London and into the East End where the poor were exploited to line the pockets of the rich. Our difficulty was in constructing Victorian London as much of has been redeveloped or erased and certainly not much of it is left in London.
There are plenty of Victorian buildings still standing but take a good look around the building, can you get a 360-degree world? Encroaching modern office buildings, sandblasted surfaces, modern pavements, street furniture, air-con and heating units all get in the way. Investigations to build our own Victorian London took us around the country; from Manchester, Leeds, Portsmouth, Chatham and finally to Hull.
I have filmed in Hull before, on ‘A Royal Night Out’ using its streets for 1940’s London. On this production we needed Victorian London and Hull High Street is a perfect example of a street from this era. A new city centre was built to the west of the old town leaving a small enclave of Victorian and Georgian streets which are reasonably quiet. We required at least 2 weeks set dress and construction, then a week of filming and finally a week of set de-rig. Hull City Council where up for this and allowed us a four week road closure with managed access so we could put up shop fronts and remove the modernity.
The other streets we needed was fine Georgian Terrace for Baker Street seen in the end scene (pictured above). We considered other towns, but the designer really wanted the tall Georgian town houses you only find in London. To film a street like this in central London takes lots of time and dedication from the locations team which they pulled off with excellent results, as you can see.
