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Parklife: 10 weeks in Black Park

The Legend of Dick and Dom, CATHERINE LAND, production designer regails the story of her medieval design

BLACK PARK, near Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire, has been the location for many highly regarded film and TVproductions. ‘Superman 2’, ‘Bugsy Malone’ and ‘Harry Potter’ have all been filmed there. This summer, the park was once again invaded, this time by CBBC and ‘The Legend of Dick and Dom’; a comedy drama I was privileged enough to be asked to production design. Having art directed ‘Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow’, an anarchic Saturday morning show on BBC One, I was well placed to understand the surreal and comedic qualities required for the design on ‘Legend’. It’s a comedy for children but the humour appeals to adults as well; plotlines are extreme and absurd with a hint of the macabre, lending itself to some delightfully imaginative design. The show is set in Medieval times and structured around a quest: Dick and Dom have to collect ingredients to make a potion that will rid their Kingdom from a terrible plague. Their quest takes place in a mysterious, magical and surreal land called ‘Bottom World’, inhabited by elves, trolls, witchdoctors and one 50ft cow - the latter being the reason why I spent an afternoon up a scaffold tower with one of my standbys, waiting for the cue to pour 30 pints of milk into some giant prop cow udders - the teats of which Dick and Dom were milking on camera.

Many more such ridiculous events abounded on the shoot, much to the dismay of the regular visitors to Black Park, which we made our home for 10 weeks, from September to November. We left no part of the park untouched. A medieval village occupied its main drag, leading interested dog walkers, supposing they might be in the midst of filming for the next series of ‘Larkrise to Candleford’ or something similarly respectable, to enquire what we were working on. I can recall their looks of confusion and disgust when told that their beautiful park was harbouring the gunge-filled world of Dick and Dom for the autumn! One woman came striding up to me after a giant Smash fight between two warring tribes that had taken place in the park that morning: “My dog has just eaten something yellow off the ground!” When I told her it was most probably mashed potato, she screamed, “I don't care what it is! It shouldn't be there!” Most dogs and dog walkers took it all in good spirits though! The show was a creative gem to work on; a cross between ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Monty Python’, it was a mix of the magical and the plain ridiculous. Medieval Villages, Witcheries, Tickle Tournament grounds, Dragons Clacks, Vampire babies, caves and swamp monsters’ huts were everyday challenges. Typically for a CBBC show, the most challenging aspect was the budget.

Being a period drama meant everything had to be hired and a lot of the props were fantastical objects that had to be specially made so costs mounted really quickly. Although the show was short on cash and a kid’s comedy, I was determined that the design was still serious and what little money we had made it on screen. ‘Jabberwocky’ and ‘the Holy Grail’ were my references, and I tried to steer clear of the bright colours that kid’s shows have clung to in the past. Everything was dirty anyway due to the ever present huge puddles of mud, but everyone on design knew that mould and grime were intrinsic to the look of the show.

Prep time was short and and the schedule was manic - meaning that we had to come up with creative and clever solutions to the tasks the brilliant scriptwriters threw at us. Often they’d give us helpful hints in the stage directions; ‘This can EASILY be achieved with fishing wire and rods’. What? A flying dragon? Thanks for the advice! The Visual effects were great but we didn’t have the budget of ‘Merlin’, so a lot of stuff was thrown back at design to sort out. I was blessed with a great team of painters and propmakers who could run up the vast amount of signs, flags and general weirdness required for every episode. The premise of the story saw Dick and Dom on a journey which meant they never returned to the same place twice, so for 10 weeks it was relentless but amazingly creative.

In the thick of it I asked one of the design team to imagine that there’d been a fault in the space-time continuum and we were sent back to week one of the shoot and had to do it all over again. He replied, “I’d walk and you’d turn into more of a mega bitch than you already are!” Charming. That’s what wearing wellies and long johns for fifty days will do to you. We were reading scripts and prepping as we went along, however the schedule was so hectic this became very difficult in the last few weeks. Production meetings were held in cars on the way to set and recces were done during tape changes. Lack of time meant no margin for error either. We were lucky to have a producer and director who were happy to work on scenes with us, so they could still look fantastic but were achievable and affordable for design. We all worked in 5th gear for the entire series but I relished the pace.

None of it would have been possible without my amazing buyer (Sue Mclean), who knew exactly what a witchdoctors hut should look like, and my Propsmaster (Craig Price), who became more of a right hand man and took everything in his stride - even building a corner shop in the woods. My art director had a vast knowledge of gunge and splat techniques, essential for a Dick and Dom show. We had to relent and get a special effects guys in to make a vampire baby that could puke Ready Brek constantly for a minute - Homebase just doesn’t cover that - but apart from that we held our own. The lack of special effects guys meant that the standbys became used to throwing, pumping and shooting gunge and gross stuff into shot. The standbys and the Propsmaster had come from highbrow, well to do dramas, and to begin with I was worried that they wouldn’t enjoy the Dick and Dom experience. When I asked one of them, however, if he regretted signing up for the show, he said “are you kidding? Today I’ve been running across a field with some 16ft arms - I love it!”

There were definitely some sticky moments getting the 50ft udders in the air, digging a 2.5m deep pit, making endless vats of Smash, raking up hay, raking up seaweed, raking up gunge - all lovely gross jobs that add to the glamour of TV. The wind, rain, hail and freezing night shoots were all nasty, but one thing I have learnt from working on location is that everyone pulls together and looks after each other. A great sense of family came with this job. By the time we finished the shoot, we all felt like we had been at a festival for ten weeks, and location catering had got the better of us all! I was desperate for a lovely job in a warm studio, but thrilled that the show looked great and I’m now ready to don my wellies again next year for another jaunt in the park.