00:00Welcome to Wuthering Heights. My name is Susie Davis and this is Our Heights.
00:16I'm still at the front door of our Wuthering Heights. It's based in Northern England up in
00:21the Yorkshire Moors. We've created this environment for the action to take place as if we're in a
00:27farmyard. But we also have areas of the land around it starting to intrude into the house.
00:33We wanted to make it feel like it's really squeezing the house. We built this whole set
00:38on a soundstage. This means that we can control the environment, the weather, we can see the
00:44passage of time all in this environment at the back of the house. The Earnshaw logo obviously
00:50from 1500 when the Earnshaws first moved to this environment we wanted to give a bit of a nod to
00:56the beauty of different architectures throughout the history and also Wuthering means windy. So
01:02there's always some sort of weather having an effect on the whole environment. So nearly every
01:08scene will have a wind and rain effects going and smoke as if we're high up in the clouds with a
01:12wind and rain.
01:19The beauty of Wuthering Heights is that very early on Emerald wanted to have a composite set,
01:23a bit like Gone with the Wind, sort of a throwback to those sort of 40s and 50s type films and that
01:29was music to my ears because very rarely do you get to build a whole environment within a studio.
01:34The big tiles that you see on the wall are very of the northern vernacular. Usually there'd be black
01:39and grey stone to build houses like this but again we wanted something different so we came up with this
01:45high gloss finish. We wanted the whole environment to feel really wet and sweaty and moist. We wanted to feel
01:51like even the walls they're either sweating, crying or exuding some sort of bodily fluid.
01:57Between the two spaces that the film takes place mainly this is our darker more uncomfortable
02:17side of things although the Grange does have that element too but you definitely know where you are
02:22and the different environments create different feelings throughout the film.
02:31Sneak peek into the booze cupboard, my favourite cupboard that we may or may not see. He might have
02:37drunk it all by the time we get to it. We've kept the ceilings quite low so we were very aware of Jacob's
02:44height so he has to sort of duck his head. It's an uncomfortable environment for him. He doesn't belong here.
02:49Nella, what do you want?
02:55We wanted to reduce the amount of dressing in this environment so Emerald was keen to keep it as austere
03:00and paired back which is difficult for myself and the set deck department because we want to scatter
03:05it with detail and actually the detail is in the lack of detail. It gives a really uncomfortable feeling.
03:10Quite harrowing.
03:11We've obviously got these elements of the rocks bursting in that will start feeling as if they're
03:22coming even further in as we go through the story and there'll be more of a sort of skin disease that
03:28happens on the woodwork. So I'm down at the kitchen end where Mrs Burton will make the terrible stews made
03:35out of sheep's tongues and pigs trotters. An alternative title to Wuthering Heights would be
03:41the fireplace film. Throughout the builds I guess we must be up to about eight or nine fireplaces,
03:46all practical. So this is Earnshaw's fireplace. We have an absolute real chimney flue that comes all
03:53the way through. All the chimneys connect and then go up and out of the studio eventually so it gets quite
03:58nice and warm in here. Through the windows we've got these little highlights of red just to give
04:04that one pop of colour and I'm going to head to the parlour with the dune painting.
04:20Into the parlour with our dune painting that we painted around the top which were prevalent in
04:25the 1800s and it's actually of the seven deadly sins which seems opportune for our film. We've
04:31also got other details here. We've got scratches on the door. We like to think that the dogs are
04:35not allowed in this room but they want to come in. We've got our lovely chandelier with like an
04:39umbilical cord holding it up. All adds to the slightly heightened feel that back in the day they
04:43were very wealthy. Again we wanted to have the feeling of the rocks squishing into the property and
04:51about to take over so we've started the elements here of the rocks pushing through that have almost
04:56become like ornamental but they will eventually take over the property. We're pretty minimally dressed
05:08again however the elements that we do have have to work pretty hard so we've got our beautiful chair
05:14that our amazing set deck department reupholstered in some ancient fabric. The most impressive fellow
05:20you know gentlemen. We've got this incredible fireplace designed by one of my art directors that actually
05:27has a sort of almost brutal design to it but we wanted to create a fireplace that really encompassed
05:34the the rock pushing through as if they've honed it back but also it's painted in a high gloss finish
05:40so it looks like it's constantly sweating and perspiring because of the heat of the fire.
