Behind the scenes during a day of filming in the grounds of Brasenose College, Oxford for Endeavour series 5, episode 5. Stepping in for Directorial duties for the day was Rob Quinn who directed the previous episode.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developed in Kodak D76. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour series 5, episode 4 in Oxford, August 2017. This set of pictures shows a scene outside the Free School on Holywell Street (which is actually the Holywell Music Room) where Endeavour and Joan Thursday have a conversation in the Black Jag but this scene didn’t make the final edit. After that there was a location move to the Botanic Gardens for a picnic scene which was meant to take place on a sunny summers day but it was now approaching the evening and the sky clouded over -this is where a huge light was brought in to act as the sun.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in Kodak HC110. Pakon scans.
This set of pictures are from a recent lunch break photo walk where I managed to finish a whole roll during the hour. I’ve been using quite a bit of Eastman Double X motion picture film recently because I bought a bottle of D96 developer and I didn’t want it to go off without much use. So far I have been very pleased with the results especially in controlling contrast.
[Tech info:] Yashica Electro 35, Eastman Double X film, developed in D96, Pakon scans.
For quite a while I’ve been looking for a cheap half-frame camera to test out and I finally managed to get one when I was least expecting it in a mixed lot of camera bits I picked up at auction. It’s an Olympus EE-3 which is fixed focus and true point and shoot because apart from the manual aperture settings when using flash, there are no other controls that you can change. The selenium cell light meter is dead on my camera but the shutter works so I decided to test it during a lunch break photo walk around Oxford. With 72 frames to get through on a roll of 36 exposure film I was able to be very instinctive with my shots – see something, point, click, move on. There’s no need to carefully consider the composition on every frame because this camera lets you use it almost without thinking, just like when you blink without thinking about it first, you just do it.
Here’s a selection of pictures from the first test roll and it looks like the camera is working well despite the dead light meter. I assume it’s working at sunny 16.
[Tech info:] Olympus EE-3, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developing in D96 for 7 mins, Pakon scans.
Sunday morning in Oxford’s University Parks, what a perfect place to film a punting scene for the tv show Endeavour. If only the sun would co-operate. After a very overcast start the sun did peek through the clouds just long enough to light everything up. I have some colour shots that will follow in a future blog post.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 50/1.5 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X film developed in D76 1+1. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes photography of a Tolkien movie starring Nicholas Hoult being filmed in Oxford. Most of the filming was inside colleges but I was fortunate to come across this scene being filmed on Brasenose Lane.
[Tech info:] Yashica Electro 35, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in D76 1+1. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes during filming of Endeavour series 5 episode 3 in Oxford. Some of the filming took place on the roof of the building where Blackwell’s Art & Poster shop is on the corner of Turl Street and the Broad. As the episode hasn’t been broadcast yet at the time of this blog post I haven’t included any shots containing spoilers, those will follow some time in the future after the broadcast of this episode in the UK. The DOP on this episode was Jamie Cairney who worked on the first two series of The Detectorists which I just recently finished watching. It’s so beautifully shot and I’m excited to see how this Endeavour episode looks. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it. As I was watching each episode I couldn’t help wonder how much fun it would have been to do some behind the scenes photography on that show.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 40/1.4 Voigtlander Nokton, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developed in Kodak HC110 1+31. Pakon scans.
The Endeavour crew were back in Oxford for two days of filming for the sixth and final episode of series 5. These behind the scenes pictures are from the morning of day one. More pictures will follow after the episode has been broadcast but for now here are the spoiler-free ones. For this roll I used the 50/1.5 Voigtlander Nokton lens for a change because I’ve been favouring the 40/1.4 Nokton for a long time now but because the Leica M6 displays 50mm frame lines when you use a 40mm lens it’s difficult to be precise with composition. On another technical note I used distilled water to dilute the D76 developer. The water in the darkroom I use is quite hard and I’ve also been using distilled water for the wetting agent and have seen a big reduction in drying marks on my films.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 50/1.5 Voigtlander Nokton lens, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in Kodak D76 1+1. Pakon scans.
The start of a new academic year at Oxford University involves a matriculation ceremony for the new students at the Sheldonian theatre and it’s one of my favourite things to photograph on the streets of Oxford. Thousands of students dressed in their black and white subfusc filling the streets is quite a sight. Here are some pictures from this year. The sky was very heavily overcast so I had to push my film one stop for a speed boost and I decided to use a little fill-flash for some shots because the black fabric soaks up light.
[Tech info:] Nikon F100, 17-35/2.8, Eastman Double X film @ ISO 500, developed in D76 stock. Pakon scans.
This is a short Endeavour post because most of the shots on this roll contain spoilers so they will have to wait until after the episode has been broadcast. This day of filming took place in the grounds of Brasenose College and apart from a rain shower in the morning and at the end of the day we were fortunate with the weather. It was a busy day with quite a few setups to get through and because of the rain at the end of the day and the rapidly dropping light level the last setup was reshot the following day in much better conditions. Rain or shine the crew always soldier on.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, Voigtlander 40/1.4 and 75/1.8 lenses, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in Kodak D76. Pakon scans.
It’s not every day you come across an Endeavour photo shoot on the streets of Oxford so when I did I thought it would be nice to document a little behind the scenes. I didn’t do much because I didn’t want to be too distracting and disrupt the shoot. The Endeavour crew were in town to film some pick-up shots for the first episode and this photo shoot was slotted in before that. After the shoot had finished I got to chat briefly with the photographer who must be one of the nicest and most down to earth photographers I’ve ever come across. I didn’t have long to chat because I wanted to catch the filming that was taking place in Exeter College – more on that in a separate blog post.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, 35/2.8 Zeiss Biogon, Eastman Double X motion picture film developed in Kodak HC110 1+64. Pakon scans.
Behind the scenes photography from filming of Endeavour series 5, episode 5 in University Parks, Oxford, September 2017. The weather in the morning started off very overcast and dull which was a shame because the scenes due to be filmed called for nice sunny weather but in a stroke of luck the sun eventually burnt through the clouds to completely transform the location. These shots are from my first roll of the day before the sunshine arrived. As this was a new episode I decided to try something different in terms of lens choice for a change so instead of using my Voigtlander 40/1.4 Nokton lens I opted for my 35/2.8 Zeiss Biogon instead. My reasoning for this was that I wouldn’t be needing the speed of the 40/1.4 because there would be plenty of light and I wanted to more accurately compose in the viewfinder – the M6 displays 50mm frame lines when using a 40mm lens. I’m very pleased with the results and have used the images uncropped apart from one frame.
[Tech info:] Leica M6, Zeiss 35/2.8 Zeiss Biogon, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developed in Kodak D76 stock, Pakon scans.
