[Bristolian]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

These two photographs remind me of a movie screening I'd gone to where a production designer was talking about the problems of location shooting for period films. While not everyone notices things in movies, a lot of people do. and the way sidewalk corners are constructed these days, with sloping and easier access for wheelchairs and the like, it poses problems if one wants to be accurate in a period film. He talked about one film where there was not time to do anything about it so the director just decided not to show the sidewalk corners, but he felt that was a distraction.

Not pertaining to streets, but to props: Pet peeves of art directors--after this was pointed out to me once, you wouldn't believe how many times I've noticed it since. Often when you see a bedroom or dining room scene, they use new sheets or tablecloths on the tables. The proper thing to do is to iron out the folded creases in them, but you'd be surprised how often you might notice people getting into bed and the sheets all have those fold marks because this wasn't done. The worst case of that I recall is a film in which people were in a scene by a clothesline and the sheets or tablecloths on the clothesline had the fold marks still on them!

The size and age of trees are also tough to get around for period pieces. Union Station has been used in numerous films but the palm trees in front are obviously taller than they would have been for the time periods of many of those films.