05:55We're in Cathy's bedroom now opposite from the stable block where we can look through diamond window into
06:01Heathcliff's bedroom and we've got this lovely little line from the book with our little highlight of red and
06:07our lovely hanging dolls which is in the opening sequence of the film. These are our hanging dolls
06:13which the kids buy at hanging day which have interesting elements to them and we think she's
06:18started collecting all the hanging dolls. Towards the end she has quite a few of them. We knew we wanted
06:25to have the hanging dolls. I think it's scripted that young Cathy jumps up to try and catch catch the
06:30dolls hanging above her bed so that's where the whole design of this room came from with this beam
06:35and everything started to come backwards from that and then we've even got some graffiti on top of the
06:41dressing table here and then through here we can see the gash and the rock wall as well. There's
06:46lots of scenes based where we look underneath the bed so I wanted to make the floor feel really
06:51authentic so we've actually given it a little bit of a pitch and a bow either side of the bed but
06:56particularly this side we've polished it a little bit more so it feels like every time she gets out
07:01of the bed it's a bit more worn on this side than perhaps the other side.
07:13Here we are in the stable block, the sort of farm working environment of Wuthering Heights. This
07:19becomes a pivotal point in our story because Heathcliff's bedroom ends up above us here which looks
07:26directly across to Cathy's bedroom. This was all really inspired by beautiful stable blocks of the
07:331800s and also we've got a lead coving which again is mimicked in the main house here again to elevate
07:41back in the day perhaps this was a bit of a smarter environment but it's all gone to rack and ruin.
07:47We've even got an element of what we're calling the factory which has the gothic arch through it
07:51again to help suggest that maybe these tumour-like growths that I spoke about earlier that are coming
07:58into the house started off in our factory surroundings here. During the build of this particular part of
08:06the environment we went to a reclamation yard and bought elements of an old barn that we then reconfigured
08:13into our construction drawings. Here we can see the beautiful tiles which we've twisted on the side to
08:19give this diamond effect and we've got our lovely leather doors as well just to give elements that
08:25are quite weird and unusual. So one of the big practicalities in the whole of the build is because
08:32we knew we're going to have rain effects throughout we've actually built a tank underneath the set.
08:38He knows I don't care to. Well I wish you would. When we have the big rain effects the water gets to drain
08:44properly so we're all about two foot above the studio floor now and underneath us is a big tank
08:51and we suck the water out at the end of every day.
09:00We're above the stable block which we've created little slithers in the floorboard so we can see
09:05down to certain goings on. We've created this area here it's quite pivotal the whole design
09:17is so that Heathcliff can see across to Cathy's bedroom through our beautiful diamond window. There
09:22are a couple of things that we're trying to differentiate throughout the film between the
09:26grange and the height so the height is all odd numbers nothing's balanced everything's off kilter
09:33there's not really much symmetry whereas the grange it's very symmetrical very ordered and all even
09:39numbers and to sort of bring in a little bit of the change as well we brought in diamond shaped
09:44windows which is just a little more curious and interesting and one of my goals is to make the
09:49actors um inhabit the spaces subconsciously I don't want them to think how does this what's this you know
09:57where's this where am I I want them to understand this is their environment and and I'm I think they
10:03feel that that this belongs to them and they inhabit the world with their characters here I am on the
10:17moors the North Yorkshire moors this is actual real greenery and grass and slate but underneath me is
10:24some rostra and some blocks of polystyrene actually that we've molded to create this environment we've
10:30got some elements where we see Heathcliff running along the moors and this is a really good join to
10:35the elements that we'll film on the real location where we'll see this backdrop for real
10:50here we are in the front yard of Wuthering Heights we're starting to break into the Yorkshire landscape
10:56and our palette starts to have little droplets of red that we've dotted about these are our bone trees
11:03and then we've got a heart tree here and then we come around and we have the back cloth as well which
11:08is a high resolution image of the exact landscape that we're going to be filming in in North Yorkshire
11:15we've slightly manipulated the weather so that we can change the weather with various lighting conditions
11:20on the stage with Linus our cinematographer we get to have these amazing sunsets sunrises wind and rain
11:29time is always a massive factor in filmmaking and for this one that was no different so we had about
11:3512 weeks to build this set before we started filming so that's pretty tight for a set this big
11:42there is a certain amount of pressure because Wuthering Heights is such an amazing bit of literature
11:46however our version is heightened there's a line between realism and surrealism that we're going
11:52for and it feels other it feels really special to be making the world of this story in such an unusual
12:00manner i hope you enjoyed the tour of Wuthering Heights i'm off to get a cup of tea at the Grange
12:20so
12:27so
12:28you
12:28you
12:28you
12:30you
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