After much deliberation we decided the two central roles (Harry and Charlie) would be played by adults, as child actors would be very hard to get hold of and the script would also be very demanding for any child actor.
My first role as 'Production Designer' was to create the (comical) illusion that the two actors were children. We decided to dress them up as school boys. I found it difficult to procure the right sort of costumes, I wanted them to be slightly old fashioned public school boys (Just William style). After going to a few uniform shops and finding nothing I decided to try charity shops. Matching shirts and ties were relatively easy to get hold of what I had the most trouble with is the shorts, and they are the most integral part of the costume, for comedy value as well as stylistically. After searching countless shops for the illusive items, I decided to buy a couple of pairs of sandy beige (perfect colour to match maroon ties) trousers, cut them to the right length and then hemmed them. I have to say Michael and Joe dressed in their school boy costumes was pretty... breathtaking.
The main difficulty in my role was finding a dead rabbit. We talked for a while about whether we should use a real rabbit or a stuffed one. Using a stuffed one would give the film a bit of a Monty Python surrealist feel, whereas a real dead rabbit would make it a lot more dark and visceral. My first port of call was local butchers. I rang up a couple and they both said they weren't able to sell me a rabbit with the skin on and they also said no other butchers in Bath would. I ended up ringing up a farm on the outskirts of town and spoke to the farmer who said he had just delivered a load to Bartlett & Sons in the centre. So the next day I went down there and was promptly given a lovely frozen rabbit for the reasonable price of four pounds.
I'm going to avoid scripts that involve dead animals in the future; it was so difficult to get hold of and to handle (it started smelling after a couple of days).
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