Sidewalks of London

Continuing my collaborative projects with actors, I worked with Liz who is an American actor living in London.

We decided to try and make her origins and profession a feature of the main shot, and so I did some research, looking for American words used in London. I was particularly looking for a sign that had an Americanism, such as Sidewalk, when I discovered a film from the 1930s entitled Sidewalks of London, with a sub-title of St Martin’s Lane. The film starred Vivien Leigh and was about a pickpocket operating in London. So armed with this information we headed for St Martin’s Lane, where we had Liz acting out the part of a pick pocket.

The final shot ended up being one of the early shots where Liz kept her gloves on (it was very cold), and I felt they added a Fagin-esque quality to the shot.

We had to wait for the area where we wanted to shoot to clear so we grabbed a couple of other portraits first.

Thanks to my assistants Oli and Tim for all their hard work.