Making the LCPS
Once we’d roughed the script out , we listed the number of locations required (about 20) and then started working our how to make them look right, usually in some detail.
The question ‘What do we have in the scene?’ was generally followed by ‘Where do we get it?’
The Punk Pit was a case in point; we
thought of Punk posters, but while pictures of Eminem
and the England Squad were going for £1 each in Hackney, Sid Vicious was only
to be found in a shop on
One of the saving graces of film is that the reality of any given set-up need only exist for the duration of the shot; before and after that, it doesn’t need to be there.
The Sharp Set Speakeasy, for instance, was lit from above by one shaded bulb; the walls are defined only by the gangster pictures, and the ‘card table’ is a circular pub table with green felt taped over it. Darkness and smoke do the rest.
In the same way, the five locations that we used on the second day –
the kitchen, the DH’s office, Matron’s room, the Punk
Pit, and the boxing ring, were all shot in different corners of the same room.
It was clear, pretty much from the get-go, that most of the interiors would have to be shot at Chats Palace Arts Centre – formerly Homerton Library – although shooting the kitchen at Lark in the Park and the boxing ring in an East End gym was considered, we rapidly decided that both could be built for Chats Palace, more easily than arranging extra locations; after all, a kitchen is just a lot of ingredients and utensils shot against a background of tea-towels, isn’t it?
Aside from the half dozen folding desks, blackboard and easel, and punishment bench, we also needed to find a significant quantity of furniture, and it all had to look right; an unforgiving constant in film is that if something looks right, it goes unnoticed, but if it’s wrong it sticks out like a sore thumb.
The chess table is something I made in the Cubs when I was ten, and the rug was on my floor; the leather chair for the Blue Brigade scene is mine, but it wasn’t until we were able to gat hold of the right Allen key that we were sure that we could get it out of the flat.
One of the first questions after writing the script was ‘How do Heavy distil the hooch?’ and Sir Guy of the Other Pony Club provided the explanation (he’s an engineer; they know these things): In closed institutions such as prisons, alcohol is typically distilled in a radiator. So we designed the still, complete with radiator, and then we had to find a radiator. Fortunately the gentleman downstairs had the builders in and they ripped all his radiators out, so he gave one to us, along with some useful piping.
We tried Freecycle, but got inundated with offers of things we didn’t want and requests for things we didn’t have
We were aware from the first, that a degree of artful design and lighting would be needed to avoid revealing that our 18 odd locations were generally within yards of each other, or occasionally in the same place. It was also a given proviso that the design budget was as close to nothing as we could make it; the film had to be done on the absolute cheap, simply because there simply wasn’t any money to spend on it.
The other consideration was how much time could Ian, the cameraman, give to the project? He had promised one day, but I knew we’d need a second day just to get the exteriors, and if anything went wrong, we might need a third to pick up anything outstanding. It seemed that, if at all possible, we should try to get all the interiors in one day at Chats. Chats agreed, and eventually we paid them £200 in cash for an afternoon and evening.
Some of the school already existed; the classroom, reception, the corridors, the gym. What we didn’t have were the six gang HQs; sets that would have to exemplify the gang ethos as well as implying their attitude and the breadth of their resources.
Witness the irony: True to say that the austere Blue Brigade barracks, with only the leader enjoying the luxury of a leather chair and chocolates (which Birgit provided herself), was the cheapest to realize (costing about 50p!), with the Punk Pit coming in a close second at £1, but the set for the far wealthier Sharp Set only cost about £2 for a light fitting and the gangster pictures (photocopies glued to black painted corrugated card), and since Chats had the sofa and piano to make the Old School Common Room look suitably traditional, and I had the chess table and rug, the portrait of Machiavelli was the only spend – it’s a colour photocopy, from the cover of The Prince, while the frame is papier mache. Even the Economist in that scene is fake – the photocopied cover is glued over a guillotined copy of erotic Trade Only.
The relatively poor
Initially we were thinking of finding a boxing ring that we could use, but since this would have meant adding an extra day on which we would have had to assemble the cast again, we decided that it would be simpler to build a boxing ring. The Firm had one before, but I got bored with it in 2005 and turned it into a whipping bench, so we made a new one; after some puzzling over how to make it freestanding, we cemented the posts into catering size baked bean tins, and painted the whole lot black, before adding the padding and coloured vinyl.
We were also considering, early on, that we might try to film the one kitchen shot in a real kitchen, but we very quickly decided that we could make the tiny kitchen at Chats look the business with the right props. In the event, we shot the scene upstairs at my then Stamford Hill home, using the contents of my own kitchen.
In the original script, scene 26 was set in
a TV studio, and we were even considering setting one up, but this would have
meant a fifth day added to a schedule already too long by two days. 
To do it simply, we produced a pastiche of a Class War poster (changed to Cross War, with an angry face, in accordance with the films idiom, and because we really don’t want any grief from a bunch of Whinging Lefties) with a period still of a moustached Ken Livingstone and a headline about the abolition of the GLC. Following from this we did local authority recycling posters for the 2008 version of our town hall, complete with crossed whips as an administrative logo. With an almost autistic attention to detail, the 2008 council notices were fixed with cable ties, while the 1986 political placards were tied with string.
For producing artwork, the internet is invaluable: You want a picture of Meyer Lansky? Google will find it for you. If you want an angry face, just type ‘angry face’, and if you think it would be witty to make the London Borough of Whipps Cross logo two crossed whips, it’s out there, all Google needs to do is find it.
The two giant banners for Punk and Blue Brigade proved a puzzle, in that while the canvas was free and we had the paint, we didn’t have sixty four square feet in which to paint them. At pretty much the eleventh hour Madame Petra suggested the Hackney Empire, where I was working.
The Empire is massive, but it doesn’t actually have any space for scenery painting, except, on very rare occasions, the stage itself. On this occasion, panto had just ended and the stage was due to be sanded and repainted; I gingerly approached someone in charge.
I don’t recall his exact words, but while being far from effusive he basically said ‘yes’ providing I didn’t ‘fuck [his] shit up’ (in spite of my never, in twenty years working there fucked up any of his shit), and further added that my only chance to do it was that evening.
So I finished work, got the bus home, collected Ginny, canvas, brushes and paint, and back we went to the Empire to paint on the stage, while the stage Manager stalked the building and growled. I don’t know what he was growling at, because I considered it safer not to ask, but was can’t have been the reason because he lent us a panto slop cloth to serve as the Punishment room floor.
Ginny’s painting of the school shield.
Sharp Set Bookies Box