External Scene 1 - Winter outside Orchard House with Lulu















Larvi and I have now started working on the thumbnails for the storyboard for the first scene of the film. This one is a little easier for me as I have an image in my mind of what I want it to look like. I've provided Larvi with links to my Pinterest boards where I've put a LOT of pictures of Orchard House. 

Orchard House 

Everything I can find in fact, which numbers 160 at the last count. I've tried to include various angles and seasons and time periods, close ups and long shots.

The picture at the top of this post is a composited photo giving a very rough idea of what I had in mind.

This is Larvi's first draft of the scene:-








In reality the hills behind Orchard House are a lot lower as the terrain is fairly flat around Concord, MA as you can see form this picture taken from Google Earth.




I asked Larvi to remove the trees in the foreground just keeping the woods behind the house. 









I provided Larvi with some photos of how Orchard House looks in winter.











I had envisioned a horse-drawn carriage riding past the outside of Orchard House on the lane something like this one:-





I also asked Larvi to reinstate the fence between Orchard House and the lane as in this picture,

  
and I wanted to add the little School of Philosophy (built by Bronson Alcott, Louisa's father) to the left of Orchard House that you can see in this picture.




 
I realised it wasn't a particularly good shot so found a clearer, more close up shot of the school.




Working from this, Larvi produced a second version of the scene which looked great. Just the kind of distance and angle I was thinking of:-




Next I wanted to address the height of the hills / treeline behind Orchard House, so I went back to google earth for a distance shot. Bit of adjustment in photoshop and here is the comparison of Larvi's with Google Earth's version of reality:-
















As you can see we're pretty close. Now we have the scale and distance right, I wanted to add some of the tree back for the woods behind Orchard house and the fence in front as in this picture, not forgetting the carriage:-





Larvi's version 3 looks like this:-


Now I've realised that the big forked tree out the front of the house is a permanent fixture in all the Orchard House photos I've seen so we better add that. 


So here is our final version of Scene 1. Its a lovely copy of Orchard House, and it has the carriage, the fence and lane and the landscape around it just right :-




I should say that I have use a little artistic licence for this. There isn't in fact a lake just outside Orchard House like this. Walden Pond which was very popular with the Alcott's was a little further away.


For more pictures take a look at my Pinterest board of Walden Pond.


Comments