Interview with Doug Cartwright, Leadlight Artist for VDT

NarniaWebber icarus writes: “An interesting feature in this magazine here with Doug Cartwright, the guy who did the Leadlights (which is apparently pretty much the same thing as a Stained Glass Window) for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s not the longest article ever, but it does give perhaps one of the first mentions for the Scrubb’s house set (we’ve heard a brief mention of the bedroom set before, but nothing of the rest of the house. I would assume the leadlights for this set would be in the hallway or on the front door probably):

Doug walked through the sets in progress, and, at Sound Stage 5, a crew of builders was working swiftly to assemble a free-standing group of houseless, three-walled rooms. “The first batch of leadlights was for the rather drab and conventional Scrubb House, from which Lucy, Edmund and their cousin Eustace depart for Narnia. Then there would be some much more stylish panels of Narnian leadlight to go into the Royal Stateroom doors onboard the ship.

Though he does also mistakenly refer to one of the fauns on set as “Mr Tumnus” but we can forgive him that one.”

The article is on page 23 of the Logan Central Magazine PDF here.

Thanks icarus for the find!

15 Responses

  1. Reepicheep775 says:

    A 'conventional' house sounds like a good fit for the Scrubbs.

  2. Fire Fairy says:

    While the article isn't very long, it is rather interesting. I thought it was especially interesting that because of the high pixelation of digital cameras, they could no longer fake the leadlights, and had to have a professional come in and do it. And the story about them adjusting the ship to adjust sunlight and the doors swinging shut was also very intriguing. It was a nice little sneak peak into a movie set from the set-builder's point of view, and what it requires on their part when something goes wrong. I really liked it.

  3. AJAiken says:

    My mum's a stained glass artist, so most "leadlight" in films makes me cringe! This is really cool. I can't wait to see what it looks like.

  4. Omac the centaur says:

    haha mr. tumnus must be pretty old! 😛

  5. Omac the centaur says:

    hm, it won't let me do any other faces. 🙁

  6. Omac the centaur says:

    it worked! 😀

  7. icarus says:

    I had been starting to wonder whether they would show any of the Scrubb's house outside the bedroom scene – I guess it makes sense they would since we know they've got a couple of outside Cambridge based scenes before hand (e.g. the street scene filmed in the MovieWorld Carpark), and it would be pretty odd if they didn't show them entering the house to get to the bedroom, but since we haven't yet got a casting for Uncle Harold or Aunt Alberta I was beginning to have my doubts (technically neither character actually "appears" in the book), but evidently the Scrubb's have quite a substantial house set. Guess we will have to wait a bit longer for Harold and Alberta.

    I also wondered whether they might have shot some of the non-bedroom scenes for the Scrubb's house in the UK before they left for Australia (hence the mysterious shooting at Twickenham Studios, and the lack of any Harold/Alberta news coming out of Australia) but i guess they shot it all down under.

  8. pselpevensie says:

    cool article

  9. Waleed Sajjad Khan says:

    same here, my dad once sketched an egyptian scene and my painted it on a mirror (stainglass). 262 days left!

  10. Liberty Hoffman says:

    ^^ yeah! like beige colors or something! 😀

  11. Hermitess of Narnia says:

    They might have a couple of shots of Eustace listening to Edmund and Lucy talk about Narnia. Keep praying.

  12. The Batman says:

    Thanks for the interesting article, icarus! 🙂 Hmmm… yeah, I hadn't thought of whether or not they'd show the aunt and uncle or not. I hope they do!

  13. Starlily says:

    You're right! I always imagined it brown or gray. I wonder what the inside will look like?

  14. WilliamMoseleyandSkandarcrush! says:

    lol. ur funny. I don't know how to do any faces except for 🙂 and :(. I I was just thinking about mr. Tumnus! he should be dead!!!

  15. Malfhok says:

    Yes! I was just noticing the part about not being able to fake the leadlights. Apparently the digital cameras are more sensitive than the film cameras…

    "It turned out that the new generation of digital cameras give such fine resolution that they couldn't get away with faking things much anymore"